04/12/2023 at 18:45 by Thilo Bayer – In the course of the announcement of the overdrive raytracing mode for Cyberpunk 2077, Nvidia has also published its own benchmarks. These show one thing: In Ultra HD, there are limitations even on the fastest graphics cards.
Since April 11th, the path tracing update for Cyberpunk 2077, known as technology preview, has been available for download. Like many other media, PCGH was and is still busy with other topics, so that we cannot yet offer our own values. However, Nvidia itself shows benchmarks that are quite tough.
Nvidia with its own benchmarks
We remember: Nvidia itself recommends a 4070 Ti, 4080 and 4090 – an RTX 3090 is only good for 1080p with 30 fps without DLSS3. Since the 4070 wasn’t launched yesterday, we can’t say anything about suitability for RT Overdrive in Cyberpunk 2077 (buy now €74.89). With Raytracing Ultra, a 4070 Ti is about 22 percent faster than an RTX 4070 – keep that in mind.
Nvidia’s own benchmarks for RT Overdrive
Several aspects stand out in the overdrive benchmarks provided by Nvidia. The UHD benchmarks are only available with DLSS performance. Despite DLSS3, the 4070 Ti doesn’t quite reach the 60 fps mark. Nvidia generally does not offer benchmarks with DLSS2, compared with switched off DLSS, which borders on masochism in view of the frame rates. Nvidia only dares to approach DLSS quality in WQHD, here the 4070 Ti also easily exceeds the 60 fps mark. The laptop GPUs 4070, 4080 and 4090 also achieve Full HD with DLSS3 – each with more than 60 frames per second.
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Nvidia itself admits that the technology preview of RT Overdrive in Cyberpunk 2077 is “extremely GPU intensive”. A new Nvidia article offers a lot of exciting background information on the technology. It features Jakub Knapik, Vice President and Global Art Director at CDPR. He notes that Raytracing: Overdrive, or path tracing, completely overhauls the entire rendering and lighting pipeline with an approach previously “known primarily as part of visual effects in films and animation.” Path tracing will allow all light sources in the game to locally produce hundreds or more, pixel-perfect lighting and shadows throughout the visible world, Knapik said. This approach gives players “a very organic looking and visually stunning world, with beautiful gradients and realism.”
Originally, Raytracing Overdrive should only be offered in photo mode – and not in the game. When Nvidia announced DLSS3, efforts went in a different direction: real-time path tracing in the game was suddenly no longer a utopia. Frame generation sometimes feels like “real magic,” says Knapik. The technology looks like a clever solution to a problem that the industry has been trying to solve for years. And as CDPR itself says: “Of course, this technology is also used in the Phantom Liberty expansion”.