CD PROJEKT RED (CDPR) recently released a new patch (4.01) for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that improves the overall stability and performance of the game on next-gen consoles and PC, including the addition of a PC-specific performance mode for ray-traced global illuminations, but the developer isn’t stopping there. According to a post that an employee shared on the official CDPR Forum today, the team is planning additional patches that should not only improve performance in the game even further via certain channels (e.g., better handling of CPU core utilization), but also resolve a number of outstanding issues, such as anomalies with ray tracing and game crashes. Users who have encountered problems with the game are encouraged to report their findings to CD PROJEKT RED’s technical support.
From a CD PROJEKT RED Forum post:
Thank you for your support and feedback on the Next-Gen update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Following Patch 4.01, we wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the issues the team is currently working on and to give a better understanding of what’s ahead. We are working on patches for the game and investigating all the reports you’re sending our way – please keep them coming!
We are currently investigating the following issues:
- CPU core utilisation.
- We are working to improve how the game handles CPU core utilisation.
- Performance of the DirectX 12 version.
- We are continuously working to improve the overall performance and stability of the DirectX 12 version of the game, and hope that you’ll see improvements with the coming patches.
- Performance on next-gen consoles.
- We’ve received reports from players who have noticed a decrease in frame rate while playing in Performance Mode on next-gen consoles. This is especially noticed in more demanding areas of the game like Novigrad and Beauclair.
- Ray traced global illumination improvements.
- We’re working on reducing global illumination lighting leaks.
- Ray traced shadows improvements.
- We’re investigating an issue with vegetation shadows “popping” depending on Geralt’s proximity and angle.
- Restoring horizon-based ambient occlusion on PC.
- Game crashes.
- We are continuously investigating game crashes that are reported to us via telemetry and tech support tickets.
- Battle Preparations quest still not working after the patch for some players.
- We are aware that some players who experienced an issue where it could be impossible to interact with Avallac’h before patch 4.01, may now experience an issue where there are no dialogue options that can progress the quest after the fix. We’re working on the underlying cause and steps to reproduce it.
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →Yeah they f*cking need another patch, cuz 4.01 wasn't great on either consoles or PC.
I have to say that 4.01 was pretty useless. It's great they added that setting but it doesn't really help. It's kind of sad that even with RT turned off this version still runs like crap compared to the original DX11 w/ similar mods. I tried playing it on the 3090 Ti/CRG9 rig a couple of weeks back and had to turn off so much stuff just to get to 30-40 FPS that the game looked absolutely horrid by then.
Meanwhile, it does look spectacular on the 4090/C2 setup but will avg 45-55 most of the time, with nearly everything maxed except post-processing stuff. On the 3090 Ti rig I can play CB2077 with similar maxed settings and get 35-55 FPS. It seems that with this game that FPS really tanks whenever there are a bunch of NPCs on the screen at the same time. If I go indoors, or there are only a couple onscreen it jumps significantly (roughly double)
Ever since that story about ReBar and Dead Space, I've been tinkering with NVPI and I think I've made some minor gains but not enough to write home about (I just increased the cache size to 5GB from 4GB this morning but haven't had a chance to test it). Meanwhile, I think I got rid of the purple glass effect, I had to add another setting for ReBar.
I guess this is the way of promoting next releases, keep people talking , and revisiting the game.
So I did some more experimenting with this on the weekend. On both rigs, I've enabled Rebar via NV Profile Inspector and increased the cache size to 10 GB (the default is 4GB). After doing this I also enabled frame generation on the 4090 (2925 MHz) and whether it was due to other updates and/or these changes as well, it is working a lot better now. I still see some stutters as it tries to figure things out in between various animations but not nearly as dramatic as before. With frame generation on, DLSS quality, and everything maxed (sans post junk as usual), I was seeing 80-110 FPS at 4K. It honestly was the best experience yet with this version of the game. Still not perfect but much better than before.
With the 3090 Ti (2160 MHz) I did the same, sans frame generation, and it improved somewhat. FPS was 40-55 with dips in the 30s as opposed to 30s most of the time. Still rough but at least playable. I'm still considering that mod that reduces the ray counts, etc. but I've heard is that CDPR might be going to release an update that does the same. If anyone decides to try rebar on their own just make sure to turn on and assign all 3 three profile settings (I don't remember which I chose but it was the one with the most games listed in it). As far as cache goes there's a 5GB setting but I figured why not hit it with a hammer and go with 10GB since I've got this installed on PCIe 4.0 SSDs on both rigs, which may have helped. I also used HXD to get the cutscenes back to 32:9.