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The Witcher 3’s next-gen update hotfix revives PC performance, though issues remainRay tracing and rasterised performance on the up; AMD FSR looks broken
Ray tracing and rasterised performance on the up; AMD FSR looks broken
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
Hello, yes, I know this is our fourth post on the subject but it’s mostly good news –The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s next-gen update is now considerably less of atechnical muddle. After applying yesterday’sPC hotfix, performance with the new ray tracing settings is majorly improved, and if you don’t (or can’t) use those, The Witcher 3 no longer runs slower than it did before the next-gen update hobbled it.
The Witcher 3’s next-gen PC update is disappointingLiam and I discussed how the next-gen update ran before the hotfix.Watch on YouTube
The Witcher 3’s next-gen PC update is disappointing
To the credit of CD Projekt RED, who unfortunatelyhave experience in patching up troubled launches, this hotfix sorts out the next-gen update’s biggest problem: rasterised (i.e. non-ray traced) performance becoming worse than it was several years ago. To recap, we originally averaged 102fps on the RTX 3070 using a combination of the Ultra preset and a 1440p resolution, but this fell to 90fps after the update. My most recent test, post-hotfix, sees that bumped back to to 105fps. Nice!
Here’s a quick table of before-and-after results for the RTX 3070, which also show the hotfix enhances ray tracing performance. Consider that another problem solved, as while RT effects will always eat a big chunk of your frames-per-second, the next-gen update was arguably a bittoohungry. Now, it performs much more reasonably on last-gen RTX cards.
The hotfix also spared me from any crashes at all while running these tests, a refreshing change from the next-gen update’s initial state. Previously, I could be sent faceplanting on the desktop for changing some settings, or re-entering the game after alt-tabbing, or simply at random. Currently, there’s still some stuttering that needs smoothing out, but generally the Witcher 3’s next-gen update is in a markedly better state than it was last week.
Also, on the RX 7900 XT, sometimes the grass would fail to load in for a few seconds? Except for these little grass texture skirting boards? How odd.
There’s more work to be done, clearly, though this hotfix does well to amend two of the next-gen update’s most glaring issues. Hopefully CDPR can turn their attention to stuttering, the Radeon glitches, and general bug stomping, before they need to bust out the big yellow apology tweets again.
