For the current PC release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered, the best settings depend on your GPU, resolution, and target frame rate. For a reliable starting point, leave ray tracing and path tracing off, use a high-quality rasterized preset, and add an upscaler only if native resolution cannot meet your target. Try ray tracing or path tracing after that, one feature at a time.
Remastered launched on September 29, 2026, as a free upgrade for existing owners within the same platform ecosystem. It uses DirectX 12 only; advice to switch between DX11 and DX12 applies to the older Next-Gen Update, not this release. CD PROJEKT RED’s Remastered feature notes describe the current changes and PC-specific options.
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| 1 |
![NAMCO - CD Projekt Red - The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, Playstation 5 [English Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51dWUfwFl5L._SL160_.jpg)
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NAMCO - CD Projekt Red - The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, Playstation 5 [English Edition] | $49.29 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition - Xbox One | $27.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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Start with your resolution and performance target
Choose the display resolution you intend to play at, then decide what frame rate you want to sustain. Those two choices determine how much room you have for image-quality features. There is no documented universal best preset or neutral, repeatable performance ranking for the Remastered build, so treat the profiles below as starting points rather than tested recipes.
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To tune your own setup, use the same scene for each comparison and change one setting or feature at a time. Compare not just the frame-rate readout but also image quality and responsiveness. If you share your GPU, resolution, and target frame rate, recommendations can be made more specific.
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Choose a starting profile
Frame-rate first
- Leave ray tracing and path tracing off.
- Start with a high-quality rasterized preset, then lower settings that matter least to you until performance is stable at your target.
- If native resolution is too demanding, try an upscaler supported by your GPU and compare the result with native rendering.
Balanced image quality and performance
- Begin with path tracing off. Try ray tracing only if performance remains acceptable at your chosen resolution.
- Keep a compatible upscaler available to recover performance, then check both image quality and responsiveness on your system.
- Test features individually so you can identify which change causes a performance or visual difference.
Visual showcase
- On capable hardware, try the Ultra+ preset with path tracing enabled.
- Use an appropriate upscaler and frame-generation option if your GPU supports them.
- Expect this profile to emphasize lighting fidelity and to be hardware intensive. Frame-generated output is not the same as native rendered frame rate.
Understand rasterization, ray tracing, and path tracing
Rasterized rendering is the sensible baseline when performance is the priority. Ray tracing adds selected effects; path tracing takes a broader approach to lighting. NVIDIA describes path tracing as unifying lighting and rendering in one system rather than combining rasterized and ray-traced effects. Its explanation says path tracing uses more rays and multiple light bounces, while selective ray-traced effects can focus on features such as reflections or shadows. NVIDIA’s Remastered feature article provides that description.
In Remastered, PC options include path tracing, ray-traced local shadows, and ray-traced HairWorks, alongside updated screen-space reflections and shadows. CD PROJEKT RED also lists GTAO, a screen-space ambient-occlusion option. Treat these as choices to test against your own performance and visual preferences, not as features that should all be enabled by default.
Use the upscaler and frame-generation option your GPU supports
The PC feature set includes DLSS 4.5 with Ray Reconstruction, FSR 4 with frame generation and Anti-Lag 2, and XeSS 2.0 with frame generation and low latency. CD PROJEKT RED states that FSR 4 supports Radeon RX 7000 Series and newer; unsupported GPUs use FSR 2. Check which options are available on your hardware, then compare their image quality and responsiveness with native rendering.
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Know which graphics settings to adjust first
The Ultra+ category affects several setting families: background-character count, shadow quality, grass density, texture quality, foliage visibility range, terrain quality, water quality, and detail level. These labels are useful places to investigate when tuning the game, but the available published notes do not quantify each setting’s frame-rate cost in the current Remastered build.
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If performance misses your target, change one of these settings at a time in the same scene and note whether the improvement is worth the visual trade-off. Avoid assuming that a particular option is the largest performance drain on every PC; the evidence does not establish a current universal per-setting ranking.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Check compatibility and interpret performance claims carefully
Remastered uses native DirectX 12 rendering with multithreading, and its system requirements changed with the upgrade, according to CD PROJEKT RED. It is not the older version’s hybrid DX11/DX12 renderer. NVIDIA describes the 2022 Next-Gen Update as hybrid and the 2026 Remastered edition as DX12-only in its Remastered feature article.
NVIDIA reports up to 385 FPS at 4K on an RTX 5090 and up to 245 FPS on an RTX 5080 in a described showcase configuration using Ultra+ path tracing, DLSS 4.5 6X Multi Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction. These are NVIDIA’s company claims for that feature and hardware stack—not independent results, typical-player expectations, or native-frame-rate guarantees. NVIDIA’s article gives the stated context.
A separate NVIDIA claim of up to a 2.3X performance increase concerns DLSS 3 in the 2022 Next-Gen Update. It should not be applied as a general result for Remastered, other GPUs, or other DLSS versions. NVIDIA’s 2022 update article describes that older claim.
What changed from the earlier edition
Remastered brings an improved shading model, updated textures and models, better grass and foliage lighting, updated tone mapping, improved HDR calibration, and updated screen-space reflections and shadows. Current PC features also include path tracing and the upscaling and frame-generation technologies described above. Earlier Next-Gen Update notes discussed ray-traced global illumination and ambient occlusion, plus optional PC ray-traced reflections and shadows; those notes are historical context, not a complete description of the current Remastered feature set. CD PROJEKT RED’s Next-Gen Update notes list the older update’s changes.
Quick Recap
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