Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.62 with Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is finally here

After being announced alongside the GeForce RTX 4090, the fully path-traced Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode has arrived in Patch 1.62 for Cyberpunk 2077.

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Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, image credit: Digital Foundry.

Patch 1.62 for Cyberpunk 2077 has just dropped, bringing the highly anticipated Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode to the game, which presents a full ray-traced experience via path tracing for all lighting effects and things like shadows and reflections.

"We're proud of it," writes CD Projekt Red in the update. "It pushes the boundaries of what's possible in technology. However, because it is so new and fundamentally different from what we've been using so far, we know it's not going to be perfect from the start, and players might experience some issues - that's why we've decided to call it a Technology Preview."

And with that, CDPR outlines the steep hardware requirements for the new mode, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series (4070 Ti and up) graphics card with DLSS 3 or a GeForce RTX 3090 to play at 1080p, 30 fps. Yeah, it's steep stuff, though it's to be expected based on how demanding path tracing is on hardware. It's definitely strange to see a visual setting limited to only a handful of GPU models.

• Read more: Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode detailed in new Digital Foundry video

Still, those with GPUs with at least 8GB of VRAM will have access to the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode via Cyberpunk 2077's Photo Mode, which will leverage GPU hardware to render a single frame. This is excellent news as Cyberpunk 2077's Photo Mode is one of the best out there, and no doubt this will lead to some stunning shots. The latest patch also brings Intel XeSS support to the game alongside the AI-based anti-aliasing of NVIDIA DLAA.

Full release notes are below.

Path Tracing: Technology Preview

Added a Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset which includes the Path Tracing technology. You can enable the Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset in Settings > Graphics > Quick Preset, or just Path Tracing separately in Settings > Graphics in the Ray Tracing section.

Additionally, we included an option to render path-traced screenshots in Photo Mode for other Ray-Tracing-capable graphics cards with at least 8GB VRAM. If your graphics card has more than 8GB VRAM and this option is still greyed out, it means you need to lower your in-game resolution. Note that the higher the resolution and the less powerful the GPU is, the longer it will take to take a screenshot (between a few seconds to several minutes). You can enable Path Tracing for Photo Mode in Settings > Graphics in the Ray Tracing section.

DLAA

Added NVIDIA DLAA, an AI-based anti-aliasing mode designed to improve image quality. DLAA requires an NVIDIA RTX graphics card. It can be enabled in Settings > Graphics in the NVIDIA DLSS section.

Intel XeSS

Added support for Intel Xe Super Sampling 1.1, an upscaling technology using machine learning to provide improved performance with high image quality. It can be enabled in Settings > Graphics in the Resolution Scaling section.

Benchmark improvements

Improved the Benchmark to display more information in the results screen, including PC specs, GPU driver version, and selected settings.