IO Interactive's long‑awaited James Bond title, 007 First Light, finally arrived after a two‑month slip from its March 2026 launch window. The third‑person action‑adventure reimagines Bond’s origin, sending a young agent across Iceland, Malta, Vietnam and Antarctica. Built on the Glacier engine, the game runs exclusively on DirectX 12.

TechPowerUp benchmarked more than 30 contemporary GPUs, charting frame rates, VRAM consumption and image quality across settings. The title supports NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 and AMD FSR 3.1.5, while Intel XeSS is absent. Ray tracing arrives later via a summer‑2026 update that will add path‑tracing and DLSS Ray Reconstruction. Frame generation is limited to DLSS Dynamic Multi‑Frame Generation, up to six‑fold.

Results show entry‑level RTX 3060‑Ti cards sustain playable 60 fps at 1080p with DLSS, while high‑end RTX 4090 rigs push beyond 120 fps at 4K Ultra settings. Heavy VRAM usage spikes above 12 GB on max textures, signaling that 16 GB of system memory becomes advisable. Gamers can expect a smooth Bond experience now, with visual upgrades arriving later this year.

By opting solely for DirectX 12 and omitting ray tracing at launch, IO Interactive mirrors a trend among AAA studios to prioritize performance over immediate fidelity. The forthcoming path‑tracing patch will keep the title relevant against rivals like Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed sequel, which promises native ray tracing from day one.