The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Remastered Best Graphics Settings for High FPS (2026 Optimization Guide)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been around for years, yet the Next-Gen update somehow managed to turn it back into one of those games that makes you stare at your GPU usage and wonder what exactly is happening.

CD PROJEKT RED pushed the game much further visually with upgraded assets, Ultra+ settings, Ray Tracing, modern upscaling technologies, improved lighting, and a number of visual improvements that make the Continent look dramatically better than the original release.

The problem is simple: The Witcher 3 Next-Gen can be brutally demanding when everything is pushed to maximum.

I have spent more than enough time riding Roach through Velen, wandering around Novigrad, fighting in dense forests, sailing around Skellige, and staring at performance graphs instead of enemies. The conclusion is pretty straightforward: you don’t need every setting at Ultra+ to make the game look fantastic.

In fact, some of the game’s most expensive settings deliver surprisingly little visual improvement during normal gameplay.

The trick is to know where to spend your GPU budget.

This Witcher 3 Next-Gen optimization guide for 2026 breaks down the settings that actually matter, which ones are safe to reduce, when Ray Tracing makes sense, and how to build a high-FPS preset without turning Geralt’s adventure into a blurry mess.

DX12 or DX11: Pick Your Performance Target First

Before touching individual graphics options, decide which DirectX version you actually want to use.

DirectX 12 is the obvious choice if you want the full Next-Gen feature set. It provides access to Ray Tracing and modern reconstruction technologies such as DLSS, FSR and XeSS, along with Frame Generation on supported hardware.

The downside is that DX12 is considerably more demanding on the CPU and can expose frame-time problems on systems that have no trouble running the older renderer.

DirectX 11 is much more straightforward. It removes Ray Tracing and several modern rendering features, but the trade-off can be a much smoother experience on older hardware.

For a PC equipped with a modern RTX or Radeon GPU, I would stick with DX12 unless you are specifically troubleshooting stutter or chasing maximum non-RT FPS.

If you’re running something older, such as a GTX 1080 Ti or RX 5700 XT, DX11 deserves a serious look. The loss of Ray Tracing is irrelevant if your priority is a stable high-refresh experience.

Ray Tracing: Gorgeous, Expensive and Absolutely Optional

Let’s be honest: Ray Tracing in The Witcher 3 looks fantastic.

The difference is particularly noticeable in dark interiors, forests, buildings, streets at night, and areas with complex indirect lighting. Ray Traced Global Illumination can completely change the mood of a location.

But the performance bill is nasty.

The game gives you several RT options:

• Ray Traced Global Illumination
• Ray Traced Reflections
• Ray Traced Shadows
• Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion

RTGI is the big one. It generally produces the largest visual change, but it also carries a heavy performance cost. Reflections can be expensive too, especially when you’re moving through areas containing lots of reflective surfaces.

If you’re trying to build a sensible 2026 preset rather than simply ticking every box, I’d start with RT completely disabled.

If you have a powerful GPU and really want the RT look, try this compromise:

This gives you a taste of the expensive lighting improvements without throwing the entire performance budget into a fire.

The Graphics Settings That Actually Matter

Not every Ultra+ setting deserves Ultra+.

Some options barely move the performance needle, while others can hammer your FPS whenever Geralt enters a dense forest or a crowded city.

Texture Quality

Texture Quality is one of the easiest settings to leave at maximum.

If your graphics card has enough VRAM, Ultra or Ultra+ textures can look excellent without producing a huge FPS penalty.

The important part is VRAM capacity.

An 8GB GPU should generally be treated differently from a 6GB card, especially at 1440p or higher resolutions. If you notice hitching, texture streaming problems or sudden frame-time spikes, dropping textures from Ultra+ to High is worth testing.

Don’t lower textures automatically just because you’re chasing FPS. They are one of the settings where the visual return is actually worth the memory usage.

Foliage Visibility Range

This is one of the first settings I would reduce.

The Witcher 3 loves trees, bushes, grass, leaves and distant vegetation. Ultra+ foliage visibility can put serious pressure on both CPU and GPU resources.

The visual difference between High and Ultra+ is much smaller than the performance difference in demanding outdoor areas.

High is the sweet spot.

You still get a convincing view of the environment without asking the engine to draw every possible piece of vegetation halfway across Velen.

Grass Density

Grass is another classic FPS trap.

At maximum settings, the world becomes beautifully dense, but you’re paying for all those extra blades.

I recommend Medium or High depending on your hardware. Medium can recover a useful amount of performance while still keeping the world visually rich.

And let’s be realistic: during an actual sword fight, you’re not admiring individual blades of grass.

Shadow Quality

Shadows matter, but Ultra+ is difficult to justify when you’re trying to maximize frame rate.

High gives you a strong balance between shadow definition and performance.

The difference between High and maximum settings becomes much harder to notice when you’re riding through the world at speed or fighting multiple enemies.

If your GPU is struggling, shadows are an obvious place to cut back.

Water Quality

Water Quality is relatively easy.

Keep it at High unless you’re desperately squeezing every possible frame out of your system.

You will notice the difference more when exploring Skellige or sailing, but it isn’t one of the settings I’d sacrifice first.

Terrain Quality

This one can stay high.

Ultra or Ultra+ is the sensible choice because the performance cost is comparatively small on modern hardware.

There is little reason to sacrifice terrain quality for a tiny performance gain when foliage, shadows and NPC density can provide much larger savings.

Detail Level

Despite the intimidating name, Detail Level isn’t the performance monster you might expect.

Keep it at Ultra or Ultra+.

The visual and gameplay-related details it controls are worth retaining, and there are better places to save performance.

Background Characters: Novigrad’s Secret FPS Killer

Novigrad can expose CPU limitations faster than many graphical stress tests.

The Number of Background Characters setting determines how many NPCs populate busy areas. Increasing it makes cities feel more alive, but it also increases CPU workload.

For most systems, High is the right choice.

Ultra+ sounds impressive on a settings menu, but watching your frame rate collapse while walking through a crowded Novigrad street isn’t particularly immersive.

High still makes the city feel populated while avoiding some unnecessary CPU pressure.

HairWorks: The Easy Setting to Sacrifice

HairWorks is one of those features that looks cool in screenshots and can become surprisingly expensive during gameplay.

Geralt’s hair, monster fur and certain other characters can receive much more detailed simulated strands, but the performance hit can become noticeable during combat and close-up scenes.

My recommendation is simple:

Turn HairWorks OFF.

If you absolutely love the effect, use a lower HairWorks preset and keep HairWorks Anti-Aliasing at 2x or 4x rather than pushing it to 8x.

For a high-FPS build, though, those frames are better spent elsewhere.

Best Upscaling Settings for 2026

Modern upscaling is a huge part of getting The Witcher 3 running smoothly at higher resolutions.

Depending on your hardware, you can use DLSS, FSR or XeSS.

For general use:

• 1080p: Quality
• 1440p: Quality or Balanced
• 4K: Balanced or Performance depending on GPU power

I prefer Quality whenever the GPU can handle it. The image usually retains much more fine detail, especially around foliage, fences, hair and distant geometry.

Performance modes become more useful at 4K, where rendering the game at native resolution can be extremely expensive.

Don’t blindly select the fastest mode just because the FPS counter looks great. The Witcher 3 has plenty of fine vegetation and thin geometry that can expose aggressive reconstruction settings.

Frame Generation Can Transform the Experience

If your GPU supports Frame Generation, it can make a substantial difference to perceived smoothness.

RTX 40-series and 50-series hardware can use supported NVIDIA technologies, while modern FSR-based solutions can provide frame-generation options in appropriate configurations.

There is an important caveat: Frame Generation does not magically remove the underlying CPU bottleneck.

If your base frame rate is extremely low, generating additional frames isn’t going to make the game feel perfect. It works much better when the game is already rendering at a reasonably stable baseline.

For a properly configured system, though, Frame Generation can make a 60 FPS experience feel dramatically smoother on a high-refresh display.

Post-Processing: Clean Up the Image

Most post-processing options aren’t massive performance killers, but some are simply personal preference.

I recommend disabling:

• Motion Blur
• Blur
• Chromatic Aberration

Motion Blur is especially easy to remove. The game already has enough visual movement without turning every fast camera rotation into a smear.

For the effects I would keep:

• Bloom: ON
• Depth of Field: ON
• Light Shafts: ON
• Vignetting: Optional

These effects help preserve the cinematic atmosphere that makes The Witcher 3 feel like The Witcher 3.

My High-FPS Witcher 3 Next-Gen Preset

If I were installing the game on a modern gaming PC today and wanted high FPS without making the Continent look cheap, this is where I would start.

Display

• Display Mode: Fullscreen
• V-Sync: OFF when using G-Sync/FreeSync
• Framerate Limit: Monitor refresh rate or Unlimited

Upscaling

• Upscaling: DLSS / FSR / XeSS
• Quality: Quality at 1080p/1440p
• 4K: Quality or Balanced
• Frame Generation: ON if supported
• NVIDIA Reflex: ON + Boost where available

Graphics

• Ray Tracing: OFF
• RTGI: ON only for high-end systems
• HairWorks: OFF
• Background Characters: High
• Shadow Quality: High
• Terrain Quality: Ultra+
• Water Quality: High
• Foliage Visibility: High
• Grass Density: Medium
• Texture Quality: Ultra+
• Detail Level: Ultra+

Post-Processing

• Motion Blur: OFF
• Blur: OFF
• Sharpening: Low
• Screen Space Reflections: Low
• Ambient Occlusion: SSAO/HBAO+
• Bloom: ON
• Depth of Field: ON
• Chromatic Aberration: OFF
• Light Shafts: ON

What FPS Should You Actually Expect?

Hardware matters more than any magic settings list.

A Steam Deck, RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 5080 are obviously going to produce very different results, and CPU limitations become increasingly important in crowded locations.

As a rough optimization target:

These should be treated as practical targets rather than guaranteed numbers. The Witcher 3 can behave very differently depending on the location, weather, NPC density, CPU, driver version and whether Ray Tracing is enabled.

Novigrad is not the same benchmark as an empty road in Velen.

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Windows and Driver Tweaks That Are Actually Worth Trying

Once the in-game settings are sorted, there are a few system-level adjustments worth checking.

Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) can be enabled through Windows graphics settings and is relevant to modern GPU scheduling and supported Frame Generation configurations.

For NVIDIA users, the Control Panel can also be configured specifically for the game’s executable. Using Prefer Maximum Performance can help prevent aggressive clock-state changes while playing.

AMD users should similarly check their driver profile and make sure the game isn’t being subjected to unnecessary power-saving behavior.

Finally, kill unnecessary overlays if you’re fighting random stutters or crashes. Discord overlays, recording utilities, monitoring software and other programs that hook into the game can sometimes complicate troubleshooting.

You don’t need to run a completely empty Windows desktop just to play The Witcher 3, but if the game suddenly starts behaving badly after installing another overlay-heavy application, that’s one of the first things I’d test.

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Final Verdict: Don’t Max Everything — Tune It

The Witcher 3 Next-Gen is one of those games where Ultra+ isn’t automatically the best preset.

Foliage, grass, shadows, NPC density, HairWorks and Ray Tracing can consume a ridiculous amount of performance for relatively modest gains once you’re actually playing.

The biggest wins come from being selective.

Keep textures, terrain and detail quality high. Reduce foliage, grass, shadows and background characters to sensible levels. Leave HairWorks disabled unless you’re willing to pay for it. Use DLSS, FSR or XeSS intelligently, and treat Ray Tracing as a luxury rather than a requirement.

For most players, the real sweet spot is a strong non-RT configuration running at a stable high frame rate.

Because after hundreds of hours in The Witcher 3, I’ve learned something pretty important: the best-looking version of the game isn’t the one with every slider slammed to the right.

It’s the one that looks fantastic while staying smooth when the fight actually starts.

The Witcher 3 – Optimization Guide (2026) – Best Settings – Low vs RT Ultra