Path tracing on a base PS5 in Cyberpunk hit 348p and 35 frames

Digital Foundry looked at how a base PlayStation 5 handles full path tracing when the console is running in an environment where the PC builds are available. The set was Quake II RTX, Portal RTX, and Cyberpunk 2077 in RT Overdrive. Night City was the heaviest.

At 1080p with XeSS Performance, Overdrive sat near 22 frames. After the output dropped to 1920×800 and the internal render effectively to 348p, the average rose to 26.9. A further cut in reflections lifted the rate to 35.5, about 32 percent, but the image breaks up under the upscale.

FSR 3.1 frame generation formally showed about 70, without the feel of real smoothness. Quake II RTX held 60 on a dynamic resolution, sometimes falling internally to 540p. Portal RTX ran near 30 with visible image problems.

DF's conclusion is cautious: an experimental path-tracing mode is still imaginable on PS5 Pro in some games, and a next generation with newer RT hardware and PSSR could run such modes without this hard a price. For now it is a lab comparison, not a mode for a normal console.