Cyberpunk 2077's new mode is basically unplayable for everyone

Cyberpunk 2077 has a new mode and sadly, it’s basically unplayable for everyone. Fantastic!

The new mode in question for CD Projekt Red’s revived sci-fi RPG is Overdrive and it’s an exclusive mode for PC players. As long as you have the required PC gaming power, such as the Nvidia 40 series, Cyberpunk 2077 is taken to a whole new level with full ray-tracing support at 4K/60fps. Well, in theory, anyway.

In the patch notes for update 1.62, CDPR explained what Overdrive brings to the table. “This update brings the technology preview of Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode for high-end PCs,” said CDPR in a blog post.

“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.”

As reported by GameSpot, unfortunately for many, if you don’t have any of the ultra-expensive Nvidia tech, you’re pretty much all out of luck. At least for the most part. CDPR says that the Overdrive mode can run on a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU but at 1080p/30fps.

However, CDPR has stated that Overdrive mode can run on older hardware on ray-tracing-supported graphics cards with at least 8GB VRAM. This can be achieved by rendering path-traced screenshots in Photo Mode resulting in GPUs rendering one frame at a time. This is instead of rendering frames every second in-game.

“Note that the higher the resolution and the less powerful the GPU is, the longer it will take to take a screenshot (between a few seconds to several minutes),” explained the developers.

In recent news, the CD Projekt Red is now hiring new staff to work on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. The Cyberpunk 2077 sequel was only announced in October 2022 and doesn't even have an official name yet, so we can expect its release to be a good few years away.

Thankfully, until the sequel arrives, we have the expansion Phantom Liberty to look forward to which releases this year for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.