Cyberpunk 2077 is the biggest PC launch of all time, with PC gamers the world over blown away by the future dystopian RPG masterpiece.
The game is graphically stunning, too, with a gorgeous art style brought to life with spectacular lighting effects like volumetric fog and real time ray tracing, elevating in-game immersion to incredible levels.
However, getting the game to run well on all but the most insanely powerful PCs is a challenge – and even if you have a powerful RTX graphics card installed in your rig. Luckily, though, for PC gamers who are playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a PC with an AMD CPU then a new quick hack has been discovered that improves performance notably.
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The discovery was made by Reddit commentator u/BramblexD, who noticed that Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't using all the logical cores on AMD's processors, just the physical ones. BramblexD also noticed that this doesn't happen on Intel CPUs.
As a result, it seems like a lot of AMD CPU PC gamers will have had their Cyberpunk 2077 performance held back by this issue, with only a limited amount of processor threads used in-game – a fact that will no-doubt have affected performance.
Luckily, though, there is an easy way to check if not all your CPU cores are being used, as well as a way to fix that, too. These are now detailed below:
How to check if all your logical cores are being used
Ok, to check if your processor is indeed only using a limited number of logical cores on PC simply open the Task Manager (achieved by right-clicking the Start button and selecting 'Task Manager'), click 'more details' and then the 'performance' tab.
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Next right click on the graph you can see and then click 'change graph to' and then select 'logical processors'.
Finally, launch Cyberpunk 2077 and then look at the graph (you can alt-tab back to the graph if necessary) to see how many cores are maxed out – if only half of them are then you know that not all of your processor's logical cores are being used by Cyberpunk 2077 and your performance is compromised.
How to get all logical cores working in Cyberpunk 2077
Now here's how to fix that performance issue, which was deduced by Reddit user UnhingedDoork. Firstly head on over to mh-nexus.de and grab the free Hex Editor software. This is needed to make the most basic hex edit on the Cyberpunk 2077 executable.
Secondly, run the editor and then open the Cyberpunk 2077 executable (found in your Cyberpunk install directory (it is called 'Cyberpunk2077.exe'). The two PC install directories you could have are either:
GoG: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Cyberpunk 2077\bin\x64\
or
Steam: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cyberpunk 2077\bin\x64
Penultimately, once the executable has been opened use the shortcut command Ctrl+F to open a search box and then enter the following numbers:
75 30 33 C9 B8 01 00 00 00 0F A2 8B C8 C1 F9 08
This will locate that series of values within the editor. Then finally, select the first character, which is '75' and change it to 'EB'. Then click save.
And that's it, job done. You can check that it has worked by once more consulting the logical processors graph when Cyberpunk 2077 is running, which should not show all logical cores maxed out.
Naturally, you will also now get a improvement in framerate within the game itself, which it has been reported for some as up to 25 per cent extra frames. Very nice!
While there's plenty of awesome quick hacks actually in Cyberpunk 2077, for AMD CPU PC gamers this is absolutely essential. Here's hoping those incoming PC patches also help improve frame rate and stability, as too a new driver update from Nvidia and AMD.
Rob has been writing about computing, gaming, mobile, home entertainment technology, toys (specifically Lego and board games), smart home and more for over 15 years. As the editor of PC Gamer, and former Deputy Editor for T3.com, you can find Rob's work in magazines, bookazines and online, as well as on podcasts and videos, too. Outside of his work Rob is passionate about motorbikes, skiing/snowboarding and team sports, with football and cricket his two favourites.
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