CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition launching on Dec. 5, with the new version containing all the game’s content, including the Phantom Libery expansion, as well as bringing a “visual overhaul” powered by Nvidia.
According to Nvidia, this release will contain technical and graphical enhancements the game received over the course of its life cycle making it a “technology showcase, and a peek into the future of PC gaming.” Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will bring every major Nvidia feature released in the past few years including full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction, and NVIDIA Reflex.
One of the main graphical features in Cyberpunk is Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, also known as path tracing or full ray tracing. With the help of the Overdrive Mode, every neon sign, street lamp, and LED billboard in the game is fully ray-traced, creating better shadows, depth, and detail when it comes to lighting. Pairing that with ray reconstruction makes the game the best RTX experience currently available. Finally, the Ultimate Edition will have two already well-known and widely used features: DLSS and Relex, which will improve the performance and responsiveness of the game respectively.
All that tech comes along with engine optimizations, under-the-hood tech features, and tailored Game Ready Drivers. This is a result of a lengthy technological partnership between CD Project Red and Nvidia aimed to take video games to a whole new level.
To experience Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition to its fullest, you will need a GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card. Although you can try and run it on older GPUs, the features I just went over are extremely resource-heavy, especially path tracing which can drop your framerate.
If you don’t own an RTX 40 card, Nvidia offers the chance to play the game via the GeForce NOW Ultimate cloud gaming service, allowing you to play on the equivalent of an RTX 4080 setup for $25.99 a month. It’s a hefty price but could be worth it to experience the definitive version of Cyberpunk 2077.
