Cyberpunk 2077 finally received the long-awaited Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode update. Patch 1.62. This patch adds a new graphics option (Overdrive Mode) to the game that replaces all rasterized lighting with a real-time lighting simulation and brings true path-traced lighting to the game. The effect is staggering, but the performance impact is drastic. So to run overdrive mode on CD Projeck Red you need RTX 3090/3090 TI (for 1080P 30FPS) or RTX 4070 Ti or above.
For a complete overview of path tracing lighting effects in games, check out our previous article here. But in summary, Overdrive mode replaces nearly all light sources with path-traced 3D simulated light, greatly improving the image quality of Cyberpunk 2077. Older/lower-end ray tracing modes used a hybrid approach that used RT effects sparingly to keep performance high. With Overdrive mode, the game transitions to a fully integrated ray tracing pipeline, designed from the ground up for path tracing.
Before we get confused, NVIDIA and CD Projeckt Red are using the terms ray tracing and path tracing interchangeably in Cyberpunk 2077’s Overdrive. marketing. (opens in new tab) However, this mode revolves almost entirely around path tracing. Path tracing is a more performant way of simulating 3D lights, and produces similar results to ray tracing.
In reality, Overdrive makes the difference between day and night in the atmosphere of the game. Rasterized lighting methods struggle to produce realistic environment lighting, leading to things like light leaks and inaccurate object shadows. Overdrive’s full path-traced graphics pipeline solves all of these problems.
performance
CD Projekt Red was no joke about the graphics requirements of Overdrive mode. The game is effectively a portal RTX on steroids, as the GPU has to render serious path tracing lighting effects in an open world environment.
According to early performance results by digital foundry, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 runs games at just 18 FPS at 4K resolution with Overdrive mode enabled. Achieving 60FPS required DLSS 2 performance mode without frame generation. However, with DLSS 3 frame generation enabled, the RTX 4090 achieves almost 100FPS.
The RTX 4090 looks pretty good natively at 1440P and 1080P. Daniel Owen We tested both of these resolutions in overdrive mode and found that the RTX 4090 can natively achieve around 45FPS at 1440P and over 60FPS at 1080.
Sadly most of the early performance coverage only covers the RTX 4090. But I did find one performance summary. who I’m running an RTX 4070 Ti. Unsurprisingly, the GPU fairs significantly worse than his RTX 4090 in overdrive mode, averaging less than 25 FPS at native 1440P with frame generation enabled. Achieving 60+ FPS required DLSS quality and frame generation. However, his test cannot verify the validity of his setup, so don’t take his results with a grain of salt.
Again, Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Overdrive mode is only available on RTX 3090 series GPUs and RTX 4070 Ti and above GPUs. However, if you have an 8GB or larger graphics card, you can access Overdrive mode in the game’s photo mode. This patch is now available to all owners of Cyberpunk 2077.
