I saw a chart that showed system reqs for various quality settings, and it implied that win 10 is needed for ray tracing. That doesn't seem to make sense if they are including the dx12 API for win 7 installs.

Has anyone read a definitive answer to this?

No.

https://support.gog.com/hc/article_attachments/360013754278/16_9_EN.jpg

Or maybe yes.

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/cyberpunk_2077_will_be_a_directx_12-only_game_on_pc_-_windows_7_will_be_supported/1

In just over 2 weeks you can put it to the test.

I have no definitive answer to this.

My idea is, you can run DXR ingame using Windows 7 with RTX cards and later also with RX 6xxx cards. But this is not recommended in the system specs. Maybe you get very low fps, (errors?, freeze?) using DXR / high end DXR cards / Windows 7.
And maybe CDPR does not help in troubleshooting cos it is not recommended using DXR with that kind of setting.

Edit: I have recently upgrade my Laptop OS from 8.1 to 10 using this how to:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/

https://www.gog.com/forum/cyberpunk_2077/c2077_windows_81_or_lower/post4

This will be handled at the GPU driver and DX12 level, so as long as you have a valid Win7 GPU driver you should be fine, depending on the rest of your hardware setup being decent enough for ray tracing.

I've not heard that by itself Win7 can not do ray tracing.

If you have to ask, then you should be upgrading to Windows 10, and then in that case you will avoid any issues and can receive support if you do run into problems.

Pretty much what I was thinking Ray tracing has been done on Win 7 DX12 games. Just not sure if this will be one of them. I'm sure I've read posts that were less useful than this, but I can't think of one ATM.

That's fine, but you should really be saving everyone the dumb questions and just upgrade to Windows 10. Also, no you can't run raytracing on Windows 7. You never have been able to. You can do DX12, but that is not the same thing.

1 min search:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/microsoft/directx12-nvidia-ray-tracing-windows-7

Not everyone wants what Windows 10 'offers'. And for those there are options, and raytracing can indeed be done under windows 7 because it is not OS dependent. It is DX12 and Nvidia driver dependent.