Cyberpunk 2077’s Improvements Lead To Higher Minimum Requirements For PCs

CD Projekt RED has revealed that Cyberpunk 2077 has raised their minimum requirements for PCs.

We had reported that Phantom Liberty came with drastic changes to the core game. In fact, CD Projekt RED overhauled Cyberpunk 2077 completely.

This seems to go in line with the pipeline CD Projekt RED has made to fix the game from the controversial condition it was in at launch. Around September of last year, the company stopped updating the game for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

These actions are understandable, as the company had spent a lot of money trying to earn goodwill back from the fans after that terrible launch. To their credit, they did also go back to fix the game as best as they could on those eight generation consoles, so those platforms did get an earlier version of the game.

And so, in the same vein, they have updated the requirements for the game today as well. This allows them to make a version of the game that is more in line with what they had promised all those years ago. On a technical level, CD Projekt RED recognized that there is only so much you can do before the game has to be raised to a higher performance level to meet that promise.

Now, it probably won’t surprise you, but a key change is that there is no more HDD support. As CD Projekt RED explained themselves on their website, “SSDs offer faster loading times, improved streaming, and better overall performance when compared to HDDs.”

Alongside that, the new and improved version offers better support for new GPUs. While most fans are thinking of Nvidia’s and AMD’s GPUs here, Intel’s Arc GPUs have emerged to be just as capable, if not more in some areas. The key to getting the most out of Arc GPUs is for developers to put specific work for better compatibility. As you’ll see below, CD Projekt RED did put that work in for Arc GPUs, and they are now officially supported and part of the PC requirements.

Now, here’s what the new minimum specs for Cyberpunk 2077 are:

Resolution: 1080p

Expected FPS: 30

OS: 64-bit Windows 10

Processor: Core i7-6700 or Ryzen 5 1600

Graphics Card: Geforce GTX 1060 6 GB, or Radeon RX 580 8 GB, or Arc A380

VRAM: 6 GB

RAM: 12 GB

Storage: 70 GB SSD

As for the Steam Deck, Cyberpunk 2077 is Steam Deck Verified. It does clear this minimum for performance, and even uses M.2 SSD for storage, so it should continue to be playable on the platform in the near future.