NVIDIA has released a new patch for Quake II RTX that adds support for Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions. What this means is that any graphics card that supports the Vulkan Ray Tracing API, such as AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series, can now run the game and enjoy id Software’s classic FPS with modern effects like global illumination and real-time reflectivity.
“Quake II RTX was initially released in June 2019, reimagining the classic game’s graphics with amazing ray-traced lighting, shadows, and reflections,” NVIDIA wrote. “With the 2019 release coming well ahead of cross-vendor Vulkan APIs for ray tracing, Quake II RTX implemented ray tracing using NVIDIA’s ‘VKRay’ extensions.”
This is cool news for those of you who managed to get your hands on an RDNA 2 GPU, but PC Gamer has shared benchmarks that suggest Quake II RTX’s performance on the Radeon RX 6800 XT Series is only half as good at what NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 is capable of in the Vulkan Ray Tracing department.
“It’s tough to be too down on AMD’s GPUs at the moment when it comes to ray tracing, however, because as I said at the beginning, it’s just getting started,” PC Gamer optimistically noted.
NVIDIA also released its GeForce Game Ready 460.89 WHQL driver today, which enables support for Quake II RTX 1.4.0. We’ve copied the open issues below.
Windows 10 Issues
- [Nicehash, other mining software]: Mining software does not recognize the NVIDIA GPU. [3200758]
- [GeForce GTX 1080 Ti]: The desktop screen may flicker. [3200599]
- [Steam VR game]: Stuttering and lagging occur upon launching a game. [3152190]
- [HDR]: With HDR enabled, black levels are incorrect. [200682795]
- [G-SYNC][NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture]: GPU power consumption may increase in idle mode on systems using certain higher refresh-rate G-SYNC monitors. [200667566]
- [YouTube]: Video playback stutters while scrolling down the YouTube page. [3129705]
- [Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly drop to 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452]
- [G-Sync][Vulkan Apps]: Performance drop occurs when using G-SYNC and switching from full-screen mode to windowed mode using the in-game settings. [200681477] To workaround, either launch the game in windowed mode directly or disable G-SYNC.
- [GeForce RTX 3070][Clone Mode]: When the resolution is set to 2560×1440 @ 144Hz, the performance state is stuck at maximum performance. [200678414]
- [NVIDIA Turing or later][Windows Movies and TV Player]: When playing a 4k video in fullscreen mode on a 2560×1440 HDR monitor, the video extends beyond the edge of the screen. [3186830]
You can download the new GeForce Game Ready 460.89 WHQL driver through GeForce Experience. The complete release notes can be found here.