I just built a new gaming PC with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and an RTX 4070 Ti, but I'm getting surprisingly low and inconsistent frame rates in a specific game, Cyberpunk 2077, even at 1440p with DLSS enabled. My frames dip into the 50s in crowded city areas, which doesn't match the benchmarks I've seen for this hardware. I've updated my GPU drivers and checked that my RAM is running at its advertised speed. What are the most effective FPS optimization steps I should take next? Should I be tweaking in-game settings like crowd density or shadow quality, or are there Windows power settings or Nvidia Control Panel adjustments that typically yield the biggest performance gains for this kind of CPU-bound scenario?
Sounds like you’re hitting a CPU bottleneck in the crowded city scenes. Start by enabling DLSS in Quality mode and lower crowd density and population distance a notch, then re-test to see if your frametimes smooth out.
Do a quick bottleneck check while you test: run a replay or a representative busy scene and monitor CPU utilization, GPU utilization, and frametime spikes with a tool like MSI Afterburner or HWInfo. If the CPU is maxed but the GPU still has headroom, focus on CPU-heavy settings (crowd AI distance, NPCs, physics). If the GPU is maxed, tune shadows, reflections, and any ray tracing you may have on.
In-game tweak order that tends to move the needle: 1) Crowd density and population distance, 2) Shadow quality/distance, 3) Reflections and any ray tracing, 4) DLSS settings (start with Quality, then test Performance or Frame Generation if available). Keeping the resolution stable helps, but DLSS gives you the leeway to push other settings.
NVIDIA/Windows settings that often yield bigger gains than you’d expect: set Windows power plan to High Performance, in Nvidia Control Panel set Power Management Mode to Prefer maximum performance, Low Latency Mode to On, and v-sync off if you’re using DLSS. Consider enabling G-Sync/VRR if your monitor supports it and cap framerate to smooth out spikes.
A simple 3-step testing plan: baseline with mid-range settings and DLSS Quality; then try DLSS Performance (or with Frame Generation if you have an RTX 40-series) and compare frametimes; pick the setup that keeps most scenes above your target framerate without excessive drops. Keep your results in a small log so you can reproduce the pick later.
If you want, tell me your exact in-game settings, your monitor refresh rate, and whether you have RT or FPS frame generation on, and I can suggest a concrete slider-tuning plan for your particular scene variety.