Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode explained: Can your PC run the RTX update?

NVIDIA has once again woven its magic, but this time into a game that is still bringing most people’s PCs to a grinding halt. The result? Perhaps the most impressive display of real-time graphics we have ever seen. Read on to learn more!

What is Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode? RTX update explained

The Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode is essentially an enhancement to the game's graphics on PC, bringing Path Tracing to the fore in impressive new ways. This goes beyond the ray tracing the game was already doing. We'll try to explain what the difference is below.

Ray tracing in games is a more accurate portrayal of how light works in the real world. Recently, games have only utilised certain ray tracing features such as reflections, shadows, global illumination and ambient occlusion to enhance the overall fidelity.

It allows for things such as reflections showing what is behind you or providing shadows under objects where traditional rendering would have struggled to do so.

It can also represent reflected light, such as when you shine a torch on a coloured object such as an orange and the resulting light bouncing off is orange, too.

Seeing each of these techniques employed at the same time is exceedingly rare and they do not fully replace traditional lighting methods. This may present itself as not all light sources using ray tracing. Dynamic lights such as muzzle flashes and headlights from a car typically use traditional methods.

Cyperpunk 2077 was already one of the best examples using those techniques, but that has just become old hat.

Path Tracing does away with the mixing and matching. It is the crème de la crème of real-time rendering – when lighting is no longer an effect, it simply is.

Path Tracing is when all light is accurately calculated to realistically simulate light's real-life properties. This results in physically correct shadows, global illumination on objects and reflections. Traditionally this was done in an ‘offline’ renderer, such as you would see in CGI heavy animations and movies such as Toy Story, so it is quite something to finally witness in a game.

The most remarkable thing about path tracing is how seemingly unremarkably normal it looks at first glance. We see a 100 per cent accurate portrayal of light every day in real life and so it makes sense for our brains when we see it replicated in a virtual world. It is when a game transforms, one that we are used to seeing with older rendering techniques, that it becomes apparent just how game-changing it really is.

There are moments during gameplay where it genuinely slips into something very close to photorealism. Considering ray tracing capable graphics cards only debuted in 2018 with the RTX 20-series, one can only dream where we might be in another five years.

When is the Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive update?

Fret not – you need not wait any longer as the Overdrive update dropped on Tuesday 11th April. You should be able to give it a go now if you have the latest Cyberpunk 2077 update installed.

You'll find the Overdrive mode available in the game as a 'Technology Preview', accessible as a pre-set option in the graphics settings on PC.

The developers from CDPR have committed themselves to continue improving the Overdrive experience and we will be sure to update you as soon as these updates are released.

Can I run the Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive update?

Be warned: here be dragons. To run the Overdrive update you need at least an NVIDIA RTX 3090 to get 30 frames per second at a measly 1080p, and this is by CDPR's own admission no less.

Even the mighty AMD Radeon 7900 XTX is no match, with benchmarks returning nine frames per second at a sub-4K resolution using AMDs upscaling technology FSR2 in its balanced mode. Yikes.

To really get the most out of the Overdrive update, you really need an NVIDIA RTX 40-series card where you can use DLSS 2 upscaling and DLSS 3 frame generation to get your frame rate up to a smooth and responsive experience.

Using these allows 4,090 users to see their frame rates skyrocket from an average of 17 frames per second in the heaviest scenes to a markedly stratospheric 128 frames per second.

NVIDIA hasn’t released the entire RTX 40 series stack, so it remains to be seen how the lower end of the scale will fare, but no doubt DLSS 3 especially will be the clutch here.

Can I play the Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive update on console?

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately the answer is no. Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 do have ray tracing, but it is only limited to shadows, the effect of which is only really noticeable in a few indoor scenes.

So, if you want to try out the Overdrive mode in Cyberpunk 2077, you'll need to be playing on a powerful PC with a modern graphics card.

Whichever platform you're playing on, though, there's still the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty DLC to look forward to!

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