007 First Light has officially gone full path tracing, and the RTX 5090, which has been spotted at more than $10,000, is what will be needed to achieve full path tracing at 4K with 200+FPS.
The update from NVIDIA and IO Interactive expands the game's existing DLSS 4.5 support to now include Ray Reconstruction and Path Tracing, delivering cinematic lighting, shadows, and reflections in quite an impressive visual overhaul.
However, this shouldn't be surprising at this point, considering other Path Tracing-compatible games, the new path-traced mode in 007 First Light requires serious PC hardware to run.
At minimum, you need an RTX 5070 for 1080p at 60 FPS. But for the 4K High preset with path tracing, the minimum is an RTX 5090 with 32GB VRAM, a Core i5-13600K or Ryzen 7 7700X, and 32GB of RAM. According to IO Interactive, these specs are needed to maintain the 200+ FPS target, which depends on DLSS Dynamic Multi Frame Generation rather than raw native performance.
This update continues the trend of high-end GPUs and DLSS 4.5 being the key to unlocking next-gen visuals in AAA titles. With the RTX 5090 and DLSS 4.5, 007 First Light joins a small number of path-traced titles, but like the others, only the most powerful systems can fully experience the graphical fidelity jump.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What are the full PC requirements for 007 First Light’s path-traced mode beyond the RTX 5070 minimum?
Does 007 First Light’s path tracing require DLSS 4.5 to hit 1080p 60 FPS, or can it run without it?
What settings need to be enabled to use Ray Reconstruction and path tracing in 007 First Light?
Will the path-traced update be available at launch or only after release on PC?
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The path-tracing feature arrives post-launch as part of IO Interactive's ongoing collaboration with NVIDIA, and it's another step toward making real-time ray tracing mainstream, even if it's still firmly in the realm of high-end hardware. It is also recommended that you update your GeForce Game Ready Driver to the latest version before trying 007: First Light with path tracing.
