Cyberpunk 2077 1.62 Update Patch Notes Revealed

The 1.62 update for Cyberpunk 2077 started rolling out on April 11, arriving alongside an in-depth changelog detailing the new patch. This is the first update to the hit open-world RPG since Cyberpunk 2077 1.61 patch rolled out in November 2022.The PC-only update largely revolves around enhanced ray-tracing support arriving as part of a Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive Mode that CD Projekt Red already detailed at GDC 2023 in late March. Much like its name suggests, this is a fairly ambitious addition to the game that pushes its graphical fidelity to an extreme. It does so by relying on path-traced rendering which generates multiple rays for each pixel and bounces them in a random direction every time an object is hit. The resource-intensive process continues until a given ray encounters another light source or reaches an arbitrary bounce limit.RELATED: CD Projekt RED Addresses Edgerunners Rumor for Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty This shinier version of Cyberpunk 2077 is unsurprisingly only reserved for the most powerful machines out there equipped with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 (1080p only) or RTX 40 Series graphics cards. The newly shared patch notes reveal that the 1.62 update also adds some other graphical settings to the game, including support for Nvidia DLAA, an AI-powered antialiasing solution for smoothing out curves on a per-pixel basis.

That's not the only AI technology introduced by the 1.62 update, with its patch notes also mentioning the addition of support for Intel Xe Super Sampling 1.1. Intel XeSS is essentially an alternative to Cyberpunk 2077's DLSS 3.0 frame generation for dynamic scene upscaling. Apart from being capable of outputting similarly polished frames, XeSS has the advantage of being a bit less resource-intensive. This makes it slightly more readily available across Intel's GPU offerings relative to how widespread DLSS support is within the Nvidia ecosystem.

Finally, the Cyberpunk 2077 1.62 update also improves the in-game benchmarking tool. Its results screen will now include more in-depth information about a given system, including its hardware specifications and driver details, as per the latest patch notes.

While this definitely isn't the last update to the hit game, its end-of-life is now fast approaching; CDPR already ended support for Cyberpunk 2077 on last-generation consoles in late 2022 and plans to wrap up all development work shortly after the release of Phantom Liberty, the game's first and only expansion. The DLC is planned to debut sometime in the second half of 2023. Keanu Reeves will be reprising his role of Johnny Silverhand for the espionage-themed expansion, which will also introduce Solomon Reed, a new character played by Idris Elba.

Cyberpunk 2077 1.62 Update Patch Notes

Path Tracing: Technology Preview

Added a Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset which includes the Path Tracing technology. You can enable the Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset in Settings > Graphics > Quick Preset, or just Path Tracing separately in Settings > Graphics in the Ray Tracing section. To make sure Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode works correctly on your PC, update your NVIDIA Game Ready Driver to version 531.41 at minimum.
Additionally, we included an option to render path-traced screenshots in Photo Mode for other Ray-Tracing-capable graphics cards with at least 8GB VRAM. If your graphics card has more than 8GB VRAM and this option is still greyed out, it means you need to lower your in-game resolution. 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). You can enable Path Tracing for Photo Mode in Settings > Graphics in the Ray Tracing section.

DLAA

Added NVIDIA DLAA, an AI-based anti-aliasing mode designed to improve image quality. DLAA requires a NVIDIA RTX graphics card. It can be enabled in Settings > Graphics in the NVIDIA DLSS section.

Intel XeSS

Added support for Intel Xe Super Sampling 1.1, an upscaling technology using machine learning to provide improved performance with high image quality. It can be enabled in Settings > Graphics in the Resolution Scaling section.