Should you play Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty with ray-tracing? Visual and performance differences explored

Cyberpunk 2077 is among the few video games with heavy ray-tracing implementation. It helps ray-traced shadows, lighting, and even reflections, and the sport seems unbelievable with these results turned on. Moreover, it lately added assist for path tracing, which is ray tracing in its full kind and can solely be correctly loved on the most recent and strongest RTX 40 sequence playing cards.

However, the overall ray tracing settings can be utilized on older RTX 30 and 20 sequence playing cards as nicely. Powerful GPUs from each these generations can run the sport at playable framerates with these settings enabled.

However, many are questioning if they need to use ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 in any respect because the recreation seems unbelievable even with rasterization results. Let’s go over performance information to judge whether or not the hardware-accelerated ray tracing results are price it.

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Ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 is a slippery slope

Ray tracing is mostly very hardware-demanding in most video video games, and Cyberpunk 2077 is not any exception to this formulation. With the most recent 2.0 replace and Phantom Liberty growth, the sport has gotten much more demanding on {hardware}, making it troublesome for last-gen graphics playing cards to play the title correctly.

Moreover, Cyberpunk 2077 has a number of ray tracing presets, with Psycho being probably the most hardware-demanding amongst them. We do not suggest something over High for mid-range and funds playing cards and Ultra for flagship GPUs. The Psycho preset will tank framerates to unplayable ranges on each graphics card, together with the RTX 4080 and 4090.
Following is an inventory of framerates recorded with ray tracing (with the extremely preset) and path tracing turned on as in comparison with preserving the settings off within the recreation:
Ray tracing OFFRay tracing ONPath tracing ONRTX 40801155239RTX 3080994832RTX 3070874221RTX 3060583513RTX 305037299

Ray tracing considerably tanks framerates, and with path tracing, the sport is barely playable. Only probably the most highly effective graphics playing cards out there, just like the RTX 3080 and 4080, can hit 30 FPS with this setting turned on. However, most different funds GPUs faltered with the setting, with the RTX 3050 being unable to play the title with base ray tracing results turned on.
Even with out DLSS, most high-end GPUs cannot hit 60 FPS within the first-person shooter with ray tracing turned on. Therefore, the visible results come at a steep performance penalty. Moreover, rasterization lighting results have gotten so good that you will not have the ability to inform the distinction between a ray-traced scene and one rendered with conventional methods.

Therefore, this leads us to suggest turning ray tracing off in Cyberpunk 2077 if you are on a funds or mid-range graphics card. You can use the results on the RTX 3090 or 4090 if you should not taking part in at 1080p or 1440p because the performance would nonetheless stay above 60 FPS. However, aside from this, you ought to follow conventional rasterization within the recreation.

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