UPDATED: 20/2/24
CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 could be the Crysis of the early 2020s, demanding more from PCs than ever before. It looks stunning for it, but if you want to play it at its best, you better have a powerful PC to run it.
Fortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 is equipped with incredibly deep graphical options, letting you customize your neon-noir future to look as good as your hardware will allow. That means that even mid-range PCs can make it look decent enough – certainly better than the last-generation console versions.
If you’re not sure if your system is up to the task, or want to know just how good you can make Cyberpunk 2077 look if you upgrade, here’s a look at what PC specs are needed to run Cyberpunk 2077 at all detail settings and resolutions.
Contents
- The Bare Minimum
- The 1080p Sweet Spot
- 4K and Everything But Ray Tracing
- So You Want to Experience Ray Tracing?
- The Ultimate 1080p Experience
- 4K Ultra Ray Tracing
Playing the Game Without Ray Tracing
The Bare Minimum for Cyberpunk 2077
If your PC is showing its age, or you’re deciding what to buy to make sure you can boot the game without worrying about ray tracing or 4K resolution, then the minimum requirements are what you want to target.
For 1080p resolution hitting 30FPS with graphical settings on low and ray tracing disabled, you’ll need to meet the following:
1080p at 30FPS with graphics on low:
- CPU: Core i7-6700 or Ryzen 5 1600
- GPU: Geforce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 8GB or Arc A380
- Ram: 12GB
- Storage: 70 GB SSD
CD Projekt RED says this will give you between 30 FPS on average in most areas of the game. It won’t look like the next-generation graphical powerhouse that Cyberpunk 2077 is, but it’ll be playable.
And perhaps more importantly at this hardware level, it’ll be a mostly smooth gameplay experience. If you’re going to put up with a game not looking its best, it needs to at least run smoothly and be stutter-free. By matching these specifications, you’ll be able to play the game just fine.
If you don’t mind lowering the resolution again to 720p, you might be able to get away with a slightly weaker GPU. The same rings true if you set the dynamic resolution setting to dip as low as 70%, but ultimately you will still need a dedicated GPU.
However, AMD did recently reveal that the integrated GPU on the 8700G CPU from their upcoming 8000 series range can play Cyberpunk 2077 on low and hit an average of over 60FPS. So, with improvements in technology like this, the era of needing a dedicated powerful GPU to play graphically intense games may be over.
The required install size is 70GB whether you’re playing the game at minimum specs or the very highest, but it’s important to note that CD Projekt RED recently updated the game’s specs to only suggest SSDs as the storage option. This is because they are so much faster than hard drives and will make playing the game so much smoother.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
The 1080p Sweet Spot
If you have a 1080p display then being able to turn up all the settings to high and still enjoy decent frame rates is a good target to aim for. It’ll provide a smooth, and gorgeous Cyberpunk 2077 experience while working within the confines of most of your existing hardware.
To hit this kind of resolution and detail demands, you’ll need a more modern CPU and more RAM, but your GPU doesn’t have to be anything crazy powerful.
1080p at 60FPS with graphics on high:
- CPU: Core i7-12700 or Ryzen 7 7800X3D
- GPU: Geforce RTX 2060 Super or Radeon RX 5700 XT or Arc A770
- Ram: 16 GB
- Storage: 70 GB SSD
The above specifications will give you a great-looking game at 60 FPS in all areas of Night City. You still won’t be able to turn ray tracing on, but CD Projekt RED did a great job of making its baked lighting look excellent.
Considering how overzealous Cyberpunk’s ray tracing can be in some areas (like exiting darkened tunnels) this may be the best way to experience the game if you can’t hit the very highest specs.
One of the best bits of these recommended specifications for 1080p gaming is that since the demands are met by relatively old hardware, you can meet them with a very affordable new gaming PC.
If you’ve been looking to upgrade from a PC that falls behind these demands, a new gaming PC like the Evolution Intel Core i5 RTX 3060 Gaming PC is an awesome buy.
For just over £1,000 it blows everything these specs demand out of the water.
It takes the GPU forward a generation, housing an RTX 3060 and with 16GB of high-speed memory, an Intel Core i5-14400F and 1TB of SSD space, it’s all the machine you need to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with everything on high.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
4K and Everything But Ray Tracing
If you’re not fussed about ray tracing and the huge performance impact it can have on your game of Cyberpunk (even if it is pretty) then you could aim for 4K gaming instead. You’ll still need to meet some quite stringent specifications, though.
If you’re used to gaming at 1080p, this kind of experience is night and day and can turn the game from a pretty one into the closest to lifelike gaming we’ve seen yet.
4K at 60FPS with graphics on ultra:
- CPU: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X
- GPU: Geforce RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- Ram: 20 GB
- Storage: 70 GB NVME
With a system like this, you should manage to hit 60 FPS at Ultra settings pretty easily. But, if you don’t mind making very slight visual sacrifices, enabling DLSS in quality mode will net you a few extra frames which can make for a smoother experience.
Achieving more will require a more powerful GPU, and there is plenty of headroom to do so with a system like this.
A more powerful card like the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti found in the Apex Ryzen 5 RTX 4070 Ti Gaming PC, would bring its own performance benefits and drive this 4K Cyberpunk 2077 experience.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
So, you want to experience Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk 2077?
If you have a powerful enough PC to run Cyberpunk 2077 at High 1080p settings and have an Nvidia RTX graphics card, then you do have another option for how to play.
If you’re happy to keep your resolution at 1080p and your frames per second at around 30, you can make Night City light up with truly realistic real-time lighting.
1080p at 30FPS with ray tracing on low:
- CPU: Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 5 5600
- GPU: Geforce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6800 XT or Arc A750
- Ram: 16 GB
- Storage: 70 GB SSD
A system of this calibre will let you enable ray tracing on low whilst keeping other visual settings on mid to high. There might be a few you want to tweak to get the smoothest frame rate, but ultimately, an RTX 2060 is all you need to get a taste of Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled.
As suggested for the 1080p specs without ray tracing, the Evolution Intel Core i5 RTX 3060 Gaming PC is a great choice, upping the recommended components to newer parts.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
The Ultimate 1080p Cyberpunk Experience
If you want an even smoother 1080p ray tracing experience in Cyberpunk 2077, you will need a pretty powerful PC. So much so that CD Projekt RED actually recommends the same PC as suggested for non-ray traced 4K play.
1080p at 60FPS with ray tracing on ultra:
- CPU: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X
- GPU: Geforce RTX 3080Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- Ram: 20 GB
- Storage: 70 GB NVME
The only difference between this system and the one rated for Cyberpunk 2077 4K gameplay is that it has a slightly more powerful Nvidia GPU recommendation.
As with the 4K no-ray traced option above, we’d suggest the Apex Ryzen 5 RTX 4070 Ti Gaming PC. It ups the performance with an RTX 4070 Ti and a massive 32GB RAM at a lightning-fast 5600MHz.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
4K Ultra Ray Tracing
If you want to leave no stone unturned when it comes to beautifying your Cyberpunk 2077 gaming experience, then you’ll need something quite special. Running the game at 4K resolution with all settings at ultra and ray tracing maxed out places an extreme demand on your gaming PC.
It’s the kind of experience that had gamers of 2007 asking “But can it run Crysis?”
4K at 60FPS with ray tracing on Overdrive:
- CPU: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X
- GPU: Geforce RTX 4080
- Ram: 24 GB
- Storage: 70 GB NVME
Since the RTX 4080 eclipsed everything in any graphics generation that went before it, you really do need cutting-edge hardware to make the dream of a 4K, ray-traced Cyberpunk game a reality. That said, you don’t need to have the fastest processor that money can buy, even if it does help a little.
The hardware specifications that CD Projekt RED recommend will net you a smooth frame rate at 60FPS with these kinds of settings, but if you want to guarantee smoothness, DLSS is a must. It can provide a huge boost, and depending on your acceptance of its unique visual artefacts, you can enjoy boosted FPS in most areas of the game.
Now with the announcement of Nvidia RTX 40-Series Super cards, a PC like the Apex Intel Core i7 RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC is a perfect option for playing the game at this level. Coupled with the impressive 20-core Intel Core i7 14700K, this system offers incredible gaming performance that’ll last for many years to come.
Image source: CD Projekt RED
Conclusion
Even if you don’t want to buy a top-tier gaming PC, there are other ways you can improve your system performance for better settings or frame rates in Cyberpunk 2077. Overclocking is one area where you can gain a little edge, and Chillblast offers it as an optional extra (for free) with all of our gaming PCs. It doesn’t even invalidate your warranty.
If you want to have a stab at improving in-game performance yourself, you can look at the various setting tweak guides out there. Many of them can go a long way to boosting your frame rates without having a major impact on the look and feel of the game.
