Cyberpunk 2077 AMD FSR 3 disappoints with severe image quality degradation, shimmering, and blurry textures

CD Projekt Red recently added AMD FSR 3 with Frame Generation to Cyberpunk 2077, and, although it presented an exciting bump in frame rates — especially for handheld gamers — side-by-side testing reveals that not everything is coming up roses for AMD's FSR upscaling and Frame Generation in Cyberpunk 2077.

There are a handful of side-by-side tests with different hardware configurations. Steam Deck Gaming on YouTube provides the most thoughtful look at the performance of Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.13 and FSR 3 with Frame Generation on the Steam Deck — arguably where the performance gains are most useful. In his performance testing, FSR 3 with Frame Generation managed to net a decent performance uplift — from around 30–35 fps using FSR 2.1 to around 45–55 fps using FSR 3 and Frame Generation.

Curiously, in Cyberpunk 2077, different parts of the map seemed to react differently to FSR 3 and FG. While there were some areas of the map that suffered from severe image quality degradation, the urban environments generally saw the least visual artefacts. In his testing, FSR 3 Native with Frame Generation and low graphics settings actually seemed to strike the best balance between visual quality and frame rate, with the game settling at around 50 fps with reasonable image quality.

Of course, AMD's FSR 3 and its Frame Generation are both hardware-agnostic, which allowed 54 FPS and MxBenchmarkPC on YouTube to test the upscaling tech with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and GeForce RTX 3080, respectively. The GTX 1650 also saw some impressive frame rate gains, with FSR 3 and Frame Generation resulting in around 60–85 fps, compared to 25–45 fps in 1080p native. Much like the testing with the Steam Deck, however, FSR did result in some flickering and shimmering in-game objects and blurry edges when moving at high speeds.

The RTX 3080 saw a similar performance uplift, with 1440p testing with FSR 3 and Frame Generation reaching around 71–75 fps, compared to just 40 fps with FSR 2.1 enabled. However, the same shimmering is present on reflective surfaces and foliage. At 4K with FSR 3 Performance mode, ray tracing, and Frame Generation enabled, the RTX 3080 was able to reach around 45–53 fps. Using Nvidia's DLSS 3.7 in Performance mode and with ray tracing on Ultra, the RTX 3080 was able to reach similar frame rates with objectively better image quality, making FSR a hard sell for those with Nvidia hardware.

Not only was performance disappointing on slower hardware, like the AMD Radeon iGPU in the Steam Deck, with serious visual artefacts, there were also some bugs spotted by Steam Deck Gaming, mostly pertaining to using cars and motorcycles in the game. It's unclear if and when CD Projekt Red will update FSR 3 to FSR 3.1, but FSR 3.1 has promised further visual and performance improvements, compared to the previous implementations.

It is interesting, however, that the problems with the graphics caused by FSR 3 are also present when using FSR 2.1, and using FSR 3 does net significant performance gains, which is a step in the right direction for those that were already reliant on features like FSR 2.1 to get playable frame rates.

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