Nvidia’s Ray Tracing Overdrive pushes RTX 4090 down to 16fps in Cyberpunk 2077
An Nvidia Ray Tracing (RT) Overdrive Mode demo revealed that even its top-end GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card would struggle to run the high-fidelity settings at playable frame rates without it the help of AI upscaling.
The company recently posted a video on YouTube showcasing Cyberpunk 2077 running with path tracing, otherwise known as full ray tracing.
Whereas current ray tracing methods produce separate RT shadows, reflections, and global illumination from a small number of light sources, path tracing is an advanced, GPU-intensive version of RT that accurately simulates light through an entire scene.
“Full ray tracing models all properties of light from an unlimited number of emissive sources, delivering physically correct shadows, reflections, and global illumination on all objects,” Nvidia explained.
The results of the technique are astounding, with hyper-realistic environmental lighting shown by Nvidia in various Cyberpunk 2077 environments.
However, Nvidia had to switch on the latest version of its AI-based upscaling technology — Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3 — to make the game playable at an upscaled 4K resolution.
Rendering Cyberpunk 2077 in native 4K delivered as low as 16 frames per second (fps) in one driving scene, and just over 30 fps in another.
As a reference, the RTX 4090 achieves roughly 50-60fps with the current Ultra settings that include the highest level of ray tracing.
Fortunately, with DLSS 3 turned on in RT overdrive mode, the performance jumped to over 100fps in Nvidia’s showcase.
The low frame rate without DLSS indicates how intensive path tracing can be on graphics hardware, but the significant bump with DLSS 3 also shows how well-developed Nvidia’s upscaling tech has become.
Nvidia said its technology preview of Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode would launch on 11 April 2023.
Below is the Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode demo shared by Nvidia.
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