Cyberpunk 2077 Steam Machine performance was high on my list once version 2.5 arrived, so I went back to Night City on Valve’s living-room box to see how far it can be pushed. I started with a completely vanilla setup at native 4K, then dropped the resolution, and finally brought in plugins for upscaling and frame generation. The short version: the Steam Machine handles this one far better than I expected, and you don’t need any extras to have a great time.
What the Cyberpunk 2077 2.5 update brings
CD Projekt Red’s Edgerunners 2 Update (2.5) arrived on 22 October alongside the second season of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime. According to the official patch notes, it adds the Clampdown side quest, a gear set based on the character King, the HKGN 102.0 FM radio station and the Double Trouble perk, which lets V dual-wield Pistols and Revolvers. There’s also cross-platform mod support through mod.io.
On the technical side, the update lists performance optimisations and a refreshed set of AMD FSR options: FSR 3 upscaling is gone, while FSR 2.1, FSR 4 and FSR 3.1 Frame Generation remain. FSR 4 is the one that matters here, because it’s what I used for every in-game test below. If you want the handheld and headset side of the story, I’ve already tested Cyberpunk 2077 v2.5 on the Steam Deck and on the Steam Frame.
My settings for the native 4K test
For the first run I kept things simple: the High graphics preset at full 4K, with FSR 4 upscaling on Quality. As always, I turned off motion blur, depth of field and chromatic aberration to get the cleanest possible image. No plugins, no tweaks beyond that, just the game as it ships.
That’s worth being clear about, because “4K” here means a 4K output with FSR 4 doing the upscaling on Quality mode, not a raw native render. Even so, it’s a demanding target for a compact machine, and a good baseline to see what the hardware can do before any extras come into play.
Cyberpunk 2077 Steam Machine performance at 4K
The result genuinely surprised me. At 4K on the High preset, the game runs at a pretty decent 30 to 40 frames per second. FSR 4 normally takes a bit more of a performance hit than older upscalers, so I expected worse, but the image looks extremely clean.
To see whether that held up, I went straight into combat and used the Sandevistan, with its slowdown effect and lots of particles popping off at once. The frame rate gets pretty close to 30fps in those moments, but it never actually drops under it. If you’re happy playing at 30 to 40fps and want the sharpest picture on a 4K TV, this is a perfectly decent way to play.
1440p: double the frame rate
If you’d rather have a higher frame rate, the one tweak that matters is dropping the resolution to 1440p while keeping every other setting exactly the same. That pretty much doubles the frame rate, taking the Steam Machine to 60fps and above.
You still get the visual clarity of the High preset with FSR 4 on Quality, and it holds up under pressure too. Even driving around the city and getting into combat from the car, I was still getting 60 frames per second quite happily. Honestly, you don’t need to change anything else if this is what you’re after.
HelixSR and MAKO frame gen with Decky MultiFrameGen
Of course, the Steam Machine runs SteamOS, so there’s a whole host of plugins available to push it further. I used our own Decky plugin, MultiFrameGen, which makes it easy to combine the HelixSR upscaler with MAKO frame generation. If you want to try it yourself, my Decky MultiFrameGen install guide walks through the setup.
HelixSR swaps out the game’s own DLSS option for the Helix upscaler, so that DLSS model can actually be used on this AMD hardware. At 1440p, I got pretty much the same frame rate as with FSR 4. The two are very close visually, but I do find HelixSR gives the image a little more crispness, and I didn’t notice any difference in input latency. It stayed extremely smooth, including while driving around.
Turning on MAKO frame generation as well, with its adaptive mode going up to three times, the Steam Machine hits 120fps very easily. It does add a very minor amount of input latency. I didn’t really notice it until I was trying to line up some fine shots, and overall it’s easy to get used to.
The plugin also lets you choose between HelixSR and the OptiScaler options, and you can still use the frame generation built into the game if you prefer. That works very well too. With 1440p already giving 60fps and up, I just don’t feel the need for it here.
Best settings for Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam Machine
There are lots of options on this one, which is a nice problem to have. Here’s how I’d sum them up:
- Best image: 4K, High preset, FSR 4 on Quality for 30 to 40fps that stays above 30 in heavy combat.
- Best balance: 1440p, High preset, FSR 4 on Quality for a smooth 60fps and up.
- Highest frame rate: 1440p with HelixSR and MAKO adaptive frame gen through MultiFrameGen for around 120fps, with a very small latency cost.
In every case I kept motion blur, depth of field and chromatic aberration switched off. HelixSR looks as good as the in-game FSR 4 Quality option, if not slightly better, so it’s well worth a try if you already have the plugin set up.
My verdict
Cyberpunk 2077 Steam Machine performance in version 2.5 is genuinely impressive. Native 4K at 30 to 40fps is more playable than I expected, and frame generation can push it all the way to 120fps if you want it. My main recommendation, though, is still the simplest: the High preset at 1440p in game, with no frame generation, for a smooth 60fps and above.
What settings are you running Cyberpunk 2077 at on your Steam Machine? Let me know in the comments.
