Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.3 VRR support for consoles brings significant FPS boost to PS5 Pro

Cyberpunk 2077 has made a full U-turn since its terrible launch in December 2020. Developer CD Projekt RED has been committed to fixing and optimizing the game, and has done so over the course of four years. With the latest 2.3 update, the team has further improved the game by adding support for the latest graphical technologies, including VRR for consoles. This seems to have resulted in a major performance boost for the PS5 Pro.

The latest DF Direct Weekly episode (linked below) by tech experts at Digital Foundry talks about VRR on PS5 (buy on Amazon), PS5 Pro (buy on Amazon), and Xbox Series X (buy on Amazon) consoles. While the base PS5 did see some improvements in FPS, it was the PS5 Pro’s performance that was truly unlocked by removing the 60 FPS cap.

For testing, the team ported over the PC benchmark sequence in Cyberpunk 2077 to the PS5 and PS5 Pro. This gave a like-for-like sequences for accurate comparison between the two consoles. Enabling VRR unlocks frame-rate on the 30 FPS RT mode, allowing it to run at 40 FPS. In performance mode, the 60 FPS cap is removed, allowing potentially 120 FPS. It was noted that the base PS5 delivered an average 62.84 FPS while the PS5 Pro delivered 81.03 FPS.

The results and performance difference varied in different testing scenarios within Night City but overall, the VRR gaming experience on the PS5 Pro was much smoother and more consistent than the base PS5. Digital Foundry believes this VRR implementation is the closest to an actual PS5 Pro enhanced version of Cyberpunk 2077.

On the other hand, the Xbox Series X did not show any improvement with VRR. The RT mode ran at 30 FPS and the performance mode was capped at 60 FPS. There is something wrong with the VRR implementation for Xbox consoles but looking at how VRR support doesn't benefit the base PS5 that much, the same would have been true for the Xbox Series X.