The Witcher 3 Remastered Best PC Settings: Ray and Path Tracing

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered looks noticeably better than the Next-Gen version, but there are no free miracles: the new lighting, improved ray tracing, and especially Path Tracing can make even an expensive graphics card stop and think. At the same time, there is little point in pushing every slider all the way to the right. Some settings eat a lot of FPS while the visual difference is hard to spot without a magnifying glass, while others genuinely change the image in a major way.In this guide, we'll go through the best graphics settings for The Witcher 3 Remastered, put together several ready-made presets for different GPUs, and separately explain which Ray Tracing and Path Tracing options are worth enabling. If you are not sure where to start with your playthrough, we also have a separate guide to the best skills in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered.

What You Need to Know Before Tweaking the Graphics

Remastered differs significantly from the version released after the Next-Gen update. On PC, the game uses DirectX 12, while the new technologies include Path Tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 with Ray Reconstruction, AMD FSR 4 with Frame Generation and Anti-Lag 2, Intel XeSS 2.0, and separate ray tracing for HairWorks.

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That means old advice such as "just launch DX11 and forget about everything else" no longer applies to Remastered. The logic behind the classic graphics settings has not changed, though: foliage visibility range, shadows, grass, and HairWorks can still take a noticeable bite out of performance.

Best Settings Without Ray Tracing

If you want high FPS without a noticeable loss in image quality, the setup is fairly straightforward. Remastered already looks very good in standard rasterization, and ComputerBase used maximum settings with HairWorks disabled in its tests.Our baseline preset:

• Main graphics preset — Maximum;
• Texture Quality — Maximum, if you have enough VRAM;
• HairWorks — Off;
• Ray Tracing — Off;
• Path Tracing — Off;
• DLSS / FSR / XeSS — Quality, or native resolution if your GPU can handle it;
• Frame Generation — Optional, if you want a higher displayed frame rate.

HairWorks once again turns out to be that beautiful fur effect your graphics card ends up paying for. Unless you plan to spend ten minutes inspecting a wolf's coat from twenty centimeters away, disabling it is one of the least painful ways to free up performance.

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If you are short on FPS, do not lower textures first. Reducing Texture Quality mainly makes sense when you are running out of VRAM or dealing with stuttering and texture-streaming issues. Start by lowering foliage visibility range, shadow quality, and grass density.

Best Ray Tracing Settings

This is where things get more interesting. In Remastered, regular Ray Tracing is much more useful than it was in the Next-Gen version. The biggest difference comes from global illumination: light from fires, windows, and the sun now has a much stronger effect on the environment, while dark interiors no longer look as if Geralt accidentally switched off the electricity across all of Velen.You do not need to max out every RT effect, though. ComputerBase recommends the following setup:

• Ray-Traced Global Illumination — Performance;
• Ray-Traced Reflections — On;
• Ray-Traced Shadows — Off;
• Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion — Off;
• Path Tracing — Off.

This is also our main recommended Ray Tracing preset.

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Why this combination? Global illumination and reflections provide most of the visual impact. RT shadows look nicer, but the difference is much smaller than the FPS cost. Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion is even more questionable: in Remastered, it can make vegetation look too dark in some scenes, so disabling it not only improves performance but can sometimes make the image look more natural.On a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, maximum Ray Tracing reduced performance by around 35% in ComputerBase's testing. After disabling RT shadows and AO and switching global illumination to Performance, the loss dropped to roughly 25%. The difference is even larger on Radeon: on an RX 9070 XT, full RT reduced performance by around 47%, while the optimized setup cut it by roughly 37%.So this is not a magical gain of two extra FPS. We are deliberately disabling the effects that are easiest to sacrifice while keeping the ones that actually make Ray Tracing worth using.

Should You Enable Path Tracing?

The short answer is only on a very powerful graphics card. Path Tracing improves indirect lighting, smaller reflections, and the accuracy of shading. In some interiors, the difference is impressive, but the biggest visual jump in Remastered still comes from moving from standard rasterization to Ray Tracing. The gap between good RT and Path Tracing is much subtler.

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In ComputerBase's testing, Path Tracing reduced performance on the RTX 5070 Ti by roughly 55–57% and on the RTX 4080 Super by around 53–54%. On the RX 9070 XT and RX 7900 XTX, the loss reached 76%. And these tests were already using aggressive Performance-mode upscaling.For 60 FPS with Path Tracing, ComputerBase found approximately the following minimum GPU tiers:

• 2560×1440 — RTX 5080 or RTX 4080 Super;
• 3440×1440 — RTX 5090 or RTX 4090;
• 3840×2160 — RTX 5090.

And again, these are not native-resolution results. The tests used DLSS Performance. We would therefore leave Path Tracing to owners of top-end GeForce cards or players who are comfortable relying heavily on Frame Generation. The feature does run on Radeon, but the FPS cost is simply too high to recommend it for a normal playthrough.Path Tracing is great for screenshots, walks through Novigrad, and the mindset of "I paid for an RTX 5090, so now it is going to work." For regular gameplay, optimized Ray Tracing is a much more sensible choice.

Should You Enable Ray Reconstruction?

Not always. With regular Ray Tracing, DLSS Ray Reconstruction currently has an unpleasant side effect: water becomes too smooth, the normal wave pattern almost disappears, and the whole image looks slightly softer. For our optimized RT preset, it is better to use regular DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution without Ray Reconstruction.

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The situation changes with maximum RT and especially Path Tracing. In those modes, Ray Reconstruction does a better job of cleaning up ray-tracing noise and can produce a cleaner image. At that point, it is worth trying both options and choosing the one you personally prefer.

DLSS, FSR, or XeSS: Which Should You Use?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX

The best option is DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution. In testing, it produced the most stable image, especially on vegetation. That matters because The Witcher 3 has roughly as much grass as it has people with problems.At 1440p and 4K, start with Quality mode. If you enable demanding RT or Path Tracing and still do not have enough FPS, switch to Balanced and then Performance.At 1080p, stay at native resolution or use DLAA whenever possible. Aggressive upscaling at such a low base resolution starts eating away at fine detail.

AMD Radeon

On Radeon RX 7000 and newer graphics cards, Remastered officially supports FSR 4. On unsupported GPUs, the game falls back to FSR 2. FSR 4 delivers good image quality, although ComputerBase found that DLSS 4.5 preserves fine vegetation slightly better in motion.

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For RX 7000/9000 cards, start with Quality. Performance mode is best reserved for 4K with demanding ray tracing or situations where your target frame rate is otherwise impossible to reach.

Intel Arc

The game includes XeSS with Frame Generation and Low Latency support. For Arc cards, this is the logical first choice. Start with Quality or Balanced and only move lower if necessary.

Should You Enable Frame Generation?

Yes, especially with Ray Tracing and Path Tracing. But there is an important caveat: Frame Generation improves visual smoothness. It does not magically turn 20 real FPS into a responsive 100 FPS.First, get the base frame rate to a reasonable level, then enable Frame Generation. On NVIDIA, use Reflex alongside it; on AMD, use Anti-Lag 2; and on Intel, use Low Latency.A small increase in latency is not critical in a single-player RPG, which makes Remastered exactly the kind of game where Frame Generation can be genuinely useful.

Should You Enable HairWorks?

If you need more FPS, no. Standard HairWorks still places a noticeable load on the system for the sake of hair and fur. We recommend either disabling it entirely or leaving it enabled only for Geralt if that option is available in your selected settings.Remastered also adds Ray-Traced HairWorks. At launch, it works only on GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards and costs roughly another 5% of performance. Five percent of your FPS for more accurate hair lighting is a deal for true connoisseurs of witcher hairstyles. Everyone else can live quite happily without it.

Ready-Made Settings for 60 FPS

Low-End and Mid-Range Graphics Cards

If you have something around the level of an RTX 3060–4060, RX 6600–7600, or a similarly performing card:

• Ray Tracing — Off;
• Path Tracing — Off;
• HairWorks — Off;
• Textures — High or Maximum if you have enough VRAM;
• Foliage Visibility Range — High;
• Shadows — High;
• Grass — High;
• DLSS / FSR / XeSS — Quality, or Balanced if needed.

This will give you a much more stable experience than trying to enable ray tracing simply because the button exists.

RTX 4070 Super / RTX 5070 / RX 7900 XT / RX 9070 GRE and Above

At 1440p, you can move to optimized Ray Tracing:

• Maximum standard graphics settings;
• HairWorks — Off;
• Ray-Traced Global Illumination — Performance;
• Ray-Traced Reflections — On;
• Ray-Traced Shadows — Off;
• Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion — Off;
• DLSS / FSR — Quality or Balanced;
• Frame Generation — If needed.

We consider this the best balance between image quality and FPS in Remastered.

RTX 4080 Super / RTX 5080 and Above

At 1440p, you can try Path Tracing with DLSS and Frame Generation. If performance is not good enough, do not start cutting every standard graphics option. First, simply switch back to optimized Ray Tracing.

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At 4K, Path Tracing remains an extreme mode. Even the RTX 4090 failed to maintain 60 FPS in ComputerBase's testing despite using DLSS Performance. In practice, the mode only feels truly comfortable on the very highest-end hardware or with Frame Generation.

Which Settings Should You Lower First?

If you are unhappy with your FPS, lower settings in this order:

• 1. Path Tracing — turn this off first. It is the most demanding option;
• 2. Ray-Traced Shadows and Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion — the visual loss is small, while the performance gain is good;
• 3. Ray-Traced Global Illumination — switch it to Performance;
• 4. HairWorks — turn it off;
• 5. Foliage Visibility Range — lower it by one level;
• 6. Shadow Quality — lower it by one level;
• 7. Grass Density — reduce it;
• 8. Switch your upscaler from Quality to Balanced or Performance.

Lower textures only after that, and primarily when VRAM is the problem. Texture Quality affects environmental sharpness far more than raw rendering speed.

Why Does FPS Drop in Novigrad and Other Cities?

Remastered can be limited by more than just the graphics card. In scenes with a large number of NPCs, the CPU can become the bottleneck, meaning lowering the resolution or switching from DLSS Quality to Performance may suddenly do almost nothing. If GPU usage drops while FPS remains low, try reducing the number of background characters and demanding draw-distance settings.This is especially relevant for older six-core CPUs and systems where a powerful modern GPU is paired with a processor from the era of your first Blood and Wine playthrough.

The Best Overall Preset for The Witcher 3 Remastered

If you do not want to spend half an hour playing everyone's favorite PC game called Settings Menu, use this setup:

• Standard graphics — Maximum;
• HairWorks — Off;
• Ray-Traced Global Illumination — Performance;
• Ray-Traced Reflections — On;
• Ray-Traced Shadows — Off;
• Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion — Off;
• Path Tracing — Off;
• DLSS 4.5 / FSR 4 / XeSS — Quality;
• Frame Generation — On if you want extra smoothness.

In our view, this is the best balance for Remastered. The new global illumination and reflections make a real difference to the image, while the most expensive effects can be disabled with very little regret.Leave Path Tracing for top-end hardware or pretty screenshots. In most scenes, it does not provide a big enough leap to justify losing half your frames. In other words, you do not need to sacrifice an RTX 5080 on the altar of technical maximalism just to make Geralt look good.