The Witcher 3 players haven’t been entirely happy with CD PROJEKT RED’s newly released next-gen update, with many complaining of poor performance when ray tracing is enabled, but help may have arrived in the form of the The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Optimized Ray Tracing Mod, a mod that is said to offer up to a 50% FPS boost for fans of the acclaimed 2015 action RPG inspired by Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels.
According to a video shared by MxBenchmarkPC, The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Optimized Ray Tracing Mod features optimized Quality/Performance modes and can provide at least up to 40% better frame rates for graphics cards that include the GeForce RTX 3060, a last-generation GPU from NVIDIA that initially launched in February 2021 with a $329 MSRP.
“Same RTGI coverage distance as vanilla,” reads the latest update for the mod that can be found on NexusMods, authored by alikoko. “1/4 Ray count. Lower number of probes but with more spacing in-between so more prone to light leakage in small indoor areas. Improved accuracy over v0.5. 40-50% higher fps than vanilla.”
The Witcher 3 players can install the mod by copying and pasting the OptimizedRT.ini file into the [The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\platform\pc] folder, as explained on the mod’s about page.
Released for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X on December 14, 2022, CD PROJEKT RED’s free next-gen update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt offers improved visuals and performance, new additional content, Photo Mode, and other upgrades to the original version of the game.
Some of the PC-specific improvements that the next-gen update introduces include Ultra+ graphical options, enabling a greater number of background characters, higher-quality textures, and more.
The update also added support for the latest version of NVIDIA’s upscaling technology, DLSS 3, to the game.