Portal with RTX was originally scheduled to show up sometime this month. But according to NVIDIA, it’s been pushed back to December 8th. This free DLC brings “full ray tracing” and “DLSS 3 to one of the best video games of all time.”

Experience the critically acclaimed and award-winning Portal™ reimagined with ray tracing. Every frame of gameplay is upgraded with stunning full ray tracing, new, hand-crafted hi-res physically based textures, and new, enhanced high-poly models evocative of the originals, all in stunning 4K. In Portal with RTX, full ray tracing transforms each level, enabling light to bounce and be affected by the scene’s geometry and materials. Every light is ray-traced and casts shadows, global illumination indirect lighting naturally illuminates and darkens rooms, volumetric ray-traced lighting scatters through fog and smoke, and shadows are pixel perfect.

NVIDIA just released a new video comparing the game with and without DLSS 3. It’s only shown for a few seconds, and you might want to take the results with a grain of salt, since the video is coming directly from NVIDIA. In any case, it looks like the game gets about five times the FPS with DLSS 3 enabled and RTX on, versus RTX and DLSS off.

The blog post mentions the ray tracing is “incredibly demanding, stressing graphics cards to their limits.” And if we go according to their chart, they’re not kidding:

Portal with RTX requirements

Apparently with DLSS 2, however, 3060 owners will get “playable” frames at 1080p at High settings. The chart indicates that the “playable” FPS in this case would be 30. Looks like my Thelio will barely be able to handle it. 60+ FPS at the same resolution and graphics settings would require a 3080 or higher. 4K, 60+ FPS at ultra settings would need the 4080 with DLSS 3.

NVIDIA will be having a “launch party” via livestream on December 6th. See the blog post for more info.

I can’t wait to try this out!