You can hack Nvidia's DLSS 2.2 into Cyberpunk 2077 today

Cyberpunk screenshots of the in-game club, Afterlife, with various in-game settings enabled
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

Rainbow Six Siege was recently updated to work with the newest version of Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling tech, DLSS 2.2. Interestingly it seems that you don't necessarily need to wait for the developer to add the latest files into the game, because you can take the 'database' file from Rainbow Six Siege and use it on other DLSS-enabled games.

You should then get the apparently rather limited benefits of DLSS 2.2 without having to wait for a pesky update, which is exactly what has happened with Cyberpunk 2077 (via PCGamesN.) 

Head over to Nexus Mods and you can download the necessary file (you'll need an account to do so) and gain the benefits that this new version of DLSS offers. That's the theory at least, in practice you're going to be hard pushed to spot any differences. 

I've tried the mod on Cyberpunk 2077, using an RTX 2080 Super at 4K running the balanced DLSS settings, and couldn't detect any performance improvements or obvious visual enhancements.

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Cyberpunk performance
Header Cell - Column 0 DLSS 2.1DLSS 2.2
Cyberpunk 2077 (average)65.4 fps66.2 fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (1% min)52.6 fps54.5 fps
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I ran the same two-minute section three times using the existing DLSS 2.1 file and again with the new DLSS 2.2 file, and saw an average 1 fps difference between the two, although the minimums did improve slightly more at 2 fps. When you consider that one of the joys of Cyberpunk 2077 is that there are random elements and events that can trigger when playing, that 1–2 fps means basically nothing.

This would seem to be as anticipated though, with even Nvidia admitting that nothing major should be expected from the update to DLSS 2.2. We spoke to Henry C Lin, product manager for DLSS, and he had this to say:

"Yeah, some people have seen and tried it out on different titles, and I think it's just a testament to this generalised network being able to improve over time. It keeps on getting better, it keeps on getting more information and giving good results.

"In terms of what's new with this version, basically improvements to image quality, it just gets better. There's nothing special about it we wanted to call out. In terms of working with developers, everyone has different cadence levels on when they take the network to put into their game, it just so happens that Rainbow Six got 2.2."

You're probably still better off waiting for the next official Cyberpunk 2077 patch, rather than dropping in some Siege code, just to see if that unlocks some more tangible improvements in the game. But we wouldn't necessarily hold our breath.

Alan Dexter

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.