The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next Gen – Graphics Card Performance Test. Brutal hardware requirements with ray tracing

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is undoubtedly one of the best cRPGs of recent years, which, despite the passage of time, has not aged, still looks good and delivers a lot of fun. We could easily wait for the continuation, but CD Projekt RED decided to give the fans a surprise, that is, a free gift in the form of the Next Gen update, which changes a lot in the gameplay and visual class. There’s just one problem… because even though you can download The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next Gen for free, it absolutely doesn’t mean you’ll be shooting all the fireworks on your current hardware. Unfortunately, the requirements have increased significantly, but the real massacre takes place when ray tracing is turned on …

Author: Sebastian Oktaba

Although this is hard to believe The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt debuted in May 2015, currently more than 7.5 years of production. Perhaps no PC title, at least among those who don’t enjoy playing online, can boast of similar popularity. Geralt is a great hero. CD Projekt RED has been working on the next-gen update for a long time, eventually even using the help of mods, because The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has received a lot of great mods in the meantime. And the approach of the creators deserves doubly praise, because the gift is free, and The changes were not limited to the visible layerOr improve controls, camera or some functions. The basis, however, remains a very serious graphics update, where we will find a higher level of graphics settings (Uber Plus), DirectX 12 implementation, ray tracing, NVIDIA Reflex, Frame Generation and DLSS 3. Most developers would like to have a few hundred zlotys For such an update, the owners of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt do not have to pay.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next Gen is a solid dose of gameplay and graphics tweaks, which has gained DirectX 12 mode to enable advanced ray tracing. We’ve already got NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and NVIDIA Reflex.

The manufacturer has not published official hardware requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next Gen, so the items in the third and fourth columns were based on my own experience. The differences between the configurations are colossal, which confirms the vintage nature of the production on the one hand, and the amazing flexibility of the engine on the other. As for the course of benchmark tests, the most interesting seems to be comparing the old level of Uber settings with the new Uber Plus. Uber Plus is seasoned with ray tracing and finally powered by NVIDIA DLSS. In all, I set up four categories of results for each decision, which should be enough to determine which equipment you need to see All The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the next generation of fireworks. Unfortunately, one thing is certain – the requirements have increased significantly compared to the seven-year-old original. The biggest challenge, of course, is ray tracing, which deserves a separate discussion.

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The Uber Plus settings level for example introduces more detailed shading, a larger drawing distance, better screen space reflections, higher resolution textures, new anti-aliasing methods, improved lighting, and more diverse vegetation. You get the most results Modification is commonly available (HD remasters, HD monster remasters, immersive real-time scenes, etc.), but the developers added ray tracing support. However, enabling ray tracing requires DirectX 12 mode, which was not present in the previous version, while ray tracing itself includes global lighting, reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion. Four simultaneous effects is a simple recipe for a huge quantum leap and a drastic increase in hardware requirements. That’s why window generation support is provided by AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS including window generation (DLSS 3), while for dessert we also get NVIDIA Reflex.