CD PROJEKT RED hasn’t released the official PC requirements for Cyberpunk 2077 yet, but its recommendations may turn out to be a real doozy, particularly for those who want to enjoy the sci-fi RPG at its highest splendor (i.e., ray-tracing effects fully enabled).
Germany’s PC Games Hardware (PCGH), which was fortunate enough to play a recent build at one of yesterday’s press events, claims that the game doesn’t run at a consistent 60 FPS and is “jerky,” especially during driving sequences. Now, this is perfectly reasonable for a ray-traced game that’s still being optimized and bug tested, but the hardware involved was NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce GPU, the RTX 2080 Ti – and not only that, the build was supposedly running at only 1080p with DLSS 2.0 enabled!
“We play in Full HD – a fact that we first have to digest a bit, given the RTX 2080 Ti in the Alienware presentation computer, there should actually be a little more in the pixel density,” wrote PCGH’s Philipp Reuther. “In addition, DLSS is activated, so the internal render resolution is again less than 1,920 × 1080 pixels. But ray tracing is also active, in our preview version in the form of shadows, ambient coverage and indirect lighting (Ray Traced Diffuse Illumination).”
“But at least at one point, the performance has dropped to ~ 30 fps or even just below it in the long term, I can see that and notice it on the controller,” Reuther added in a forum post. “In addition, the game is jerky more often, especially when driving. The rest of the time it was okay, but in my opinion not or only relatively rarely with 60 fps or more.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is sure to run a lot better after CD PROJEKT RED’s QA testers work their magic, but the anecdote doesn’t bode well for gamers who want a taste of that sweet, sweet ray tracing and thought they could get away with anything less than a flagship system. That said, the Xbox channel has uploaded a nearly 10-minute-long gameplay preview in 4K, which alludes to a smooth and beautiful experience even on lesser hardware, such as consoles.
In any event, expect Cyberpunk 2077 to be a huge component in NVIDIA’s upcoming RTX 3000-series promotions. Green team’s Ampere-based flagship may be the only way to experience the game in its full fidelity…