As we noted in our
Cyberpunk 2077 review, the latest creation from CD Projekt Red is a really good game at its core, with an engrossing story and interesting cast of characters that draw you into their universe. And at the same time, there are bugs. Quite a few them, actually, including one that prevents the game from taking full advantage of AMD's Ryzen processors. Good news, though—that particular bug and several others have been stomped out in the latest patch.
The inability to fully tap into AMD's simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) on Ryzen processors is one of the more high profile quirks of the game, which leaves untapped performance on the table on some PCs. Up until now, users have had to rely on their own devices to get around the issue. There emerged two main solutions. One was to grab a HEX editor and
make a simple code change, and the other was to download a mod. Neither method is required at this point.
Or at least that will be the case soon. Working overtime, CD Projekt Red dropped its hotfix 1.05 patch today (Saturday), saying it is live now on
Xbox and PlayStation consoles, while the PC version will "follow soon." In the mean time, the developer laid out what fixes are headed to PC. They include the following...
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[AMD SMT] Optimized default core/thread utilization for 4-core and 6-core AMD Ryzen processors. 8-core, 12-core and 16-core processors remain unchanged and behaving as intended. This change was implemented in cooperation with AMD and based on tests on both sides indicating that performance improvement occurs only on CPUs with 6 cores and less.
- Fixed an issue with the way Raw Input is collected.
- Removed the use of AVX instruction set thus fixing crashes occurring at the end of the Prologue on processors not supporting AVX.
- Removed debug console to prevent functions that could lead to crashes or blocked quests. This doesn't mean we don't want to support the modding community. Stay tuned for more info on that.
- Ray traced reflections should no longer seem too bright in comparison to the environment.
- Fixed an issue with Steam Overlay crash on game shutdown.
- Removed the memory_pool_budgets.csv file. which was not connected with the final version of the game and had no influence on it (it was a leftover file used during the development to estimate memory usage. It had no effect on how much memory was actually allocated). Perceived performance increase after editing the file may have been related to restarting the game.
There are over half a dozen bug fixes for the PC alone, plus eight more geared specifically towards consoles, including improved image sharpness with Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain turned on, settings no longer resetting to default after several game session restarts, some visual anomalies have been stomped out, and more.
CD Projekt Red also made some gameplay improvements with the latest hotfix. For one, it claims to have improved the reaction times of NPCs taking cover. And secondly, it corrected the number of shots needed to kill civilians from a distance while in combat. These are in addition to some general stability improvements, including unspecified crash fixes.
The developer spent a bunch of time cleaning up quests as well. There are more than two dozen fixes and improvements related to quests, including an issue with Dum Dum following V after The Pickup is finished, and Jackie no longer disappearing in The Pickup or The Heist, to name just two.
In addition, there are visual improvements too. NPCs are faster to appear in the quest area during Stadium Love, Silencer icons are no longer displayed with no image in the inventory, some UI overlap issues have been fixed, and so forth.