Cyberpunk 2077
The classic GPU stress test. Cyberpunk 2077 scales from playable on a GTX 1060 to full path tracing on an RTX 4080 — where you land on that ladder is decided almost entirely by your graphics card.
Cyberpunk 2077 is CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG and the benchmark reviewers use to torture graphics cards. After years of patches and the Phantom Liberty expansion, it’s superbly optimised — it just scales enormously. Raster-only at 1080p is friendly to older GPUs, ray tracing needs modern RTX hardware, and the Path Tracing “Overdrive” mode remains one of the heaviest workloads in gaming. DLSS and FSR upscaling are the levers that make each tier affordable.
Genre: Open-World RPG | Developer: CD Projekt Red | Platform: PC, Console
- CPU: 6-core minimum — crowd density in Night City loads the processor hard.
- RAM: 16 GB minimum for smooth streaming of the city.
- GPU: RTX 2060/3060 for 1080p60 high (raster); RTX 3070+ for ray tracing; RTX 4070 Ti+ for path tracing with DLSS.
- Storage: SSD officially required — the game does not support hard drives.
Can a used RTX 3060 run Cyberpunk well?
Yes — at 1080p high settings with DLSS Quality, an RTX 3060 delivers a comfortable 60+ FPS without ray tracing, and playable frames with medium ray tracing. It’s one of the best value used cards for this game.
Is path tracing worth the GPU cost?
It’s the best-looking real-time lighting in any game, but it demands RTX 4070 Ti-class hardware or above. Most players get 90% of the experience from standard ray tracing on a much cheaper card.
We stock tested used RTX 30 and 40 series cards — and our full Cyberpunk guide maps each card to real FPS.
