In 2015, my GTX 770M laptop was unable to handle The Witcher 3 and left me wanting more power, prompting me to build a GTX 1080 desktop the following year. Sadly, by 2020 even the powerful 1080 desktop was struggling to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second at 1080p low when running Cyberpunk 2077.

The climate fluctuates, the tide comes in, and CD Projekt obliterates my PCs: the powerful, costly RTX 3070 I procured only a year ago can scarcely reach 40fps with The Witcher 3s new ray tracing implementations, and this is one of the few occasions I’ve taken a gander at RT comparisons and thought, great, that truly does look better! In case you’re like me and anxious to get some additional execution out of The Witcher 3 Next Gen’s ray tracing, you might need to attempt modder alikokos Optimized Raytracing(opens in new tab) on NexusMods.

Basically, Alikokos mod decreases the amount of probes emitting light to bounce around the game’s scene, which minimizes the stress on your GPU while still allowing ray traced lighting. It’s like a user-made high/medium/low setting slider for The Witcher 3’s real-time global illumination, and Alikoko stated a 20-30% performance boost with an RTX 2060 Super. Other users in the comments reported similar improvements, and I found Alikoko’s mod quite useful on my system, typically ensuring more than 50fps with the performance preset, RT global, and mostly Ultra settings with DLSS Performance.

Alikoko cautions that the lighting on indoor shots may not be entirely precise, and the mod has not yet addressed the RT sub-settings of shadows, reflections, or ambient occlusion. Other concerns with The Witcher 3 Next Gen, like the inefficient CPU usage and the memory leak connected to ray tracing mentioned by Digital Foundry, are still present.

The Alikokos mod is a helpful way for someone who doesn’t have access to an RTX 4090 to experience its capabilities, however I eventually gave up on it. Although I had a G-Sync monitor, the game kept having issues with fps dropping below 60 and it would take a performance hit once there had been prolonged use of ray tracing. With the RT setting off and all other visuals turned to Ultra+, even with Hairworks on, the game managed to stay at around 70fps on a 1440p resolution.

I’m planning on trying out jojolapin102s Better SSAO for my next Witcher 3 lighting modification⁠— do gamers really get the full experience if they spend more time adjusting settings than playing the game? For those who are starting a brand-new playthrough or replaying, make sure you look into getting the Henry Cavill armor that was added in the 4.0 patch. We’ve also got guidelines concerning the Ursine and Feline Witcher school sets on the website.