What are the very best The Witcher 3 settings for PC? Due to common updates over the previous few years, together with the main next-gen graphical replace, The Witcher 3 has by no means seemed higher on PC, however getting the very best out of it’s going to nonetheless require a bit messing round within the settings menus.
It gained’t take the very best graphics card to get most fps out of The Witcher 3, however refining your settings to maximise the efficiency of your {hardware} is essential.
The Witcher 3 graphics Presets
Favor a laid-back method to settings? Don’t fear, The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt has a bunch of presets that’ll prevent from tinkering round in menus. The standard low, medium, excessive, and extremely choices are all current, but when your system is armed with one the very best graphics card contenders, there’s an ‘Extremely ray tracing’ tab tagged on the finish.
Weirdly, CDPR doesn’t embrace Extremely+ inside its vary of Witcher 3 presets, as you’ll must toggle every graphics possibility your self. This can maybe be a nuisance for gamers who’re assured their RTX 4090 can deal with the ramped-up settings. Nonetheless, for those who’re seeking to fastidiously dial issues up and enhance fps on an older GPU, a preset most likely wouldn’t assist anyway.
As all the time, we’d advise utilizing presets as a efficiency baseline earlier than messing round, and The Witcher 3 system necessities will preemptively defend you from body price complications. Certain, a few of you will crank all the things up max instantly only for the hell of it, however taking the time to get issues proper beforehand will enable you to bounce into Geralt’s sneakers (or bathtub) with no hitch.
The very best Witcher 3 graphics settings
- V-sync: Off
- Framerate restrict: Limitless
- Show mode: Fullscreen
- Background characters: Excessive
- Shadow high quality: Extremely
- Water high quality: Extremely
- Foliage visibility: Excessive
- Grass density: Extremely
- Texture high quality: Extremely
- Element degree: Extremely
- Movement blur: Off
- Bloom: Off
- Depth of subject: On
- Chromatic Aberration: On
- Vignetting: On
- Gentle shafts: On
- Digital camera lens results: Off
Lighting
The Witcher 3’s lighting choices are unimaginable, and also you gained’t be upset taking part in the sport with Excessive or Extremely settings enabled. Scaling issues again to Medium additionally gained’t disappoint, however we’d counsel wanting elsewhere for a body price enhance. In case your rig is combating efficiency demons, you may swap bloom settings off, because it’ll offer you a modest 4% fps bump.
Extremely+ lighting settings take The Witcher 3 to the subsequent degree, however they’re positively a luxurious. Once more, CDPR most likely hasn’t given us a devoted preset for a purpose, and it’s most likely greatest to think about the elevated choices after you’ve carried out a balanced vary of adjustments.
Ray Tracing
As you’d anticipate, ray tracing takes a toll on The Witcher 3 body charges, and CDPR makes steep graphics card suggestions for utilizing the settings. Finally, except you’re utilizing an RTX 4000 like us, you’ll discover that you will have to commerce away Extremely and Excessive choices to attain 60fps and over.
Choosing Extremely+ choices will place you in a fair better efficiency predicament, particularly for those who’re not utilizing a shiny new GPU. Fortunately, with our present testing rigs, we’re in a position to obtain a stable 60fps at 1440p with Nvidia DLSS set to High quality.
Should you really feel like you may’t reside with out ray tracing illuminating Geralt’s path, you’re going to need to pay the efficiency worth or throw away constancy. As a final resort, you may bump issues right down to 1080p, however we reckon that’ll compromise the expertise a bit an excessive amount of.
Decision
Talking of decision, for those who’re fortunate sufficient to personal the very best gaming monitor round with 4K superpowers, it is best to hold issues native. Dipping issues right down to 1440p most likely gained’t offend your eyeballs an excessive amount of, however we’d steer properly away from 1080p and decrease (except you occur to be taking part in on a Steam Deck).
Shadow high quality
Similar to lighting, we predict Extremely shadow settings are value enabling in The Witcher 3. Turning on Extremely+ will give results an edge, but it surely’d go to the chopping block earlier than different settings, like textures and foliage. In different phrases, take the identical method as talked about earlier than with lighting, significantly for those who’re struggling to seek out your body price footing within the first place.
Textures
Textures are as a rule the very first thing your eyes will discover when taking part in the very best PC video games. In a approach, they’re the material of the world you’ll understand as you meander by means of mesmerizing locales. The identical applies to The Witcher 3, and we’d advocate maintaining your settings as excessive as potential.
You don’t need to allow Extremely+ settings to need to good time, however it’s going to remodel the RPG right into a next-gen outing. CDPR’s world is chock-full of fantasy visuals, from medieval structure to sprawling valleys, and ramping issues up will solely add extra immersive realism into the combo.
Grass and foliage
The Witcher 3 is a really outdoorsy recreation, and there are many locations to the touch grass on the Continent. As such, cranking grass and foliage settings to Extremely will give all that vegetation a sensible vibe, and the next-gen replace really options improved textures in comparison with the unique launch.
Switching on Extremely+ grass and foliage goes to make a distinction, and it’s a setting value prioritizing. That’s maybe a subjective assertion provided that some gamers gained’t cease for lengthy to understand any of their environment, not to mention an in depth leaf. Nonetheless, it’s one we’d purpose for, offered your GPU can deal with the additional work.
How we take a look at The Witcher 3
At , we use devoted gaming rigs to check the very best settings for efficiency and gameplay within the newest releases. The take a look at rig used for Valorant consists of the next elements; Intel Core i7 11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We additionally take a look at utilizing Widows 11 64-bit.
We all the time run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to establish the very best settings, then once more at 2,560 x 1,440 utilizing the identical setup to gauge the distinction in efficiency. We use CapFrameX to seize body knowledge and evaluate testing periods.
The best way to monitor efficiency in The Witcher 3
If you wish to keep watch over efficiency in The Witcher 3, we’ve a simple methodology that works whether or not you’re utilizing an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
For Nvidia playing cards, guarantee you may have GeForce Expertise or the Nvidia App put in and the in-game overlay enabled. Then hit Alt + R in-game to carry up your efficiency monitor. With AMD playing cards, you may allow efficiency monitoring through the Radeon overlay utilizing the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.
Alternatively, you may obtain free software program similar to CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, extra simplified benchmarking instrument that works with any graphics card.
If that you must improve your {hardware} to begin taking part in The Witcher 3, comply with our useful information on find out how to construct a gaming PC, which takes takes you thru the method step-by-step from begin to end.
