Best PC for Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red · 2020-12-10 · Last verified July 2026
Path tracing made Cyberpunk the benchmark that humbles GPUs. Here is what it actually takes to run it — from a 1080p budget build to a 4K overdrive rig.
Changelog
- 2026-07-25 — Page created; calibration anchored to current review data.
System requirements
Minimum
Recommended
FPS expectations
Estimated, not measured — modelled from Aggregated from TechPowerUp / Tom's Hardware RTX 40/50-series review benchmarks, ultra preset, native res, RT off. How we estimate FPS.
Recommended builds
1080p Budget
High-preset 1080p at 60+ fps without ray tracing — the cheapest build that does Night City justice.
1440p Sweet Spot
Ultra 1440p raster comfortably past 90 fps, with enough headroom to sample ray tracing via DLSS/FSR.
4K / Path Tracing
The no-compromise rig: 4K ultra, path tracing on, frame generation doing what it was built for.
What actually limits Cyberpunk performance
At 1080p and 1440p with ray tracing off, Cyberpunk 2077 scales almost linearly with GPU raster performance — the CPU only becomes the ceiling on very fast cards in crowd-dense districts. Turn path tracing on and the game becomes the hardest workload in mainstream gaming: VRAM use climbs past 12 GB at 4K and frame rates drop to a third of raster performance without upscaling.
The practical takeaway: buy for the resolution and RT ambition you actually have. A mid-range card delivers a great 1440p raster experience; path tracing at 4K remains flagship-GPU territory even in 2026, and leans hard on DLSS/FSR frame generation.
Frequently asked questions
How much VRAM does Cyberpunk 2077 need?
8 GB is comfortable for 1080p/1440p raster play. Ray tracing at 1440p wants 12 GB, and 4K with path tracing can exceed 16 GB — VRAM pressure, not raw compute, is what retires older mid-range cards here.
Is Cyberpunk 2077 CPU-heavy?
Moderately. Dense crowd areas push the CPU, but most rigs are GPU-limited first. A modern 6–8 core CPU (Ryzen 5 7600 class or better) will not hold back any mainstream GPU.