Hardware and Software Need to Run Cyberpunk 2077

Update: 7/6/2020

A serious blow for Windows 8 users, Cyberpunk 2077 will not be playable with this operating system. Marcin Gollent, Lead Graphic Programmer of CD Projekt Red has confirmed via PCGH that the game will only work on PC with DirectX 12 on Windows 7 and 10 systems. Due to the fact that Windows 8 does not have the DX12 library, necessary for the proper functioning of CP 2077.

CD Projekt RED Held a big press event recently, where a lot of the media was able to get hands-on with the Cyberpunk 2077. So thanks to this event we got some new information regarding the type of hardware require to run Cyberpunk 2077 under certain resolutions with certain graphics settings and we can take from that and you know how to figure out what type of system you actually need to run this game when it comes out and we also have some speculative system requirements from the gaming industry as there have not been any official system requirements released at this point by the developers.

So let's talk about the gameplay demos that were shown off by CD Projekt RED, they do this like 25 minute long video. It's definitely worth checking out if you're excited for

Cyberpunk 2077 coming out later this year.

The graphics visuals and stuff like that are I think truly next-gen. I think this is the first next-gen title which is probably why they chose to delay this game until November so that they can have it out right around the time when the Next generation of consoles come out. Even though the game is going to work on ps4 and Xbox one, you know when it comes out it's also going to work on the PS 5 and Xbox Series X. Even if you buy the ps4 or Xbox one copy it's going to work on those next-gen consoles and they did mention during the event that there'll be like upgrades but they didn't really give any further details on it but I assume on the next-gen consoles that would bring with it things like Ray-Tracing as the next-gen consoles will support that but kind of getting off on a tangent there.

Well, we're here to talk about the performance today on the PC that was you know talked about a little bit during this event. One of the content creators that posted a video was by the name of Skill Up who was one of the few members of the press that actually was playing on his own local hardware.

Guess what type of hardware Nvidia had on their servers but it was very likely top-end spec something like an RTX 2080 Ti.

The information provided by Skill Up and the performance that he talked about for him the game was running at 1080p 60 frames per second on that RTX 2080 Ti with Ray- Tracing effects and max settings completely enabled. So, you know, we obviously doesn't seem like there was an uncapped framerate, but it sounds like you don't want paper from him that it can run on a 2080 Ti and get 60 frames per second at 1080p with Ray- Tracing effects, which is pretty good because of Ray-Tracing and how advanced it looks in this game and also we're expecting to see a new lineup of 3000 series cards later this year which are meant to be even better in handling Ray-Tracing effects.

However, it was also mentioned in another feed that this preview build was also running DLSS 2.0. So that would mean that the 1080p resolution that the game was apparently running at is also not truly 1080p as DLSS will cut your resolution down and then use Tensor Cores to basically upscale that to give you a crisper image and you know just watching a few gameplay videos out there. It's fairly obvious that it is very likely running at sub 1080p a lot of the textures the aliasing and stuff on the character models is extremely blurry even though it's using DLSS 2.0.

That's still going to be the case where the game is essentially running at sub 1080p which is not that impressive to be perfectly honest if it was running, you know just max settings 1080p 60 frames per second with Ray Tracing on. I would say that's a pretty good start with the 2080 Ti for a game that is not fully optimized yet.

And you know, there might be some more headroom there to see what the performance can go but if it's running DLSS 2.0 on the game at 1080p. That is not actually 1080p and that is not very impressive even for 2080 Ti, a next-gen game with a $1200 graphics card, so that's kind of scary to think about as it seems like, you know specially if you're wanting to do 1440p or 4k. It seems like the next-generation RTX 3000 series 3080 Ti / 3090 which is one of the rumored names for those is probably going to be crucial. Especially, if you want to do anything above 1080p and if you don't want to use DLSS which a lot of people don't want to utilize because they want to play at their native resolution and get the crispest image. Possible, but without having any firm framerate numbers and an uncapped framerate and knowing what the 2080 Ti you know was really running the game at as I said, it could have been over 60 frames per second it's really hard to figure out You know how much Headroom was really there for that card to be able to run the game?

Especially, if you know you turned off Ray Tracing effects would likely you know boost the frame rate by probably another anywhere from 15 to 30 frames per second, roughly

Obviously, I'm just taking the top of the head but that's you know by comparing it to games played in the past things like Battle 55 and other titles that have supported Ray- Tracing that's typically the type of format you can set you can expect to see improvement wise if you go ahead and disable a Rate Racing now.

We do have some system requirements that are based on industry sources and what you know they assume are going to be needed in order to be able to run this game. This was actually posted over on the SteelSeries website which is, you know, very reputable company. They make you know, PC peripherals and stuff like that, So they posted up some initial system requirements again which are not official but it's what a lot of sources agree upon that you’ll probably need for the minimum requirement on the GPU side, they're saying in R9 380 or a GTX 960 2 gigabyte card, which I think is fairly low, but that would very likely be 1080p, you know low to medium settings and probably like 30 frames per second definitely not using ray-tracing a system like that and they say an i5-2500 K or an FX 8320 but that could probably run this game, but that is at the bare minimum as I said again 1080p medium settings, maybe at best and probably not 60fps. I would say the recommended Spec here is probably fairly accurate they're saying for the GPU a Vegas 64 8 gigabyte card or a GTX 1070 which is fairly comparable to that although really a GTX 1080 would be closer to a \Vegas 64 card for the Nvidia side and recommended requirements typically are targeting 1080p high settings 60 frames per second.

So for that, I would say that this seems fairly believable. I think Vegas 64 or GTX 1080 or something like maybe an RTX 2070 or 2060 Super which is fairly comparable to a 1070 or 1080. I would say that seems about right and on the CPU they say a 4670 K or horizon 5 1600 which I also agree with I think both of those would be pretty solid although I would probably lean towards more the horizon 5 1600 as this is meant to be a next gen title and I do think the extra cores and threads are really going to start to matter.

Once the PS 5 and Xbox series X come out and having an i5-670 K which is just a quad-core just a straight Quad-core no hyper threading. That's before you know Intel ramped up their core counts having something like the rise in 5 1600 6 cores 12 threads even though it's a little bit slower than the newer generation horizon stuff. I think the extra cores and threads there are going to help on this game but that's pure speculation on my part. You know what you think about this and if you know what you think you'll be able to `need to actually run this game when it comes out later this year and then also they have a set of system requirements called mid-range with Ray-Tracing support or they say the GPU would be an RTX 2060 super now they say mid-range.

I guess that would mean like 1080p but with rate racing, I don't see this being accurate obviously, they're not listening an AMD card because none of the AMD cards currently support Ray Tracing although Navi 23 is meant to be supporting rate racing effects, but we haven't seen any of those in the market yet.

So it's really hard to speculate on those especially since we don't even have model numbers or anything about those cards. Just yet, which is actual information. But to say mid-range with Ray Racing support in RTX 2060 super I would say that you're really reaching there, especially since during this mini event they needed an RTX 2080 Ti to run it at 1080p end with DLSS which as I stated at the start is not really 1080p it's the resolution cut down quite a bit and then up scaled in order to get the image somewhat closer to what native 1080p would actually look like so, you know based on that I think you know for when this game comes out I think for ray tracing effects. You are really going to need something RTX 2080 and above or whatever ends up being that counterpart for the AMD side on Navi 23 once those GPUs come out if they have something that compete at the level of the RTX 2080 Super, 2080 Ti and then of course, we'll have the 3000 series to talk about very likely around August and so that's going to bring in some new cards that we can talk about but on the GPU side I really think it's going to require something quite hefty even if you don't want to use Ray Tracing effects, I think 1080p, you know high to ultra settings I think you're looking at somewhere around the bare minimum of like a 1080 Ti RTX 2070. I think that is going to be the bare minimum.

I think even if you were trying to play it 1440p on ultra settings without Ray Tracing I think that those cards are going to struggle quite a bit unless you get into the 3000 series, which again, this is based on rumor. They're meant to be significantly more efficient when it comes to dealing with Ray Tracing as much as four times better than the Turing cards that are out there right now, but that's based on rumors and stuff. But you know it would make sense that those cards would be able to handle the great Tracing stuff a lot better even if you know typical rasterization performance on these new cards are only like, you know 25 to 30% faster than the Turing cards from what we've heard so far the Ray Tracing [erformance is something that is meant to be amped up exponentially.

You know something that we don't typically see with rasterization performance generation to generation. So with something like cyberpunk that's gonna have so much Ray Tracing on so many surfaces and stuff like that I do think the 3000 series for anyone that wants to use Ray Tracing is really going to be a requirement unless you're planning to pay it to 1080p with DLSS on and use a $1,200 graphics card. It sounds like for Ray Tracing stuff. The 3000 series is really going to be made specifically for a title like this. So we'll have to wait and see once those cards come out. But I think that's probably gonna be people's best bet if they want to use Ray Tracing but I know that's not the majority people. I know most people just want to run this game at 1080p or 1440p at high to ultra settings and get a good frame rate and I think on current generation hardware that is going to be manageable but I do think you're gonna need a fairly high end GPU especially if you want to get into 1440p high ultra. As I said I think you're gonna need something like a RTX 2070 super / 2080 Ti probably is going to be realistic. But we'll just have to wait and see on all of that.

My speculation here on what type of hardware you're actually going to be able to need to run Cyberpunk 2077 I know I'll definitely be grabbing a RTX 3080 Ti because I want to play this game at 4k maxed out hopefully with Ray Tracing and not DLSS. Although I think that's even probably not going to happen. I even went a 3080 TIiI have my doubts that it will be able to run this game at 4k maxed out and Ray Tracing stuff turned on. I think even with Ray Tracing off 60 frames per second will be a Struggle on next-generation hardware just based on how good this game looks it's one of the most detailed and gorgeous looking games I've ever seen.

So I look forward to trying this game.