Max Payne 2 RTX Remix looks incredible, but performance drops from 1200 FPS to below 40 FPS

Max Payne 2 gets the RTX Remix treatment, and even though it looks fantastic, performance takes a massive hit when played in 4K on the GeForce RTX 5080.

Max Payne 2 RTX Remix looks incredible, but performance drops from 1200 FPS to below 40 FPS
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TL;DR: Max Payne 2 RTX Remix enhances the 2003 classic with advanced ray tracing, path-traced lighting, and improved textures, delivering stunning visuals but demanding high-end hardware. Even powerful GPUs like the GeForce RTX 5080 struggle with performance, highlighting the need for DLSS 4 and Frame Generation to achieve playable frame rates.

Remedy's Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, released in 2003, saw the studio deliver a masterpiece of noir, crime, and bullet-time action. On PC, the game debuted with cutting-edge visuals that still look great in 2025, but are taken to the next level with full ray tracing or path-traced lighting thanks to NVIDIA's RTX Remix modding toolkit.

Max Payne 2 RTX Remix sees the game's visuals and lighting improve, but at the cost of real performance, image credit: MxBenchmarkPC/YouTube.
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Max Payne 2 RTX Remix sees the game's visuals and lighting improve, but at the cost of real performance, image credit: MxBenchmarkPC/YouTube.

Currently in development by Darko9.13, Max Payne 2 RTX Remix is playable and available for download on Moddb; however, performance takes a massive hit, even when running on one of the most powerful GPUs on the market. Path tracing is incredibly hardware-intensive (as seen in Half-Life 2 RTX), and here we see performance in one area drop from around 1250 FPS in one scene down to around 40 FPS on a GeForce RTX 5080.

This figure comes from a Max Payne 2 RTX Remix visual showcase and performance video created by MxBenchmarkPC. The 40 FPS path tracing figure is obtained with DLSS 4's 'Performance' preset enabled, which means the game's internally rendered resolution is 1080p. Yes, this makes Max Payne 2 RTX Remix one of the most visually demanding mods currently available; however, the transition to realistic lighting, physically based materials, improved textures, and some updated geometry is impressive to see.

Max Payne 2 RTX Remix looks incredible, but performance drops from 1200 FPS to below 40 FPS 3
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For a game that is over two decades old, it's pretty remarkable. But, yeah, that performance hit is just as impressive. It's worth adding that, like games themselves, RTX Remix mods require optimization for the best performance, whether that's customizing the ray bounces and other RT effects to run on more hardware or tweaking textures, effects, and other settings.

As seen in the benchmark video, running the game at 1440p with DLSS 4's Balanced preset achieves a performance closer to 60 FPS, which increases to nearly 100 FPS with Frame Generation enabled using the 2X preset. RTX Remix mods are meant to be played with DLSS 4 and Frame Generation for the best performance, but here it looks like the GeForce RTX 5080 isn't quite powerful enough to run Max Payne 2 RTX Remix in its current state in 4K - you'll probably need a GeForce RTX 5090 for that.