Hello from our The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Next Gen Update guide. We have prepared this guide for those who spend a lot of time testing all the settings and fiddling with the game’s configuration files to get extra performance! We hope they will save you some time.
This is the guide SteelerTy86 it was created by. You can find the author’s link at the end of the guide.
The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Next-Gen Update
Welcome to our The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Next Gen Update guide. This guide will show you detailed information about optimizing The Witcher 3 Next-Gen!
Which API?
First off, you’ll have to decide if you want to run the DX12 or DX11 version of the game. As of patch 4.04, DX11 should be used by the overwhelming majority of players.
Although DX11 does not allow for RT, DLSS/FSR, or Nvidia Reflex, it is significantly more stable, offered significantly higher FPS when using the same settings, and produced a clearer image overall with more consistent frametimes.
A few other thoughts – The RT implementation is fairly lackluster in this game. It absolutely looks better than standard rasterization, but it’s not worth the colossal FPS hit. DLSS/FSR also is implemented poorly and produces a very soft, blurry image. Unless you are running a 4090/7900XTX system that is capable to just brute force through the weak DX12 implementation, DX11 is the superior API.
Recommended Graphics Settings
Anti-Aliasing: TAAU
Sharpening: Off (If playing at a low resolution, set this to low)
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+
Screen Space Reflections: High (the high setting for SSR only works properly on DX12 so it does not matter which setting is selected here if you’re on DX11. If on DX12, set to low. This tanks FPS for a minor but noticeable improvement to water and some other surfaces.
Motion Blur: Off
Blur: Off
Bloom: On (Worth noting, the Light Shafts setting is dependent on this setting to function, so if you disable bloom, you cannot have light shafts. I normally dislike bloom, but CDPR’s implementation here is good. Leave this on.
Depth of Field: Off (It looks decent in cutscenes, but unfortunately this setting is also on during standard gameplay. This means you get slightly blurred distant detail and a slight drop to FPS when leaving the setting enabled.
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: Off
Light Shafts: On (Sometimes I find the effect to be a bit much, but it does a great job at making the game look less flat and just gives more depth to the scene overall. I’d leave this on.
Camera Lens Effects: Off
Nvidia Hairworks: Ok, so Nvidia Hairworks looks incredible on animals/monsters, but ironically, Geralt’s hair has always looked terrible to me with this on. If you want the best of both worlds, grab this mod. https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/7217 – As far as the settings, you can max all of them out most likely. Lower the AA setting some if you see major drops.
Number of Background Characters: High (After extensive testing, I finally settled on high. This essentially controls how many NPCs are walking around in the major cities. Low makes the cities near empty and should be avoided. Medium and High are solid. Ultra and Ultra+ in my opinion are actually overkill. You’ll be running into crowd npcs constantly. This is a user preference setting but to me High is just right.
Shadow Quality: Medium or Ultra+ (Ok, so this one took a lot of effort to make me feel confident with the recommendation. Shadow pop-in is a real problem in W3. Only the Ultra+ setting mostly eliminates it, so you should make an effort to hit ultra+ if possible, or if on a low-end system go for medium. The low setting does not offer any additional fps over medium, so medium is a good value here.
Terrain Quality: Ultra+ (This setting does not work or affect performance, so feel free to just max it)
Water Quality: Ultra+ (Controls the level of water tessellation, Geralt’s splashes, and waves during major storms. Max this unless your system is very old.)
Foliage Visibility Range: Ultra+ (If you have a lower end system, at least try for high here)
Grass Density: Medium/High (Low should be avoided as it shows a lot terrain patches without any grass. Medium looks decent. High is the best value here as it provides about 85%-90% of the quality of Ultra+ while saving some fps.
Texture Quality: Ultra+ (This actually controls both the texture resolution as well as the mipbias setting. Set this to Ultra+, but we will tweak TextureMipBias in the next section.
Detail Level: Ultra+ (This effects blood, decals, and some mesh quality settings. Can be maxed out safely assuming your card isn’t ancient.
Additional Tweaking
The user.settings file has a few settings that can be tweaked to reclaim some frames without sacrificing any noticeable level of visual fidelity. The file can be located in your documents>Witcher 3 folder.
First up is TextureMipBias. If using the Ultra+ setting, this will be at -2. This hits performance very hard and doesn’t impact the visuals much. After a lot of testing I’d recommend a value of -0.7. Of course, if you have performance to spare you can leave it as -2 and skip this tweak.
Next is CascadeShadowmapSize. This defaults to 4096 on the ultra+ setting but looks pretty much indistinguishable at 2048. This will provide a significant boost to fps and while retaining the other ultra+ shadow settings to avoid pop-in.
Another shadow tweak is FoliageShadowDistanceScale. This is can be dropped to the high preset of 16 for a significant fps increase. It controls the distance at which distant trees have shadowing applied to them and is generally not noticeable during most gameplay.
The final setting to adjust is TextureMemoryBudget. This controls the amount of VRAM allocated to the game’s textures. The default setting is 1200, but can be raised as high as 4000. If you have 8GBs of VRAM or more, this can be safely increased to 4000 and will help to reduce stutter, especially in the game’s major cities.
Wrapping Up
If you did use the tweaks from the last section, you’ll want to ensure you set the file to read only so your settings are locked in and won’t be changed. This can be done by right-clicking the user.settings file and clicking properties, then check the box. In-game, you’ll notice that shadow quality, texture quality, and foliage distance will be set to low. This is because the tweaks we changed don’t match with the game’s default presets, so it doesn’t know which setting to display, so it just shows as low.
