Nvidia wants to sell everyone on its vision of the future of graphics rendering. It's a compelling vision in many ways, with higher fidelity ray tracing thanks to AI enhanced visuals. DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction is here, in the form of Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 and the Phantom Liberty DLC, and we've tested it and seen how it looks. It's clearly a step forward in graphics fidelity, especially if you want fully ray traced graphics. The system requirements are steep, however, and Ray Reconstruction is also completely proprietary — as in, you must have an Nvidia RTX graphics card to even give it a try.
We're at a fork in the road, in other words, and I'm not even sure there's a "correct" way forward. Nvidia has the GPUs and technologies to make noticeable improvements in gaming graphics viable. Yes, it requires upscaling, and it also benefits from frame generation. Non-Nvidia alternatives are potentially available to both of those in the form of AMD's FSR 2 and FSR 3, respectively. But Ray Reconstruction? Yeah, that's fully locked into Nvidia RTX hardware, there's no direct competitor, and I'm not sure there will ever be a direct competitor.
The graphics enthusiast in me absolutely loves what Nvidia is doing. This is cool stuff! AI-enhanced upscaling and ray traced rendering have real potential benefits (though I'm less convinced by frame generation). Nvidia isn't alone in promoting the benefits of ray tracing either: Just look to Hollywood and you can't swing a projector without hitting some ray traced special effects. But this effectively breaks competition, in the sense that AMD and Intel GPUs have no way of running DLSS 3.5.
That's not good, for a variety of reasons. At the same time, innovation often flies in the face of standards. We began down this road with the first RTX graphics cards, and Nvidia had to work with Microsoft to create a new standard. DirectX Raytracing (DXR) works for ray tracing effects, but we don't have an equivalent standard for real-time neural rendering tools. For better or worse, Nvidia is blazing trail and leaving the competition to find their own path.
While Nvidia is the market leader in PC graphics, and according to the Steam Hardware survey it accounts for 82% of the total PC market, it's not the only game in town. Specifically, besides AMD and Intel GPUs on PC — the remaining 18% — there are tens of millions of console gamers using the latest PlayStation 5 (over 40 million) and Xbox Series X (over 21 million) consoles. That means they're all using AMD GPUs, and that means games made for consoles won't have Ray Reconstruction unless the developers do extra work for the PC version.
Looking just at Nvidia's RTX GPUs, that amounts to 46% of the Steam Hardware Survey. Except, 37% of those are running either RTX 20-series or RTX 3050 or 3060 GPUs. Less than 10% of the Steam users surveyed have an RTX 3080 or faster Nvidia GPU (including all 40-series cards, which aren't technically faster if you look at the 4060-class offerings). We don't have precise numbers, but surely there are far fewer than 61 million people who own such a GPU. Even if you want Nvidia to win out, then, it's far from a done deal.
That's sort of unfortunate. Improved graphics and new technologies on the one hand, status quo graphics on the other. But the status quo also represents a win for standards and a loss for proprietary tech, and if you want competition in the GPU space going forward, maybe that's okay? Alternatively, Nvidia is forging ahead because no other company appears willing to do so. Waiting for "open" standards that would allow Ray Reconstruction to work on every GPU under the sun probably means we'd never have the tech in the first place. So we have a choice between one company's innovations, or stagnating standards for everyone.
That's a lengthy introduction to Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty and the debut of DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, but it's an important topic. Cool graphics technology that never gets used isn't much good to anyone. Cool graphics technology that locks you to a specific vendor meanwhile isn't great either. But enough about all that, let's look at the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update, in terms of graphics and performance
And CDPR promised a city on par with GTA, if not better.