Cyberpunk 2077 2.21 patch adds DLSS 4 support days before RTX 50 series debut

Cyberpunk 2077 has officially received its DLSS 4 patch, featuring DLSS upgrades Nvidia advertised at CES 2025 and a plethora of bug fixes for PCs and consoles. Patch 2.21 formally supports DLSS 4's all-new Multi-Frame Generation technology and the new DLSS 4 transformer model.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the first (if not the first) titles to get the DLSS 4 update. We first saw the game running on DLSS 4 at CES 2025, inevitably in a demo format. But now the game officially supports Nvidia's new DLSS iteration just before the update goes live, with the RTX 50 series initial release on January 30th.

DLSS 4 support adds Multi-Frame Generation support and the new DLSS transformer model to Cyberpunk 2077's performance-enhancing options for RTX GPUs. Multi-frame generation allows RTX 50 series GPUs to render three or four AI-generated frames in addition to the real frame rendered on screen, tripling or quadrupling frame rates compared to native rendering. Gamers can toggle to render two, three, or four frames with their GPU in the in-game menu.

As the name suggests, the new DLSS transformer model incorporates an all-new transformer AI model replacing DLSS' older Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The new model operates on twice as many parameters as its predecessor and requires four times more computing capabilities to run properly, making it significantly more demanding. Cyberpunk 2077 allows users to switch between the older CNN or newer transformer architecture on RTX GPUs that support DLSS 4.

With DLSS 4's transformer model comes a massive improvement in image quality in areas where the older CNN DLSS implementation struggled. MxBenchmarkPC showcased a side-by-side comparison of DLSS 3.8 and DLSS 4, revealing a massive improvement in animated texture quality and less noticeable ghosting. However, the extra computation requirements of DLSS 4 can also be seen, with the RTX 4080 operating at a 2 FPS deficit with DLSS 4 compared to DLSS 3.8.

This degradation in performance is barely noticeable on an RTX 4080. However, it could be amplified on slower cards, particularly previous-generation RTX-series GPUs with less powerful tensor cores.

In addition to DLSS 4, the Cyberpunk 2077 dev team also dumped a plethora of bug fixes into this latest update for the game. Photo mode has received a boatload of fixes, including appearance issues with Adam Smasher and Johnny Silverstone.