Is Nvidia’s RTX Remix necessary, or are we polishing rough gaming diamonds back into coal?
Nvidia’s RTX remix, a resource platform that gives the modding community access to tools to easily remaster old titles, has entered open beta and now we’re finally seeing the results. Unfortunately, those results look pretty mixed right now.
There has been a recent demo showing off the 23 year old game Max Payne with RTX Remix improvements, a mod you can access here. While it looks visually stunning running on the RTX 4080 – one of the best graphics cards – and uses path tracing, performance-wise it is quite poor.
The framerate drops significantly from 1,300 fps without the mod to just under 60 fps with the RTX Remix mod active, while the graphics card’s power consumption almost doubles from 180 W to 300 W.
Some would argue that because May Payne If this is such an old title, it’s par for the course, but the whole point of the RTX Remix toolkit is to improve older titles in the first place. If you’re sacrificing so much performance for a prettier face, what’s the point of enabling this, since many older games already suffer from performance issues?
And sometimes the facelift isn’t even worth it, depending on the game. While many older games are not as technically advanced as newer ones, this was often compensated by creating a unique atmosphere by turning graphical limitations into interesting art design choices that enhanced the title. And other games, like Portal 2, have such excellent art direction and clever design that updated graphics aren’t even necessary.
That’s not to say nothing good came out of RTX Remix, with projects like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind remastering, Fallout: LondonAnd Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community-led remaster that shows what’s possible. When fans truly understand the game they are remastering, they can improve the visuals without sacrificing performance or the intended aesthetic.
The Max Payne The tech demo doesn’t illustrate that kind of concern. It sacrifices gaming performance, the very thing that makes a game a game, for a glossy coat of paint. Is that path tracing worth the cost?
The Portal RTX remake, that tries to fix what isn’t broken in the first place isn’t better. The base game, as described above, looks incredible and has aged almost flawlessly. There’s no reason for a remaster in the first place, as it doesn’t refine the graphics or improve performance.
I really hope there are more high quality remasters like the ones mentioned above Older roles III And Fallen London honor the RTX Remix community. But unfortunately, we’ll probably get more Max Payne remasters instead.