Nvidia has just opened up its bag ofRTX 40-seriesgoodies and unleashed all of them onPortal: Prelude RTX, a community remaster of one of the most popularPortalmods.
The game features full ray tracing, as well as support forDLSS 3. To top it off, it also utilizes Nvidia’s Reflex and RTX IO tech to improve performance. you’re able to play it for free, but only if you already own the original version ofPortal.
Nvidia’s DLC forPortal,titledPortal RTX, has been on Steam for a while. Now, a remake of an unofficial mod will also become available at 12 p.m. PT on July 18. First released in 2008, it takes place before the main game. Nvidia teases thatPortal: Preludeserves up an “extremely challenging” 10-hour campaign that comes with a lot of interesting stuff to sink your teeth into. Expect to see new gameplay mechanics, 19 previously unseen test chambers, and a fully fleshed-out story complete with voice acting.
Although it may have started as a successful mod,Portal: Preludecertainly sounds like a proper game. It was created by modders with the use of Nvidia’s RTX Remix creator toolkit, which is a modding platform that lets creators revamp classic games to take advantage of Nvidia’s RTX tools, includingray tracingand DLSS. The end result is a collaboration between Nvidia and the original creator ofPortal Prelude, Nicolas Grevet (NykO18).
The game is said to make the most of what Nvidia has to offer in this generation of GPUs. The ever-impressive DLSS 3 is here in full force, ramping up frame rates while Reflex cuts back on latency. Every frame has been upgraded in a group effort by a team of five modders, and it now features high-resolution imagery with realistic ray tracing and lighting, as well as enhanced models. It’s likePortal, but on steroids.
Nvidia teases huge performance boosts thanks to the use of its RTX product stack (DLSS 3, Reflex, RTX IO). The game is said to run up to 5x faster on average when played at 4K with max settings, which, Nvidia claims, translates to 80 frames per second (fps) or more. This only applies to theRTX 4080and theRTX 4090,though. RTX IO itself improves texture loading speeds by 5x and also takes up 44% less space on your drive.
In addition to the game itself, Nvidia is launching a new Game Ready Driver. It also adds some optimizations for other games, such asRatchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and boosts the way RTX IO and Microsoft DirectStorage in Windows work in these two titles.
The game is up for grabs — if you already ownPortal, you can download the new prequel on Steam. Nvidia hasn’t mentioned any availability for the game elsewhere, so this seems to be the only option.
Nvidia also teased that the 16GB version ofRTX 4060 Tiis coming later this month, which seemingly confirms the theory that Nvidia itself is not making a Founders Edition of the card.
