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00:00Now, as buggy, crashy and as much of a performance hog as it is, I would say Cyberpunk is one
00:06of the best implementations of RT and DLSS I've ever seen in a game.
00:11Sometimes it's quite subtle, with penumbra or more diffuse, less hard shadows on objects,
00:16lighting that more naturally exposes the world and of course reflections from shiny desks
00:20to puddles and car windows.
00:23Although bizarrely, your character V must be some kind of vampire, maybe that's what
00:26the V stands for as you can't even see yourself in a mirror.
00:29I mean even the original Deus Ex had that.
00:32So clearly this is a beast of a game and so I've teamed up with Nvidia, who offered
00:36to sponsor this video, as I wanted to test every RTX 3000 series card, so the 3060 Ti,
00:433070, the 80 and the 90, as well as the previous 2080 Ti for some context, to see just how
00:49well they perform in Cyberpunk, what kind of an impact ray tracing and DLSS has and
00:54if they're even worth using and finally to help you figure out what graphics card
00:58is best for the resolution that you play at.
01:01Nice and simple.
01:02Well, it would have been if it wasn't for the billion or so crashes to desktop, Cyberpunk
01:06did not make this an easy video to make.
01:13But don't worry, no spoilers here at all, I've only spent a few hours in Night City
01:17so far and while what you're watching is my captured gameplay, I'm not going to give
01:21anything away.
01:22Also, I'm testing the game with the day one patch and without the DRM that was added
01:26to pre-release review versions of the game and I've also got an i9-10900K processor
01:31and 32 gigs of RAM in my test PC, so hopefully you'll find this useful and if you do, it
01:36would be amazing if you could hit that subscribe button as I'm so close to that 1 million
01:40mark.
01:41Alright, so the first thing any self-respecting PC gamer will do is go into the graphics settings.
01:46There's a quick preset with the usual low, medium, high and ultra, but then it goes to
01:51ray tracing medium and ray tracing ultra.
01:54These are essentially ultra graphics settings, but then going beyond with ray tracing medium
01:58adding advanced shadows and lighting, but you'll want ray tracing ultra for these fancy
02:03reflections.
02:04Ray traced lighting also tops out with psycho mode which gives you even higher quality global
02:08illumination.
02:10And then below all this we have DLSS, which I'll come to in a second, but is absolutely
02:14essential for any of this ray tracing to run well.
02:18But let me show you what ray tracing can do.
02:20So this is with regular ultra settings, no RT.
02:23Then turning it up to RT medium and the lighting becomes more realistic and that harsh shadow
02:28on the right disappears.
02:31But the big jump is when I switch to RT ultra, which turns on reflections and you can see
02:36just what a difference ray tracing can make.
02:38Does it fundamentally change the game?
02:40No, but as a single player game and all about being as immersive as possible, the visual
02:45upgrade is pretty impressive.
02:47But what's the cost?
02:48Well, to give you one example, running an RTX 3090 at 4K with regular ultra settings,
02:54so no RT, I'm averaging about 104 FPS.
02:58Switching to RT medium drops it to 76 and then RT ultra, which really is the one you
03:03want for that full ray tracing experience, we're down to 66.
03:08So let's bring in the full deck of cards.
03:10This is every Ampere card plus the 2080 Ti for reference to last gen.
03:14And starting at 4K, you can see how RT medium, ultra and psycho compare to the standard ultra
03:20settings without any RT.
03:22And it is a big hit.
03:23I mean, this is already a very demanding game, but I would suggest avoiding 4K unless you're
03:28Mr. Fancy Pants with an RTX 3080 or 3090.
03:32Now dropping to 1440p and everything is a bit more reasonable here.
03:36The RTX 3070 breaks that crucial 60 FPS mark, which is good to see and the 3060 Ti isn't
03:41too far behind.
03:42And actually, if you tweak a few settings, you could easily hit 60 with it.
03:46And finally at 1080p, which is still the most popular resolution, of course, and I think
03:50here the 3060 Ti makes the most sense.
03:53Unless you're running a high refresh monitor, in which case maybe the 3070 is a good bet.
03:58However, without ray tracing, you can see all the cards break triple digits.
04:03No surprises there then, RT looks great.
04:06This is probably the best example of it, but it still has a big impact on your frame rate.
04:10However, that's only half the story.
04:13Deep Learning Supersampling, or DLSS, is I think one of the most underrated graphics
04:18technologies right now.
04:19By rendering the game at a lower resolution and then scaling up, DLSS 2.1, which we have
04:24here, gives us much higher frame rates than we'd normally get at native resolution.
04:28Now in Cyberpunk, we have a few different options.
04:31By default, it's set to auto, but let's have a look if we can see any difference between
04:34the modes.
04:35With the native 4K gameplay on the left as a control.
04:38And then it's basically a sliding scale in terms of visual quality as you go through
04:42the DLSS options.
04:44And then kind of falling off a cliff with ultra performance mode.
04:47Which I would just avoid, unless maybe you're me or Linus who are also making videos playing
04:51this at 8K.
04:53So it seems DLSS off and quality modes are almost indistinguishable, with some slight
04:58artifacting, shimmering and softening cropping up as you head towards balance and performance.
05:03But at 4K, it's still fairly subtle, they all look quite good.
05:07My takeaway though, comparing the visual vs performance tradeoff, is to use DLSS quality
05:11mode when you're playing at 1080p.
05:14At 1440p, I think quality or balance modes are your best options, depending on the frame
05:19rate you want to hit.
05:20And at 4K, definitely go with DLSS performance.
05:24If all this seems like a lot though, then the good news is that there's also an auto
05:27DLSS mode.
05:28I actually ran the numbers against the other modes and it looks like at 1080p, it uses
05:33quality mode, at 1440p, we get balanced and at 4K, it's performance.
05:37Which is actually exactly what we'd have recommended using anyway.
05:40So the best graphics combination in my opinion is to play with RT ultra settings and then
05:45leave DLSS on auto.
05:48And so with that, let's figure out which graphics card is best for you.
05:51And so kicking off at 1080p, and here I think you're absolutely fine with the 3060 Ti.
05:57We're getting over 60fps with maxed out settings, including quality mode DLSS, and it costs
06:02just £370.
06:04Plus if you're not bothered about ray tracing, you'll get 125 with the Ti.
06:08Not too shabby.
06:10Now if you're playing at 1440, which I think is still the sweet spot really, despite only
06:14scoring 48fps here, I would actually suggest going for the RTX 3070.
06:19But then maybe changing the DLSS to balanced mode instead of quality.
06:23The visual difference is tiny, but that'll get you to 60fps and it's only £100 more
06:28than the 3060 Ti.
06:30And finally, 4K.
06:32Well the truth here is only the 3090 will get you 60fps.
06:36However while the 3090 is 20% faster than the 3080, it's also about twice the price.
06:42So if you are gaming at 4K, you may need to tweak the settings a little, but I think the
06:453080 is the best buy.
06:47Assuming of course you can actually buy one.
06:49Stock issues are still a big problem.
06:51I know Nvidia is doing their best, but it doesn't help if you still can't buy one
06:55of these cards.
06:56Hopefully you'll be able to upgrade your PC soon though and then this guide will come
07:00in handy.
07:01So as probably the most hyped game in the last 10 years or so, what do you think of
07:05Cyberpunk so far?
07:07Let me know in the comments below.
07:09Thank you so much for watching guys, don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you
07:11want to see more of me and now I'm actually going to go play and have some fun in Cyberpunk
07:15rather than just running benchmarks and cursing its name every time it crashes.
07:19Check out the description for links to all the cards I've tested and I'll catch you
07:22guys in the next one.