How To Re-Enable Cyberpunk's Ryzen Multithreading Fix With The 1.05 Update
Over the weekend, developer CD Projekt Red rolled out a patch (v1.05) for Cyberpunk 2077 containing a whole bunch of fixes, improvements, and tweaks. One of the fixes is supposed to address the simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) issue with AMD's Ryzen processors. However, if your Ryzen processor is still not being properly utilized, you can re-apply a rather simple HEX edit to get it firing on all cylinders again.
You should also check out our Cyberpunk 2077 review, if you have not done so already, in which we discuss the game's performance and present several benchmarks to digest. We also talk about some of the glitches that hitched a ride to the game's release.
As for the SMT issue, some Ryzen owners have noticed that the game is not correctly utilizing all of the available cores and threads of their CPU. The issue essentially dates back to AMD's stance in late 2017 that games can take a performance hit due to SMT, whereas Intel concluded that Hyper Threading should be enabled on its CPUs to improve gaming performance.
CD Projekt Red seems to have erred on the side of caution with regards to Ryzen, hence why there appears to be untapped performance on certain AMD platforms. The ones that should benefit the most are older Ryzen processors, like the Ryzen 3000 series and especially the 2000 series. When we tried the HEX edit method ourselves, we saw up to an 11 percent gain on an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X.
The 1.05 patch was supposed to fix the SMT issue with Ryzen processors, but users on Reddit claim they are still seeing performance gains by re-applying the HEX edit, after applying the patch. If you want to try it yourself, here is what you need to do...
- Grab a HEX editor (HxD is free)
- Navigate to the Cyberpunk2077.exe and make a backup, just in case
- Open Cyberpunk2077.exe with your HEX editor (drag it to HxD if using that one)
- Press CTRL+F and search for 75 2D 33 C9 B8 01 00 00 00 0F A2 8B C8 C1 F9 08
- Change the first value (75) to EB
- Save and you are good to go
Note that this is a different line of code than the original one we wrote about a little over a week ago. However, the effect is the same. Whether or it works or not with the patch in place, well, your mileage will vary.
One of the users in the thread claimed their Ryzen 7 2700 went from 40-50 percent utilization, to 60-75 percent after making the HEX edit. Furthermore, they also claimed this resulted in a 10-15 frames per second gain.
On the flip side, another user said they saw a 10 percent performance drop with the HEX edit in place, albeit on a newer Ryzen 9 5900X CPU. It's said this edit mainly benefits processors with a single CCD, and not two CCDs like the Ryzen 9 5900X.
Yet another person said they saw no difference at all in actual performance with their Ryzen 9 3900X paired with a GeForce RTX 3080, though the CPU utilization did go up. Results are all over the map, it seems. Our advice? If you are using an older Ryzen processor, it's worth giving this a shot. After all, if it does not do anything, just restore the backup or manually revert the edit.
