Cyberpunk 2.0 Ray Reconstruction Comparison, DLSS 3.5, & Benchmarks

[@GamersNexus]

OK, next question: What's the interest level in Phantom Liberty standalone benchmarks in a few days? We haven't updated our Cyberpunk numbers since around 1.6, so it'd involve all the new patches and could show some performance swings. Maybe we could test in a new Phantom Liberty game area. The alternative would be spending the benchmarking time on a different game or product, so let us know what you prefer! Check out our Starfield Graphics Optimization Guide: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3m9eKyBrLeCjZI The best way to support our work is through our store: store.gamersnexus.net/

[@Browser404]

Personally and I feel as I would be in the minority, I have zero interest in anything they put out or its performance. They seem to be trying to use CP as a a testing bench to push everything but zero quality in the game itself so I expect nothing much from this DLC bar another buggy mess and a 12 month + wait for it to be useable 😆

[@TheToMiToX]

I'm curious about 0.1 and 1% lows, cyberpunk always felt quite stuttery so that might have changed since.

[@nateo200]

Absolutely want to see Phantom Liberty benchmarks but I’d like to see it as part of a “look at the performance increases in cyberpunk since launch and our last analysis “ type thing. I know you guys test A LOT so I can’t emphasize how much I and I think others would appreciate this

[@nameltneGesreveR]

I think that, for a lot of people, there's a feeling that 2.0 is what should have launched. It'll have flaws, sure, but what we're getting now should've been what launched and CDPR iterated on post-release. There's a fair amount of hype, both cautious and optimistic, and seeing eminently objective outlets such as DigitalFoundry and yourselves at GN cover it would be interesting - particularly given you're capable of giving clear measurements of relative improvement from 1.0 -> 2.0.

[@zzzyyyxxx]

Absolutely interested, especially because CDPR said that the system requirements are heavier this time for Phantom Liberty.

[@Aotearas]

I'd love to see a CPU test now that the devs have included higher core count support with the current patch. I am very interested to see how my R9 3900X would stack up. Its single core performance isn't as good as the newer generations, but I'd hope that with better utilization of cores it'd be a solid performer leaving only my old GPU as the performance bottleneck.

[@BIGBASSSAMA_4]

Does it utilize up to 16 cores now I have a 7950x 16 core cpu

[@MrGiHunt]

Higher core count support? more like core count requirements*. Totally not the same thing.

[@Aotearas]

@@BIGBASSSAMA_4 how's the workload? Is it going like a Cinebench stress test like the dev comment implied or does the higher corecount tax individual cores less? Dev said something about disabling SMT with higher core CPU and I'm still not sure exactly why he recommended that.

[@Aotearas]

@@MrGiHunt Well previously people had to resort to mods to make better use of higher core count CPUs, that is now natively supported. That's higher core count support in my books. Whether that coincides with the game now also wanting more cores (as you mean it if I understand you correctly) is something a CPU test would show I'd assume.

[@gozutheDJ]

@@MrGiHunt your interpetation is entirely wrong

[@shukterhousejive]

It's a shame you can't just DLL swap this into older titles, early RT games like _Control_ would really benefit from this denoiser

[@guotyr2502]

I would LOVe to see this in titles like ratchet and clank

[@Hotobu]

Control is noisy af

[@Netsuko]

Control actually has a mod that significantly reduces the noise of Ray Tracing.

[@jdogdarkness]

IF it was all just a DLSS improvement u could do exactly that, in case u didn't know. Techspot & other websites keep a page with ALL DLSS .dll files explicitly for that purpose.

[@shukterhousejive]

@@Netsuko If you're talking about the "HDR" mod, it does that by jacking up the number of rays. Which is good, but very expensive

[@himanshukansal5509]

Dammn!! There's so much hard work that goes into making such detailed videos. Hats off to you and your team! 😮

[@AwesomeBlackDude]

Just throwing it out there, but isn't the Nvidia RTX 4090 more of a professional card than a gaming one? 😳

[@bradleyaustin5978]

It should still be a capable gaming card@@AwesomeBlackDude

[@Auziuwu]

@@AwesomeBlackDude ehh It's both.

[@Benjamas-]

20:04 hey! Ray reconstruction simulates what’s it like to have astigmatism! That’s kind of cool

[@someTransChick]

Dammit… 😆

[@egida6486]

I guess V should visit his/her ripper doc to get it fixed.

[@reptarien]

You're right! That's what lights ALWAYS look like to me at night!

[@Erickzy]

Hmm I might need glases

[@brulaapgaapmeester8052]

Yes very cool, who doesn't want astigmatism?

[@emili8927]

EVERYONE ITS AN ARTIFICIAL LIMIT GO INTO YOUR APPDATA/LOCAL/CD PROJECT FILE AND CHANGE THE USER SETTINGS CFG FORCE DLSSD TO TRUE AND DEFAULT TO TRUE THEN SAVE IT AS READ ONLY AND RAY RECONSTRUCTION WILL WORK WITH NORMAL RTX

[@anthonyrizzo9043]

So ray reconstruction makes the game look more like it would with RT off, but with RT on. It also cleans up dirt which is great.

[@HybridHumaan]

You have not even watched the video yet lmao

[@GamersNexus]

haha, that's actually pretty accurate for some aspects of it. Great phrasing. Denoising gets kind of recorrected back to what it should be (if you had upscaling artifacts, anyway)

[@anthonyrizzo9043]

​@@HybridHumaanit's sort of a joke man, I can clearly see the better lighting and reflections.

[@gearheadlydia]

This video really felt like someone at GN has an art degree, in the best way possible! The detailed explanations of subtle differences are enthralling here. Also wow, y'all clearly combed through the whole game to find some of these scenes; given that this is by no means a small game, the dedication to your craft is clear!

[@ryanj610]

It's super hard to do visual comparisons (which are so subjective), but GN is doing pretty well. I think Digital Foundry is still the gold star with this type of content, but I always like Steve's more skeptical take, too.

[@darlokt51]

Just as info, what you called „gritty details“ at 16:18 (and probably also at 16:59) are actually artefacts from the (temporal) denoisers. This is not supposed to be there, you can see it from the „pulsing“ of the pixels, as it struggles with the accumulation of (temporal) information due to the glossy and irregular nature of the surface at a subpixel level, the RR version is probably way more accurate. It’s a common problem with the hand-tuned denoisers used, you can see it even better in some of the „sequin-like-in-surface“ outfits worn by some characters in the game like I believe „Hanako“ (?). Also the higher perceived sharpness is not oversharpening per se, but rather a byproduct of performing denoising and upscaling in one process. Both at a very high level work alike, sacrificing high frequency detail for a „cleaner“ image, so with RR you only do it once, maintaining more high frequency information in the output image, therefore „sharper“. It’s remotely comparable to recompressing a compressed video and loosing even more information in the process.

[@notoriouspomegranate5612]

Yeah I HATE the pulsing effect of Path Tracing in Cyberpunk, I hope this is the biggest improvement with RR. I’m actually surprised he didn’t talk about it.

[@Cikflipp180]

Your comment was relatively inoffensive

[@olotocolo]

Yeah that silver sofa is DEFINITELY not supposed to have this artifacts and it's massive improvement in RR version

[@rapzid3536]

Some good observations in this video but suss conclusions.

[@TobyIKanoby]

yeah the "gritty details" didn't look like the y were supposed to be there to me

[@CrowCZ]

That light blowout bug after loading save has been in the game since the launch, even without RT. It's pretty bad that it's still there even with this patch.

[@gozutheDJ]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

[@matthias6933]

usual CDPR quality

[@sammigiordani7878]

@@gozutheDJ waluigi? is that you?

[@theoneshot236]

@@matthias6933 yeah like... with best and most advanced engine on the market to render such city lol what a cap and finding sth to bitch about

[@gozutheDJ]

@@sammigiordani7878 its you wailing

[@Kuriketto]

There's a mod that allows the number of rays cast per pixel to be adjusted. Going to have to test if upping the number of rays will help shore up RR visual fidelity while hopefully roughly maintaining the same baseline performance of path tracing alone.

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

I love the implication that you can run path tracing without the performance boost lol

[@Kuriketto]

@@zaidlacksalastname4905 From what I recall, that's viable on a 4090 at 1080 and even 1440p, but I'd enable upscaling and frame gen in any scenario involving path tracing regardless. Haven't had a chance to jump back into the game just yet to verify.

[@georgwarhead2801]

@@Kuriketto imagine needing a 1500$ gpu to play a game in 1080p or 1440p natively...

[@Kuriketto]

@@georgwarhead2801 $1600

[@qwertyrewtywyterty]

​@georgwarhead2801 imagine not knowing how exponentially demanding graphics gets the more realistic it is

[@SuRReal2k]

Yesus take a break guys. The video frequency and quality is absolutely outstanding! I dont want to see anybody of you burned out :( Greetings from over the ocean and thank your for your videos

[@Relatyvity]

One of the most prominent improvements is (I think) has been made to chain-link fences: Before 2.0, when you were close up they were incredibly noisy and further away they just became blurred. Now they look exactly how you'd expect. I do feel like there were possibly improvements done to DLSS as well, cause even witjhout RR, it looks much better then before the patch, though RR cleans them up even better.

[@CDHarris]

It's funny that RR's improvement in the lag between lighting changes ended up revealing more bugs. For example, what you identified as a bug with RR at ~16:00 is actually visible in the original shot as well, just smeared over by the aggressive temporal denoising. You can tell by how the two states flickering back and forth on the left are both visible overlaid on top of each other on the right. I imagine something similar is happening when the lighting on objects switching between LODs briefly flickers with RR on. The regular denoiser is probably just smearing old lighting data over it and hiding the flicker as a happy accident.

[@TheTaxxor]

Even some lighting changes, for example when you look around and the scene gets darker or brighter in response, are much quicker without RR for me. If I have RR enabled, these changes are slower and ghosting is especially strong during those changes if you dare to move your weapon at the same time

[@tempeczek]

immediately gave a like for Polish pronunciation of "projekt" :D Respect Man!

[@psyedk]

great coverage guys! love these technical deep dives analyzing what's really going on

[@jon-umber]

Already loved Cyberpunk 2077 on day one (yes, I'm one of the few, I guess), I'm so pumped to play 2.0 and Phantom Liberty.

[@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD]

They were literally refunding the game with no stipulations, publicly apologized repeatedly, and were successfully sued by their investors; I think you know that you're one of the few that was happy with the launch state.

[@daveblueballz6659]

@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD and who won in the end? the non-bandwagoners

[@vihu2001]

Your polish pronounce of CD Projekt Red was flawless, thank you and respect

[@johngalactus4014]

RR doing a great job cleaning up the image, still some ways to go but this is amazing.

[@MFMArt]

It cleaning up the muddiness cannot be understated. I left my save for a new play through at the arasaka hotel bar scene with Jackie and the whole floor and all the couches are a blurry mess, I'm excited to see how that improves in a few hours. Pretty massive update for the future of RT in games imo, and like all the tech so far will get better the more training models they handle so it's atleast a good stepping stone for a new feature.

[@Kryptonic83]

Thanks for the in-depth coverage on this!

[@JacobG5]

Great in detail comparison video as always from you guys. That being said I have a quick suggestion on the off chance someone reads this. I've rewatched several parts of this comparison especially when you flicker back and forth between RR on and off because it was kind of hard to track what version of the scene I was looking at. Maybe in the future for side by side comparisons like this you could have a color coded screen boarder or some other more obvious indicator of which is which. Say when RR is enabled there is a noticeable green boarder around the frame and when the setting is turned off the boarder is gray or something. Small nitpick on an otherwise great video.

[@georgewood7893]

this the type of review I've been looking for. no cdpr fanboy, honest impressions and facts.

[@RedundancyDept]

Hardware Unboxed found that Ray Reconstruction offered a performance uplift in Cyberpunk only with the 4090. Lower-tier cards took a (tiny) performance penalty. Just throwing it out there; It doesn't seem that the performance variance for this feature is determined solely by the game. Thanks for the great video.

[@TheScrubmuffin69]

I have a 4070ti, so it seems like it's still a plus for me at least. I'm only at 1080p so that helps lol

[@TheScyy]

Whoever added the FPS Doug quote at 7:40 is clearly a person of culture.

[@Lexxxco1]

Ray Reconstruction adds heavier ghosting on further objects and very noticeable neural-network related artifacts, test it while driving the cat in the city during any chase - it will be looking as an oil painting or drug trip effect. It is visible on all DLSS modes, further from quality mode = more visible. Strangely this effects are more noticeable on 2K resolution, not 4K. This may be related to the resolution of training models.

[@fernandes327]

Yeah the ghosting is unbearable, you're not the first person i see saying 4K is better for this issue. I'm playing on 1440p and the only reason i didn't enable RR is the ghosting/smearing. I wonder if the difference from 1440p to 2160p is that big, ghosting-wise (since its the only downside i found from RR)

[@emresdioshi]

I will suggest you something against ghosting and smearing because it worked with my 4080. Turn off your DLSS and use FSR. You should keep the frame generation On somehow. RT and other Nvidia related things you can keep turned on somehow. I am hoping that you will get more clear image like this with the same fps. If you try please give feedback.

[@panvlk]

Extra thumbs up for pronunciation of CD Projekt Red:).

[@cs_mns]

"it's pretty inoffensive" Steve's way of saying 7/10

[@barrupa]

Great quote from FPS Doug @ 7:43

[@AceStrife]

It's things like this that make me feel old. :(

[@Rare_Pepe]

BOOM Headshot!

[@NooBSyBoT69]

Cant wait for the dlss 4.5 ray reconstruction 2 analysis video

[@KaziQTR]

From what I tested long ago that distortion around the NPCs is caused by the TAA used by the game in native mode that can’t be turned off in the menu. You need to modify it in the ini file. That’ll take care of it. I hope you see this. I feel TAA was unnecessary for 4K. It’s really powerful for lower resolutions. Because of that, devs probably thought to make it a must and never expose it as an option in the menu.

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

According to pcgamingwiki: "DLSS requires temporal anti-aliasing to function; disabling TAA will prevent DLSS from working"

[@KaziQTR]

@@shinyhappyrem8728And that's why I said for native resolution not DLSS.

[@YoodielandExplorer]

​@@KaziQTRno ray reconstruction without dlss on

[@KaziQTR]

@@YoodielandExplorer at one point somewhere in the middle of the video Steve was comparing image quality around NPCs against native rendering.

[@Dorraj]

I'd agree but modern games like this have a ton of alpha effects that are run at / resolutions. Often 1/2 or 1/4, sometimes even 1/8 or 1/16. TAA does its job by blurring this. Things like hair in modern games are just made with TAA in mind, and if you force them off, it looks terrible. Go play Stray and force TAA off. That cat looks like a walking nightmare with how much alaising is there. I hate how much we rely on temporal AA nowadays, but that's the way games are made now. It sucks.

[@mouseFPV]

The image quality of these videos is phenomenal. It's like one of the only things that makes my phone display really shine. Woah.

[@plarpoon]

@GamerNexus I strongly suggest once customized the settings in the menu to set the configuration save file to immutable. That way you can test those settings without any fear that it would change and when you need to change the values you just remove the immutable bit. Just as a workaround for now.

[@MrEL91N]

I'm playing on a 4070Ti w/ a i7-12700K and without DLSS 3.5 I was only getting about 30-40 frames in 4K with full ray tracing and most settings on high. Basically not really playable in my opinion. After turning it on I'm able to comfortably sit in the upper 70's and low 80's. That is a major improvement in my eyes.

[@MrEL91N]

since the DLSS 3.5 update my game looks absolutely terrible when I don't have path tracing turned on. Its like all the lighting and textures are wrong. At first I thought it was just me but after some testing there is for some sort of bug where without path tracing nothing is being displayed correctly. Even with regular raytracing on it doesn't look right. My frames are all over the place too.

[@zeekjones1]

You may be able to see if there is a config file you can edit, for consistent settings on launch. I have not checked if Cyberpunk has one, but most games do, and also can give more settings than what the menus have available.

[@matthewwarner1606]

I really enjoyed the sponsor plug on this one. lol

[@DarrenHowseMusic]

For anyone still on the fence about playing this game, I played it last month before 2.0 and it's now one of my favorite FPS games of all time. So damn good. My only gripe is the driving mechanics, which I really hope is addressed in 2.0.

[@DarrenHowseMusic]

@@Navi_xoo I experienced very minimal bugs in my playthrough, and nothing game-breaking. And you're right about the just the main story, but if you do not do the side content you are definitely doing yourself a disservice. Especially, the Panam missions. Cheers.

[@G0A7]

Theres a mod that changes that, maybe u want to try it

[@Greez1337]

Interesting. Must not play many shooters or RPG's.

[@georgejones5019]

They did more adjustments to driving in w.p because the added vehicle combat and vehicle focused skills.

[@or1on89]

The fact that you called it FPS tells me that there’s nothing of the promised RPG. So it’s still a no for me…

[@BiGG_X]

I really hope Cyberpunk pulls it off. That game deserves much more credit than what it has received. AND relating to your SWAFan add, love those fans. Everything is easier about adding them in a case and they look great.

[@quirinaled2752]

Agreed but it's unfortunately unlikely. The troll hoard dude their best to bury the game at launch and will continue to attack it no matter what CDPR do. They've spent huge resources fixing and upgrading the game since launch and all you get on YT and /r is 'It haz 2 meny bugz lolz'

[@timbaumann9046]

FINALLY got my 15 year T-Shirt Steve... Thanks!

[@HoroJoga]

They way you guys circunvented the embargo was genius.

[@daedaluxe]

The paint flake shimmering with RR looks amazing

[@StrengthScholar0]

I was blown away by how well this game ran after the CPU optimizations CDPR made. I was worried that the game was going to run worse after patch 2.0 but it runs WAY better.

[@Khomuna]

Indeed. Along with the police changes Cyberpunk finally runs and plays like it should have 3 years ago.

[@IronKnee963]

Who cares? The game is garbage. Once again they wasted resources on featuring a celebrity nobody cares about. Idris Elba. It's too late. Anybody who still pushes for Cyberpunk suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.

[@saricubra2867]

But Cyberpunk 2077 is very CPU heavy, 12 cores are recommended for the DLC.

[@franchezvibritannia7320]

how it should've been from the begining

[@futuza]

I can finally put my 32 threads to use.

[@TKwoN87]

Elden Ring is a prime example of how videogames should be launched. This whole launch-now-fix-in-a-few-years is the easiest way for a publisher/developer to avoid my money.

[@zivzulander]

Multiple embargoes seems very in the spirit of "cyberpunk". The dystopian future genre, I mean, not the franchise. 😁

[@Muppet-kz2nc]

theres a lot of dumb reviewers that would spoil story beats if not mandated to b-roll. I think you're either the type of person to assume the worst or give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to CDPR's intentions. Some have chosen the former.

[@goofball1_134]

Yeah cdpr has some very sketchy restrictions on what can and can't be shown. The restrictions seem to convey they are hiding bugs/issues to avoid bad press prelaunch. Not cool.

[@riven4121]

@@goofball1_134 It's the same thing with the 1.0 release. There's a very good reason why reviewers of the launch game were not allowed via embargo contract to show or review the console version of the game.

[@WayStedYou]

Steve circumventing the restrictions by saying just take 60 screenshots a second is hilarious

[@Squishydew]

I watched some other videos on this like hardware unboxed and it looked like this barely did anything.. Your overview was so much clearer and actually showed significant differences. Nice. I definitely wouldnt trade sharper reflections for that ghosting though, id rather have the blurry reflections any day.

[@yesornoandmaybeso]

17:49 So has this been confirmed as intended behavior? I was under the impression that this type of distortion above & around the fire was a deliberate rendering technique to emulate that light displacement/refraction 'mirage' effect from the heat... i.e., not just a hazy & blurry filter.

[@tamagogohann]

Yes heat warping is an intended effect, thats just kinda how fire works irl lol(otherwise it wouldnt be there in native) I think RR just sees it as noise and tries to "fix" it

[@thomasleif]

I have a 4070, the trailing/ghosting is really bad in some instances. Objects that are picked up seem to fade away slowly, any work on the computers is choppy and has a trailing cursor, but overall the reflection quality is making me keep it on. It. Looks. FANTASTIC. :)

[@MS10x]

Hi, I am planning to buy 4070, how does it performs in recent AAA titles ? I want to game at 2k high settings Thank you

[@emresdioshi]

I will suggest you something against ghosting and smearing because it worked with my 4080. Turn off your DLSS and use FSR. You should keep the frame generation On somehow. RT and other Nvidia related things you can keep turned on somehow. I am hoping that you will get more clear image like this with the same fps. If you try please give feedback.

[@DJCurry25]

i really loved this video! thank you. i also do appreciate the summary at the end as well!

[@tclark5481]

A recommendation for a future video. How about doing an in-depth dive on how to optimize graphics settings in a game to get the best performance. This would be a generic discussion and would include how various settings impact fps as well as graphic fidelity. It would also be good to tie different graphic settings to hardware features on a GPU. For example, how does a particular hardware feature drive certain graphical aspects of the game and what settings control that?

[@RyneLanders]

Digital Foundry has that exact video for this exact game already. For RT Overdrive mode, there are no adjustable settings - it's either on, or off.

[@OmegaPhattyAcid]

GN has done this in the past, go digging. They deserve the viewtime

[@tclark5481]

@@OmegaPhattyAcid I watch them all the time. I'll look for the video.

[@perigee_vitz-wong]

2010s: in 10 years we'll be at the point where will be hard to tell game graphics apart from reality 2020s: we're at the point where it's hard to tell the game graphics apart from what the devs intended

[@RCmies]

13:27 that looks really bad. Not sure it's supposed to do that. I hope not because I'm not sure it's worth the upgrade if there is so much ghosting around NPCs.

[@Jossages]

IIRC this could happen sometimes if you just stood still for a while, so unsure if that's the cause or if it's RR.

[@melcorchancla9431]

@@Jossages it is, I disabled it and the image is 1000x cleanser in 1440

[@dolan_plz]

The ghosting is my biggest complaint about RR so far. I hope they can patch it out, because I don't remember it being that bad before. Other than that it runs and looks better, which is great 🙂

[@theftking]

Ngl I'm pretty excited to crush _Phantom Liberty_ @ 1440p. I didn't play Cyberpunk until ~6 months ago, and whatever the state was in at launch, for the $40 or whatever I paid, thought it was phenomenal. Very impressive game. I did notice that while I get ~120FPS with path tracing + DLSS everything @ 1440p on a 4090, the 1% lows are abysmal. Like... big hitches to 40 on a consistent basis.

[@delayed_control]

This is the only English language channel where I consistently hear "CD Projekt" pronounced correctly.

[@fabrb26]

Thanks, look forward for Phantom Liberty 👌

[@J--Dubs]

Fantastic review. I'm hoping DLSS 4 solves the massive increase of ghosting to distant moving objects/npcs.

[@djam7484]

DLSS 4..like DLSS 3 where 30 series owners got shafted. but this time with the 40 series getting shafted. only avalible for 50 series gpus..coming late 2024 early 2025

[@Real_MisterSir]

@@djam7484 The only aspect of DLSS 3.0 that wasn't available to older cards, is the frame generation which is a standalone tech within the DLSS suite. Everything else is comparable to DLSS 2.5 that is available for all cards.

[@djam7484]

@@Real_MisterSir still an aspect that is shut of for people with older cards. and its not the first time this has hapend.

[@Yayosmxxx]

There was way more ghosting before this update with path tracing it's actually playable now

[@kamikaze00007]

@@djam7484 And fully done by sparkling new AI cores that only 50 series gpus have for +50% price increase.

[@Itchy-Pixel]

Honestly, I switched it on when I loaded up the game on my 4070ti and it does look pretty when you are stood still looking at the effect, but within an hour I had turned ray tracing back off again because when actually playing the game normally I hardly ever notice it and I prefer higher frame rate. Just a personal preference I guess but the tech is cool.

[@rocstarang5747]

Same. I'd be happy with a setting that only turned on rt (and ultra) in screenshots.

[@deivytrajan]

Disagreed. I keep path tracing on because the game lighting, shadows and reflections become real life like and improve visuals so much. It’s a big difference. Rtx 4090 user here

[@fraysure1298]

@@deivytrajanagreeded 4080 user

[@Juanguar]

@@deivytrajansame here with a 4060 I run it on 1080p though but with DLSS I can manage at least 40 fps

[@steel5897]

Terrible naming aside, this denoiser is so so good, I was already a RT believer but it's surreal seeing it get this good, realistic lighting now at realistic speeds instead of having to get an incomplete noisy effect that gets better after like 20 frames.

[@Decenium]

this is an excellent video, it really shows how much work is still left.

[@AlbertoMartinez765]

and also how little of a difference it actually makes to the actual gameplay.

[@kazioo2]

Unless neural rendering takes over and reboots the entire industry.

[@frankcooke1692]

If I was CDProjekt Red, or whatever, I would probably just try starting the game, before releasing it. And then you would know if it works or not. Oh and by the way, it takes 14 hours to download the update, which is always nice.

[@nontoxic9960]

6:59 you can see an NPC bottom left literally smear while walking

[@reanimationxp]

Fantastic video. THANK YOU ty ty for always unapologetically hunting for truth and delving into so much detail. This is the quality we can expect from GN. I also appreciate the litmus test at the end being the TESTER's opinion rather than your own on whether he'll use it himself. That (and your self-awareness that you probably didn't see everything he did) speaks volumes. Hat's off.

[@michaelcruz8425]

Last time I was this early tech Jesus had short hair

[@mziv112]

Same lol

[@matteo964]

We should ask Steve

[@nateo200]

Lmao

[@joelcampos9429]

I would love a tech jesus and gun jesus mashup discussing that biometric gun he had on.

[@AakashKumar-tn6yh]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Melrieoi]

Not sure what GN's take is on 17:56. The heat distortion is removed by RR, which it may see as noise, but is supposed to be there because it is a fire.

[@123JimmyTheCookie]

IMO while they didn't explicitly say it, it was implied to be a negative

[@G0A7]

Its not bad for a first time and in a game made without this tech in mind, it should get better over time

[@MaximizedAction]

This test review was more captivating than the game itself. Those 26min were over like nothing.

[@ricky_pigeon]

Top quality as always GamersNexus, thanks for an awesome comparison.

[@lTwojaStara]

2023 and we still got vector/square trees, pots, railings - but it reflects the light in the puddle! :C

[@theRemedyGames]

My main issue with ray tracing like this is how clear and focused the light reflections/refractions are. Nowhere in the world, unless off an actual mirror, is reflected light ever that clear and crisp. Imperfect surfaces (ESPECIALLY wet surfaces) do not refract light like this. RT implemented like this is actually less realistically convincing and borderline distracting. And yet I hear absolutely nobody talking about this.

[@TheSupremeSkill]

I have been thinking the same, but I don't treat all games and their visuals needing to be as realistic as possible, but rather if the effects are appealing to eye, and in this case the sharper reflections are a bit better in comparison imo.

[@countertime]

Yes, I’d like to know if it’s a problem with the tech or just artist choices of material properties (made before path tracing was added).

[@MrAden1307]

Exactly, and there's no excuse for it in games like CP that are trying to be realistic. All that extra power and performance cost just for fake looking reflections. It's something i've been thinking about a lot. And it's definitely deciding if i upgrade to 40 card. It amazes me how like you said, they don't ever talk about this. Some of these so called amazing features are plagued with issues The other thing for me that completely breaks the reflections is this added ghosting. They still can't avoid it..

[@yusifalizade3394]

Have you… went outside and looked at actual reflections. On a still wet surface, reflections are crisp. They only become blurry in real life if there are waves on the surface of the water.

[@theRemedyGames]

@@yusifalizade3394 wet surface reflections are not crisp. Especially puddles on the street. Water on city streets and sidewalks tends to be greasy/grimy. Hence my comment about imperfections. I lived in NYC for 25 years. I know reflections in a city of lights.

[@AVINIDE]

The ghosting issue comes from game's implementation of TAA. It's present no matter if you have DLSS, FSR or XeSS enabled/disabled. In order to fully get rid of it is through mods which disable TAA altogether. However, doing so breaks all upsampling methods.

[@AVINIDE]

@@epoch151 It's not disabled, since 1.0 all kind of upscalers require TAA, and it's always on.

[@shingod700]

I feel like other new dlss feature it will greatly improve over time.

[@dudanvictor4203]

For sure.

[@Real_MisterSir]

Absolutely. Just looking at how DLSS itself has improved since its initial version to where we are now, that's the beauty of deep learning and progressive AI solutions. The fact that the starting point is already as promising as it is now, is pretty remarkable. Industries have relied on traditional denoising for decades, and now they're mostly obsolete and the outcome on average is better, sometimes significantly so. By no means perfect, but knowing Nvidia and their continuous support and development of their tech, I am definitely looking forward to seeing this tech progress in the coming years.

[@ramonandrajo6348]

A gimmick is a gimmick. XD

[@TTx04xCOBRA]

​@@ramonandrajo6348your coping is pathetic

[@rudrasingh6354]

​@@ramonandrajo6348everything is a gimmick to you isn't it

[@KillahMate]

22:06 What does 'technically had an uplift for performance' mean here? I'm looking at those graphs and what I'm seeing is a free 9% performance uplift with an associated image improvement, but the entire video discusses DLSS 3.5 with comments like 'there shouldn't be a big performance impact'. Is this not really a 9% performance uplift for some reason? Is there something about the tech that means it normally runs slower than native denoising?

[@rapzid3536]

I get a strange vibe from a lot of the conclusions. Many scenes where RR got rid of artifacts it described as "removing detail". Many scenes where they are "not sure which is better" and I'm sitting here looking at AO where it didn't exist before and more accurate bounce illumination thinking "It looks completely better to me". The overall conclusion seeming to be "whose to say if it's really better" seems super odd haha. It's like they know, even with the legit issues they found, DLSS 3.5 produces a way better image with better performance but they are pandering to a large percent of the base who dumps on RT and DLSS as a form of copium with vague conclusions.

[@billyeveryteen7328]

The bug with lighting being blown out whenever you load a save is really common in my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 as well, which isn't using ray tracing, and I don't think it's using DLSS, and it's on a completely different engine.

[@awgmax]

Steve pronouncing CD Projekt properly catches me off guard every time. BIg ups.

[@Zenzuu]

It’s sad the talks and focus especially regarding GPU’s is all about DLSS/FSR and Ray tracing which is essentially just more accurate lighting/reflections/shadows now days I much rather prefer for developers use the resources to push for higher polygon counts, more destructible, object/environments, better AI, more advance & better physics.

[@Relrion]

Look into unreal 5 tech demos, they are covering that stuff

[@milohajek]

Another great video Steve and GN Team

[@mo0rd]

The game looks absolutely gorgeous now. Keen to actually play it this time on the 4090.

[@azaril7780]

Same, waiting to do a fresh run when my 4090 arrives next week (curse you long shipping times) may actually do more side quests instead of blasting through the campaign.

[@DTheProducer]

Great video, as always!

[@lagrangemechanics]

I have had a quick look with RR in the game's Overdrive mode, and it definitely cleaned up a lot of the artifacts that the previous denoise had struggled to remove. A lot of those were temporal "sparkles" that you started seeing on some surfaces when the game is in Overdrive mode (possibly because the game is fully path traced in that mode) and you probably can't show them well in KZbin due to compression, but they were moderately conspicuous. RR cleaned those up quite well, and the temporal stability that RR offers is, to me, more valuable than less blurry RT effects, which is also very much welcome.

[@AlindBack]

I second all if this. I have experienced the same on my setup.

[@HuguesBalzac]

Squints really hard too notice enough improvement to pay €€€€ for a high end RTX 40x0... Nope. Fuck that for a game of expensive soldiers.

[@MrArrmageddon]

Before watching any of this video I tested out DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction in game and I noticed a difference and prefer it. In my screenshots I took I noticed improvements for sure. It's nothing major but it's helpful. I gained about 6-7 FPS on my 4080 as well as a buff in visual aspects. I noticed a few downsides as well. But overall a positive.

[@sereph9612]

I have a 4080 and haven't had time to boot the game up with the new update. Overall, how is your performance and are you using FG?

[@tringuyen7519]

DLSS 3.5 works differently for those who own a 3080 or 2080 than a 4080. Read the fine print before you’re disappointed.

[@MrArrmageddon]

@@sereph9612 Yes I strongly prefer FG in just about all games. 12700K and 4080. I get about 100-116 FPS with 100% maxed settings. 1440P, DLSS Quality, Path Tracing and RR on. With as you mentioned FG. I say 100 to 116 as it depends on where you are in game. I'm sure in some places it's going to be lower than 100 and in some over 116. But in general the game runs at 100+ towards the minimum. I toggled RR on and off a few times. Notice at least a consistent 5 or more FPS boost having it on. Not that 5-7 FPS does not matter to much. But I like RR on anyways so it's win/win with some visual glitches which is true with most settings. I don't really notice the issues with RR on though. I have to mostly focus in on them. But this video does point the worst ones out. As for FG I notice very minimal issues. In fact I have to try to notice problems with FG to notice them. I get a lot of FPS boost having FG on. The smoothness it brings far off sets and possible negatives. I am a gamer who loves FG. It's very, very good. lol I know not everyone agrees.

[@sereph9612]

@@MrArrmageddon I also use FG in any game that supports it because they are all mainly single player story driven games that don't require next level input latency so the added latency is never an issue. I play at 4K res because I game on a C2, so I can expect my frame rate to be quite a bit lower than yours, cheers!

[@paulleggett9735]

15 years?!?! Wow..had to go back and see some early Steve. Hair has always been a theme!

[@CaracuSC]

As much as I love Digital Foundry for great software related content, I'm loving these Gamers Nexus' deep dives on graphics. People at GN are so knowledgeable on both hardware and software, they definitely are my go-to for anything gaming.

[@olotocolo]

I used to love Digital Foundry but recently they are doing some REALLY weird things... Their Starfield review has completely different tone than "pc settings" on the same game, which, ok. But what really really rubebd me the wrong way was them in a review saying "this game looks gorgeous most of the time" WHILE SHOWING FOOTAGE LOOKING LIKE PS3. But ok, maybe just mismatch from footage to text read. I'm playing Starfield for few days now. It looks like utter s**t. It's probably the ugliest AA-AAA game of this year, and it would be also of the previous if it wasn't for gollum. It's absolutely disgusting and it's much wors if you do not have filter-removing mod. And Digital Foundry calls that georgeus.

[@rcavicchijr]

​@@olotocoloI think quite a bit of starfield looks great. They definitely upgraded their lighting, character models, animations, and textures for the creation engine. Especially compared to fallout 4. The physics system is also a huge upgrade. It's obviously not as pretty as some recent fully next gen games like U.E. 5, but it's approach and gameplay are quite limiting in that aspect. Calling it ps3 level graphics is just ridiculous though, I'd say it looks more mid-late 8th gen with some 9th gen stickers on it.

[@abeidiot]

@@olotocolo starfield looks great. you may need a new pair of glasses. Of course it doesn't hold a candle to path traced graphics, but otherwise it's pretty good. The crowd character models are horrible though

[@mtlvmpr]

​@@olotocolo You should just ignore everything said on Digital Foundry if it's not related to a tech a game uses. The channel was better when it was just fps graphs over gameplay videos.

[@robw7381]

@@rcavicchijr Starfield looks terrible a minor upgrade to FO4 in 8 years. No improved AI, loading screens everywhere. I knew it would be terrible when Bethesda said they will continue using their creaking old Creation Engine which is 20 years old now

[@starofeden9277]

allthough there are some things looking more crispier seems 3.5 brings new ghosting issues maybe dlss 4 will fix all these new issues

[@KingGameReview]

I feel like ray reconstruction is bugged for me. When I turn it on it makes everything look like it has an extreme sharpening filter on it. Everything has a dark outline, and almost looks like borderlands or something. I have DLSS sharpening set to zero, and it still has that effect.

[@carpelunam]

are you using the right resolution for your game and monitor?

[@KingGameReview]

@@carpelunam yes. I'm using the max resolution for my monitor and using "quality" DLSS. 0 sharpening. The sharpen artifacts only appear when I turn on ray reconstruction. When I turn that off, then the game looks normal again.

[@PhilipClouds]

Same here. It looks absolutely disgusting to the point I got super happy when I realized it went away with RR off lol

[@KingGameReview]

@@PhilipClouds Glad I'm not the only one. Everyone I see talking about it says that, at its worst, it's the same or better than with it turned off. That has not been my experience at all.

[@PhilipClouds]

@@KingGameReview Yes. There seems to be some benefits but I will never sacrifice clarity like this. Look at NPCs faces, reflections in movement and oversharpened edges on everything. People must be blind

[@jujuteuxOfficial]

ngl the tower lights having those trails is pretty damn cool

[@VanethReaper]

The flaws in it aside, i have been a fan of ray reconstruction as a whole since the update went live. playing at 3440x1440 fully path traced, with frame gen, dlss quality and RR on. I like RR for the more subtle things it lets come through, like the shadows under the cardboard you noted at 12:55 and whatnot. it just brings back some of that scene "depth" and makes the world feel less flat. I think it has a lot more upsides than downsides that make it well worth running, at least to me.

[@SilverforceX]

Amazing that we have to 300% zoom and slow motion to see the differences..

[@ozner55]

I'm definitely going to give it a try. Thanks for the quality content as always. Where is that Evo XL thermals vid. lol

[@JazerMedia]

I think with a little more time, a new iteration of DLSS could fix of the issues we're seeing with RR. At the moment, it's really promising and solves more issues than it creates!

[@dudanvictor4203]

I prefer it on , despite some little ghosting here and there, it improves the overall image , the reflection are so crisp now and that very distracting shimmering that occurred before has been reduced to very acceptable now. In 2 years I think it's gonna be perfect.

[@AxeDragon1989]

Obviously, this is literally the first iteration ever of RR

[@PierreLeroy76620]

I was expecting multiple GPU test ? But thank for the coverages! Thank you

[@hizacaine]

Nvidia could introduce a canned set of test modes that would accompany the card, or driver, to toggle the settings and allow apple to apple comparisons for any game and user/reviewer.

[@j.w.grayson6937]

That was a lot of work Steve! But, I doubt that I would notice the stuff you pointed out while playing the game.

[@HybridHumaan]

You guys tested it against denoisers which is great and all. But they are also not a great ground truth to begin with honestly. It would be great to have games/environments where you could render a scene with way more casted rays (not in real time then of course) and then compare both conventional denoisers and ray reconstruction to those ground truth scenes. Just a thought of mine, even though this seems to be impossible to implement at the moment.

[@DelgaDude]

There is no point in using denoisers in a non real time usage of ray tracing. Ray tracing has been a thing for a long long time now. Used in making CGI of all kinds.

[@computron5824]

@@DelgaDude Denoisers are used in pretty much every non-realtime CG rendering production. All of the major offline render engines have some sort of denoising built in because otherwise final frames would take even longer to clean up. Especially if they're using brute force path tracing.

[@Deliveredmean42]

​@@DelgaDudeyou will thi k that, but in reality everyone use them to speed up production, even in big movies and tv shows. Its just mandatory considering in these making things fast phase in the industry at the moment. Which may or may not deteriorate considering the exploitation of the workers.

[@zbigniewkrajewski7536]

Thanks for your hard work Gamers Nexus, love you guys

[@Twigz2010]

This is massive and might get me to try DLSS again. The ghosting issue has always been a deal breaker for me.

[@PlayJasch]

It has gotten a lot better in other games. Cyberpunk just seems to be too complex.

[@pathway4582]

​@@PlayJasch I think so too. The game was not designed around RT and DLSS; both technologies were an afterthought. There's a (sort of) podcast about ray reconstruction where one of the devs explained how the whole game world was designed in a way that's actually really difficult for RT to work properly (really tall buildings and overpasses which interfere with light bounces), so I imagine there are also limitations on an engine level which cannot be fixed.

[@morgothbloody7181]

might be your monitor

[@joeymoto108]

@@morgothbloody7181 it's not their monitor- ghosting in DLSS provably exists. Cyberpunk has always been a particularly strong example of it- I still have ghosting with RR, particularly when it comes to pedestrians and cars in the distance.

[@emresdioshi]

I will suggest you something against ghosting and smearing because it worked with my 4080. Turn off your DLSS and use FSR. You should keep the frame generation On somehow. RT and other Nvidia related things you can keep turned on somehow. I am hoping that you will get more clear image like this with the same fps. If you try please give feedback.

[@ionseven]

Please don't stop these graphics analysis videos! Other channels are way too corporate or don't know wtf they're talking about posting just for click. Also lost it for DF after their 5 video Anthem "ad" campaign disguised as analysis videos, Alex's peddling Halo Infinite Craig edition, and Wichard calling John's justified criticism of Suicide Squad being a live service scam "a bit harsh." And we all know how those games turned out. Appreciate the real, unbiased work here.

[@DESX312]

DF does massively better and more technical breakdowns of very specific rendering pipelines. Lets be serious. I've watched Gamersnexus for years. Since Steve maybe had like 20-30K subscribers, the channels are far different. No one does a better graphical analysis than DF, but DF sure as hell doesn't do hardware analysis like GN does.

[@ctrlectrld]

@@DESX312 GN's Starfield optimization video is leaps and bounds better than DF's. I agree with @ionseven, I made basically the same comment, enough with the Nvidia marketing shoved into tech analyses. I hope GN and also HUB keep it up. HUB's Starfield optimization video was on par with DF's.

[@sorena2952]

Testing very early, or near release after a couple updates builds of cyberpunk vs the current in similar scenarios would be a nice video. to see if performance of the game has improved either due to driver or game engine improvements. and to see if they game has changed in minor/major ares Visualy.

[@Liquid_Truth]

“i can dance all day. i can dance all day” lol what a throwback

[@tomder2880]

The scene beginning at 6:49 is exactly what annoys me the most with RT/PT in Cyberpunk, it's just over the top, in which dimension wet wood act as a perfect mirror ? Even puddles doesn't do that realistically. I can sound nitpicking but the whole RT/PT was marketed as "creating realistic lightning effects/mirroring" and this is not the case here.

[@loayzc10]

I don't think that's wood flooring, but I do get what you're saying about mirror effect of water.

[@levijosephcreates]

Dark wet wood would reflect more light, similar to how a black background under glass acts like a mirror for product photography. The water on the wood would reflect and refract the photons, especially if that wood is varnished which I expect it would be in an outdoor environment, thus allowing the water to sit on top of it.

[@aviral1230]

Thank you for all your hard work!