Yesterday I finally managed to finish the DLC of this CDPR title and I used my travels to save many games in different places, which I used to run tests with the help of which I created a guide dedicated to how to improve performance in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 Phantom Liberty, without major sacrifices on the quality of the graphics and maintaining a good level of detail.

It is important to keep two things in mind. The first is that if your device doesn’t meet even the minimum requirements, it’s going to be complicated to achieve an acceptable level of performance without significantly reducing the quality of graphics. On the other hand, you also have to remember that ray tracing has a huge impact on the graphics page, but at the same time it consumes a lot of resources, so we need to know when it is appropriate to use it and when not.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with a huge amount of text. My goal is to make this guide as simple as possible, to read well, and for you to get the most out of it without overcomplicating it. For this reason, I will give you a direct hint settings that have the biggest impact on Cyberpunk 2077 performanceand also ones that can help you reduce the load on some components in case you have, for example, a less powerful processor or are limited to HDD.

How to improve performance in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0

Resolution has a very big effect on performance, but we can reduce it by using any of the resizing technologies this game integrates. However, keep in mind that from a certain level up there is no point in using more aggressive rescaling, as there is a bottleneck at the processor level that can end up significantly reducing GPU utilization. The sacrifice in image quality will also be greater and we lose a lot of sharpnessso follow these recommendations:

• For 1080p It is ideal to use rescaling (DLSS, FSR or XeSS) in quality mode.
• For 1440p we should not exceed balanced mode.
• For 2160p We can get into performance mode, but we shouldn’t go down from there.

Frame generation can help us get a lot of pictures and enjoy greater fluidity, but to activate this option we will need a graphics card compatible with the mentioned technology.

Graphics settings that They consume less resources and this affects the quality of the graphics the most. Cyberpunk 2077 are as follows:

• Distinction: We always have to look for the native monitor of our monitor, even if we use rescaling.
• Texture quality: We should always hold it high. We won’t have graphics memory issues unless we use a graphics card with less than 6GB of VRAM and play at 1440p or higher.
• Anisotropic filtering: We should also always have it at x16 as it improves texture detail at medium and long distances.
• Cascading Shadows: Their range and resolution have a significant effect on the graphic quality of the game and do not significantly affect performance. We need to set them high.
• Distant Shadow Resolution: It’s another adjustment that can also be noticed in certain scenarios, especially when we have large objects at a long distance casting shadows. It is ideal to have them high.
• Level of detail: Its impact can vary depending on each specific area, but since it has almost no effect on performance, it is ideal to have it in high quality.

Now we will move on to see the graphic settings that consume the most resources and that affect the graphic quality of the game the most. These are those who can help us improve performance the most from Cyberpunk 2077 2.0:

• Bulk fog: It is ideal to set the quality to medium. Going low is only worth it if we have a very GPU tight PC.
• Screen Space Reflections: Since they have a huge impact on performance, but also on the quality of the graphics, it is best to configure them to medium quality if we have an acceptable GPU, or to medium quality if we are very tight on power.
• Local Shadow Quality: We can achieve a noticeable increase in performance by configuring them to medium quality, but it is not worth reaching low quality if we do not have a GPU with very low consumption.
• Ambient occlusion: By turning it off, we can gain a lot of performance, but the impact on graphics quality will be quite large. It is ideal if we are in a hurry to set the quality to low.

Ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0

It is an adjustment that very big difference in terms of graphic quality, as it can affect lighting, shadows and reflections. We just need to activate it if we have enough graphics powerThat is, if we are able to exceed 60 FPS long in rasterization with the game set to ultra quality.

Within the various ray tracing settings is ideal configuration in relation to image quality and performance would be the following:

• Ray tracing reflections enabled: This affects performance a lot, but greatly improves the quality of the graphics.
• Local shadows using ray tracing enabled: Shadow quality has been noticeably improved and its impact on performance is milder.
• Shadows generated by the sun due to disabling ray tracing: because it has little effect on the graphics quality and allows us to get a lot of performance.
• Ray tracing lighting enabled: It is the most demanding setting and depending on the selected quality mode, the resource consumption can be enormous. An ultra level would be ideal, but if we want extra fluidity, we can go for a medium quality level.

Overdrive mode, which uses path tracing, This is only really viable on very powerful graphics cards with a resolution lower than 4K if we are limited to DLSS Super Resolution such as GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti. I tested this technology with a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and it is perfectly viable at 1440p with DLSS Super Resolution in balanced mode and beam reconstruction.

If we have a GeForce RTX 40 and have access to frame generation, things change and the mentioned mode It is also available in much less powerful models, if we move in a resolution suitable for the graphics card we have. So for example a GeForce RTX 4060 would run fine at 1080p with path tracing.

How to improve Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 performance with weak CPU and HDD

The 2.0 update improved the game’s multi-threaded scaling and also introduced an SSD as a “requirement” for gameplay. Despite everything, Cyberpunk 2077 still works on computers with hard drives, and also in processors with only 4 cores and 8 threads if the IPC is up to par, even if it’s not ideal.

For example, the Intel Core i3-12100F can achieve a good level of performance even though it only has 4 cores and 8 threads, but most of the time this CPU It will be practically 100% used, which means it’s ideal to have at least a 6-core, 12-thread processor that has Zen 3 or Rocket Lake-S (Cypress Cove or Ice Lake) IPC.

The optimization mode for computers with hard drives is still present, and I can also confirm that you will play it without much trouble if you have a drive of this type. This is one “legacy” optimization which was introduced in the base game as a result of its development for PS4 and Xbox One and will not receive any further improvements.

To improve the performance of Cyberpunk 2077 on a CPU-limited computer that has a hard drive I recommend you:

• As is obvious, activate the HDD mode.
• Set crowd density to low quality.
• Reduce texture quality, as using HDD increases graphics memory consumption.