You'll Need An Impressive PC Setup For The Best Cyberpunk 2077 Experience

Excitement for CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is reaching a fever pitch, with a steady stream of new trailers and developer announcements helping put to rest rumors of a fourth delay. In another sign of the company's confidence in hitting their Dec. 10 launch date, CD Projekt Red released a comprehensive system requirements chart for PCs, revealing that you will need a top of the line gaming rig to run the game at the full detail.

In September, CD Projekt Red released the minimum and recommended system requirements for playing the game on PC during its third Night City Wire presentation. All in all, both the minimum and recommended settings weren't too extreme and were within the realm of what most PC gamers likely already owned. The GTX 780 graphics card recommended for the lowest settings, for example, was a model first released in 2013, and while the specs went up for recommended, the increase was reasonable.

Taking a closer look at the expanded system requirements CD Projekt Red released today, the basic system requirements stay within the realm of reality for many PC gamers, even as the settings ramp-up to high. The CPU requirements remain the same, while the RAM and graphics card requirements incrementally increase as the resolution capabilities increase. While the components needed to reach high are no joke, for anyone expecting to play a brand new, graphically intense game in 2020, many of these requirements are to be expected.

However, to experience Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K, or with its highly-anticipated ray tracing technology enabled, gamers will need a serious PC setup. The absolute minimum required to run ray tracing is a Nvidia RTX 2060, which is less than two years old. To increase any of the ray tracing settings or run it on a high-resolution 1080p or 4K monitor that gamers likely have to go with their expensive gaming rig, only the brand new Nvidia RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 will suffice.

While one omission of the system requirements chart is the expected frames per second that these different requirements deliver, gamers can safely assume that each level delivers at least 30 FPS. Most gamers tend to shoot for 60 FPS, especially for driving and action-heavy games. However, 30 FPS should be enough for players to explore Night City and take in the next generation graphic fidelity promised by Cyberpunk 2077, even if they have to walk some of those setting back for peak performance.