Cyberpunk 2077 will soon look a lot more like real life as Nvidia has revealed an enhanced ray tracing mode. Nvidia calls this brand new graphic enhancements mode Ray Tracing: Overdrive, it’ll be quite literally the best graphics in a game today and for the next few years to come. It’s all simply a preview of where graphics and visual fidelity is going in gaming, especially in the current generation lineup, and even a way early peek at what the post-next-gen era could bring us.

Nvidia posted a video on YouTube of some environments taken directly from inside Cyberpunk 2077 with the RTX Overdrive mode on and off for comparisons. Nvidia describes it as “path tracing, also known as full ray tracing an advanced, GPU-intensive form of ray-tracing that accurately simulates light throughout the entire scene.” Every source of light, every surface, reflection, and shadow is all ray traced at their highest level in real-time. Nvidia also highlighted in the video that the graphics are so intensive that the incredible 40-series GPU can only run Overdrive at 16fps. However it won’t cause problems for those with RTX 40 GPU, as it can be alleviated with DLSS 3 turned on, everything can run smoothly well over 120fps. 

For those looking to experience RTX Overdrive won’t have to wait long, it’ll be coming out next week, April 11th in a patch. However only those with a demanding GPU like a higher end RTX 30 or 40 series will be able to experience the new graphics mode. 

When it comes to clocking-out hardware in gaming, Cyberpunk 2077 will no doubt be today’s Crysis. Testing to see just how demanding hardware can run Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings and have RTX Overdrive on will be that benchmark standard. 

CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 has come a long way, announced in 2012 and a trailer teased way back in 2013 and never heard of again until 2018 and 2019. The game was massively hyped up. The trailers promised well, what RTX Overdrive promises. Of course when Cyberpunk 2077 released it was a colossal disaster, mired with bugs, and barely functioning on PS4 and Xbox One, the game eventually was removed from digital play stores. It’s improved however since then, receiving numerous patches to fix nearly everything that was originally wrong. Cyberpunk 2077 is a playable title now without any game breaking issues, and it has received some positive feedback from players for the work put into fixing the game.