The next-gen upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has arrived on consoles and PC. This long-awaited patch brought many improvements to 2015’s hit open-world action RPG, primarily in the graphics department. As is tradition with CDPR, the launch of this update had some issues, but surprisingly this time, they were mostly PC related, and since the launch, there have been some quick fixes, so let’s find out how Witcher 3 next-gen performance is today.
Related: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next-Gen Upgrade Review | The Test of Time
Is Witcher 3 Next-Gen Performance Good?
After the release of the next-gen patch for the PC version of The Witcher 3, many players reported severe issues with stutter even on high-end machines, frame rate drops, textures not loading correctly, and generally worse performance than before even without ray-tracing enabled. CDPR acknowledged these issues on the official The Witcher Twitter account.
Since then, the hotfix was released for PC, and CDPR stated on Twitter that it “should improve the overall stability and performance, and fix GOG & Steam overlays.” The situation with the launch problems is a little better now, but still, the performance is not ideal. By turning off ray-tracing, you definitely get a bigger performance boost in the PC version, but at the end of the day, that defeats the point of the next-gen update. We hope that CDPR will continue to patch the PC version.
As for console versions, things seem much better from the start on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, provided you don’t mind the 30fps limit. There is a 60fps performance and a 30fps ray tracing mode. Both modes implement the upscaling via AMD’s FSR (Fidelity Super Resolution, a variation of NVIDIA’s DLSS tech) that outputs the 4k image with dynamic resolution scaling. The result of all this is a relatively stable performance and, more significantly, a sharper image compared to the last-gen version. It should be added that the Xbox Series S version does not actually support ray tracing, but it has an additional quality mode that adds more detail.
So there you have it, that’s the current state of The Witcher 3 next-gen; play it on a new console, or wait for a few more patches on PC. It’s up to you. Have fun!
For more Witcher 3 Next-Gen here on Prima Games, check out How to Transfer Your Witcher 3 PS4 Save to PS5, Everything You Need to Know Before You Play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next-Gen Upgrade, and Witcher 3 Next-Gen Console Commands: Full List of Cheats.
