The good folks over at Digital Foundry have been taking a look at the Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.6 that dropped last week, and the findings are "only good news" for Xbox Series X and Series S owners, so let's dig in a little bit!
Firstly, looking at the Xbox Series S Performance mode that was added with Patch 1.6, the outlet says that it runs at a pretty much locked 60FPS on the lesser-powered console, which is great to hear. There are obvious visual downsides, but it seems like they're worth the tradeoff:
"It's really solid, and the sacrifices to achieve it feel fair too I think. The resolution drop, reduced shadows and lower NPC counts are all trades I'm happy to make personally."
Elsewhere, the other big thing Digital Foundry tested as part of this update was the input latency in the Xbox Series X Ray-Tracing mode, which previously clocked in at a very high 163.1MS. After Patch 1.6 it's been brought down to 136.5MS, which is obviously still pretty high, but nevertheless a welcome improvement.
"The upshot is that the 30FPS Performance Mode does feel more responsive now, no denying that. [The difference] is significant enough to detect by eye. Still though, I've got to say the 136.5MS reading we're left with isn't exactly snappy for a 30FPS title.
And for perspective, a likewise test on Cyberpunk's 60FPS Performance Mode [on Series X] gets us to a far better 51.6MS result."
There's still more work that could be done, then, but the takeaway is that Patch 1.6 brings "only good news" for Xbox Series X and Series S owners of Cyberpunk 2077, especially in regards to that Series S Performance mode.
Have you had a chance to try Patch 1.6 yet? Let us know down in the comments below.
Comments 6
This is great news.
Just waiting for a sale now to treat my Series S.
136ms isn't 'that' bad for a 30fps mode and better than some games (like RDR2 - which can take up to 500ms for an 'action' to be carried out and in 'general' seems to be about the same for any 'response' to start. Of course, RDR2 as 'animations' to lift a gun and shoot so its not 'instant' and why its nearly half a second to actually 'fire' a bullet after pulling the trigger.
Its certainly still on the 'high' side and you'd expect around 90ms (+/- 10ms) in the vast majority of 'best' examples at 30fps on consoles. I'd expect about 120ms as the 'average' so its not too bad considering but of course could be better. Whether or not it can be improved further may depend on the game engine and way the game was designed/built. In RDR2's case, there 'input lag' is by design, triggering animations that need to play out so it can take half a second between pulling the trigger and a shot being fired by design.
Anyway, its great that they took some extra time to bring 60fps to Series S owners and the 'visual' downgrades that were necessary to achieve that would be a lot less noticeable on 1080p TV's/Monitors. You have basically a 1080p image at 30fps with better shadows and a slightly higher crowd density or 800-1080p DRS image but 60fps with a more responsive feeling game-play too...
All the talk and 'Visual' comparisons between Series X and Series S on 4k TV's will obviously show the difference that 2x-4x the amount of 'pixels' an image has and the 'upscaling' too adds blur. But if you game on HD TV's/Monitors as I bet a LOT of Series S owners do, Supersampled 1440p or 2160p is going to look the same on a 1080p TV. All that means is that at 1080p, every pixel colour is decided by sampling 2-4 pixels (depending on the image size) and using that to decide what colour to show on screen. If you had 2 black pixels and 2 white pixels at 4k, at 1080p that would probably end up as 50% grey when it may of been 'Black' or 'White' at native 1080p...
Not sure about anyone else but that game makes me nauseated any time I play due to frame rate.
Run series x, Samsung ks9000, tried both graphics modes. All terrible to me and feel terrible playing.
Bummer since really wanted to play the game.
So the higher frame rate is a more responsive event? Nice!!
How does this play on Series X now?
I bought it day 1 but shelved it due to the state it launched in. Currently playing through Witcher 3 GOTY but tempted to boot 2077 up after I finish.
That's... Acceptable for 30 fps, especially if the display used didn't have Freesync premium and boost mode active.
I tried it but I'll stick with 60 on Xbox and above it with everything turned up and DLSS on quality for PC at 4k. Massive performance gains.
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