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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt/Beginner & Core Systems

The Witcher 3 Remastered: Best PC Settings for Performance and Visuals

Vaagame10 min read

The Remastered rebuilt the renderer around native DX12 and raised the official requirements. CD PROJEKT RED's tiers translated, path tracing, DLSS 4.5, FSR 4 and XeSS 2.0 explained, plus Performance, Balanced and Visuals starter profiles.

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The Remastered is a free update, but it is not the lightweight game your PC remembers from

2015. Version 5.0 rebuilt the renderer around native DirectX 12, added a new lighting model and optional path tracing, and raised the official system requirements in the process — Windows 11 and an SSD are now the baseline at every tier. The good news is that the same menu scales from a GTX 1660 to an RTX

5080. This guide starts from CD PROJEKT RED's own requirements table, translates the new tech terms into plain English, and then gives you three starting profiles — Performance, Balanced and Visuals — clearly labelled as our recommendations, not official presets.

The launch trailer's "Modernized Systems and Tech" card. Underneath the slogan sits a genuinely new renderer — and a settings menu with more ways to spend your GPU than the 2015 game ever offered. — CD PROJEKT RED (official launch trailer)

At a glance

  • Renderer: Native DirectX 12 with multithreading (5.0 replaced the old translation layer)

  • Upscaling: DLSS 4.5 with ray reconstruction

    · FSR 4 (FSR 2 fallback on older AMD cards)

    · XeSS 2.0 — all with frame generation support

  • Official minimum: GTX 1660 / RX 5500 XT / Arc A580, 6 GB VRAM, 12 GB RAM — 1080p, 30 FPS, Low

  • Official recommended: RTX 2060 Super / RX 6600 XT / Arc B580, 8 GB VRAM, 16 GB RAM — 1080p, 60 FPS, High

  • Top official tier: Path tracing at 2160p targets an RTX 5080 and 16 GB VRAM

  • Baseline for every tier: 64-bit Windows 11, 60 GB on an SSD (95 GB free on the Epic Games Store)

  • Current PC patch: 5.01 (October 8, 2026) — it also fixes several settings bugs from launch, see section 7

  • Too old a PC? The launcher still offers the Classic (1.32) build

Night over Skellige. The rebuilt lighting model is the single biggest visual change in 5.0 — and lighting is exactly what the expensive settings below are paying for. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)

1. Start from the official requirements

CD PROJEKT RED published a six-tier requirements table alongside the Remastered announcement (the table itself was released as an image; the minimum and recommended rows are also printed as text on the Steam store page). These are the developer's own test targets — your mileage will vary by scene, but they are the right anchor for every choice in this guide:

  • Minimum — 1080p

    · 30 FPS

    · Low — GTX 1660

    · RX 5500 XT

    · Arc A580 — 6 GB — 12 GB

  • Recommended — 1080p

    · 60 FPS

    · High — RTX 2060 Super

    · RX 6600 XT

    · Arc B580 — 8 GB — 16 GB

  • Ultra — 1440p

    · 60 FPS

    · Ultra — RTX 3070 Ti

    · RX 6800 XT

    · Arc B580 (XeSS) — 12 GB — 24 GB

  • RT Minimum — 1080p

    · 30 FPS

    · RT, upscaling on — RTX 2060 Super

    · RX 6600 XT

    · Arc B580 — 8 GB — 16 GB

  • RT Recommended — 1440p

    · 60 FPS

    · RT Ultra, upscaling on — RTX 4080

    · RX 9070 XT

    · — — 12 GB — 24 GB

  • Path Tracing — 2160p

    · 60 FPS

    · RT Ultra, DLSS + frame generation — RTX 5080

    · —

    · — — 16 GB — 24 GB

Three things in that table deserve a beginner's attention. First, the CPU bar rises with the lighting, not the resolution: the path-tracing tier asks for a Core i9-13900K or Ryzen 7 9800X3D, while the minimum tier is content with a Core i5-8400 or Ryzen 5

2600. Second, every ray-tracing tier assumes an upscaler is switched on — ray tracing at native resolution is not in the developer's plan at any price. Third, CD PROJEKT RED's own footnote says the humble GTX 1660 can reach 60 FPS or higher at the Minimum settings — the floor of this game is lower than the table's 30 FPS headline suggests.

2. The 5.0 tech stack in plain English

You do not need to be an engineer, but five terms decide your whole settings page:

  • Native DirectX

    12. The 4.0 release rendered through a translation layer; 5.0 renders DX12 natively with multithreading. You cannot toggle this — it is simply why frame pacing feels smoother than the next-gen version on the same hardware.

  • Ray tracing vs path tracing. Ray tracing computes selected light effects — shadows, reflections, global illumination — with real rays instead of approximations. Path tracing goes all the way: the entire lighting model is ray-based. It is the most beautiful and by far the most expensive option in the menu, which is why CD PROJEKT RED's table reserves it for one top-end tier.

  • Upscalers (DLSS / FSR / XeSS). These render the game below your screen's resolution and reconstruct the image with AI or temporal data. In 5.0 you get DLSS 4.5 with ray reconstruction on NVIDIA, FSR 4 on AMD (with frame generation and Anti-Lag 2 on RX 7000-series and newer; older AMD cards fall back to FSR 2), and XeSS 2.0 on Intel, with frame generation and a low-latency mode. Pick the one that matches your GPU brand.

  • Frame generation. The GPU inserts AI-built frames between rendered ones. It raises the FPS counter and smooths motion, at a small cost in input latency — most welcome at the path-tracing tier, where CD PROJEKT RED's own target assumes it.

  • GTAO. A new, higher-quality ambient-occlusion option — the soft shadowing where objects meet surfaces. It is the cheap way to buy most of ray tracing's grounding and depth without paying for ray tracing.

The rest of the 5.0 visual rebuild — the improved shading model, image-based lighting, subsurface scattering on skin, reworked bloom, and the integrated HD Reworked Project textures — is always on. It is the floor, not a setting.

The developer's own checklist from the announcement trailer — GTAO, ray-tracing improvements, a global lighting rework and a new shading model all appear by name. — CD PROJEKT RED (official announcement trailer)

3. The levers that actually move your frame rate

The graphics menu is long, but five decisions account for almost all of your performance:

  • Ray tracing tier. Off → ray tracing → path tracing is the steepest staircase in the game. Each step up should be a deliberate purchase, never a default.

  • Upscaler mode. Quality, Balanced and Performance modes trade sharpness for frames in that order. With ray tracing on, an upscaler is not optional — the official targets all assume one.

  • Resolution. Dropping from 2160p to 1440p, or 1440p to 1080p, is the oldest lever and still the most honest one. With a good upscaler you may not need it — try the upscaler first.

  • Shadows and GTAO. Shadow quality and the ambient-occlusion method tax every scene, in daylight and at night. GTAO is the quality pick; stepping occlusion down is a classic, nearly invisible saving.

  • HairWorks. The strand-based hair simulation now has a ray-traced version, and it has already caused one launch hiccup (see section 7). If your frames dip in close-ups and conversations, this is the first suspect.

Everything else — texture quality (mostly a VRAM question), foliage density, motion blur — fine-tunes around those five. Set the big five first, play for ten minutes, then adjust.

Fire, rain and dynamic light in one frame. Scenes like this are the stress test: if your settings hold here, they hold anywhere. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)

4. Profile one — Performance (our recommended starting point)

For: GTX 1660-class cards, 6–8 GB VRAM, laptops, and anyone who values a locked frame rate over sparkle.

Start from the game's Low or Medium preset at 1080p, ray tracing off, and your brand's upscaler on Balanced (Quality if your frame rate has headroom). HairWorks off, shadows and foliage visibility at medium, GTAO on only if the frame rate allows — it is the one luxury worth testing here. CD PROJEKT RED rates this hardware band at 30 FPS on Low and notes the GTX 1660 can push past 60 at those settings; with an upscaler helping, a stable 60 is a realistic goal at 1080p. What you keep is everything that is always on: the new lighting model, the HD Reworked textures and the smoother DX12 frame pacing.

Foliage and grass lighting were specifically improved in 5.0 — and vegetation density is one of the first places the Performance profile saves. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)

5. Profile two — Balanced (our recommended starting point)

For: RTX 2060 Super to RTX 3070-class cards, 8–12 GB VRAM — the hardware most returning players actually own.

Start from the High preset at 1080p (or Ultra at 1440p on the stronger end of this band, matching the official Ultra tier), upscaler on Quality, GTAO on, HairWorks on at its standard level. Ray tracing is your judgement call: CD PROJEKT RED's RT Minimum tier — 1080p, 30 FPS, upscaling on — is built on exactly this hardware, so enabling ray-traced lighting here means accepting a 30 FPS-class experience or dropping other settings to compensate. Our honest advice for a first playthrough: keep ray tracing off, enjoy a high and stable frame rate, and revisit it for a second run or for photo mode. This profile is the game's centre of gravity — the official Recommended tier (1080p, 60 FPS, High) sits right inside it.

Toussaint at golden hour is the Balanced profile's home turf: high settings, Quality upscaling, no ray tracing — and very little visibly missing. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)

6. Profile three — Visuals and path tracing (our recommended starting point)

For: RTX 4080-class hardware and above, 12–16 GB VRAM.

Two honest flavours here. Ray Tracing Ultra at 1440p is CD PROJEKT RED's RT Recommended tier: 60 FPS with an upscaler on an RTX 4080 or RX 9070 XT — ray reconstruction on for NVIDIA cards, frame generation available if you want the counter higher. Full path tracing is a different commitment: the official tier is 2160p, an RTX 5080, 16 GB of VRAM and a flagship CPU, and even then the 60 FPS target is written with DLSS and frame generation enabled. Treat path tracing as the showcase mode it is — the one you enable for the great vistas and photo mode — rather than the way a first playthrough has to look. However you set it, this is the profile where the remaster's work shows most: ray-traced light through the new shading model is a generational step from the 2015 original.

Water and reflections around Skellige — updated screen-space reflections are part of the always-on rebuild, and ray-traced reflections push them further in this profile. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)
Skin and materials are where subsurface scattering and the new shading model earn their keep — visible in every conversation, at every settings tier. — CD PROJEKT RED (via Steam)

7. After the update: resets, fixes and the Classic escape hatch

Two launch settings bugs are already fixed, so be sure you are on patch 5.01: the GTAO option no longer resets itself when you restart the game, and dynamic resolution now defaults to off instead of quietly downscaling your image. The earlier 5.00c hotfix also rolled back a ray-traced HairWorks change that had hurt performance and visuals for some users — if hair looked wrong or cost too much at launch, that is why. Update your GPU drivers while you are at it; the new upscalers and ray reconstruction expect current drivers.

And if your PC simply predates all of this, the launcher still offers the Classic (1.32) build — the game as it ran for a decade, with the old, far lighter requirements. It is a legitimate way to play the same story on old hardware.

FAQ

Can I still play on Windows 10? The official requirements list 64-bit Windows 11 at every tier, and CD PROJEKT RED no longer tests or officially supports Windows 10 for the Remastered — the game may still run, but you are outside the published spec. An SSD, by contrast, is a hard requirement in the table; hard drives are no longer supported.

My card is a GTX

1660. Is the Remastered playable for me? Yes — you are the official minimum. CD PROJEKT RED rates the card at 1080p/30 FPS on Low and notes it can reach 60 FPS or higher at those settings; add FSR or XeSS upscaling (both work on NVIDIA cards) and the Performance profile in section 4 is built for you.

DLSS, FSR or XeSS — which one do I pick? The one made for your GPU: DLSS 4.5 on NVIDIA RTX cards (it also unlocks ray reconstruction), FSR 4 on AMD (FSR 2 on older AMD cards), XeSS 2.0 on Intel Arc. All three offer quality modes and frame generation in this build.

Is path tracing worth it? Visually, it is the single biggest step the remaster offers. Practically, CD PROJEKT RED's own target needs an RTX 5080, 16 GB of VRAM, DLSS and frame generation to hold 60 FPS at 2160p. Buy it for vistas and photo mode if your hardware is already there; do not build a first playthrough around it.

What about the Steam Deck? The Remastered build is Steam Deck Verified (re-tested September 30, 2026). Expect to live in the Performance profile's neighbourhood — low-to-medium settings with upscaling — rather than the ray-tracing tiers.

Related guides

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  • The Witcher 3 Remastered: What's New and Different vs the Original and Next-Gen Versions

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  • The Witcher 3 Remastered Combat Basics: Swords, Dodging vs Rolling, Parries and Staying Alive

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