Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty tech review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks

Right now, our gaming benchmarks are performed using these laptops. Click on the images to visit the respective product page. All other test systems (tower PCs, mini-PCs, etc.) are listed at the end of this article.

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty is sadly not very polished in other aspects as well. For example, once you launch the game, it sometimes takes what feels like an eternity to access the main menu after the “Press to Continue” screen. Furthermore, we occasionally encountered the following problem: after booting up, the game would at times modify settings without being asked to do so. On our main test rig, version 2.0 of Phantom Liberty also downright refused to start and crashed during launch. The game only started running properly after being updated to version 2.1. With DLC included, Cyberpunk 2077 takes up around 77 GB of disk space, which is perfectly acceptable for a game of this scale.

Cyberpunk 2077 once again deserves huge kudos for its integrated benchmark tool. Though the game only shows the FPS count during the roughly one-minute camera roam without providing any performance graphs (as seen in many Ubisoft games), it does give you a fairly comprehensive analysis at the end, with details including minimum and maximum FPS, system information and the settings used (see video). 

All in all, it is safe to say that Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t particularly demanding when you use the normal presets. The game only starts becoming very difficult to run when ray tracing is enabled, especially at higher resolutions. This is true as long as you don’t use any upscaling. The combination we tested (DLSS Quality plus Frame Generation) offers a surprisingly great performance and very compelling visuals at 4K.

If your system is only equipped with an iGPU, you should probably stay away from Cyberpunk 2077. Even the relatively powerful Radeon 680M is able to churn out more than 40 FPS only at 720p and the lowest settings. On the other hand, mid-range cards, such as the GeForce RTX 4050,  Radeon RX 6800S or similar, have no problem handling the game at Full HD and can deliver upwards of 60 FPS even with settings cranked up to Ultra.

The game’s graphics requirements are likewise quite reasonable at QHD. Whilst the aforementioned mid-tier cards can deliver roughly 40 FPS with a combination of 1440p and max settings, GPUs that fall somewhere between the mid-range and high-end segments (e.g. the GeForce RTX 4070 and RTX 3070 Ti) come close to hitting the 60 FPS mark.

The going gets really tough at 4K if you want to enjoy Cyberpunk in all its graphical glory. Without using upscaling, none of the current laptop GPUs can deliver 60 FPS or more at 4K and Ultra preset. That said, the game is definitely playable at the roughly 40 FPS and 50 FPS provided by the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 respectively. A truly powerful desktop graphics card, such as the Radeon RX 7900 XT, is necessary if you with to achieve 60 FPS at these settings. 

Many gamers would probably very interested in finding out how Cyberpunk performs with ray tracing enabled (we used the Ultra ray tracing preset for our testing here). Here's a quick rundown: It is possible to hit above 40 FPS at Full HD using a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 4070 or better. By contrast, an RTX 4080 is capable of breaking the 60 FPS mark. For 4K, you’ll absolutely need to make use of upscaling. With DLSS Quality and Frame Generation enabled, an RTX 4080 or higher is again necessary to help you stay on the safe side. At least in the case of more powerful GPUs, performance is similar to what you might see at Full HD without DLSS, which is already very incredible.

Because gaming tests are very time-consuming and are often constrained by installation or activation limits, we are only able to provide you with part of the benchmark results at the time of publishing this article. We will be adding more graphics cards over the coming days and weeks.