There's no question that you should be playing Cyberpunk 2077 on PC if you have a decent rig. The next-gen console versions of Cyberpunk won't be out until next year, and the last-gen versions are so bad that developer CD Projekt Red is even offering refunds.
But even on PC, Cyberpunk 2077 could use some optimization. Certainly, something like Nvidia Experience will find the optimal settings to use with Cyberpunk after a few more patches are released, but in the meantime, we've got Digital Foundry to thank for this video outlining the absolute best graphics settings to nail the sweet spot between quality and performance.
The idea here is to reduce or eliminate options that have little visual impact but cost a lot of frames while placing options with huge visual impact with little framerate loss at "high" or even "ultra."
Certain graphics options can be set to low without sacrificing visual fidelity. Screen space reflections and ambient occlusion are two options that Digital Foundry recommends you leave on "low" even if you're playing on a beefy rig with the latest Nvidia RTX graphics cards. The boost you get in framerate is way more than you lose in visual quality, so the sacrifice here is worth it.
Volumetric clouds and color precision are two settings that should be on the "medium" setting. This is because there's little difference between "medium" and "ultra", but there's a big difference between "ultra" and "low." The middle setting provides the best compromise between the two extremes.
Some settings could be cranked all the way up to maximum without sacrificing frame rates at all. Local shadow quality, cascaded shadow range, cascaded shadow resolution, and distant shadow resolution are recommended to all be at "high" since there's a big difference in shadow quality but minimal impact on frames.
A few settings seemed to have little effect at all to either visual fidelity or framerate, leading Digital Foundry to wonder if these settings are glitched and not actually enabled. These options include “sub-surface scattering” and “level of detail.”
There’s way more to go over, and you’ll have to watch the full video to see the full list of what Digital Foundry recommends. You can also check out our previous article on getting the most performance out of your GPU and possibly even doubling your framerate.
Source: Digital Foundry
Cyberpunk 2077 is available for PC on GOG.COM, Steam and Epic, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Stadia from December 10, 2020. When you buy Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG.COM, 100% of your money goes to CD PROJEKT Group and supports their future projects.
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