The new version 1.62 patch is now available for Cyberpunk 2077, adding the promised "technology preview of Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode for high-end PCs." This can be found on the Epic Games Store, GOG.com,* and Steam. This recent Behind the Settings Video digs into the DLSS 3 and path tracing improvements in the update. This makes it clear that path tracing without an NVIDIA GPU will be futile because of the absence of DLSS 3. This post from CD PROJEKT RED with the patch notes adding that this will have to be a beefy GPU, calling the GeForce RTX 3090 the minimum spec to reach 30 fps. It is noted that lesser ray-tracing-capable PC graphics cards with at least 8GB VRAM have an option to render path-traced screenshots in Photo Mode. CDPR also warns that this is called a "technology preview" because the use of fundamentally different technology, and that users should expect problems. Many of these users experienced the launch of the science fiction action/RPG, so these warnings are probably unnecessary. NVIDIA has a few articles about this too, offering an overview on the tech, a Technology Preview Of New Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode, and an RTX Inside The Game Interview, as well as a Full Ray Tracing Deep Dive Video. Here's word:

Together with NVIDIA, we’re bringing a completely new, fully ray-traced, aka path-traced, rendering mode to the game with this patch – Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode. We’re proud of it. It pushes the boundaries of what's possible in technology. However, because it is so new and fundamentally different from what we've been using so far, we know it's not going to be perfect from the start and players might experience some issues – that’s why we’ve decided to call it a “Technology Preview”. This is a vision of the future that we want to share, and we're committed to continue working on and improving this feature.

The technology preview of Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is currently supported on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series (4070 Ti and up) graphics cards. Also, on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (1080p, 30 fps). As this is a cutting-edge feature, it requires the highest-performing hardware available to run it properly. Ray Tracing: Overdrive is very GPU intensive, therefore it’s set to "off" by default.

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