Nvidia's prettier Portal with ray tracing, DLSS 3 arrives December 8

Portal with RTX
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Valve's classic puzzle-platform game Portal has been given a full Nvidia-style makeover with ray tracing and DLSS 3 support. Created in-house at Nvidia's Lightspeed Studios, it's known as Portal with RTX and will be available from December 8th as a free DLC add-on for the original game.

Believe it or not, the release is being timed to coincide with the 15-year anniversary of the original release of Portal by Valve way back in the mists of 2007. Yes, Portal really is that old. And so are we. Even Portal 2 is nine years old. Terrifying.

Anywho, the whole game has been redone with ray-traced lighting, plus new high-res textures and 3D models with higher polygon counts. Then there's full support for both DLSS 2 and DLSS 3, Nvidia's resolution scaling and performance-enhancing platforms.

DLSS 2 features are available on RTX 30-series graphics boards, while DLSS 3, including frame insertion, is exclusive to the very latest RTX 40-series GPUs, including the mighty GeForce RTX 4090.

It's not immediately clear if the new visuals will be supported on AMD hardware. But we expect that the ray tracing, fancy textures and nifty high-poly models will work on AMD GPUs. It's just the DLSS shizzle you'll miss out on. There's more info here on required system specs.

Nvidia Portal RTX recommended specs

Here's what you need in your rig to get started. (Image credit: Nvidia)
Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

Of course, no doubt the whole shebang has been carefully coded to fly on Nvidia GPUs. To celebrate all of the above, Nvidia is holding an online Portal with RTX party on December 6th, 10AM PST, with behind-the-scenes looks at the making of Portal with RTX, new gameplay, special surprises, giveaways of Portal game codes, and a chance to win GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards. 

We might just spool up our 4090 review unit and pop in.

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Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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