For better visuals in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered without sacrificing more performance than necessary, start with a preset that suits your PC and target resolution, then raise settings in small steps while checking frame pacing in the game. Treat ray tracing as an optional visual upgrade and path tracing as a high-end choice, not a baseline requirement. The Remastered edition launched on September 29, 2026; settings advice and benchmark results for the 2015 release or 2022 Next-Gen update may not transfer directly.
Start with your resolution and performance goal
Choose the display resolution and the kind of experience you want before tuning individual graphics options. A stable, smooth frame rate may call for different compromises than maximum lighting fidelity. The official CD PROJEKT RED PC requirements page warns that higher resolution significantly affects FPS and that results vary by scene, configuration and settings.
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- Choose your output resolution. Use the resolution you actually intend to play at; do not assume a performance target at one resolution applies at another.
- Pick a starting preset. Begin with the preset appropriate to your hardware tier, then adjust individual options rather than changing many at once.
- Check a representative scene. Look at both image quality and frame-time smoothness in the game, not just a single FPS reading or a static menu.
- Change one setting at a time. Keep the change if the visual improvement is worth its performance cost; otherwise restore it and test another option.
This is a practical tuning method, not a universal ranking of the most expensive settings. The performance effect of an option depends on the current Remastered build, scene, resolution and PC.
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Preset and Ultra+ settings
Presets are a useful baseline, not a promise that every option will suit your hardware or priorities. The 2022 Next-Gen update documented Ultra+ controls covering background characters, shadows, grass density, texture quality, foliage visibility range, terrain, water and detail. Those categories help explain the kinds of trade-offs a player may encounter, but Remastered changed the renderer and graphics system. Do not assume the older update’s exact menu labels, behavior or performance costs are unchanged in the 2026 edition.
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If a setting is available in your current build, judge it by the scene: texture quality affects surface detail, while foliage and visibility options affect how vegetation and distant detail appear. Shadows and lighting affect how scenes are shaded. Their individual costs cannot be ranked reliably across PCs from the available official information.
Ray tracing and path tracing
Ray tracing and path tracing are not interchangeable labels for one switch. NVIDIA describes the Next-Gen renderer as hybrid, with selectable ray-traced global illumination, ambient occlusion, shadows and reflections. For Remastered, NVIDIA describes path tracing as a more unified lighting and rendering approach, with more rays and light bounces than a mixture of ray-traced and rasterized effects. This is NVIDIA’s technical description; the practical point is that path tracing aims for more comprehensive lighting, while targeted ray-traced effects apply to selected parts of the image.
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CD PROJEKT RED presents path tracing as the edition’s most visually advanced option and assigns it a separate, high-end hardware tier. It is therefore best treated as a maximum-visuals branch for capable systems, rather than a prerequisite for good image quality. The cost varies by system; the official tier targets use upscaling, and the path-tracing target also uses frame generation.
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Upscaling, frame generation and Ray Reconstruction
| Technology | What it does | What to keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| DLSS, FSR or XeSS upscaling | Renders internally below the output resolution and reconstructs the image. | It changes the rendering-resolution side of the performance and image-quality trade-off. The official Remastered RT and path-tracing requirement measurements use these technologies set to Auto. |
| Frame generation | Creates additional displayed frames. | It is distinct from upscaling; it does not mean the game is rendering every displayed frame in the same way. CD PROJEKT RED’s path-tracing requirement target includes frame generation. |
| Ray Reconstruction | NVIDIA’s feature for reconstructing ray-traced or path-traced effects. | It is a reconstruction feature for those effects, not another name for upscaling or frame generation. |
Use the upscaling option supported by your system and compare the image at your actual output resolution. Do not compare a native-resolution, no-upscaling result directly with a target measured using automatic upscaling as if the conditions were identical.
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Use the official hardware tiers as targets, not guarantees
CD PROJEKT RED publishes Minimum, Recommended, Ultra, RT Minimum, RT Recommended and Path Tracing tiers. The published table targets 30 or 60 FPS depending on tier and resolution. These are vendor targets, not guaranteed frame rates for every scene or configuration. The measurement method differs by tier, so the FPS targets are not an apples-to-apples comparison of native rendering against ray tracing.
| Tier group | Published measurement approach | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum, Recommended and Ultra | Native resolution, with upscaling off. | Use the tier for a starting point, while accounting for the resolution and scene you actually play. |
| RT Minimum and RT Recommended | DLSS, FSR or XeSS set to Auto. | The listed target includes automatic upscaling; it is not a native-resolution result. |
| Path Tracing | DLSS, FSR or XeSS set to Auto, with frame generation enabled. | The listed target depends on both automatic upscaling and frame generation. |
The path-tracing row names an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 with 16 GB of VRAM and lists a 2160p, 60 FPS target with frame generation. That is a specification for CD PROJEKT RED’s path-tracing tier, not a requirement for ordinary play or the other tiers. Do not infer that every RTX 5080 system will hold 60 FPS in every scene.
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Choose a tuning path that matches your priority
If smooth performance matters most
- Begin at a preset aligned with the official non-RT tier closest to your hardware and intended resolution.
- Keep ray tracing and path tracing out of the baseline until you know how the game performs without them.
- If you need more performance, consider a supported upscaler and assess image quality at your normal viewing distance.
- Reduce or restore individual detail options in measured steps, checking frame pacing in more than one scene.
If you want stronger lighting without going straight to path tracing
- Try the available targeted ray-tracing effects one at a time, if your build and GPU expose them.
- Compare the same scene with the effect enabled and disabled so you can judge the visible gain.
- Use the RT tier as a reference, remembering that CD PROJEKT RED measured it with upscaling set to Auto.
If maximum visual fidelity is the priority
- Use the path-tracing tier as a high-end reference and account for its frame-generation and upscaling assumptions.
- Check whether the frame rate and frame pacing remain acceptable in actual gameplay, not just a favorable scene.
- Do not buy a GPU solely because of a path-tracing target unless that specific experience is your goal; the official requirements include lower tiers for other play configurations.
Check system and version details before troubleshooting
Storage and Windows support
CD PROJEKT RED says an SSD is required for the current technical enhancements. It also says Windows 10 is no longer officially supported: the game may still run, but compatibility and performance are not guaranteed. An SSD is an installation requirement, not a graphics setting or visual upgrade.
Missing options or unexpected behavior
Update the game and confirm which distribution build you are running if a graphics option is missing or behaves differently from an older guide. Windows Central reported that the October 1, 2026 Patch 5.00b hotfix fixed DLSS availability in the Xbox Play Anywhere PC version and adjusted lighting. That report concerns a specific distribution build; it does not establish that every PC version has the same issue or fix.
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Older advice about HairWorks and HBAO+ also needs a version check. NVIDIA’s original guide explains those features for the DirectX 11-era game and reports HBAO+ running four FPS slower than SSAO in its historical test. That figure is not a Remastered benchmark and should not be used to predict current performance.
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