Back in October, Gfinity Esports shared an excerpt from PC Gamer magazine that suggested Cyberpunk 2077’s snazzy ray-tracing effects (i.e., diffuse illumination, reflections, ambient occlusion, and shadows) would be exclusive to NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards at launch.
“In an interview with PC Gamer’s magazine, art director Jakup Knapik confirmed that only Nvidia Geforce cards will support the feature when the game launches next month,” the website wrote.
Now we’re learning that may not be the case. According to a Q&A with NVIDIA’s Brian Burke (via Wccftech), Cyberpunk 2077’s ray tracing is based on Microsoft’s DirectX API. That means it should work on AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs, which fully support DXR.
“Cyberpunk 2077 uses the industry standard DirectX Ray Tracing API,” Burke noted. “It will work on any DXR-compatible GPU. Nothing related to Cyberpunk 2077 ray tracing is proprietary to NVIDIA.”
CD PROJEKT RED’s Radek Adam Grabowski also reached out to us, confirming that Cyberpunk 2077’s ray tracing is based on DXR.
“CP2077’s implementation of ray tracing is based on fully standard DirectX Raytracing (DXR),” Grabowski clarified.
This is great news for prospective Radeon RX 6000 Series owners who wish to play the game at its highest visual fidelity. NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series might have the upper hand in terms of performance, however, as Cyberpunk 2077 also boasts support for DLSS 2.0.