Cyberpunk RT Overdrive Benchmarks, Image Quality, Path Tracing, & DLSS
Sponsor: Thermaltake Ceres 500 TG on Amazon - geni.us/8An8nn
Cyberpunk 2077 on max graphics settings now includes RT Overdrive -- or Path Tracing -- and is at a point where it nearly requires an RTX 4090 and DLSS. We're benchmarking the new Ray Tracing Overdrive (Path Tracing) feature in Cyberpunk 2077, including some comparisons of ray tracing (RT Ultra, RT Psycho) vs. Path Tracing (Overdrive). We also briefly go over how DLSS works, frame generation, and offer a blind test for a fun check against your expectations. Frametimes are additionally included for an objective look at frame pacing.
Grab the new GN Project & Soldering mat! store.gamersnexus.net/product...
Or one of our large modmats! store.gamersnexus.net/product...
We posted 2 new bonus videos on Patreon last week! Support our work here: / gamersnexus
00:00 - RT Overdrive in Cyberpunk 2077
02:11 - Where Cyberpunk Sees Path Tracing
04:55 - Talking with NVIDIA Engineers
06:54 - Path Tracing Benchmarks (1080p, 1440p, 4K)
08:29 - Frametimes (Path Traced vs. RT vs. Neither)
09:52 - Ray Tracing vs. Path Tracing Benchmarks, DLSS Off
11:13 - How DLSS3 & Frame Generation Work
16:54 - DLSS Benchmarks w/ Path Tracing vs. Ray Tracing
18:04 - Blind Test for Image Quality (Path vs. Ray Tracing)
19:17 - Club Image Quality Comparison
20:55 - City Image Quality Comparison
21:35 - Desert Image Quality Comparison
22:30 - Parade Image Quality Comparison
23:19 - DLSS Image Quality Brief Comparison
24:33 - Conclusions: Performance & Quality
** Please like, comment, and subscribe for more! **
Links to Amazon and Newegg are typically monetized on our channel (affiliate links) and may return a commission of sales to us from the retailer. This is unrelated to the product manufacturer. Any advertisements or sponsorships are disclosed within the video ("this video is brought to you by") and above the fold in the description. We do not ever produce paid content or "sponsored content" (meaning that the content is our idea and is not funded externally aside from whatever ad placement is in the beginning) and we do not ever charge manufacturers for coverage.
Follow us in these locations for more gaming and hardware updates:
t: / gamersnexus
f: / gamersnexus
w: www.gamersnexus.net/
Host, Writing, Testing: Steve Burke
Testing, Writing: Patrick Lathan
Testing, Writing: Jeremy Clayton
Video: Vitalii Makhnovets
Thanks for watching, everyone! Full GPU suite to come still. The team turned this around in only 1.5 full days and it was impressive the amount of benchmarking and capture we could do in that time -- as usual, I'm proud of the team and what each person contributed. We just got access and had to carefully choose our focus with that limited time (and our embargo only just lifted on this content), so there's still a LOT we want to do with RT Overdrive benchmarking as it continues to update. We might give this a deeper benchmark numbers look in the future, but for now, you've got a good starting place. Thanks again! BTW, we just posted 2 new Patreon behind-the-scenes videos last week if you'd like to support our type of work: www.patreon.com/gamersnexus
Do you think more and more developer deciding to use UE5 which got Lumen etc. Raytracing will be any nessesary in the future? I mean Lumen & Nanite are incredible but I don't think Raytracing or Pathtracing will be any relevant or am I wrong? Thank you
VRAM Usage on these different settings would be good to see their cost on memory
Path tracing is on the unreal engine 5... seems to me Nvidia should have used their time to make sure that every next game using the UE5.2+ would be able to use it easily... putting path tracing on the red engine... going to the trash soon... is a waste of time and effort IMO... but Nvidia wants it for PR purposes... will it work? Maybe for 5 minutes.
The blur effect of DLSS3 is outrageously visible. Nevertheless, on the RT side tech, it's the first real demo that show something interesting. It's clearly not ready, and for now would force the game artist to work twice as much, one version for the wealthy rtx5xxx owner and another for everybody else. So nothing new since 20xx series, RTX is not that much of use. NVIDIA: replacing frame with 'AI" crap replacing artist with computed light consuming 600W to play a game. Forgetting gameplay matters most. CDPR: really trying to show case the best of it.
Props to the GN team. Favorite KZhead channel hands down 😎 y’all are just too real 💯💯💯
I actually don't mind devs adding settings that are clearly reserved for future GPU's. The new lighting looks great, even if only the 4090 w/ fake frames can run it well.
Especially when it's a free update. Updating games in a future-looking way keeps them alive and fresh as they age, which tends to be a good thing.
The Crysis treatment. Reminds me of the days when devs were stretching the possibilities of at the time hardware and software.
Definitely! Just benchmarked my 4080 and it's averaging over 90 fps (77 minimum) with everything at max at 3440x1440 using DLSS Auto and FG enabled. Plays well and looks great!
@@GamersNexus I mean, it’s clearly paid by NVidia, and them being CDPR the customers would expect it to be free at this point. Still, cool update. If the founders 4090 actually exists in Canada, I probably would have gone for it.
Right. I think they are positioning Cyberpunk in the same spot as Crysis was so many years ago. A tech lab/benchmark.
It'll be cool to revisit this with a 7090.
I wonder what would be the prefix model name for those cards. RGTX ? GRTX ? GTRX ?
@@LtCatscratch low end RTGTXRTX-X and high end RTGTXRTX-XXX. Add more X's for higher tier cards.
By the way I don't think nvidia will be building gaming gpus for much longer. 7090 may not be a thing. We might not need a PC to play games. Streaming as a service.
@@zushikatetomotoshift1575 Dont fall for it. 3060ti or higher can play this fine. The multi card video is gonna be eye opening to a lot of r/pcmr fans.
100% I'm not even bothering with The Witcher 3 (reloaded) on my 2070.. when I upgrade to whatever the series after the 4000 is in a couple of years, I'll look at Ray Tracing again seriously :P
I can't believe how good those shadows look when teabagging. Never has a game quite captured such a nuanced technique with realistic environmental reactions.
All we need is some jiggle physics for the balls flopping about 😉
@@Kholaslittlespot1 You didn't play RDR2 I take it ;P
I noticed the teabagging towards the end of the video and searched for this comment. Never has teabagging looked so good.
Why did Nvidia put ray tracing into their products when clearly all of their GPUs can't handle it's all just for show to put higher prices on their crap DLSS GPUs all they have to put on their old GPUs gtx1080 gtx1070 is DLSS and it would be same performance as rtx3080 and rtx 3090
@@dssd7685 Becuase this stuff is always gradually integrated. It takes time for stuff to be integrated. None of the effects we have today for rasterization just popped up and were performant on release. SSAO, Shadow Maps, SSR, and many other modern effects take time to become performant. Ray tracing is in a similar boat while being far more accurate. This was the best approach to adding it in and it's only going to become more popular. Plus this technology does not only benefit gamers
I always appreciate how GN does the blind "Image 1, 2, 3" tests to check biases and set expectations; even though I'm usually able to get them all right, the act of _doing that_ really changes how I approach the rest of the comparisons in the video. In the blind test I was able to say "Okay, 1 is very dark so it's probably Off, 3 has more 'real' lighting so it's the RT and 2 has more bounce lighting so it's probably PT, ... _but_ this bar actually looks better when it's a bit darker, so the PT is a neat tech demo but it kinda takes away from this scene in particular"
Yeah, the bars lighting clearly wasn't tuned for Pt, theyd have to change the gloss of many surfaces and probably change lighting source intensity to bring it back to intent
if i want the scene to look brighter and more fake ill just disable shadows and it will looke like RT
But the image appear more neat, and the reflection seems better without RT/PT on this image. I'll pick first mode over the two other. I think there is too much reflection there. On the outdoor environnement RT looks nicer if you stand by and watch the city. But the perf cost is so huge... More than doubling the resolution if you don't activate DLSS.
Doesn't this sort of suggest that path-tracing is just a way for devs to save time - so it hurts our performance while saving them time making the game, ultimately costing developers less and us more? Like the parade scene where there was barely any difference due to the effort already put in by the devs.
@@naturesown4489 exactly right
I absolutely love being alive at a time where I could see path tracing go from hours-per-frame to frames-per-second
Conversely, even though this makes Hollywood Big Budget films cheaper and faster, some how the CGI of modern films looks horrible next to what came out years earlier.
@@kurtwinter4422 the 'how' there is a simultaneous shortage of artists, studios not wanting to spend that much money on said artists, and normalisation of new industry conventions allowing re-writes, re-shoots, re-cuts .etc way later in the production process, all giving the artists way less time to make it look good.
Wait till AI gets its hands on it..lol
But 99.9% of gamers cannot tell the difference. Yes I know its very impressive and worth every cent!
@@lurch789 whine more
The exercise you did where you show us the three slices of graphical quality to tailor our expectations was absolutely brilliant. Cheers bro.
Round of applause for the devs who optimized the game really well for rasterized lighting.
I can't agree more ! While RT/PT optimized pictures might be « better » for enthousiasts, I'm not a big fan of the « improvements » they bring to us. The pictures without any RT or PT seemed perfectly enjoyable, in my opinion. They were more than enough for my needs ^^
CP 2077 is not the best case of a good rasterized lighting though, most outdoor urban areas look like greenish-grey pile of mud with no shadows
@@user-vk7fd2st8j untrue
Not really, the game is terribly optimized for path tracing (not to mention releasing a horrendously incomplete game at launch). This cult-like worship of devs on KZhead and reddit is insane where they get praised for any mildly positive thing whereas they're shielded from all criticism regarding bugs and incomplete launches where it's not the devs fault but "the suits" and "management".
@@DragonZombie2000 wow you got all that from my 1 sentence comment that didn't say any of those things?
This really helps immerse me in my ideal world. A dystopian hell scape with every surface covered with gloss and a vengeful sun that constantly attacks you with god rays and blooming straight into your retinas
So exactly like real life, then?
California
@@GamersNexus uncomfortably close to real life at this point
Mirror's Edge?
@@Aggrofool only reason there’s no mirrors edge with RT is because you can’t freerun if you’re constantly flashbanged by any piece of glass in eyeshot
im still impressed by the fact that we can play raytraced games now. it’s like a 90’s 3D animator’s vision coming true
Except it looks bad
Nvidia saying it's revolutionary in order to sell overpriced cards and not getting crushed by AMD doesn't means it's true... look at the image and at the frametime...
@@lupintheiii3055 Nope, It doesn't
@@RaikoH6644 Their greed aside, the technology is revolutionary. We literally went from hours per frame to frames per second with path tracing.
Tell me about it first game i played was called Prince of Persia, i was so bad at jumping in this old classic
I love that gamerneuxus intro so much. Who ever created it did a great job.
Thank you. Nice that you like it.
Several years ago, just before the first Nvidia RTX cards were released, I took a college game programming class on ray tracing. We talked about this kind of full scene ray tracing being several years away, but possible, of course. Really cool to actually see it fully implemented. I will say even having taken that course, some explanations take me a bit to figure out. I'm sure some of it will be gibberish to most people, but it's still fun to think about. Lots of lines shot at things and telling the computer what to show you. Woo!
But it's not. Not all elements are raytraced yet which is clearly mentioned.
@@azynkron Still getting a lot closer. It makes sense there are various exceptions. What Unreal Engine is doing is super cool too. It's just fun that I took a class on something before it became mainstream. 😁
@@azynkron shadows, reflections, and indirect lighting are plenty. All other factors are negligible and would add cost for no noticeable benefit. We've already hit the point where cutting edge GPUs are struggling, let alone ones further down the stack that most people get.
I mean, mainstream for games and real time. Path tracing has been mainstream for renders for decades. @@802Garage
it just lacks good environment though, racing part is dam good
Regarding the "bloom-iness" and higher light intensities of light in RT and especially non-RT vs PT: I wonder if it's because developers made light stronger, and surfaces more reflective than what is realistic because, with non-RT and RT, you needed that to have enough lighting so the scene is not too dark. If this is true, then putting in more realistic reflectivity values + PT could yield more realistic brightness levels in scenes (compared to the pre-PT ways of rendering scenes), for future games where PT is a realistic mainstream option.
or its so that its not so subtle that most people wont notice the ray tracing
I wondered that too. I think they tweaked the brightness of emissive surfaces to maintain the same average level of direct and indirect illumination in the scene, compared to artist-tweaked lighting in the non-OD version, thus making some light sources brighter/bloomier.
Yes this is exactly what they did. The original visuals were specifically calibrated to work well both with full raster, and also conventional RT. It means some lights were overdone, some additional light sources were added in specific places exclusively to artificially illuminate them to mimic true traced lighting, and some environment materials were made brighter and more reflective than need be since fewer light sources from fewer angles were interacting with them. Basically like if you have a movie theater, and you paint the walls white while the lights are off, and it looks fine and not bright- but rather perhaps looks like a dark grey due to the lack of light. But then when the movie is on and the screen lights up, all the walls just bounce the excess light and everything gets overexposed as a result of the original artistic direction that didn't account for the excess light during a movie playback.
No it has to do with stronger differences in exposure, there's less of an "average" more areas are much darker than they could be before so exposure compensation needs to be stronger.
Could be that in part, but also many shadowed areas are properly dark now as opposed the glow they had before, which means there is a larger exposure difference between lit and shadowed parts. So, when in a mostly shadowed area, other lights will get blown up
That's a super cool implementation of the tech for sure! I certainly won't be doing as in-depth a look for my charts and review as you guys did but obviously it also makes it very challenging to benchmark. That balloon-ceiling'd cafe looks great though; can really see the changes there!
This was extremely good Steve, you did an excellent job explained the differences between each of these modes!
I like how youtube just stopped recommending any of your videos for weeks and I only just now remembered because you guys finally showed up. Despite the fact I watch almost all of them
Can't wait to experience this 10 years from now when I have a GPU that can actually run it. That's about how how long it took me to be able to play Crysis.
Unbelievable that a $1700 graphics card can be brought to it's knees and deliver unplayable framerates!
@@volvo09 It's not about price in this instance, the technology is not there yet. Even if they make a 20000$ GPU right now it would still not be able to run it smoothly. The main issue is the technology isn't there.
@@a-mir905 very well said!
If it's 20 fps at 4k with a 4090 and the 50 series is rumored to be twice as powerful then you can assume a 40 fps on the 5090 at 4k which means that in 2026 with the 60 series they might actually achieve above 4k60 in Cyberpunk with PT. So, only 3-4 years left to go.
@@a-mir905 Sure, but with the 4090 you can at least use DLSS 3 to get a smooth experience. It's not ideal, but it's at least an option. So it's at least partially about price. A couple years from now when the next generation of GPUs comes out the 5090 might be able to run this at 4K60 with DLSS Quality in a best case scenario. But lower end more affordable SKUs like a 5070 or 5060 are likely to be slower than a 4090 so it's still going to be inaccessible to most people. Maybe in 4 years a 6070 class GPU might be capable enough, but realistically I don't expect this to become a more mainstream option until the 7000 series from Nvidia and whatever equivalent Radeon GPUs are out at the time.
19:00 - guessed it the first time, but had to really look for it. I managed by choosing the one that seemed "flawless", not a single element felt out of place, like the base of the chair on the other ones. And the way characters are lit more uniformly, because of soft lighting on the ceiling instead of sharp shadows coming out of nowhere. Fun fact: soft lighting like in the pathtraced image makes more sense for a bar than the raster, as this kind of lighting makes the faces look more flattering.
Really deep and insightful analysis, thank you!
That club scene is a fantastic example of why you can't change lighting tech in a scene without affecting it adversely away from the director's intent. It's also a great example of how imperfect path tracing often is. The compounded light is certainly more physically accurate, but the summed exposure is perceptually inaccurate as our eyes would naturally turn it down. That would need _another_ shader pass to fix.
Its going to be really cool to see future games made with path tracing from the ground up. Hopefully they will be able to run more efficiently with PT as well. Very exciting.
Appreciate all you do Steve (and team) trust your opinion 100%
Agree... But 98.7%
18:22 I did not expect a 50 Cent In Da Club reference, kek. Great content as always. Very informative and entertaining throughout!
Good video, i liked the pace you were talking in this one much better, you didnt rush through the content. I struggle to keep up with you when you read so fast from the script. I am not that old only 39 :)
The frametime consistency was always one of the most impressive parts of this game. It runs so incredibly smoothly even with all the settings maxed out, on hardware that a lot of newer games struggle to stay above 30 fps with.
This just proves how badly optimized TLOU, RE4, and Forspoken are. I'm not spending a dime on games that have arbitrarily demanding requirements under the guise of "next-gen" graphics, when CP2077 looks as good as it does.
Idk. It might better now but it is still not very consistent in my opinion and it used to be a mess. The marketplaces (the one near Tom’s Diner for example) in this game have a lot of stress on the CPU. I always have significant fps dip in those areas.
I mean, a lot of games will preform better when running at like 60% render res with DLSS on. The frametimes look like a nightmare without it
Maybe with newer tech. The gameplay was horrific with a 3000-series CPU.
@@steph_on_yt They spent 2 years to reach where they are right now. It used to be a complete mess too at launch.
Got the PT correct, as it was the most diffuse/blown out looking. Scene lighting really will need to be handled differently to get the same artistic contrast going with PT as the model obviously. That being said I think it'll be a lot more intuitive on the artist side, and less time consuming (especially compared to the amount of work that goes into probes and mapping) Looking forward to where this goes in 5-7 years or so when this might converge, as opposed to being a special demo for high end hardware.
I recall 4A talking about the workflow improvements with it when they did the Metro Exodus RT edition. The workflow gains from the dev side are incredible.
@2freeIvX he also described it from the Wikipedia page as including caustics, which o highly doubt is implemented here. Proper caustics and full light transport typically requires bidirectional path tracing which is quite a bit more costly. This implementation seems to handle scene light minus reflections and transparency which was still handled with the RT approach. Luxcore handles them quite nicely. This isn't a physically correct path tracer yet, but it's a great step forward for real time lighting.
I got all 3 correct, only because I've done this kind of test on my own when I got my 3080 Ti. I usually prefer the game with RT off because of your exact point.. more environments in the game simply look better with RT off. There are some scenes that look better with RT on, mostly outdoors and at night, but the areas with tons of indoor lighting just get blown out so bad. I'm also excited to see more games that are designed with RT in mind.
heyyy finally gamers nexus direct footage capture in a video!
I just saw that Cyberpunk Update in my Steam News. So I went to KZhead and wanted to know more - What a delight to see GN Just having released a video about this
I very much appreciate the blind test, usually I'm pretty good at discerning ray-tracing (and variants thereof) as I feel that it makes the overall scene 'feel' much more natural even if I can't necessarily point to the individual parts that look better, and while RT Off was the clear outlier, I did confuse RT Ultra and PT in this case!
Rasterization @native >>> Ray Traced DLatencySS
Even harder to tell since KZhead makes videos look like dog poop
@@kostasdinos8982 tech illiterate spotted. Dlss 3 with reflex has lower latency then native. Try again AMDumb.
Love the blind test for ray and path tracing you should do them more often! Got them right, but actually think the path tracing looks worse than ray tracing in this scenario.
yeah, I think they need to tone it down a little. Maybe the light sources are too bright because initially they did not plan for pathtracing?
I find this true more often than not, because they are not used to how much light propagates and are used to over compensating. I see this quite often in HDR, as well. I also got it right based on this expierence.
Just bought a 4080 so I was super thrilled to see I got the blind test right 😅 probably helps that I spend my professional life thinking about how light bounces
I've never used RT or PT, and I got it all wrong lmao ^^ Looks like I'm not made for this technology 😅
This kind of tech preview/capability demo is one of the things I think many people forget to cover. When it is covered a lot of what I have seen is subjective analysis. Thank you to the GN team for showcasing the tech itself and providing both an objective (where possible) and a very much stated subjective commentary (when you provide them.) The less frequent use of subjective adjectives in the reporting is one of the many reasons I keep coming back to watch GN media
Yes. Nailed it. The light bleed on various parts of the image hint as to which image is fully path traced.
I don't notice a difference between that and Crytek's SVOGI. Path traced Cyberpunk 2077 looks cleaner now that reminds me of Crysis remastered.
For the question I immediately picked the 2nd image since its much brighter, also one of the factors also that make me choose it is because I know somewhat of how Path Tracing works and also I have worked with it before which is used in 3D renderers like Octane, Redshift and Cycles to name a few. Generally a 3D scene with a lot of reflective material or bright-colored materials is that it brightens the image due to it being able to bounce light to the objects near it.
Simply being experienced with how scenes look in real life should also allow one to draw the same conclusions, as path-tracing is attempting to emulate realistic light scatter, bounce, and refraction!
I got it right. Surprisingly as in the past I failed to see the differences and sometimes preferred the images with RT off but of course it's very dependent on the scene. Thanks Steve for the excellent explanation this video was so well done and informative I will be watching it again to absorb some more knowledge. The more you know about these technologies makes for better optimization in different games. This means less trial and error for gamers to get better looking gameplay and playable experiences at the same time.
reflections made by cd projekt are very good, it's what makes this game has very good graphics. RT is a cherry on top of the cake, but there are places where advanced refection look better than RT and vice versa. RT cost a lot of perf, so if you gpu can't allow you to run it smoothly, I don't think you are being ripped off, because you have still great reflections.
Games have to include high quality baked in visuals for those not using ray tracing, that's what makes it hard a lot of the time. Especially when games only had RT shadows and ambient occlusion (cough cough Elden Ring update). When we get to the point that everyone has RT hardware it will make game development a fair bit faster since they won't have to faff about with engineering fake lighting.
Your the only one who I'll watch sponsor spots for because I know it'll be good
I got my coasters on Easter. So cute! Great quality! ❤️
Got it right on the blind test. The no RT/PT is pretty obvious, but for the PT one there's just more reflection and it's more bright overall because of the light bouncing more I guess.
I could tell the difference in the images. The extra bounces make the lighting look richer, and overall, I'm in love with this effect.... but yeah, if I were in a bar that bright, I'd think the bartender was trying to tell me to go home.
Totally got it right. Was fairly easy to tell the difference, especially when looking at the nooks and crannies in the shelves on the left side of the image.
Appreciate the more detailed explanation of DLSS.
Your thumbnail is so good
hahaha
I am now quite looking forward to how much more real-time path tracing can be rendered in one or two GPU generations, also how 3D artists are going to account for it.
I got it right 👍 Thanks for the vid GN!
For the Club Split-Screen comparison, I got it right, but it was easy and obvious. You only need to look at the reflections and how much more accurate they were in the PT version, + PT making the whole scene much brighter due to much better bounced and fully relying on PT to cast that large volume of white light from above. This is also seen on skin shading and how it becomes much softer, as the light source is now accurately a large volume instead of some raster light. Also the accurate contact shadows in PT help in recognizing it.
Reflections look better because devs didn't make them good enough in the basic graphics. The case when RT transforms any material into mirror or a "wet surface" is present in almost all RT-supported games, because RT just can't deal with any scattering except reflective
Thank you for the amazing overview of the PT technology. I wonder if the 12700k is impacting those highly GPU bound tests in any capacity.
I frickin hope not (me with a Ryzen 3600) 😂
@@Noe2iq I can tell you right now that your 3600 is holding you back in Cyberpunk, GPU limited or not. I had the superior 3700X and even upgrading to a 5700X will massively improve your gaming performance, specifically in the 1% lows. And that's important because it's the metric that determines how smooth your game looks
The stuff that was done manually looks just as good imo. The back alleys that they didn't spend time on improve a lot though, at a huge cost of course.
the real amazing part is that any solo dev can just put their lights where they're supposed to be and it instantly looks great.
@@Volker_A4 not great per se, but it'll look right.
I guessed the pic right just because all the previous path traced lighting was so freakin bright. Looks odd to me. But I always enjoy a good image quality analysis though. Good job guys.
Great video, I particularly liked the tbag on the police officer in the footage.
Path tracing actually seems kind of cool. A lot of stuff felt kind of different with more realistic lighting. It seems like a lot of your complaints of how scenes changed and the developer baked in lighting looked better (which I thought it did too). It seems that's more a complaint of not designing the scenes around the tech more that path tracing being actually worse. It would be fascinating to see a path traced game where the lighting is designed around light working realistically. I can see it get very interesting when cards can actually run it and devs start to design around it.
For the "No RT"/PT/RT blind test: I immediately guessed "No RT" correctly due to how the edges around the seats are rather sharp. I pondered for a minute between PT/RT and ultimately chose (correctly) PT for the middle one because it was brighter.
for me the visible thing was correct bounce of light sources while maintaining deep shadows on the bar counter.
I still think a combination of RT and screen space effects looks best. That will probably change, though.
At the 20 minute tri screen split. Instantly the rt ultra one looked so much better than the other 2 by a mile
Ha, I was right with the 3 way splitscreen, got all of them... surprised myself there, as I normally struggle to spot RT on in screenshots, outside of obvious puddles. What clinched it for me that I figured out correctly which the PT on image was, was looking at the couch in the background center, the lining now having the diffused lighting color from the ceiling and standing lights applied.
It definitely highlights how much we take artists in the gaming industry for granted, always seeming to focus on the technical aspects of graphics.
as a 3d artist, 90% of what actually demands hard work, is often what gets overlooked haha. But all the flashy stuff has to be supported by a great foundation, and it's the foundation that takes time and effort even if it isn't what stands out at an immediate glance.
I voted for the middle picture. It wasn’t because of picture quality or it being more realistic. The first picture was very different to the other 2, so I figured that that’s the one with RT off. The second picture was lighter and feom what I saw so far, it there are more light sources, the PT picture will be lighter. :)
Got the blind test images right. I was fairly certain the first one (my preferred option) was without RT, and the second felt a bit "cleaner" than the third.
At first I thought left would be PT, but then I saw the light bounce near the ceiling and guessed all 3 correctly. The reflection in the full screenshot also is a major hint.
Totally got that image test wrong, and I think it's because I somehow have associated extra bright scenes with lower game settings (i.e. having Ambient Occlusion off) even though I was fully aware of the actual setting being used lol. That scene in particular looked quite flat with Path Tracing, and I think I'd actually prefer the version with no RT/PT when comparing the two side-by-side. That being said, RT Ultra looks really nice, and seems to not have the issue with "flatness" in that particular screenshot
The tell was that PT has extra pink color bleeding on the vertical dark surfaces
The callout of Ambient Occlusion being turned off usually leading to a more-bright scene and thus PT looking "lower quality" is a really good one, and it makes me want to see a comparison of the two features side by side to see how the effects differ.
For the question 19 minutes in, I mixed up the no RT/PT and Path Tracing results, but I got the RT ultra correct I honestly think the no RT/PT result looks better than the Path Tracing too, with the RT ultra looking better than both
@@MinishMan It's because of the white balloon ceiling. Makes for a weird vibe in there. The nice contrast of the non-rt mode makes for a more pleasing image.
This was a great video, so thanks for sharing. The part where I get a bit confused is that originally, when Unreal mentioned about this tech, (back when they were still on version 4 but working on 5), it was supposed to be a software implementation, so why does this version depend on hardware? On a totally separate point, while sometimes I prefer RT or PT image, sometimes I preferred the artists' render more. Best example of this is the one Barge RT scene I like better than the PT. However, when Unreal first mentioned it, it was to not only look good, but to help game developers and save them many hours where they would just have to add a light source to the scene, (be it the sun or a lamp, etc.), and the scene would light up appropriately. Would be great to see games cranked out more frequently versus several years. (My fave games are visually striking open world games that take several years to make, lol).
Got the test right, but I have to admit I'm into cgi and wrote a basic path tracer with Vulkan myself... I knew which details to look for in the shadows/reflections.
I also really love the fact that for lower-end RTX video cards with at least 8GB VRAM, CDPR provided the option to render path-traced screenshots in Photo Mode. So if you don't have a high-end 40 series card, you won't be able to enjoy RT Overdrive during gameplay, but at least you'll be able to take screenshots with the same technology/visual upgrade as long as you have a ray tracing capable GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM.
750€ 4060ti best screenshot card confirmed!
That sounds great! I’ll definitely give that a try on my 2070 when I’m able to
That's a nice feature. The photo mode in CP2077 is neato.
@@veduci22 I really don't get where you take that price from.
Wow screenshots! Thanks ScamVidia!
I look forward to thinking about possibly using this 5-6 years from now.
Same. Hopefully by then I'll have the funds to comfortably build a rig with an RTX 6090 Ti to try this out.
@@Shieftain $2,000 graphics card
@@boredgunner lol that would be the 5090. 6090 ti will probably be 3 grand MSRP. I like your optimism though!
@@boredgunner That was the 3090ti, buddy. For a 6090ti, we're looking at $3000-$3500.
@@hellterminator You guys are all optimists. By then we will have a high-end graphics unit separate from your actual pc tower. Am I joking? Perhaps. But think about it, it's way better for the company if they can just create their own cooling solution without having to rely on users selecting the right case, fans etc.
Thanks Steve !
Got it right in da club, kinda tricky there though. I feel like those stools should have had some grounding shadows.
Running it at Max settings 1440p on my 4070Ti and the only crashes Ive had have been to do with photo mode (after mods were installed) Gotta say, this update went really smooth
I was testing Pathtracing out with my 4090 earlier today. There is a bridge connecting santo domingo to heywood thath as a beautiful colorful train bridge going over it. Switching to path tracing there very beautifully illuminated the building and streets around it according to the colors ofthe bridge. It looks super pretty. Sadly that is the only place where I was able to with certainty say whether path tracing was turned on or not. The main giveaway for whether it was on or not, for me, wasn't the change in visual quality but the change in how absolutely sluggish the camera movements felt with DLSS3 on. Not to mention having to paly on DLSS Performance ot get any form of playable base framerate that gives alow enough input lag to not feel like 30 fps. The visual jump from Ray Traced Lighting Medium + DLSS Quality far outshines the drop in visual quality with DLSS Performance with path tracing enabled. Not to mention that RTX Medium + DLSS Quality performs better than DLSS Performance with Path Tracing. The areas where you do notice a difference by switching between the two it's a give and take. Path Tracing seems to eliminate many shadows which makes the scene often times less dramatic and subjectively less good. 20:30 is a perfect example of this. The absence of shadows around the air conditioning unit would lead me to believe that this is a shot with shadows or AO turned off. It looks less appealing to me personally. Generally though, those are differences you will only notice in direct comparisons. They are mostly not apparent in actual gameplay - for me at least.
Watch Digital Foundary video where they compare RT and PT - they found a lot of places ;-)
I appreciated the "finding us in a club" line you had.
I actually expected some mention on the Nvidia DLAA setting too instead of just DLSS. I currently play at 1440p + DLAA + Frame generation + Path Tracing on a RTX4080.
DLAA at 1440p should have theoretically around the same performance as 4k dlss quality I would think. Since its basically doing the same thing. It's basically DSRing the imagine and treating it like 4k DLSS on quality.
I am considering selling my 3090 and copping a 4080. So far it's been running Cyberpunk fantastic, but I really want to try path tracing with DLSS3. Would you recommend the switch? I already use a bunch of graphics mods to make the game look great but, i can't pull the trig yet.
@@Slushkin since you have a 3090 i would consider even the 4090 for the bigger upgrade leap. But still the 4080 can handle anything with frame generation.
@@nonserviam_ I did just come from a 3060 4 months ago so i'm not super trying to upgrade heavily. I'm just trying to swap my 3090 for a 4080 but if I can get a 4090 cheap enough i think i might do it. Oh that's sick to hear the 4080 would pull its weight i was worried about that.
For it being an afterthought, the changes look amazing in certrain areas. Other videos have shown PT outside and how it affects lighting under a staircase and it just looks amazing. It might not really work rn, but neither did the OG RT on the 2000 series cards. Games using it from the ground up will probably look amazing and maybe even save the artists some time manually adjusting it everywhere.
The way muzzle flash also impacts surrounding scenery, as well as lighting things/people on fire etc, explosions, and so on - this changes the game dramatically, especially at night where it's more noticeable. I personally would want to play this game fully pathtraced exclusively for this aspect of the lighting visuals -even if everything else looked the same.
Artist here and I will confirm that PT is much more plug-and-play compared to all the hacky techniques you have to juggle together with rasterization
I'm actually playing it right now for the first time on 4080 in 3440x1440 ultrawide. Plays nicely and looks astounding.
I decided to check out Path Tracing last night, and I'm using a 4k 60hz monitor with an RTX 4070 Ti. After some tweaking I was able to get the game to run at about 55-60 FPS on average with Path Tracing enabled. I used DLSS Ultra Performance (Balanced and up was unplayable) with other settings maxed out, but ended up having to turn off DLSS Frame Generation because it actually made the game run worse for me (without taking into account the input lag issues. I also limited FPS to 30 in order to have it render 60 FPS when DLSS Frame Generation was enabled).
Time to try it on my 3060 12GB and taste that delicious single digit fps :D
@@JoriDiculous is it the tree in the area with the snidgets? lol
@@yoonigan Yes :D Amazing area :P
@@JoriDiculous that was super weird. You could stand next to the tree and it's fine, it's only if you look at the tree lol. Nice to know it wasn't just a problem with me specifically 😂
@@yoonigan You drop fps in the whole area as long the tree is "in you sight" but not crazy much, think it went down to around 40 for me. At the tree it dropped to at least 6 fps. And if you managed too turn around fps got almost normal. Weird as heck. Wonder what is wrong there?
SPF maybe
Awesome "preview" of RT Overdrive. I'm really looking forward to benchmarks on all the newest-gen GPUs; and maybe even last-gen 3700+ and 6700+, just to see if they can run Overdrive at any resolution at all. Plus, I want to know the min CPU and RAM requirements.
That blind test was awesome. Totally got it wrong.
I did get the split screen right, but only because I’ve see other screenshots of pathtracing and they have all made the scene much more bright. So I looked for that. The reflections are also way better with ray tracing in general turned on.
Honestly the 4090 is chewing through it pretty well even at 19 FPS. It's also wild hearing the description of how the dlss frames are generated through all that so fast that it's still playable without crazy latency. Like it or not you have to at least be impressed by the tech. Cool video guys, thanks
Nah the pathtracing is def chewing the 4090, eating its ass per se. Really doesn't seem worth it. The difference in lighting vs no RT is hardly noticeable, the only thing you'd seriously notice is 70FPS vs 20FPS, lol.
turn down the resolution from 4K to 1440p. immediately get double the framerate.
@@ISirSmoke well yeah, turning down the resolution by more than half will give you roughly double the frames, who could've guessed?
@@SlickSloth everyone seems fixated on 4090 and 4K. thanks for your input.
@@ISirSmoke Imagine buying the latest and greatest GPU and not even be able to play in 4k.
For the images, I guessed the RT off correctly, but mixed the two RT implementations. Gotta say though that scene is a perfect example of RT not always being better, at least for me personally. The light sources were clearly placed and designed with traditional lighting in mind, and led it to be way too bright with RT.
I was sceptical of this update seeing DF only giving 4090 numbers, but after playing with it for a few hours, I'm positively surprised! It runs at a very constant 50-60fps on my 3080 10G,ultra setting at 1080p with dlss quality. I thought I was just going to enable it for a few hours, but It'll stay on for the rest of my current playthrough!
Yeah man, 3070ti and upwards it's totally workable. I'm basically on the same card (3080ti waste of sand) so I look forward to getting back into CP2077
Thanks for reading "projekt" correctly :) Most forgets that it is not cd project red. Projekt is polish word for project which should be read accordingly just like any english word.
Honestly I'm more impressed with how well the game is already presented without any ray tracing. At most I'd want ultra ray tracing, but path tracing seems like it would need a game designed with it in mind from the beginning.
As a technological demonstration path tracing is kind of mind blowing. I remember thinking that the cutscenes in playstation x final fantasy games were incredible, and advent children was a marvel. I'm in awe of how fast technology and software can advance in spite of supposed limitations
Agree. I also think Psycho RT would be a more playable experience than PT (aside from FPS) since it looks like PT gives super dark shadows which I actually kind of hate in games. Like I want to see the textures of the models the devs crested, not just a black blob, even if the black blob is closer to what you'd see in real life.
@@GiuseppeSan I think you've nailed my feelings on it. If I wanted a simulator I'd buy one, but a game can still be immersive and satisfying without being true to real life
Why does this come off as cope?
Path-traced images can easily be identified by the "color bleed" - secondary bounces from colored surfaces "bleed" that surface color onto nearby objects. No other technique can beliveably simulate this effect.
@Rute Fernandes There are a lot of articles about everything, but I've never seen this actually implemented in the real games. It is very hard to faithfully reproduce indirect lighting, pretty much all existing "approximations" fail more often than they work (especially screen-space techniques fail spectacularily at this), and none of them get anywhere close to what path tracing produces.
@Lurch Preach
@@asmi06 Look at RAGE 2 - it has non-RT Global Illumination with color bleeding. But it's worse than Path Tracing ;-)
Appreciate the T-Bagging on the cop. 10/10 1:32
A great video, I've been playing this on a 4070ti and I agree on many of your points. Strictly speaking the lighting is more realistic but subjective as to whether it looks better as they have already done an amazing job. Where the tech will really shine is in games which are designed around it in the first place, or older games which have very basic lighting models, I do rather like Quake 2 with it. This will be a fun one to revisit in years to come when the technology catches up, much like Crysis
What do you prefer? I have a 4080 and I'm torn on whether it's worth it. On the one hand, some scenes look drastically better, on the other hand it's so much performance to sacrifice and forces to use DLSS which does have that shimmer/quality degradation. I'm thinking perhaps the sweet spot (at least while they tune the tech) for 4070 Ti and up owners is to just play on maxed RT Psycho settings.
For the blind test, I guessed RT ultra was path tracing due to the nice gradient on the white structure.
In a game like Cyberpunk 2077 it's very noticeable the use of this technology. At night in places like jig jig street and similar places, it's eye candy. It's good that technology like this is being experimented, in the future it will look even greater.
@@pauloa.7609 I agree, overall path tracing looks better. The difference can be significant in areas with a lot of lights and reflections. However, the point is that in certain areas it is almost indistinguishable.
thought the same, Image 3 is PT. Tho, I was looking for the ambient occlusion below the seats, and the reflections thereabouts
19:12 - I didn't try to guess which was using which tech, I just looked at the images and considered which I visually enjoyed most. My preferred order was 1, 3, 2 (1 being best). I consistently find that looking at examples of on/off RT comparisons, certain small elements may look significantly better. Puddle reflections, certain small lighting elements. But overall the images tend to look some mixture between over exposed, soft focus or blurry that reduces the overall enjoyment of the framing/scene. I'm less worried about chasing hyperrealism and more concerned about enjoying the end product. If I wanted reality I'd go outside and stare at the sun.
I really like your point about looking for which you enjoyed the most visually. We'll phrase it from that angle next time, probably. It makes more sense -- it's sort of irrelevant if a person can identify path tracing and more relevant if they like an unlabeled image.
That comparison confused me because I am not sure if the white/black square thingy was supposed to be white or black because RT/PT properly bounce light around causing the thingy to appear white instead of black without RT/PT. Still, I think the PT image is the best one followed by Non-RT/PT and with RT ultra being last. RT ultra image looks kinda unfinished which PT seemingly completes.
Agreed, 1 and 3 looked the best to me visually.
How do you prefer an image where a super bright roof doesn't have any effect on the lighting in the rest of the room? That non RT image it's the perfect showcase of the failures of traditional rasterization, and it's not likely what CDPR artists intended.
@@moonknightish you're nitpicking the accuracy of details represented because you're looking for them. I'm appreciating the scene as a whole because I'm interested in the atmosphere of the game I'd be playing. Can you pick out individual elements and say "look how much better this has been done!"? Of course. The upwards glow on the patron at the bar looks amazing. I'm sure the more you immerse yourself in what RT tech is doing, the more you train yourself to see the details that RT highlights, the more you'll focus on those small changes and be impressed at the achievements. But overall the tone and atmosphere is significantly changed in the RT'd versions of the scene - the entire space is brighter and washed out, compared to the non-RT version which is deeper, moodier, it has more contrast to the parts the glow. I'm looking at the woods, not just the trees. If all painters aspired to photo-realism there'd be nothing for them to do because a photographer would always be better. If I'm playing a game I want to appreciate the artistry of the environment the level designers create, I don't urgently feel the need to sacrifice that for photorealistic lighting at the cost of a huge tax on hardware (plus the cost on the wallet). So yes, my preference is the first image. Does RT have great potential? Of course. I look forward to seeing what developers come out with while designing around it from the ground up, maybe in a decade's time when most people are finally running on hardware capable of decent RT performance. Right now, with retroactively injecting RT to already mapped scenes for a different style of lighting, a lot of the "gains" for the overall image imo are marginal at best or sometimes even regressive to the overall experience.
Thanks for covering it from the artist POV as well. Because most people don't appreciate the work of IRL artists. They just assume that graphics is entirely technology and nothing to do with creative work
nice one ,SER explained properly
I actually got the Path Tracing and Ray Tracing mixed up. I think I just preferred the RT’s darker/more dynamic look? Very interesting
Definitely path tracing is more realistic as now ALL light sources are taken into account for shadows and all reflected light is also too. Give it a few years, this will be the norm and possibly no more rasterization will be needed.
I also thought Ray Tracing looked MUCH better. It feels to me like the Path Tracing scenes look way too bright to be even remotely realistic and even eye scorchingly annoying in it's brightness. It's like it's all dialed up to 11 when it should be 6 to be comfortable on the eyes and look realistic in terms of the brightness and fidelity of colors like the clothes and leather on the seats for instance in the bar scene and also the air conditioning unit looks way too bright, like they just disabled all shadows or removed all grey values making the colors look flat and boring whereas in the raytraced scene it all looks realisticly dark and the colors are much richer and warmer.
@@ArmadaOne Indeed, but as mentioned this is probably in large part because (as Steve mentioned) the game wasn't designed for path tracing. Some areas are too bright because of the added reflections adding more light, and some areas turn too dark (compared to no RT). It's not an issue with the technique itself and games designed for PT/full RT will look better.
I don't like either and rasterized, i haven't found a game that looks as clean for lighting as Crysis remastered.
I appreciate the constant teabagging of enemies during the shown gameplay runs - no doubt any benchmarks that do not include teabagging are considered invalid from now on, regardless of game or technology tested.
Been testing the update most of today on 4090, didn't expect it to run this well. I usually hate frame generation (it's a total mess in Spiderman), but so far it looks good here. I've been huge into lighting/shadows since Doom 3 - I really don't get people hating on RT/path tracing, we're in the early stages and it is where lighting will ultimately go. It will also be a massive boost to immersion once we can run VR with RT. Last VR game I made, lighting was a major pain because of so many limitations. We spent so many hours fine tuning every light and shadow, and I still was never really happy with it.
I love this update because it's optimized and believable how heavy it is on current hardware. Reminds me of Crysis in 2007 and how nothing could run it all-out, with all settings maxed. It's a nice throwback and surely people will be using Cyberpunk 2077 as a modern benchmark for years to come.
Very impressive given that it wasn’t that long ago when the idea of real time ray tracing was a pipe dream.
Real time raytracing hs existed since the mid 90's.
@@enjoshi-godrez8775 only in tech demos, and almost nearly always on hardware that wasn’t consumer level.
@@rare6499 no, that wasn't a pipe dream. The supercomputer pixar used to make monsters ink used it. It was in actual use 20 years ago.
@@enjoshi-godrez8775 since when was monsters ink real time? It took 29 hours to render a single frame on monsters ink.
@@rare6499 it wasn't, but the machine was able to do it. By mid 2000's all the frames of most CGI movies were raytraced.
Those AI generated graphics cards on thumbnail are so cursed. Love it
Our best prompt yet!
An excellent point that was made by Steve is how path tracing was "bolted on" afterwards...in other words, it wasn't integral during the development of the game (Cyberpunk 2077) itself. I'm about to get a 4080, and haven't played Cyber Punk in awhile. And even if I don't utilize path tracing (if it's "tanking" the 4090's performance without DLSS or RT, I'm sure the results would be even worse on the 4080, though admitedly) I will do some initial experiments with the setting. Still though, I think it's a very intruiging technology and hopefully points to future games/titles that perhaps will be intergral to their developments. OUTSTANDING video, Steve and staff at Gamer's Nexus!
The floor caught my eye - I wasn't really sure which was which - I figured path tracing was one of the first two - felt like image 3/RT ultra looked the worst and assumed that was everything off. I also enjoy that path tracing gives people cowboy hats. (/s) Weirdly, I was able to spot RT Psycho vs Ultra for some reason. Can't wait to play this on truly max settings without frame generation in 2077.
This will be a great feature in 5 years.
We were told that about regular raytracing 5 years ago.
@@zxbc1 And modern videocards do regular Ray Tracing pretty good. Maybe, not in 4k tho xD
@@igorthelight Except raytracing still looks barely better in most titles compared to no RT and cripples your performance disproportionately. So the technology that was promised back then still isn't even close to a "great feature" today.
@@zxbc1 True. It's like "Ultra+" for those who have to spare 30% of their FPS.
It is weird because I actually like classic ray tracing more than how path tracing looks.
Yup, PT looks too bright. But maybe the game wasn't made for this at first
Honestly I let myself get mislead by the "sharper" reflection on image 1. Image 2 is the one that actually does look how you'd expect light to work if you just look at the ceiling. It's just gotta be some diffuse lighting but also gotta be brighter due to those diffusers being this bright. It's great honestly, even tho we can only play it with DLSS Frame Gen and Quality setting. I myself got the 27GR95QE by LG and I'm really looking forward to playing this game one last time on my 4090, albeit that I'm likely to get some more fps than you guys using 4k. Great job benching all of this and thank you very much!
Its a really neat tech demo but it really is just that, a tech demo something that we will be revisiting to test RT performance in the future without needing to wait for games to come out that take advantage of the new hardware
Path tracing appears to emphasize HDR lighting (in my own testing), in the sense that it really stacks well on top of each other and feels very realistic.
That's because raster doesn't actually compute proper light values - it's all a bunch of hackery. Properly clamped (or unclamped) RT output would have realistic light values by default.
It's not deliberate, the two technologies just naturally complement each other very well.
To me it looks like same result as if some one played with «shadow» slider in photoshop… in 50% of the cases it doesn’t actually make it look better.
@@air21511 Some people are blind and have poor attention to detail. It's fine, play something else.
It's a thought I had myselft when using traditional RT on games, these tech do indeed go very well together.