How to improve FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 (PC)
Cyberpunk 2077 remains, after several years of patches and the Phantom Liberty expansion, one of the most demanding and graphically rich PC games on the market. The good news: thanks to its full support for DLSS, FSR 3, and XeSS, it's perfectly playable even on mid-range hardware if configured correctly. This guide covers the settings that give the best FPS/visual quality ratio based on data from Digital Foundry, Hardware Unboxed, and community consensus.
This is what you'd gain with a NVIDIA RTX 4060
Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +7% free FPS.
Motion Blur
Cyberpunk's motion blur is aggressive and many people prefer it off. Bonus: small GPU savings.
Film Grain
Purely aesthetic film grain. Off cleans up the image a lot and frees a few FPS.
Chromatic Aberration
Almost nobody wants it. Off by default in any serious guide.
Lens Flare
Lens flares impact performance in night scenes with neon. Off gives a sharper Night City.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Screen Space Reflections
The 'Psycho' SSR level is brutal and barely distinguishable from Medium during normal gameplay. The best quality/cost trade in the game.
Volumetric Fog Resolution
Volumetric fog on Ultra is very expensive. At Medium it maintains Night City's atmosphere with almost all the FPS.
Volumetric Cloud Quality
Volumetric clouds are barely visible day-to-day in the game. Medium is enough.
Shadow Quality
Like SSR, the Psycho shadow level is exaggerated. High maintains quality and frees ~10% GPU.
Cascaded Shadows Resolution
Resolution of distant shadows. High is indistinguishable from Ultra on screen.
Crowd Density
In dense Night City areas it reduces NPC count. Reduces CPU load (the main bottleneck in cities). Visually noticeable.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
DLSS Quality (NVIDIA RTX 20-series y superior)
+32% FPSCyberpunk was the first game with DLSS and still implements it best. At 1080p Quality it's virtually lossless visually with +30% FPS.
DLSS Ray Reconstruction (RTX 40-series con RT activo)
+8% FPSImproves Ray Tracing and Path Tracing visual quality while maintaining FPS. Enable if using RT.
DLSS Frame Generation (RTX 40-series)
+85% FPSThe star feature in Cyberpunk. Doubles practical FPS. Combined with Path Tracing it's the only thing that makes that mode viable.
FSR 3 Frame Generation (AMD RX 6000+ y NVIDIA GTX 16+/RTX 20+)
+70% FPSAMD added FSR 3 with Frame Generation and it works excellent. Available even on older GPUs. Game changer if you don't have RTX 40.
XeSS Quality (Intel Arc)
+25% FPSCompatible with Arc A-series and B-series. Quality close to DLSS, FPS gain similar to FSR.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Cyberpunk is NVIDIA's showcase: DLSS, RT, Frame Gen, Path Tracing and Ray Reconstruction are all available.
- •Enable Resizable BAR (ReBAR) — Cyberpunk benefits quite a bit.
- •With RTX 30-series, RT Medium + DLSS Quality is the sweet spot. RT Psycho + Path Tracing only with RTX 4070+.
- •If you have RTX 40-series, always enable Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction when using RT.
AMD
- •Enable Smart Access Memory (SAM) in BIOS — Cyberpunk makes good use of it.
- •Use FSR 3 (not FSR 2) — version 3 with Frame Generation nearly matches DLSS FG.
- •Avoid Ray Tracing on RX 6000/7000 unless you have an RX 7900 XTX. The cost is disproportionate.
- •Path Tracing is practically unplayable on AMD; keep RT at Off or Medium.
Intel
- •XeSS works well on Arc — use Quality or Balanced.
- •RT on Arc still struggles: leave it Off except on Arc B-series with active DLSS-rival.
- •Make sure you have Arc drivers 31.0.101.5xxx or higher — significant improvements in Cyberpunk.
5. Known game issues
CPU bottleneck in Night City
In dense districts (Heywood, Westbrook) the CPU gets saturated by NPC and traffic simulation. Reduce 'Crowd Density' to Medium to alleviate it. Ryzen 5 5600 or i5-12400 CPUs are the reasonable minimum.
Shader compilation on startup
The first time after a patch the game compiles shaders for ~3-5 minutes. After that the stutter disappears. Not a bug — it's intentional.
Estado: Improved in patches 2.0+
Path Tracing requires 60+ FPS base before DLSS
If your base without DLSS is below 30 FPS with Path Tracing, neither DLSS Performance nor Frame Generation will save it. Minimum viable hardware: RTX 4070 + DLSS Quality + Frame Gen.
Occasional memory leaks in long sessions
In sessions of 3+ hours RAM can spike. Fix: save and restart the game periodically.
Estado: Improved in patch 2.13
6. Frequently asked questions
Can I play Cyberpunk 2077 with an RTX 3060?▾
Is Path Tracing worth it?▾
Does Phantom Liberty run worse than the base game?▾
How much VRAM do I need?▾
DLSS, FSR 3, or XeSS?▾
Want to know exactly how many FPS YOUR PC will get?
Enter your GPU and CPU in our calculator and measure the real impact of each setting.
Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →