So I bought a gaming laptop a while back, and Cyberpunk 2077 binaries got leaked a few days ago... So I wanted to play it, kinda. It looks really good from the screenshots. Friend asks me "what CPU / GPU do you have"?

My gaming laptop is a Y700 so an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 960M. Turns out that even at low settings this thing probably won't pull even 30 FPS.

So even with a gaming laptop, you don't get to do any gaming. 10/10 would buy again! I'll enjoy Super Mario because imagine caring about gameplay rather than stunning graphics that you need tomorrow's hardware for, and buy it yesterday! And have it already obsolete today.

Long story short, I kinda hate the gaming scene. I'm not a gamer either by any means. Even this laptop just runs Linux and I bought it mostly because some of its hardware is better than my x220's. Are gamers expected to spring the money for the latest and greatest nugget every other month? When such a CPU and GPU alone would already cost most people's entire monthly wage?

What's the point of having a game that nobody can play? Even my friends' desktop hardware which is quite a bit better still - it only pulls 45 FPS according to him. Seriously, what's the point?

The point is that the GTX 960M is pretty old and can't really be expected to handle a game of the scale of C2077 without compromises.

Yeah, you pretty much are expected to maintain decent enough hardware if you want to play the latest stuff. Gaming companies work on statistics - if their data shows that enough people have the hardware to handle their fancy stuff, they'll do it, because it elevates them over the competition and lets them do new things (it's not just the graphical effects that slow C2077 down but the scale of crowdsim, animation, dialogue, physics, AI, etc).

They do it that way because doing it any other way is lunacy, you'll bleed money and shut down. People who don't have money to upgrade probably wouldn't have money to buy many games from them either (as illustrated here).

Besides, a game is expected to sell in the market for a while and keep up with a few generations of new hardware coming out.

Plus, a good chunk of sales is actually from consoles and people do upgrade to newest consoles. You don't see companies making latest games for the PS3.

Your gripe really is with the speed of improvement in computer hardware, since the latest games push hardware the most. Can't do anything about that.

Sucks, but what to do. I need to do an upgrade too, this RX580's showing its age.

@RememberMe Fair points, although I'm not sure if the whole "not enough money" argument holds true.

At the time of release (2016) this laptop went for $1800. Granted that is not the price I bought it for, that would be €300. I don't get the whole shaming around this however.

In games that I do play, if I like them I tend to spend quite large amounts on them. On another online game I've been playing since around 2015 I've spent around €500 over time. Some people would call that ridiculous. I would call it reasonable over a period of 5 years. I don't mind the cost of a game (€60) as much as the cost of upgrading hardware (~€2k).

I don't think the argument about money is therefore valid. But as far as hardware goes, perhaps a console wouldn't be a bad option then. At least that somehow doesn't get obsolete until a few years later (and even then the games released on the platform still work). And it saves the security and privacy cost of maintaining a Windows box too I suppose.

@Condor precisely why people buy consoles. If you want to do PC gaming you need to do the upgrades yourself.

The not enough money argument is secondary. The real point is, AAA devs *have* to push games forwards otherwise they won't sell. This doesn't apply to indie devs or games for which fanciness isn't the biggest draw, which are usually MMO or competitive (eg. CSGO, dota, Overwatch, etc.).

@Condor if you bought the game on steam you could use geforce now to play the game for free for one hour sessions without rtx if geforce now is available in your country

Maybe I will buy it, but not until it's down under $20. But also, I don't want to reward CDPR for crunching their devs for over a year.

To be fair you mainly need the allotted ram and GPU. I'm using the same processor but the desktop version and can get 60 fps on the ultra settings. But I'm using a graphics card from two years ago. Although I will say I turned ray tracing off, that thing has been an fps killer since it released, doesn't look much different either. Get out of the laptop ecosystem for gaming on pc and you'll be fine.

@vomitmachine that's good to hear! Might give it a try then. I'm kinda hard-pressed to install Windows on my Y700, or worst case I could take out my old Thinkstation which has a desktop GTX 970 in it... NGL I really like what I'm seeing about the game so far. If it's doable at all, the temptation is real :3

This game is probably one of the first games that properly use multi-core CPUs. On my 2700X it runs the same with power saving mode enabled as with performance mode. Can't say the same thing about my poor GPU tho. RIP GTX1080Ti. Only 40 fps on ultra 1440p :(

@Condor It's fun, but I think it's mainly hype that the build up from like 4 years of development have been leading towards. There's little bits and pieces sometimes that standout like a gang group beating someone down, or a gang and police shootout, that you sometimes stumble across. But so far they don't seem varied enough. Idk, I like management games way more than this, got it to scratch the sci fi roleplaying game that hasn't been satisfied for years. Don't climb on the hype wagon, watch a streamer and mute them, and just watch the gameplay, it's honestly not that invigorating.

@RememberMe @Condor the probleem starts with gaming+laptop.
Any mobile version of graphics card or CPU is severely scaled down for thermal reasons. This means they are behind from the get go even when you compair it with mid range of normal stuff of that time.

@Condo it seems that CD Projekt Red shipped a not so good config for the game. This reddit thread shares some modifications to fix it which may or may not fix it.
https://reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/...

@Sony-wf-1000xm3 nice, thanks for sharing! :D