Mid-range PC and handheld users rejoice; you can now play Cyberpunk 2077 in a smoother fashion. Patch 2.13 finally introduces FSR 3 Frame Generation (FG), which allows you to nearly double your original frame rate. Add to that FSR 3 upscaling, and you can enjoy this demanding title even on gaming portables.
If you own anything from AMD Radeon RX 5000 or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2000, you can enable Frame Generation in the game options. Note that this setting requires a restart to take effect. Though developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) recommends a minimum of 60fps before enabling Frame Generation, you can always try it for yourself and see if you like it.
Like with Black Myth: Wukong’s benchmark, I couldn’t resist testing this out on my Ryzen 7600X and Radeon RX 7900 XT combo. Using mostly maxed settings apart from some advanced ray tracing options, I got 38fps at native 1440p and 66fps using FSR 2.1 Quality / FSR 3 Quality. I also tested the Native AA mode for fun and got 36fps. Ouch. Now, moving to the star of the show, enabling FSR 3 Quality with Frame Generation netted me a smooth 120fps.
Unfortunately, this comes with the usual FG limitations, i.e. artefacts. If you look at the picture below, you can see how the car’s rear and wheels are messed up. This happens to all moving objects, though it is less striking when playing the game. No time to pixel peep when a bunch of Corpo shower you with bullets. You do feel that something’s off, but it’s hard to put your finger on it.
Now the question is, would I play the game this way? For now, the extra smoothness from Frame Generation outweighs its limitations. That said, if my machine could deliver above 100fps without it, I would instantly turn it off. What is sure is that having the option available doesn’t hurt.
If you want to give it a try yourself, make sure you have the latest drivers installed. CDPR recommends version 32.0.11037 for Radeon, 556.12 for GeForce, and 32.0.101.5972 for Arc. You can find the full changelog here.
