Update: Hotfix deployed, no longer a downgrade

Update:CDPR have released a PC hotfix thatreturns non-ray traced performance to its previous levels, with RT performance getting a boost as well. Hooray! Though it’s still quite stuttery and it appears AMD FSR is causing crashes. Less hooray! The original article, based on test results taken before the hotfix, continues below:

Earlier today we brought news thatThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s next-gen update – a seemingly juicy serving of new ray tracing,DLSS/FSRupscaling, and assorted quality of life features – had in fact arrived ina bit of a mess. To assess the damage, I’ve spent some time with it myself, and can confirm: it ain’t great! Besides the devastating frames-per-second toll that the RT effects take, it seems far more crash-prone than I ever remember The Witcher 3 being in the past, and performance in general is just worse than it was pre-update.

This isn’t my usual performance analysis/best settings guide routine, because in this case I kinda think it’s better to wait and see if CD Projekt Red can tame the performance problems with hotfixes and future updates, which they’ve nowacknowledgedthey’re looking into. More on these woes below, and I also chatted to Liam about our shared inability to wrangle a good framerate out of the new settings:

First off, some balance. With all four of the new ray traced options enabled – that’s global illumination, reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion – The Witcher 3 does look noticeably better. The iffy screen space reflections on bodies of water are replaced, no longer jerking across the surface depending on where you’re looking, and the improved ambient occlusion give added depth to detailed interiors.

It’s great to see FSR and DLSS involved, too. In an ideal world, these performance boosters would be in every PC game, and while DLSS looks crisper in its Balanced and Quality modes than FSR does, their joint inclusion means every GPU make is covered. ForRTX 4080andRTX 4090owners, there’s also the option of enablingDLSS 3with frame generation. It’s a commendably substantial update, graphics-wise.

Sadly, even upscaling can’t save most GPUs from buckling under the weight of Wild Hunt’s ray tracing additions. I’ve mainly been testing with a high-endRTX 3070, installed alongside an Intel Core i5-11600K and 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and at 1440p, the all-in RT Ultra preset averages a mere 27fps. With DLSS on Balanced mode (and this is DLSS 2, not DLSS 3 with its interpolated bonus fames), that only rose to 34fps.

There’s another preset simply named RT, which keeps the RT Ultra preset’s ray traced global illumination but switches it off for reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion. Back at 1440p, a combination of the RT preset and Balanced DLSS afforded the RTX 3070 a more reasonable 51fps. However, that still means you’re roughly halving overall performance to get the least individually noticable ray tracing effect of the bunch.

Chances are you’d have a better time with an even faster/newer/more expensive GPU, but when I tried to find out by installing the brand spanking newAMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the game couldn’t avoid crashing long enough for me to grab a single meaningful benchmark. Yes, stability is an issue with this update as well. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX got the worst of it, conking out to desktop every single time, but the RTX 3070 also saw more than its share of crashes: random crashes, crashes when changing settings, crashes when alt-tabbing. Not good.

Luckily, you canroll back The Witcher 3 to an earlier versionif the next-gen update isn’t working out for you. Not as lucky as we’d be if it didn’t botch anything in the first place, but hey.