Cyberpunk 2077 is a DirectX 12 exclusive for the PC

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best looking games of 2020 by far, and when it has all of its graphical bells and whistles enabled (thanks, NVIDIA) it truly looks out of this world.

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Well, all of those pretty graphics are a DirectX 12 exclusive -- with PC gamers requiring Windows 10 for the most part, but will work with Windows 7 and its implementation of DX12. The reason? Marcin Gollent, Lead Graphics Programmer at CD PROJEKT RED says it's because of ray tracing.

During a recent interview with PC Games Hardware, Gollent said: "Thanks to the introduction of DX12 support for Windows 7 SP1 that Microsoft introduced last year, the game will run on this system. We do, and will continue to, test Cyberpunk 2077 on Windows 7 in an attempt to iron out any edge-cases that might arise. Unfortunately, Windows 8 didn't receive its variant of DX12 libraries".

• More reading: Cyberpunk 2077 has ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 tech at launch. Not just that, but NVIDIA's GeForce drivers are DirectX 12 Ultimate ready, now.

He added: "Regarding DX12 Ultimate, Cyberpunk 2077 will work absolutely fine with all DX12-compatible GPUs. What the "Ultimate" feature set does is it allows us to do more if the hardware allows for it. We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons".

Gollent continued: "Firstly, it is the standard API for the Xbox platforms, and with the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to have it implemented as soon as possible. Secondly, it is the birthplace of DXR, and given we had plans to invest in DXR very early on, that made the choice to go with DX12 a pretty straightforward one".

Remember that CD PROJEKT RED and NVIDIA announced that Cyberpunk 2077 would feature ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 technologies when the game launches.

NVIDIA ray traced & DLSS 2.0 screenshots

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More Cyberpunk 2077 screenshots (recent)

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Sometimes you just have to stop and marvel at how good Cyberpunk 2077 looks, and that's through just screenshots and recent gameplay footage. I can't wait to see how the world feels when I'm playing it.

Cyberpunk 2077 launches November 19, 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It'll also get free upgrades on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.