News The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s 4.01 Update

The recent patch update for the popular RPG game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has left players with mixed feelings. The patch notes claim to "improve the overall stability and performance of the game", however, for players who are not using the ray tracing settings, the opposite might be true.
The 4.01 update introduces a new 'Performance' setting for RT global illumination and a fix for the broken screen space reflections setting.

• Non-Ray Traced DirectX 12 Performance Takes a Hit

Back on the 4.00 patch, players using an RTX 3070-based test PC averaged 105fps on Ultra quality at 1440p. After updating to the 4.01 patch, the performance dropped to 63fps, marking a 40% decrease. On the High preset, the decrease was 44% from 117fps on 4.00 to 65fps on 4.01.

A small part of the decrease can be attributed to the screen space reflections fix. The Witcher 3 was previously failing to activate its High-quality SSR setting correctly, so it always showed Low-quality reflections. The High setting now works as it should, but with a performance hit, which takes 63fps with the Ultra preset to 74fps when going back to Low-quality SSR.

The downgrade only takes effect when playing in DirectX 12, the game’s default, and the author of the post is not convinced that SSR changes are the cause of the problems directly. Enabling ray tracing effects brings the performance back in line with how it was on 4.00 (and post-hotfix), and it’s not just ray traced reflections. Using RT global illumination is enough to prevent the unexplained drop, and that leaves SSR in use, so it’s not simply a case of the newly fixed screen space reflections causing the FPS drop.

• Ray Traced Global Illumination Brings FPS Improvements

Despite the problems with non-ray traced DirectX 12 performance, the RT global illumination change is actually quite good. This setting now has a faster Performance mode, in addition to the original Quality mode, and it’s worth using when you’re a few frames shy of ideal smoothness. With RT global illumination on Quality mode, plus a full set of other RT and Ultra-level graphics settings, the author's test rig averaged 46fps at 1440p. The FPS then jumped up to 54fps on Performance mode.

• Conclusion

In conclusion, the 4.01 update is a mixed bag of results for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt players. While the RT global illumination change is a positive update, the non-ray traced DirectX 12 performance has taken a hit. If you don’t have the graphics card power for ray tracing, the author recommends rolling back to 4.00 or launching The Witcher 3 using DirectX 11. This is the second time in less than three months that The Witcher 3's non-RT performance has suffered after an update, and players are hopeful that CD Projekt Red will fix the issue soon.