Cyberpunk 2077 With NVIDIA RT Overdrive Mode & Path Tracing To Be 30-40% More GPU Intensive, DLSS 3 Allows Over 100 FPS on RTX 4090

Cyberpunk 2077 devs have posted a new "Behind The Settings" video that discusses the upcoming Path Tracing update and NVIDIA Overdrive RT mode that is coming to the game next week, talking about how taxing the new visual mode will be on modern-day GPUs and how DLSS 3 can definitely assist with adding more performance.

A few days ago, NVIDIA published a video of the Cyberpunk 2077 RT overdrive mode and the first unveiling of the Path Tracing Technical Preview which will be available to everyone to try out on the 11th of April as a free update. The video showcased that with the game running natively & with Path Tracing enabled, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 could only manage 16 FPS whereas enabling DLSS 3 boosted the performance to over 100+ FPS.

Now, Cyberpunk 2077 devs themselves, including Cezary Bella (Graphics Programmer), Jakub Knapik (Global Art Director), and Giovanni de Francesco (Senior Technical Lighting Artist), have revealed even more details, highlighting the various performance aspects of the new modes & revealing how taxing Path Tracing is.

Well, it's going to be pretty expensive. I mean, pretty heavy on the GPU & we don't have a precise number but probably something around 30 percent, 40 percent heavier but this is where DLSS 3 comes in to help us because it gives back all the performance, all the frame that we are losing with the high demanding rendering technique.

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev

For the demonstration, the Cyberpunk 2077 devs used a high-end PC running an AMD Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPU with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. Following is the test configuration:

NVIDIA & Cyberpunk 2077 devs already stated back at GDC 2023 that you will need a very powerful PC equipped with RTX 40 GPUs to fully enjoy what Path Tracing and RT Overdrive Mode offer in the game. The team is aiming for a good and playable experience on the RTX 40 series across the board so it looks like users running an RTX 4070-class GPU would also be able to run the game with Path Tracing enabled and get decent FPS.

Although the native Path Tracing performance is not shown, we do get to see the difference in the standard ray tracing + DLSS 3 setting with the new Path Tracing + DLSS 3 setting. The developers state that the NVIDIA RT Overdrive Mode with Path Tracing will be around 30-40% more taxing on the GPU and with an RTX 4090 struggling to hit that 100 FPS+ mark even with DLSS 3 enabled, it is likely that native performance (DLSS Disabled) with the same settings will yield sub-30 FPS graphics performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

But more importantly, one should remember that the whole reason for adding RT Overdrive mode and Path Tracing to Cyberpunk 2077 is to offer a sort of technical preview which is what it is. Its main purpose is to showcase what Path Tracing brings to the tables in terms of visual fidelity and what are some ways in which game developers and GPU vendors can work to try and optimize the next-gen of AAA titles so that we can get even better. Surely, DLSS 3 is one of those techniques but we can't wait to see further optimizations coming in the future.