The Half-Life 2 RTX Demo Makes Half-Life 2 Look Like What You Remember It Did

A Community Made Mod Turned NVIDIA Tech Demo

The just released Half-Life 2 RTX demo was developed by Orbifold Studios, which is a group of modders who wanted to make the game look like we remember it did, as nostalgia through rose-colored glasses definitely applies to this game.  The hardware requirements are beefy, the suggested RTX 3060 Ti is going to struggle to maintain decent frame rates.  In Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN’s testing an RTX 5080 could maintain decent frame rates with the help of both DLSS and Frame Generation.  AMD’s new RX 9070 XT may be able to approach 60FPS but at the moment you should be looking at NVIDIA’s most expensive cards to get the most out of it.

The Half-Life 2 RTX demo has a fair amount of bugs, which may be ironed out over time if you are willing to wait.  If you want to jump right in, most people who tried the demo out had mixed feelings.  There are parts that are absolutely gorgeous, and others that seem to have been left completely out for some reason.  As RPS points out while trying Ravenholm, the pipes which play such an important part in that section of the game are still rather lacklustre.  Still, it is free and at that price it’s worth taking a peek!