Impressions of the graphics, ray tracing and the game world before...

For the last time – we promise – we will make your mouth watered in an article with preliminary information, screenshots and enthusiastic descriptions of Cyberpunk 2077, which is awaited with excitement, even with ecstatic-passionate fervor. Because by the time you read these lines, we may have already received our test versions that are ready for release and ready for release and, hopefully, as promised, the final graphics card drivers from AMD and Nvidia, so that we can really put Cyberpunk 2077 to the test. For this purpose, we are planning a benchmark live ticker for the launch on Thursday, December 10th, where you will find our comprehensive launch analysis on performance, the chic ray tracing and a variety of graphics card and CPU benchmarks on top of that.

Don’t miss: Cyberpunk 2077 tested by PC Games

Cyberpunk 2077 (25)

Quelle: PC Games Hardware

Until then, however, we would like to share our experiences in Night City with you a little. Because we received a preliminary version from CD Projekt RED, which we can deal with a little before the launch in order to gain new impressions and to scout out some interesting places for our benchmark scenes before the launch. Thanks to our review session in April, we can also report a whole series of improvements and optimizations, and all raytracing effects are now in Cyberpunk 2077 (buy now 58.19 €) as well as the extensive graphics menu integrated. But let’s start our description from the beginning.

Cyberpunk 2077 – trial version, the system used and the first impressions

Our pre-test version was equipped with a rather brutally set copy protection function to protect against leaks and was tied to a single system for obvious reasons – the launch version of GoG comes, of course, as usual from CD Projekt RED without this restriction. The test system used is the private system from author Philipp Reuther, which, however, was equipped with an overclocked MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X / 24G for the best possible graphic display. Since this preliminary version is not yet completely final and, on top of that, the copy protection would possibly torpedo extensive measurements due to the particularly armed hardware lock and also have an impact on the performance, we will refrain from benchmarks and detailed performance descriptions at this point – You will then find this up-to-date on the launch on our website.

The system used consists of an Asrock X570 Pro 4, in whose AM4 socket an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, liquid-cooled by means of Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280, works with a standard clock rate. Two 16 GiByte G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3600 RAM with slightly sharpened timings serve as main memory. The graphics card is connected via PCI-E 4.0, the game is installed on a PCI-E SSD, the formerly somewhat weak power supply with 650 watts was replaced by an 850 watt platinum PSU from Enermax for the purpose of adequate RTX 3090 supply . The image is output via the display port, the display used is an Asus ROG Swift PG27VQ with 165 Hz and Gsync support, for which the resolution 3,840 × 2,160 pixels at 60 Hz was activated via driver downsampling. With this system we should be well prepared for Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 (26)

Quelle: PC Games Hardware

Cyberpunk 2077: Tons of Options

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on CD Projekt’s in-house RED Engine (an exact version number is not given, but internally the abbreviation R6 is used, with The Witcher 3 the name was R4 despite “RED Engine 3”) and only uses Direct-X on the PC -12 interface. However, there is a fallback with which you can at least enjoy the game under Windows 7 (DX12-capable hardware required). After starting the game, the first thing we do is take a look at the extensive options menu. With a preset screen resolution of 2,560 × 1,440 pixels and, thanks to the RTX 3090, equipped with plenty of power and plenty of memory, Cyberpunk 2077 suggests ultra settings including ultra ray tracing, and DLSS is set to “Automatic”. The dynamic resolution scaling available on top of that, which also uses AMD’s Fidelity FX sharpness filtering for image sharpening, is deactivated. Most of the other options are at their maximum with the ultra preset, but the screen space reflections and the complete ray tracing lighting (GI plus ambient obscuration) can be set one level higher and set to “Psycho”. The ray tracing effects are only available for Nvidia hardware at launch, but a later patch will also enable ray tracing on AMD’s new Navi-21 GPUs.

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Interesting and for us as a benchmarker at this point as a memo: A potentially relatively performance-critical option in the form of the NPC or population density of Night City is not in the graphics menu, but under “Gameplay”. In addition to the density of the population of Night City, a “mode for slow HDD” can also be activated there. We shall examine the implications of these and other options in more detail in time.

Cyberpunk 2077: Our Settings

We leave the settings on the ultra-preset including ultra-ray tracing for the time being, but choose “quality” for DLSS, since the auto level clearly reduces the image quality and the internal rendering resolution for the selected 1440p including auto-DLSS is obvious in view of the hardware installed is a bit badly low – in this case the graphics tends to visibly grizzly, on top of that the alpha textures often found in Night City in the form of fine fences or grids flicker clearly due to the aggressive DLSS level, and many of the textures also tend to pixel crawling in the Specular -Textures. When using DLSS “Quality”, we achieve a significantly more homogeneous, cleaner image with the RTX 3090 in WQHD and, on top of that, frame rates of around or just over 60 fps. For quite a few players who value a certain smoothness in games – including the author explicitly – frame rates at this level are the level that should be used in a shooter or in games with a first-person perspective in general. With the RTX 3090, this performance level in WQHD including ultra-ray tracing and DLSS “quality” is kept very well in the preliminary version or exceeded as far as possible. Without ray tracing and DLSS, the RTX 3090 achieves almost three-digit frame rates in WQHD, the built-in 12-core CPU is also well addressed and even has room for slightly higher frame rates – with the appropriate hardware and suitable graphics settings, Cyberpunk 2077 should actually also be high- Fps gamers with 100 fps plus weaknesses can satisfy. The memory usage of the RTX 3090 with 24 GiB is just under 10 GiByte in WQHD including ray tracing and DLSS, without ray tracing and DLSS around 9 GiByte.

Then we start a new game and – as we did in April – choose the street kid background for our red-headed protagonist “V”, created in the extensive character editor. When playing the relatively limited and relatively strong prologue, which also serves as a tutorial, we are following a familiar storyline and roaming through sections of Night City that we already know from previous demonstrations and our own alludes in April. We can compare optics and performance with scenes that are already known and previously played by us, but on top of that we also explore new areas. The graphics are great, not a few of Night City, its NPC residents and the dynamic day-night cycle drawn scenes are even breathtaking – especially after we deactivated the FOV slider to 90 and on top of that the film grain and the very strong chroma deviation . You can of course also find switches for these artistic effects in the pleasingly extensive options menu – and we can finally use them for the first time. A comparison:

While roaming and driving through the extensive, asphalted veins of the city, it quickly becomes apparent that CD Projekt RED has fortunately also used the postponement (s) of Cyberpunk 2077 to give the game some technical fine-tuning, the streaming and the Improve performance. This is particularly evident in large, open areas and when driving fast through the atmospheric streets of Night City. If, especially with the latter, there were occasional jerks during our playing in April, our preview version runs smoothly and happily. The stuttering that interfered with the flow of the game has disappeared and the level-of-detail also works cleaner, although it is not completely invisible and here and there, in addition to objects, the distant lighting or the GI visibly fades or the model and clothing as well as the head of hair of approaching NPCs , sometimes go through quite rough LoD levels. But the general foresight is very high and the magnificence of detail presented is impressive. This becomes evident when we reach a higher point in the city and let our gaze wander over the vast metropolis – Night City is definitely worth seeing and is certainly one of the most impressive virtual cities of all.

[PLUS] GPU benchmarks 2019/2020: Current and older graphics cards in new gamesPCGH Plus: Is your graphics card fit for upcoming games? After thousands of measurements, we present you the new benchmark course for graphics cards, which is valid for 2019 and 2020. Find out what has happened in this article. The article comes from PC Games Hardware 08/2019.
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