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How to Increase FPS in Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077, despite having one of the biggest open worlds in recent years, has had its share of problems with performance and bugs. We even studied how Cyberpunk 2077 could’ve looked like, and while it never got to that point, we hope that changes shortly. Until and if that happens, we’re committed to helping experience everything the game has to offer under the best conditions possible. This will require some tweaking and experimentation on your part, however. What worked for us may not make a huge or any difference to you. With that said, let’s jump straight into how to increase FPS in Cyberpunk 2077.

1. Update or reinstall GPU drivers

Before we dive into the game itself, you must ensure the foundation, i.e., your computer is in tip-top shape. This is not game-dependent, and there’s no sense in repeating ourselves. We’ll refer to our guide on increasing FPS in CSGO multiple times, so please keep the tab open. With that said, follow the steps outlined in method 1 of that guide to the tee.

2. Set Cyberpunk 2077 as a High priority and terminate unnecessary processes

Another trick in the aforementioned guide, listed as method 3, also applies here. Only, instead of the executable mentioned in step 5, you need to find cyberpunk2077.exe. The rest of the steps are identical — get rid of any process that the game doesn’t require to run. Also disable any overlays such as Game Bar, Xbox Game Bar, Discord, Origin, GOG, MSI Afterburner, and more.

3. Run Cyberpunk 2077 as Administrator

Running Cyberpunk 2077 as an Administrator will give the game the priorities it lacks and may increase FPS. Or, at the very least, eradicate potential crashes. The easiest way of doing that is locating the Cyberpunk 2077 icon, and then:

  1. Right-click and select Properties.
  2. Click the Open File Location button.
  3. You’ll find the installation folder and should see the Cyberpunk2077.exe file.
  4. If you don’t, you may need to go to “\bin\x64\Cyberpunk2077.exe” manually.
  5. Repeat step 1.
  6. Switch to the Compatibility tab.
  7. Put a checkmark in front of “Run this program as an administrator”.

4. Delete temporary files and Cyberpunk 2077 cache

Don’t close the tab just yet. Now, turn your attention to method 7 in our guide on boosting FPS within Fortnite. More specifically, the steps under the headline “Clean temporary files”. After that, you may also try cleaning cache Cyberpunk 2077 generated in the following way:

  1. Find Cyberpunk 2077 cache in the following location:
    %LOCALAPPDATA%\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077\cache\
  2. Tip. If that doesn’t work, replace “%localappdata%” with “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local”).
  3. Find the file titled GamePipelineLibrary.cache.
  4. Rename it to GamePipelineLibrary-old.cache. You can also delete it.
  5. Launch the game so it creates a new file.

5. Switch power plan to High performance

We already went over this in the guide for increasing FPS in Fortnite. You merely have to look below, toward the end of method 7, to the instructions under the “Switch the power plan” headline. Be careful with this setting on a laptop computer, especially without an outlet nearby. We also wrote about optimizing your laptop for gaming.

6. Adjust GPU drivers’ settings

Now’s the time to go back to the article from method 1, and combine the nuggets of information from method 2 with method 6 in the Fortnite article. Together, these should give you a healthy boost of FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 and any other games you might play. Don’t take our word as law — conduct multiple tests to determine which setting positively impacted your performance.

7. Tweak Cyberpunk 2077 in-game graphics settings

While you can turn off everything or set everything to Low in the game, that’s no way to experience Night City and its residents. Thus, here are our optimal Cyberpunk 2077 graphics settings for best performance:

  • Quick Preset —  Custom 
  • Texture Quality — Medium
  • Film Grain — Off
  • Field of View — Off
  • Depth of Field — Off
  • Lens Flare — Off
  • Chromatic Aberration — Off
  • Contact Shadows — Off
  • Motion Blur — Off
  • Improved Facial Light Geometry — Enable
  • Anisotropy — 4x or 8x
  • Local Shadow Mesh Quality — Medium or High
  • Local Shadow Quality — Medium or High
  • Distant Shadows Resolution — Medium
  • Cascaded Shadows Range — Low or Medium
  • Volumetric Fog Resolution — Low
  • Volumetric Cloud Quality — Low
  • Max Dynamic Decals — Medium
  • Subsurface Scattering Quality — Low or Medium
  • Screen Space Reflections Quality — Low or Medium
  • Ambient Occlusion — Low or Disabled
  • Color Precision — Low
  • Mirror Quality — Medium or High
  • Level of Detail (LOD) — Medium or High
  • Crowd Density — Low
  • Slow HDD Mode — Off
  • VSync — Off

Additional settings

The settings above applied to both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. However, there are a couple of extra settings that are platform-specific and revolve around Resolution Scaling. They allow you to play in lower resolution and let AI (Artificial Intelligence) upscale it to a higher resolution. They are:

  • DLSS — Automatic (NVIDIA exclusive setting. Depending on your system and results, you may want to set it to Off)
  • Dynamic FidelityFX CAS — Off (AMD exclusive. Bugged for us and others but should be revisited in the future)
  • Static FidelityFX CAS — On (Exclusive to AMD)
  • Resolution Scaling — 90% (Optimal number for us. We suggest beginning at 100% and going as far as 75%)

8. Allocate more RAM to Cyberpunk 2077 via config

One big downside to Cyberpunk 2077 in-game settings is the lack of visual representation of RAM, CPU, or GPU utilization. To solve that problem, tweak Cyberpunk 2077 configuration file like this:

  1. Exit Cyberpunk 2077 if you’re playing it.
  2. Open your Cyberpunk 2077 installation folder, go to engine > config folders. For instance, “C:\Games\steamapps\common\Cyberpunk 2077\engine\config”.
  3. Find the file named memory_pool_budgets.csv and make a copy of it.
  4. Edit the original file with Notepad or Microsoft Excel.
  5. Find the line that says: PoolCPU, and change the number under “PC” to 60-70% of your total system RAM.
  6. For instance, if you have 16 GB of RAM, enter 9GB (without a space in-between). You can also enter 0, which lets your system decide the number.
  7. Repeat the same for PoolGPU by checking total VRAM. You may want to go a little higher, or enter 0.
  8. Save changes.
  9. Optional. Clear cache as suggested in method 4.

9. Use a graphics mod for Cyberpunk 2077

Game mods usually add something that isn’t present in the game by default. This was the case with several modes, one of which is Developer Extras by FreakaZ72. It is based on an open-source project, CyberEngineTweaks on GitHub. It adds a menu that allows you to tweak settings available to developers but hidden from regular players. Many of those are known to drastically increase Cyberpunk 2077 FPS.

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