The demo for Half-Life 2 RTX is out now. Available to play for free, the game can be downloaded off Steam. As its name implies, Half-Life 2 RTX is a remaster of the seminal shooter, albeit this time around making use of Nvidia’s current-gen features, like ray tracing and DLSS.
Half-Life 2 RTX is the latest release as part of Nvidia recently fully launching its RTX Remix tool. Developed through RTX Remix, Half-Life 2 RTX features the Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt levels. The team behind Half-Life 2 RTX has said that it plans on remastering the entirety of the game, with every texture, model and level getting updates.
“With a mission to remaster the entirety of Half-Life 2, we’re updating every texture, model, and level, adding extra geometric detail to buildings and surfaces to realistically interact with fully ray-traced lighting,” wrote Orbifold Studios in a post. “Each upgraded asset employs state of the art PBR-based workflows to make highly detailed meshes with realistic material properties, in place of the low resolution, low poly originals. And even particles and animations are being revitalized to bring Half-Life 2 to modern graphical standards.”
Along with ray traced lighting and higher resolution textures, Half-Life 2 RTX also features support for Nvidia’s DLSS 4. This includes support for upscaling, as well as Multi Frame Generation, which is able to multiply the frame rate by up to 10 times when playing Half Life 2 RTX at 4K. DLSS Super Resolution and DLSS Ray Reconstruction are also being used, along with the Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin, and RTX Volumetrics.
To play Half-Life 2 RTX, at minimum, you will need either an Intel i7-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with 8 GB of VRAM to run the game at 1080p and 30 FPS. This hardware will be able to run the game at the Low graphics preset with DLSS turned on.
To play at 1080p and 60 FPS, you will need either an Intel i7-10700 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 12 GB of VRAM. This will run the game at the High graphics preset with DLSS on.
To play at 4K and 144 FPS, you will need a top-of-the-line system running on either an Intel i7-12700K or an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 with 16 GB of VRAM. This runs the title at the Ultra preset with DLSS on.
Orbifold Studios has also provided optimal settings for players, depending on the resolutions and frame rates that they want to play at, while also taking their PC specs into account. These settings include Nvidia’s own feature set, including DLSS Ray Reconstruction models and Frame Generation mode depending on their GPU.
If Half-Life 2 RTX has made you curious about RTX Remix, you can try out the tool for free through Nvidia’s official website. RTX Remix was originally released as a beta back in 2023, and has allowed modders to bring modern visual effects to classic games like Painkiller and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
