[Hardware] The "new" Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 makes the RTX 3090 look low-end

[Draeno]

 

The Cyberpunk 2077 game has been one of the games that has bet the strongest on the integration of Ray Tracing. Recently, this game has implemented Ray Tracing Overload, which is a solution from NVIDIA that adds more realism to this technology. Well, this new technology has caused the NVIDIA RTX 3090 to move said game to only 30 FPS in 1080p resolution.

What Ray Tracing Overload does is panoramic ray tracing rendering. This technology is specially designed for the RTX 40 Series, since there are changes in the architecture of the RT Cores and Tensor Cores. At the same time, it renders any older generation graphics card obsolete.

Artificial obsolescence due to Ray Tracing
Cyberpunk 2077 version 1.62 released this week adds Ray Tracing Overload. This update graphically improves the game when ray tracing is activated, providing more realism. You see more realistic ambient lighting and deeper shadows. But getting this is not exactly free.

The demand increases, requiring very powerful hardware to be able to use it. Specifically, at least an NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti is required to run this technology with guarantees.

We must emphasize that the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 are very powerful graphics that are close to the RTX 4070 Ti. The problem is that changes at the hardware level between generations are a very good "trick" to avoid compatibility. They have run Cyberpunk 2077 v1.62 with Overload on an RTX 3090 and DLSS 2 active and have only averaged 30 FPS at 1080p resolution.

The problem is that the RTX 30 Series does not support Overload and DLSS 3. The inclusion of panoramic lighting causes an increase in computational cost. It artificially increases the gap between the two generations of graphics cards.

 

 

But, to show a button. MyDrivers uses a gaming laptop with an NVIDIA RTX 4080 with a TDP of 175W. They run Cyberpunk 2077 v1.62 at 1440p resolution, with “normal” Ray Tracing, and with Ray Tracing Super and Overload. The game with normal ray tracing has 104 FPS, but with these two new technologies it plummets to 65 FPS. For both situations we have DLSS 3 activated.

We see how the computational cost is brutal, since we have a loss close to 40 FPS. With these data, we think that any graphics card lower than the RTX 4080 will have a terrible time, even at 1080p resolution.

 

 

AMD has a huge opportunity
All this gives your main competitor a great opportunity. AMD has always said that Ray Tracing is an interesting complementary technology, but it is not critical. On the other hand, they offer FSR as an alternative to DLSS, which does not require additional hardware.

Not having so much dependence on Ray Tracing and not adding dedicated hardware for image rescaling, allows you to create cheaper graphics. At the same time, not everyone wants to use this new technology and of course, these users opt for cheaper components and where this technology does not have as much weight.

Obviously, they have a great opportunity to position themselves for these users who do not want to pay nonsense to enjoy ray tracing. Also, attack these users who don't care about this technology. Two types of users who may prefer their products over the very expensive ones from NVIDIA.

 

https://hardzone.es/noticias/tarjetas-graficas/nvidia-ray-tracing-overload-rtx-3090-cyberpunk-2077/