Cyberpunk 2077 is almost here. Is your PC up to the task?
A few weeks back, CD Projekt Red has released the PC specs needed to play its upcoming action/RPG title, Cyberpunk 2077. However, this list missing from that list was what was needed to play at the higher end resolutions. Ray Tracing was curiously missing from these specs, which caused me and countless others to bombard the developers with questions regarding what hardware would be needed to play the game with all the bells and whistles. Today, CD Projekt Red released an updated spec sheet, complete with both Minimum/Recommended and High specs, with and without Ray Tracing.
Interesting enough is that these specs, especially for an AAA game to be released for the PC, look quite tame. Outside of the GPU requirements, when heading off into Ray Tracing territory, both the CPU and memory requirements are lower than I anticipated. What isn’t mentioned is what frame rate is being targeted per these specs.
You can check out those specs below.
Minimum
- OS: Windows 7/10 64-bit
- Memory: 8GB
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K / AMD FX-8310 or better
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 780 / AMD RX 470 or better
- VRAM: 3GB
- Graphic Setting: Low
- Resolution: 1080p
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
Recommended
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4790 / AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or better
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 590 or better
- VRAM: 6GB
- Graphic Setting: High
- Resolution: 1080p
- Memory: 12GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
High
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 / AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or better
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 5700XT
- VRAM: 6GB
- Graphic Setting: Ultra
- Resolution: 1440p
- Memory: 12GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
Ultra
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- GPU: Nvidia 2080 Super, RTX 3070 / AMD RX 6800 XT
- VRAM: 8GB
- Graphic Setting: Ultra
- Resolution: 2160p (4K)
- Memory: 16GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
Moving on to Ray Tracing, here, nothing past an Nvidia RTX card will be listed. Interesting enough, while AMD’s RX 6800/6800 XT can do Ray Tracing, they are absent on these lists. However, what isn’t mentioned is if this is Ray Tracing with DLSS 2.0 being implemented and, again, what the targetted frame rate would be.
Ray Tracing Minimum
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 / AMD Ryzen 3 3200G
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060
- VRAM: 6GB
- Graphic Setting: Ray Tracing Medium
- Resolution: 1080p
- Memory: 16GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
Ray Tracing High
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- GPU: RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3070 (the RTX 2080 Ti isn’t officially listed, but the performance is similar)
- VRAM: 8GB
- Graphic Setting: Ray Tracing Ultra
- Resolution: 1440p
- Memory: 16GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
Ray Tracing Ultra
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- GPU: RTX 3080
- VRAM: 10GB
- Graphic Setting: Ray Tracing Ultra
- Resolution: 2160p (4K)
- Memory: 16GB
- Storage: 70GB (SSD Recommended)
There you have it. The complete list of hardware needed to play Cyberpunk 2077, and honestly, I’m thrilled to see what has been announced. Most PC gamers who’ve either upgraded or purchased a new PC in the past 2-3 years should be covered. At the same time, I’m saddened as I’d love to play this game with Ray Tracing enabled. But as you’re all too familiar with, locating and acquiring either the RTX 3070, RTX 3080, or even the RTX 3090 has been an exercise in futility. I still have concerns regarding if VRAM is going to hold the Nvidia cards back, but we won’t know more about that until the game is finally released and testing can be done.
Either way, I’ll be playing the hell out of this game and looking forward to seeing if it lives up to the hype or not. I’m sure it will, but you never can tell anymore.
Cyberpunk 2077 releases on December 10th, 2020, for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The game will be backward compatible with the Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5, with next-gen versions of the game, complete with enhancements to be released in 2021.
