A few select colleagues in the press were recently able to access a Cyberpunk 2077 preview build in order to try the highly anticipated open world game in development at CD PROJEKT RED.
While some apparently had remote access to the game via GeForce NOW, others such as PC Games Hardware got to actually play on a proper PC at a local event. The performance report from the German publication is a bit concerning on multiple levels, as the Cyberpunk 2077 preview apparently ran at 1080p with DLSS 2.0 enabled (announced yesterday by NVIDIA to be available for the game) and some (but not all) raytracing effects enabled on a computer powered by the mighty RTX 2080Ti graphics card.
We play in Full HD - a fact that we first have to digest a bit, given the RTX 2080 Ti in the Alienware presentation computer, there should actually be a little more in the pixel density. In addition, DLSS is activated, so the internal render resolution is again less than 1,920 × 1080 pixels. But ray tracing is also active, in our preview version in the form of shadows, ambient occlusion and indirect lighting (Ray Traced Diffuse Illumination). As we have also known since our Gamescom 2018 impressions of the raytracing titles that appeared later, they run much better after the release - whether it is Battlefield 5 , Metro Exodus or Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The already integrated DLSS already makes a very good impression. Even for Full HD, the picture on the huge 65-inch telly looked relatively sharp, despite the fact that the preview version had chromatic aberration and film grain switched on. The graphics menu was not yet integrated in our build.
From our previous experience with DLSS 2.0, we know that the rendering resolution can go as low as 540p with a 1080p output resolution, though we don't know for sure that was the case in the Cyberpunk 2077 preview.
Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the raytraced reflections are apparently missing from this build and enabling them would certainly make the game even more taxing on any system. Even with all these caveats, the frame rate dropped below 60fps and down to roughly 30fps in at least one instance, as the article's author added in a forum post.
But at least at one point, the performance has dropped to ~ 30 fps or even just below it, I could see that and noticed it on the controller. In addition, the game is often jerky, especially when driving. The rest of the time it was okay, but in my opinion, it only relatively rarely hit 60 fps or more.
That's not to say the Cyberpunk 2077 preview was bad by any means, as the PC Games Hardware article points out that it looks a lot better than previously released gameplay footage, particularly thanks to the ray traced ambient occlusion, diffuse illumination and shadows. However, it is clear that there is a lot for CD Projekt RED left to optimize and we now understand the latest delay a bit more.
The RTX 2080Ti should be able to play the game at 4K resolution with DLSS 2.0 active and all ray tracing effects enabled, while it seems to be struggling a bit even at 1080p for the time being. Let's hope these final five months can be fully devoted to optimization (and bug squashing, of course).
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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