Hello and welcome all you Cyberpunks! This long awaited game is finally out and certainly does not disappoint. It was very difficult for me to pull myself away from doing “just one more mission” to actually create this graphics settings for Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark article. But, I gathered all my willpower and made it happen, so here it is.
As there is unfortunately no built-in benchmark, I had to find a good place in the brawling city to do some benchmark runabout tests. I quickly found the perfect location, which is a big traffic circle, which allowed me to do endless repetitive loops.
FYI: I gained a TON of ‘athletic’ experience haha! When CDProjekt Red check my in game data, then gonna say “damn what dis crazy fool up to!“
Table of Contents
Best Graphics for Cyberpunk 2077
Anyway, I set the time of day to 10pm (you can easily do this by pressing ‘I’ for inventory in game, and setting the time there).
Night time is naturally when all the flashy lights and reflections come on, putting the most strain on our systems, making it perfect for some benchmarking.
With the release of the PlayStation 5 ($449.99) and Microsoft XBox Series X ($449.00), console gamers are now in more control of their graphic settings than ever before.
Due to their increased hardware capabilities, the new consoles are giving gamers custom graphic settings, very similar to PC’s,
While you may be more limited on your graphical options on a console, it is still great to see, and a vast improvement over last gen. Hopefully this guide will now be able to help both PC and console gamers.
With that said, let’s take a look at the best graphics settings for Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmark PC Setup
The following Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks were done at 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, using the following PC system specs:
- Graphics Card :
RTX 2070 Super (DISCONTINUED)- Check out Nvidia RTX 3070 or AMD RX 6800
- CPU :
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x (DISCONTINUED)- Check out Ryzen 5 5600X ($151.18)
- RAM: Corsair CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB ($113.98)
- Motherboard : Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro Wifi ($399.99)
- Storage Drive : Western Digital 8TB Ultrastar DC HC320 ($150.00)
- Recording Drive : Samsung 970 EVO SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe ($109.99)
- System Drive : Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB SATA ($139.00)
- Power Supply : EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G3 ($179.99)
- Monitor :
Samsung 49″ RU7300 – 4K Smart TV (DISCONTINUED)
PC Setup Extras
- Keyboard : Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Price not available)
- Keyboard Rubber O-Rings : Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard Rubber O-Rings (Price not available)
- Mouse : Corsair M65 Elite – FPS Gaming Mouse ($42.85)
- Gaming Controller : Microsoft Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 ($150.99)
- PC Case : Phanteks Eclipse P600S (Price not available)
- PC Case Fans : Corsair LL120 RGB, 120mm RGB LED Fan – Triple Pack ($69.99)
- PC Case RGB LED Strips : Speclux Computer Magnetic Addressable RGB LED Strip Kit ($16.99)
- PC Case RGB Controller : Corsair iCUE Commander PRO (Price not available)
- CPU Cooler : Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition CPU Air Cooler ($99.99)
Microphone : Rode NT1-A Anniversary Condenser Microphone (DEPRECIATED)- Microphone Stand : RODE PSA 1 Swivel Mount Studio Microphone Boom Arm ($98.50)
- Audio Interface Device : Steinberg UR22C 2×2 USB 3.0 Audio Interface ($194.99)
- Headphones : Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 80 Limited Edition Black ($200.00)
- NVMe Expansion : ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 – 4x NVMe M.2 ($47.99)
- HDMI Switch : KVM 4K60p HDMI USB 4 Way Switch (Price not available)
- Stream Deck : Elgato 15 Key Stream Deck (No products found.)
- Monitor RGB LED Light Strips : GIDERWEL RGBW LED Strip Light,16.4ft SMD5050 ($15.99)
- RGB LED Light Strip Controller : GIDERWEL Home Smart Zigbee RGBCCT (Philips Hue Compatible) ($21.99)
- SATA Cables : 10 Pack 16 Inch SATA III 6.0 Gbps Cable (Price not available)
- Figurine (Storm Trooper) : Revoltech Star Wars Stormtrooper 6.7″ Action Figure ($181.64)
- Figurine (Darth Vader) : Revoltech Star Wars Darth Vader 6.7″ Action Figure ($64.36)
Cyberpunk 2077 Preset Graphics Benchmarks
The most obvious place to start any benchmark, are the graphic presets, which in this case are LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, ULTRA, RAYTRACING MEDIUM, RAYTRACING HIGH.
With these results, we are able to get a fairly good idea of the maximum and minimum results we can expect from Cyberpunk 2077, before diving deeper into each individual graphic setting.
Here we can see that each graphic preset setting in Cyberpunk 2077 delivers a semi-linear progression in frame per second performance gains from the lowest setting.
Using the LOW setting, I was able to reach 37fps, while on the opposite side of the spectrum, the ULTRA setting output 19fps, resulting in a 18fps difference in performance.
In-between these two min and max results, we have MEDIUM with 28fps and HIGH 22fps.
If we then put this into a table format, we can analyze the performance loss that each graphical preset setting has, compared to the LOW setting of 37fps.
Here again we can see a steady progression in performance, as we incrementally increase the preset settings from the baseline LOW setting.
- LOW = 37fps (baseline preset)
- MEDIUM = 28fps (24%) performance loss
- HIGH = 22fps (41%) performance loss
- ULTRA = 19fps (49%) performance loss
The second part of this are the two Raytracing settings, labeled RAYTRACING MEDIUM and RAYTRACING HIGH.
While your immediate thought might be that these two presets are just the MEDIUM and HIGH presets with Raytracing turned on, they are in fact very different.
RAYTRACING MEDIUM is actually comprised of most high settings, while RAYTRACING HIGH consists of mostly ultra settings.
Another major difference between them and the regular presets, is the inclusion of DLSS being turned on and set to AUTO, whereas the regular presets all have DLSS turned off.
I will dive deeper into DLSS, further down in this benchmark article, but its pretty much essential if you want to enable raytracing and/or reach 4K 60fps in Cyberpunk 2077.
Alright, with all that said, lets now uses these presets as our foundational information, and then individually test each setting against them, in order to see how best we can optimize Cyberpunk 2077’s performance.
- 🎧【Clamp-on Headphone Stand】The E-Hold Series headphone holder...
- 🎧【Rotating Adjustable Headphone Arm】Experience effortless...
- 🎧【Built in Cable Organizer】The headphone hanger features cable...
Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks - Individual Settings
As with some of my other best graphic settings benchmark articles, I usually set all graphic settings to their MAX/ULTRA value, then set each individual setting to its LOWEST/OFF value, one at a time, running the benchmark with each change.
However, I had to do it the opposite way around in this Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark test.
Reason being is that this game is very demanding on your graphics card, because hey – “looking this good don’t come cheap darlin“.
While I had no issues with VRAM, (as in the case of my Call of Duty: Cold War benchmarks) Cyberpunk 2077’s futuristic urban world is not only immense, its filled with endless lights, reflections and shiny stuff, everywhere you look.
These are far more taxing on your gaming hardware than what a game such as Red Dead Redemption II’s sparse countryside world is.
I’m definitely not taking anything away from the stunning graphics of RDR II. I’m simply noting that Cyberpunk 2077 is a different graphically demanding beast altogether, especially when you throw raytracing into the mix.
My point being, is that I couldn’t benchmark ULTRA without DLSS on because it gave me a staggering 1 (ONE) fps.
Yes you read that right, I was only able to achieve 1 fps with ULTRA and Raytracing on without DLSS. Even on LOW with RT on and DLSS off, i was only able to get 2fps!
I wanted to do all tests without DLSS though, as I firstly wanted to be able to test each DLSS setting individually, and also wanted to give you guys that don’t have a DLSS enabled Nvidia graphics card, an idea of plain non-DLSS rasterization performance as well.
So, to overcome all this, I simply made the LOW preset setting my baseline performance benchmark, then pushed each individual setting to its max, in order to see how it compares to this baseline.
By doing this, we can get some good data on which settings are the most resource hungry, thereby tuning them down in order to optimize our game for the most graphical beauty, at the lowest performance loss.
Here are the results.
After doing my first of many, many, maaaanny loops around the traffic circle, with all settings on LOW I recorded a baseline of 37fps at 4K. Again, this is without DLSS.
I then followed to put each individual setting up to its max/best setting and see how much it changes in performance from 37fps.
So, when looking at the chart below, anything below 37fps, indicates a negative impact on our performance, while anything above, indicates a positive increase in our performance.
Anything that remains at 37fps, means it has no real world impact and can be left at its max settings.
As predicted, our three raytracing settings, Raytraced Lighting, Raytraced Reflections and Raytraced Shadows are all in the top 4 resource hogs, sucking 10-24fps (27-65%) of our frames
Taking the second spot in-between all the raytracing settings, is Screen Space Reflections, with a 21fps (57%) performance hit. This isn’t too much of a surprise, as anything with reflections is going to be taxing on our performance, regardless if its raytraced or not.
The next performance hog is Volumetric Fog Resolution, albeit with a much lower 5fps (14%) performance hit, followed by Ambient Occlusion at a 4fps (11%) loss.
Anisotropy (texture depth seen at oblique angles – such as gravel on a road) is next, with a more moderate 3fps (8%) performance loss.
Next up is Motion Blur, Cascaded Shadow Resolution (level of detail of shadows cast by the sun) and Texture Quality (High) all at a 2fps (5%) loss.
I absolutely despise Motion Blur in any game. Its the first thing I turn off, so I am very happy to see that I get an increase in my performance when doing so.
Cascaded Shadow Resolution might give a slightly bigger performance hit in the daytime when the sun is out, but didn’t notice too much of a difference in further optimized tests.
Lastly, Texture Quality is the only setting that you can’t change on the fly while in game. In fact you won’t even see it in the settings menu. You have to be in the Main Menu Screen for it to appear and change.
I strongly recommend keeping Texture Quality on high, as the difference it makes to textures in the world of Cyberpunk is immense.
On low, some textures (especially tattoos, labels, signed and graphiti) are extremely pixelated, which completely throws you out of the immersive experience.
The 2fps difference between it on low and high, is the best frames you will ever spend on this game.
Following the above, are a lot of settings that only cause a 1fps (3%) loss in performance, followed by even more that have zero impact at all.
I would recommend keeping all of these on their max value, as you lose nothing in return, while gaming a whole lot of visual increases.
This includes the hidden Crowd Density setting found under the Gameplay menu tab.
The only exception to this would be all the post-processing effects, including Film Grain, Chromatic Aberration, Depth of Field, Lens Flare and Motion Blur.
Much like Motion Blur they make things look much worse, especially the Lens Flare which is totally out of control, flaring off anything and everything. Highly unrealistic and needs some serious toning down by the devs.
The option of Film Grain, is something I have never understood.
Why would you want to make your game look grainy, old and crap?
As a photographer and filmmaker, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on lenses, cameras and software to not have noise and grain in my footage, so why would I now put it back in?
Besides, if you own a Nvidia graphics card, you should ALWAYS be using the Nvidia Geforce Experience’s SHARPEN Game Filters (set to 65%).
The difference it makes to the clarity of all games that allow it, its mind-blowing. The side effect is some grain, which is understandable and well worth the trade-off. So I certainly don’t need to add more grain in game as well.
Anyway, point is to turn all these post-processing effects off, They aren’t worth it and you gain some slight performance increase.
Nvidia Graphics for Cyberpunk 2077
Nvidia RTX 3070 Graphics Cards on Amazon
- EVGA RTX 3070 XC3 Black 8GB ($739.99)
- MSI Gaming RTX 3070 8GB ($689.90)
- Zotac Twin Edge RTX 3070 8GB ($1,197.73)
- Zotac Twin Edge OC RTX 3070 8GB ($499.00)
- PNY Revel RTX 3070 8GB ($599.00)
- PNY Uprising RTX 3070 8GB (Price not available)
Nvidia RTX 3080 Graphics Cards on Amazon
- ASUS TUF Gaming 10GB ($899.90)
- EVGA RTX 3080 Black 10GB ($799.99)
- EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 Ultra 10GB ($763.13)
- EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Gaming 10GB ($1,070.00)
- EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra 10GB ($799.99)
- MSI Gaming RTX 3080 10GB ($879.99)
- Zotac Trinity RTX 3080 10GB (Price not available)
- Zotac Trinity OC RTX 3080 10GB ($1,099.01)
- PNY XLR8 RTX 3080 10GB ($435.70)
- Gigabyte Gaming OC RTX 3070 8GB ($832.13)
- Gigabyte Eagle OC RTX 3070 8GB ($499.99)
AMD Graphics for Cyberpunk 2077
Coming Soon
Cyberpunk 2077 DLSS Benchmarks
Last but certainly not least are the DLSS settings, which include 5 options:
- DLSS Auto
- DLSS Quality
- DLSS Balanced
- DLSS Performance
- DLSS Ultra Performance
It’s the first time that I’ve seen DLSS Auto in a game, but after looking at the other results, it seems that at 4K it is simply using the DLSS Balanced setting, as they gave the same results. This will most likely change depending on the resolution you are playing at, as Auto obviously scales according to that.
Besides this duplicate, the other DLSS settings once again blew my mind.
DLSS Quality gave a 19fps (51%) performance increase, followed by DLSS Balanced with a 25fps (68%) increase, DLSS Performance with a 32fps (86%) increase and finally DLSS Ultra Performance with a staggering 44fps (119%) increase in performance, more than doubling our base frame rate.
DLSS continues to make my jaw drop.
See more of how it enhances other games in my best DLSS games list.
Other than the Nvidia Experience recording software (which kicks the daylights out of OBS for 4K in-game capture) and Broadcast (including RTX voice), DLSS is the sole reason I stay with Nvidia over AMD at this point, as it basically gives me a free graphics card for the price of one.
I know AMD are still developing their FidelityFX and really hope they do, as competition is always good, but its a long way off at this point, while DLSS is right here and doing amazing things.
Cyberpunk 2077 Raytracing Benchmarks
What about raytracing? Should you enable Raytracing in Cyberpunk 2077?
Short answer is NO – step away from the RT bro!
I am a massive fan of everything raytracing, as you can see by my best raytracing games article , but when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077, I simply cannot recommend it at all.
As we saw above, raytracing has a massive hit on our performance, but the bigger question remains, is the trade-off in performance worth quality increase?
Still NO!
Cyberpunk 2077 Raytraced Reflections
Reason for this is because the devs did such a great job of making Screen Space Reflections look amazing, beating the pants off of the quality of the raytraced shadows in areas such as the wet streets.
Raytraced Reflections look pixelated and low resolution, while SSR looks stunning. Its really weird as it should be the other way round.
Set SSR to High or Medium and you are good to go. Psycho (yes that’s a setting name) causes a major performance hit, similar to RT Reflections.
The only benefit RT Reflections have is in glass windows, but those are honestly far and few between, found in some car windows and interior scenes, thus certainly not worth the massive performance impact dropping your frames from 37fps to 1fps!
Turn them off, even if you have an RTX graphics card.
Cyberpunk 2077 Raytraced Shadows
The same applies to Raytraced Shadows. I honestly couldn’t find the difference between it being off and on. Interiors and exteriors, it all looked the same to me.
Shadows on wall and streets were identical. Shadow distance was also the same. My character shadows were also no different.
It’s probably there somewhere if you look really hard, but honestly if you can’t notice everywhere while running down the streets, then the massive 27% loss in performance simply isn’t worth it either.
Turn it off.
Cyberpunk 2077 Raytraced Lighting
I feel like a broken record at this point, but the same applies to Raytraced Lighting.
This is basically just a raytraced version of Ambient Occlusion with a much bigger performance impact. Again not worth it, the built in AO looks just as good (even on low) .
Raytraced Lighting was the biggest performance hog on the list with a whopping 65% drain on our frames, so turn it off and put AO on High.
How to get 4K 60fps in Cyberpunk 2077
Alright, so what are the best graphic settings for Cyberpunk 2077 then?
Well, its actually pretty simple really. You can put all settings on Ultra, except for AO, SSR and Volumetric Fog. Put those one down on High or Medium.
Then, its unfortunate to say but YOU HAVE TO HAVE a Nvidia DLSS enabled Turing or Ampere graphic card. Not for the Raytracing features, but for the DLSS feature, plain and simple.
Without DLSS there is no way you are going to get 4K 60fps, even the all mighty RTX 3090, that only reaches 44fps without DLSS, with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT trailing behind at 36fps.
You have to have DLSS for Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K 60p.
With that said, I was able to reach an average of 62fps after playing for 3 hours straight, through daylight, night time, interiors and exteriors on my RTX 2070 Super, at 4K (3840×2160) using the following settings:
- Field of View: Anything – I like 85 degrees
- Film Grain: OFF (use Nvidia Experience Sharpen Filter at 65%)
- Chromatic Aberration: OFF
- Depth of Field: OFF
- Lens Flare: OFF
- Motion Blur: OFF
- Contact Shadows: ON
- Facial Lighting: ON
- Anisotropy: 8 or 16
- Shadow Mesh Quality (Local): HIGH
- Shadow Quality (Local): HIGH
- Shadow Range (Cascaded): HIGH
- Shadow Resolution (Cascaded): HIGH
- Shadow Resolution (Distant): HIGH
- Volumetric Fog Resolution: HIGH
- Volumetric Fog Quality: ULTRA
- Dynamic Decals: ULTRA
- Screen Space Reflections: HIGH
- Subsurface Scattering: HIGH
- Ambient Occlusion: MEDIUM
- Color Precision: HIGH
- Mirror Quality: HIGH
- Level of Detail: HIGH
- Raytraced Reflections: OFF
- Raytraced Shadows: OFF
- Raytraced Lighting: OFF
- DLSS: ULTRA PERFORMANCE
- Crowd Density: HIGH (set in Gameplay menu)
- Texture Quality: HIGH (set in main menu)
You are of course welcome to reduce/increase these further, depending on your graphics card, resolution etc, but these worked well for me, netting me a solid avg of 62fps at 4K, while sometimes even shooting up to 75fps in some less detailed interiors.
In terms of DLSS choices, I went with DLSS Ultra Performance, as this gave me more than double my original frame rate.
You can up this if you have a better graphics card, but you will be hard pressed to notice any difference, as you can see below. The only really edge difference that I could spot, were in the detail under the metal roof on the bottom right. DLSS Performance loses some detail there.
Where I did notice a big quality difference, was in the Screen Space Reflections on the street. As the reflections are based on the down scaled DLSS footage, they will be the same resolution, therefore it will be of a lower quality, the lower the DLSS footage is.
To solve this you can use DLSS Performance, but you will lose about 10fps, dropping down to 50fps in my setup.
Best Call of Duty: Cold War Graphic Settings Conclusion
Well guys, that’s it from me, and this best graphics settings for Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark review.
If you are running out of hard drive space, check out this list of the best HDDs below and if you want faster load times in Cyberpunk 2077, check out the SSD storage devices below.
Best Hard Drives for Cyberpunk 2077
Western Digital Blue Hard Drives on Amazon
- WD Blue 1TB SATA HDD ($39.19)
- WD Blue 2TB SATA HDD ($85.98)
- WD Blue 4TB SATA HDD ($119.99)
- WD Blue 6TB SATA HDD ($126.43)
Western Digital Black Hard Drives on Amazon
- WD Black 1TB SATA HDD (No products found.)
- WD Black 2TB SATA HDD ($99.99)
- WD Black 4TB SATA HDD ($144.99)
- WD Black 6TB SATA HDD ($256.50)
- WD Black 8TB SATA HDD (Price not available)
Western Digital UltraStar SATA Hard Drives on Amazon
- WD 1TB Ultrastar DC HA200 SATA HDD ($45.00)
- WD 2TB Ultrastar DC HA200 SATA HDD ($51.98)
- WD 4TB Ultrastar DC HC310 SATA HDD ($120.99)
- WD 6TB Ultrastar DC HC310 SATA HDD ($100.00)
- WD 8TB Ultrastar DC HC320 SATA HDD ($150.00)
- WD 10TB Ultrastar DC HC510 SATA HDD ($264.45)
Seagate IronWolf PRO SATA Hard Drives on Amazon
Best SSD for Cyberpunk 2077
Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD Drives on Amazon
- Samsung 860 EVO 250GB ($39.99)
- Samsung 860 EVO 500GB ($108.50)
- Samsung 860 EVO 1TB ($139.00)
- Samsung 860 EVO 2TB ($274.99)
Western Digital Blue SATA SSD Drives on Amazon
- WD Blue 3D NAND 250GB ($24.95)
- WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB ($24.95)
- WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB ($132.00)
- WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB ($184.44)
ADATA SU635 SATA SSD Drives on Amazon
- ADATA SU635 240GB SATA SSD (Price not available)
- ADATA SU635 480GB SATA SSD ($39.99)
- ADATA SU635 1TB SATA SSD (Price not available)
- ADATA SU635 2TB SATA SSD (Price not available)
Western Digital Green SATA SSD Drives on Amazon
- WD Green 240GB SATA SSD ($52.06)
- WD Green 480GB SATA SSD ($45.95)
- WD Green 1TB SATA SSD ($99.99)
- WD Green 2TB SATA SSD ($185.99)
Crucial MX500 SATA SSD Drives on Amazon
Alternatively if you are looking at building a new gaming PC, make sure to check out my PC building and buying guides as well:
If you are in the market for a new Gaming Monitor, then check out these lists as well
If you enjoyed this content and found it useful, please share it on your favorite social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest.
Happy Gaming
Ozarc (¬‿¬)
DEALS
We collect information from many stores for best price available