The Witcher 3 Gets 30 FPS On an RTX 5080 With Frame Gen Disabled
The Witcher 3 Remastered comes out tomorrow with a whole host of improvements that yet again bring it into the current generation. But it seems like if you want to max the game out with path tracing, you're going to need an absolute beast of a gaming PC.
The Witcher 3 Remastered, releasing tomorrow, boasts enhancements that further place it in the current generation. However, to fully enable path tracing at 4K, a powerful graphics card is required, according to recent updates from CD Projekt Red. Specifically, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, priced around $1,650, is necessary to run the game at high settings.
Yet, even this high-end GPU struggles to maintain 60 fps with path tracing enabled at 4K, as demonstrated in a test run of The Witcher 3 Remastered's Novigrad area. With DLSS upscaling and frame generation disabled, the RTX 5080 averages a mere 30 fps. Turning on frame generation increases the average to 59 fps, but the low base frame rate still produces noticeable artifacts, particularly in ground textures.
Disabling hairworks, a notorious frame rate killer in The Witcher 3 since its launch, improves performance, but the RTX 5080 still falls short of achieving 60 fps without frame generation. To optimize performance on an RTX 5080, disabling path tracing entirely yields a more manageable 55 fps average. However, further improvements can be achieved by disabling other ray tracing effects.
Despite these optimizations, playing an 11-year-old game on one of the most expensive GPUs available is disappointing. The Witcher 3 Remastered is now available as a free update for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 from September 29.
Written by urgent.news from IGN's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
