

We can imagine that the level of detail setting has both CPU and GPU implications but adjusting it made no difference to the presentation or indeed performance. Secondly, some settings simply do not appear to be working. A user-mod apparently addresses the issue but we found no improvement to CPU-bound performance at all, and we'd hope to see CD Projekt Red address this entire situation with some urgency. For starters, as you will have noted in the video, driving around the city is demanding on the CPU - and it appears that SMT or 'hyper threading' is not working properly on Ryzen processors, meaning that the mainstream favourite - the Ryis unduly suffering, particularly when driving at speed through the city. I can foresee the heavy system requirements improving here because it is clear that the game has some technical issues. Right now, RT only seems to work on Nvidia cards, despite using the DXR API that should allow for AMD's RDNA 2 offerings to operate - but with Team Red's Super Resolution DLSS alternative currently not available, we can foresee good RT performance being difficult for AMD's new cards. As you might imagine, using DLSS is essential in maintaining good performance. As you can imagine, if the standard non-RT version is demanding, using ray traced graphics can only add significantly to the load. An alternative 'light' mode would see you turning off reflections too, leaning into the rasterised screen-space versions instead. For optimised ray tracing settings, I recommend turning off ray traced shadows, running RT lighting at medium and turning on reflections. Note we recommend DLSS quality mode at 1080p, balanced at 1440p and performance at 4K - if you are using an RTX card, of course. Our video guide to what the settings in Cyberpunk 2077 actually do - and how you can claw back performance without taking too much of a hit on visual quality. When a 60fps experience essentially requires a render budget of 16ms per frame, that's an impressive saying for no appreciable hit in visual quality. To give you some idea of the overall win here, on the RTX 3090 system at 4K resolution without ray tracing or DLSS in use, moving from flat-out ultra to optimised settings delivers a 35 per cent improvement in performance, clawing back 5ms of render time. It does have its limits - 6GB of VRAM takes ray tracing out of the equation unless you're happy with 1080p30 (in which case, you can max out every single RT effect, right up to psycho-level lighting) - but it's still an impressive showing overall.įirst of all, to understand exactly how we've crafted our optimised settings, I'd recommend watching the video. Our objective here is to set the bar, and to retain the the game's wow factor, and to achieve this with an RTX 2060 is impressive stuff. You can of course tweak downwards still further and still have a great experience, but at that point, you'll start to cut into the quality level. The RTX 2060 may well be the least capable Nvidia GPU with next-gen features, but it's still a fairly powerful piece of kit, relatively speaking.

Hopefully that gives some kind of idea of how this game scales on the graphics side - yes, it's demanding.
#1440p cyberpunk 2077 1080p
Interestingly, native 1080p actually seems a touch heavier than DLSS 1440p - and certainly looks a significantly less impressive.

To put all of this into perspective, our chosen settings allow an RTX 2060 to run the game without ray tracing at 4K30 resolution using the balanced version of DLSS, or to hit 1440p60 (with just minor dips in the busiest parts of the city). However, all of our measurements were taken at 4K resolution, meaning that as you move down the resolution ladder back to 1080p, the requirements of the graphics card you'll need scale back considerably. The test rig we used is hardly mainstream - we paired Intel's Core i9 10900K with a RTX 3090 and 32GB of 3200MHz DDR4, and we ran the game from an NVMe drive. The idea here is straightforward: to retain everything that makes the game 'next-gen' from a visual perspective, but to deliver the best 'bang for the buck'. Put simply, we tested every graphics setting in Cyberpunk 2077, measured the performance cost and judged the overall quality you get at each preset.
#1440p cyberpunk 2077 Pc
It's perhaps a game geared towards the computers of the future, but in the here and now, it's still possible to get a fantastic PC experience - a process we hope to aid with our optimised settings. There's no doubt about it - Cyberpunk 2077 is a demanding game, heavy on both CPU and GPU, while solid-state storage is also recommended for an optimal experience.
