Cyberpunk 2077: How To Increase Framerate on PC

Players are reporting some visual bugs, glitches, and display issues with Cyberpunk 2077, making many of the game’s gorgeous, sprawling cityscapes blurry and unpleasant to look at. The controversy surrounding the state of Cyberpunk 2077 on release has been well documented by fans and the developers, even prompting CD Projekt Red to issue an apology and offer refunds to players running the game on PlayStation and Xbox. While developers have promised more updates and bug fixes are on the way, players can improve their experience and performance right now on PC by adjusting settings that may impact the framerate.

Though the recommended PC requirements for Cyberpunk 2077 are not too high, they appear to target around 30 FPS. For some players, that is simply not enough, and it may even be causing visual issues. Even players on the newest, most expensive graphics cards have reported issues with FPS, likely due to the game’s current unoptimized state.  Cyberpunk 2077 comes with an extensive list of customizable settings, and players can maximize their performance while keeping as much visual fidelity as possible if they alter a few key options. Here’s how to improve Cyberpunk 2077‘s framerate on PC without sacrificing too much performance.

How To Increase Cyberpunk 2077’s Framerate on PC

Before messing with any advanced graphic settings, players should be sure their PC meets the minimum specifications to run Cyberpunk 2077. While this may seem obvious, running the game on a machine with below-minimum specs can impact not only framerate but also performance overall. Players should also make sure to update their drivers and software for their GPU. Some players who are running Cyberpunk 2077 on the latest drivers should try reverting to the previous version and see if that helps their framerate.

With all those bases covered, players can begin experimenting with the game’s graphics settings. After launching Cyberpunk 2077, players should navigate to the Settings menu. Then, select Advanced Settings. Players can begin by turning down or completely disabling the following visual settings:

• Cascaded Shadow Resolution/Range (lower this first)
• Screen Space Reflections Quality
• Volumetric Fog Resolution
• Local Shadow Mesh/Quality
• Distant Shadows Resolution
• Ambient Occlusion

These are settings that eat up much of a PC’s performance during gameplay, and lowering or disabling them will result in a higher framerate and better performance overall. While lowering Screen Space Reflections Quality will impact the way Night City looks, with its many chrome and reflective surfaces, it may be a necessary sacrifice to keep the game running smoothly.

Next, players should disable Ray Tracing. RTX can lower FPS by a lot, and players who turn it off usually notice their FPS boosts. This will dull the sparkle of Night City somewhat but can help the game run a bit better. If players are reluctant to sacrifice the state-of-the-art Ray Tracing Cyberpunk 2077 uses, there is a good chance optimization patches will be incoming from CD Projekt Red soon.

If players have DLSS, which they often will with a recent Nvidia graphics card, they should select either Auto, Balanced, Performance, or Super Performance. This can boost FPS by up to 60%, or even double it in some cases. For players who have older GTX graphics cards or use AMD, enabling FidelityFX CAS can have a similar, if slightly less polished, effect.

If all that still doesn’t get the game to an ideal FPS, players can also lower the Resolution from 1440p or 4K to 1080p to improve framerate and performance. They can also limit their field of view, which will lower the width of the visible world while exploring. The default setting for field of view is 80, but players can reasonably lower it to 75 or 70 without causing issues and gain back between 2 and 6 frames.

Ultimately, however, the FPS issue can’t be completely solved this way. Changing settings like this will offer a temporary solution so players can enjoy the game in the meantime. However, for players to fully experience the advanced, gorgeous graphics of Cyberpunk 2077, the issues will need to be addressed by developers in updates.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available for PC, PlayStation 4, Google Stadia, and Xbox One, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions coming in 2021.

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