The Witcher 3 Pays a Heavy Price for Ray-Tracing on PS5, Resolution is Low and 30fps Shaky

Get the nitty-gritty details of The Witcher 3 next-gen patch on PS5. Expect to pay a price for ray-tracing.

[Orchard]

Sounds like a bit of a mess. Low res in performance and raytracing modes. FPS drops in both. PS5 should not be struggling with Witcher 3.

[Seafort]

Well the PS5 is struggling turning on RT in a massive open world. These "next gen" consoles have their limitations. They are a complete AMD system that isn't as advanced as nvidia when it comes to RT.

What did you expect from a $500/£450 machine?

RT is a gimmick and shouldn't be used if the gameplay is compromised. It doesn't add anything to gameplay.

[blackblades]

Maybe, I dont think RT is a gimmick just a expensive feature that really isnt needed going by Sony devs UE

[Levii_92]

RT is not a gimmick and does not just give you pretty reflections it can completely transform games with much better lighting, just look at 9:55 for example. I'm playing RE2 Remake on Pc with RT and when i go back to the old version i can't stand how much worse it looks in comparison.

[Tapani]

Spiderman is a more modern game that has a higher rendering resolution, more complex environments / animations / systems / overall one large single world with more reflections, but it runs at a higher resolution and double the frame rate. Witcher 3 is a series of sets of relatively limited and non vertical open-world in comparison.

This is a bad job by the Dev, and typical of them joining forces with Nvidia just like with Cyberpunk. Don't try and make this sound like AMD or Consoles blaablaa can't do this and that. Two spiderman titles and Ratchet and Clank makes your point moot. And in pure raster, many others do the same, such as Callisto Protocol on PS5 vs PC.

The Witcher 3 needed more attention to detail, attention to RDNA2 specific features and strong points, and CD Project RED were not ready to invest in this. They wanted money from Nvidia to please their shareholders and are about the hype, famous people and selling copies to the masses.

Their "indie dev / let's impress them with what we can do with less" days have been over a long time ago. No need to blame consoles or RDNA2. It is weaker than Nvidia in RT, but fact that RDNA2 raster performance itself in Witcher 3 is subpar relatively speaking to almost any other title in RDNA2 vs Ampere comparisons.

This is a money job.

[TheKingKratos]

Yeah let's blame the console even though he is doing alot of games with Ray Tracing just fine Including God of war Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden west and Spiderman and what do they have in common?? ..they all blow Witcher 3 graphics out of the water

Let's face it it's the developers fault not the system

[DarthZoolu]

RT means a lot of different things and in some games is implemented quite well Metro Exodus and Doom do a good job with it on Series X and I expect it’s the same experience on PS5. It’s a big open world game as well.

[Flewid638]

I agree RT is a gimmick but Spiderman on PS5 runs it just fine.

[SullysCigar]

How is series S holding up, by comparison?

[thecodingart]

RT is absolutely not a gimmick lol. Currently computers minus the 40 RTX series have the same issues. RT is demanding

[FPS_D3TH]

It’s not a gimmick, but I can understand the viewpoint if you’re stuck with shitty performance and haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying it above 60fps. Otherwise I’d agreed with everything else you said

@TheKingKratos all of those games use the most basic forms of ray tracing or use very select features such as water or surface reflections only. There’s way more to raytracing than that. Metro exodus and Cyberpunk on ultra settings is the best and most raytracing features used in a single game. Not even some of the best PCs can handle those games at 60fps, let alone current gen consoles. Disagree all you want though, just shows your ignorance to the tech more than anything honestly and has zero effect on my enjoyment of RTX.

[ChasterMies]

Games are not always about gameplay. Sometimes I want to be wowed by an alternate world, like a virtual vacation. Sometimes I want to be sucked in by the story, and aesthetics can help. In some games, 30fps is fine, just like how 24fps is still fine for films.

[TheEnigma313]

This is what people don't understand. These current gen consoles are $500, so they aren't going to be as powerful as PC.

[anubusgold]

Yeah ray tracing is in most pc games now.

[InUrFoxHole]

Patch the patch?

[ChubbyBlade]

Every game that enables ray tracing on console takes a huge hit.

You still need monster hardware to do it.

Ray tracing is used for CGI lighting in movies and it’s not done in real time. It’s a very expensive thing. I never expected the consoles to handle it well.

[Tapani]

It is a complete mess on PC, especially on RDNA2 (same chip PS5 and Series X has).

5600X + 6900XT, both overclocked to be around 2.2x the Tflops and overall performance with triple the power budget, is a #stutterstruggle. The ultra (no RT) barely hits 60fps at FSR2 Quality (rendering resolution at 1440p!!). Enabling RT drops it to 30-40fps and the FPS is all over the place, fluctuating from 25-50, a nice 100% fluctuation.

CD Project RED has learned absolutely NOTHING from the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco, and this does not bode well for the company. They are becoming all about hype, fame and cool, forgetting the most important which is the substance and polish.

Disappointed.

[Good-Smurf]

Its AMD RDNA 2 Chip so not going to do well on RT.
Unless the great talent from Top PS studios involved which CDPR and whatever who did the current gen port of Witcher 3 doesn't have that kind of talent and know how.

[anubusgold]

its not the game its the hardware amd doesnt have the hardware to do ray tracing built in thats why Nvidia 3090 last gen gpu still have twice the performance than amd latest 7000 series graphics cards.

[Christopher]

I mean, technically, it's not struggling with Witcher 3. It's struggling with vastly updated and cobbled-together Witcher 3 for the PS5. Let's not act like this is just running old code here. It's not. It's running updated code just for PS5 and there's a reason the company is moving toward UE5 for future games.

Certain to see similar complaints with the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC. Just to note, still running on the same engine, not UE5. So, you know, just get ready for it to run poorly. Let's not act surprised or confused.

[anubusgold]

Runs fine on Pc because my hardware has ray tracing cores in the gpu.

[neutralgamer1992]

RT will be a feature next generation just like 60FPS was a big gimmick in 7th generation and only now is that becoming a reality

So RT will get better but let's be real most high end game cards can't even do RT at stable FPS

[anubusgold]

I was gaming at 80fps in 2005 lol

[SierraGuy]

Tell me you know nothing about current gen hardware/ray tracing without telling me you know nothing about current gen hardware/ray tracing.

[Jin_Sakai]

I’ll always take 60fps over Ray Tracing at 30fps. The trade off isn’t worth it.

[anubusgold]

Only cyberpunk will make you drop to 30 fps on insane settings at higher than 1440P. NO ray tracing game with current hardware will make you hit 30fps only if you play at 4k and 4k isnt much better than 1440P ultra detail. I rather have high refresh rate and ray tracing and HDR than 4k it looks better than that extra resolution.

[DarXyde]

It really just sounds unoptimized. Like CDPR went at it like a neanderthal, giving little attention to the hardware nuances. Open world game, but PS5 is very capable hardware. I don't really believe they couldn't have done better. Ray tracing is up in the air to me, but resolution and frame rate issues scream unoptimized.

Free update. Hopefully they patch it.

[Bathory666]

It’s like that on series x too it’s not ps5 specific.

[anubusgold]

Only because sony put in their contract xbox cant look better than us and yes Sorry sony puts that crap in contracts . And they also put in contracts you cant put this game on gamepass because we need to charge them 70 dollars or we just look greedy and stupid.

[Eidolon]

I'll be playing on PS5 performance mode.. Ray-tracing still just is not cutting it for me on a non VRR display(C7 OLED), as 40 fps might be acceptable, but 30fps isn't justifiable for ray-tracing vs 60fps. I need to upgrade my TV..

[Orchard]

Tbh I think raytracing has been the biggest let down this generation - lots of hype around it but I can’t think of a game where RT makes such a big difference that the performance trade off is worth it.

It feels like we won’t see RT really be worth it until the mid gen refreshes - or perhaps even next gen.

[Bobertt]

Probably won't be until next gen cause AMD's ray tracing has not caught up to Nvidia and even a 4080 needs upscaling in games with heavy or full raytracing to hit 60fps. The PS5 Pro is likely to come out in 2023-2024 if it follows the same timeline as PS4 Pro which was 3 years after launch. So it's likely being built on AMD GPUs that are already out now which won't get us the performance we want in the best looking ray traced titles. https://www.digitaltrends.c...

[Kornholic]

Raytracing is many times one of those things that you have to "look for" to notice it. When I'm watching raytracing comparison videos, sometimes it's very hard to pinpoint the differences until the video is paused and zoomed in on the details. To me, that is not worth the resources raytracing demands from the hardware.

[Jin_Sakai]

“Tbh I think raytracing has been the biggest let down this generation - lots of hype around it but I can’t think of a game where RT makes such a big difference that the performance trade off is worth it.”

Minecraft looked amazing with Ray Tracing running on Series X but it’s nowhere to be seen. Just like the Super Duper Graphics Pack and current gen versions on the game.

[deleted]

@Jin_Sakai I agree, Minecraft looks amazing on PC w raytracing.

Minimalistic, or older titles are the biggest upgrades when reworked w modern raytracing, as most did not have fancy lighting to begin with. Quake looks amazing with raytracing and I'm really looking forward to Portal.

On titles like this, there's just so much already going on onscreen and already have decent lighting for us to really notice without pausing and analyzing. It's a neat feature to have if you already have a powerful rig, but not worth the price of upgrading just for this feature. For me personally, I'd rather utilize my rig's extra power on something like VR, which I see as a bigger game changer.

[blackblades]

They still gotta perfect 4k60fps 1st on consoles and eliminate 30fps forever, then focus on RT. Better yet create something that would lower the cost of RT.

[PrinceOfAnger]

See Portal on pc

[anubusgold]

@Jin_Sakai Cyberpunk says hello raytracing looks so much better than with it turned off.

[EvertonFC]

Metro exodus and Callisto protocol used RT well with performance not an issue but agree with you're comment for the most games

[SierraGuy]

It's because you don't know what tf your looking at.

[UncertainCategory]

Doom Eternal did it well. Full raytraced reflections at a locked 60fps. Looks great.

[shinoff2183]

One of the few times I agree with you orchard. This Gen doesn't have it unless it's put on by a ps pro or Xbox scorp editions come out or next Gen. Idk I still go back and play snes games. I don't feel it's really that big of a deal at this point.

[TheColbertinator]

Ray tracing isn't a letdown, the hardware of this generation is.

[Aussiesummer]

upgrading your tv won't do a thing for this game as rt mode will still be 30fps.

[Bobertt]

Personally i don't mind 30fps for a RPG like this but the ray tracing mode just isn't that good in this for halving the fps. The shadows look a bit better in some areas but nothing to get excited about and in areas like the ocean scene the water looked better in performance mode to me.

[StarkR3ality]

Only the higher end of the 30 series GPU's could really handle RT and that's with DLSS holding them up, GPU's that cost twice as much as the full console. They were never going to do RT to a decent level, plus AMD's RT implementation is lacking even on their high end GPU's.

The RT in this game looks great don't get me wrong, However not at the cost of a mid 20 FPS and low 1200p Res. Should of just sent time optimising the performance mode and made that the only mode available tbh. Better visuals at 1800p there or there abouts, the much better experience from what I've played.

[anubusgold]

My pc does ray tracing fine at 1440P with my 3080ti and im over 60fps on with high or ultra details. Amd aka consoles are just bad at ray tracing because they dont have cores that are built in the hardware to deal with it.

[StarkR3ality]

Yeah you've got a high end 3000 series GPU.. 3080 and up you'll be okay. Just to say though even at 4k your card will struggle without DLSS. Take control for example, ultra settings at 4k with ray tracing and you're getting 30 - 40fps without DLSS.

Plus if you genuinely have a 3080ti that card on it's own is £1200 MSRP. Taking into account the CPU and ram you'd need to not be bottled necked along side the cooling and PSU you're approaching £2000+ which makes your brag irrelevant as you've paid through the nose for it.

Fyi, you should've skipped the 3080ti, price to performance it's not worth it, I have a 3080 that I got for £750 that provides 90% of the performance, you got ripped off my friend.

[anubusgold]

@StarkR3ality Nope 3080ti is 734 on bestbbuy and zotac store and 4k resoultion is stupid its not worth the power to push those speeds because im a 144fps+ gamer for shooters. !440P is more than anough and most gamers havent even moved off 1080P

[StarkR3ality]

@anubus

Now I know you're lying and you don't even have one.. 3080ti for less than 900 even pre-owned is not believeable when even the 3080 is going for around that.

So you're arguing basically to keep tech stagnant and stay on 1080p? Okay boomer.

All TV's now are 4K, soon monitors will be that way also. Times have changed so therefore demands on tech do. Anyway I don't know why this has anything to do with our orignal argument, yeah well done you have an imaginary £2000+ PC that can outperform a console, well done mate, genius.

[anubusgold]

@StarkR3ality Sorry you missed the sale but yes they was that price before that 4080 launched but it was such a failure the prices have come back up. Bestbuy had them on sale in store for 734 to be picked up and the zotac store had them in stock for about a month the prices only went back up with the 4080 launch chaos. Even the 3090 dropped to 900 dollars. And evga which cards are high priced by itself had them for 829 before they sold out https://www.evga.com/produc... And the amd 6900 cards had dropped to 600 dollars.

[Deathdeliverer]

This guy always gets the worst PS5 version of anything. Either way, performance is the way I’m going. After seeing how amazing Fortnite looks with nanite, I’m convinced that everyone needs to find a way to implement it.

[EvertonFC]

According to DF nanite hasn't been finished or used in UE5?

[Deathdeliverer]

Look at the DF Fortnite update performance test. Even on console nanite is used and the results are crazy. I’ve started playing again since the chapter 4 trailer showed Deku. I was NOT expecting Fortnite to look like that as I hadn’t played the game since the original season 4. Years ago. Ray tracing looks amazing, especially when in doors and light is coming in from outside. Mirror reflections (to an extent).

[StarkR3ality]

@d3ath

@death

It's Lumen that's responsible for the lighting part but yeah it's fantastic.

It's not even real ray tracing, it's a substitute for it that looks just as good and requires a hell of a lot less of a performance sacrifice. Amazing tech.

[Aussiesummer]

need pro console stat.

[ChubbyBlade]

Obviously. It’s an open world game and ray tracing is very demanding.

It’s demanding on Pc as well.

People expecting solid performance with ray tracing are delusional. We’re still years away from that.

[Darkwatchman]

The comments commenting on this article and the article about the low resolution really don’t understand that it doesn’t actually look like the states resolution. It uses AMD FSR 2.1 to reconstruct to 4K which provides pretty great results. The resolution ranges aren’t even bad. Keep in mind that FSR 2 and DLSS are native 1440p in quality mode when targeting 4K and 1080p in performance mode when targeting 4K. So this falls well within that balanced to quality mode range to expect from a reconstruction technique like this.

[StarkR3ality]

I don't think it's the res people are complaining about, there's a clear indication that the RT mode is low Res, I've seen it myself and while that's not the be all and end all, it's just not a worthy trade.

The massive problem is the performance, I'm not a hater of 30fps, I'm used to it being a primarily console player all my life, but the TV's these days don't do well with low frame rate content, so it has to be a LOCKED, and I mean locked 30fps with no issues with pacing. This has Terrible frame pacing and drops to low 20's by the looks, it's pretty much unplayable. The performance mode however is nigh on a solid 60fps with drops in the city and with a much higher resolution compared to the RT mode.

It's nice that they tried, but if they can't get a locked 30fps in 2022 then RT shouldn't have been included full stop.

[shinoff2183]

Some of yall wouldn't of survived video games back in the day I swear. Fps dropping back in the day was common. A bit of a drop isn't a big deal every now and then

[StarkR3ality]

@shin

Demands change as tech advances. If you can't understand that as I'm not surprised as you don't seem totally screwed on.

[Levii_92]

Honestly this turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, who would have guessed. Hopefully it will improve over time.

[StarkR3ality]

I don't think it's a disappointment if you play the performance mode, it's quite stunning really, should of just had one 60fps mode but polished the fuck out of it in my opinion.

[hiawa23]

Moral of the story is our new consoles as awesome as they are struggle with the CPU hogger RT, and have their limitations, which is why I am wondering why is it pushed so much. It really is something I don't need if res/performance are compromised.

[StarkR3ality]

CPU's aren't the Issue, the CPU's are actually very future proofed compared to last gen. RT is GPU based, which when RTX's cards that are twice as expensive and 3 - 4 times more powerful are struggling, it's going to be a problem on console clearly. Some RT games have shown glimpses of what RT can do, but it's child's play compared to what can be achieved on say a 4080 etc.

I think full RT implementation is something that needs to be left to next console gen as I'm sure 4k will still be the standard and things like RT can be pushed further.

[Darkwatchman]

Ray tracing relies on the cpu as well as the GPU. Yes, the GPU is the main portion of the hardware that gets you RT, but enabling ray tracing also increases the CPU workload

[StarkR3ality]

@dark

Everything on a PC is both CPU and GPU, one can't work without the other, however there's a reason why there are RT cores inside the GPU itself. It's why Nvidia has better RT performance because they tend to have more/faster RT cores in their GPU's.

[ChubbyBlade]

RT isn’t cpu based….

[wiegraf]

It seems like Raytracing only works properly without performance taking a big hit in super high end PCs

[StarkR3ality]

Even they take a massive hit, people need to realise that even after 2 years the GPU's in these consoles are now basically low/mid range PC's they're great pieces of tech, but it just moves so fast now, it's outdated in a year or 2 unless you buy the latest and greatest PC GPU.

[Binarycode]

Just needs a little more optimization.

28-30fps, if increased to a solid 30 with frametimes being clean, will be fine, or if they can push it to 40fps.

RT isn't a gimmick, but should be used sparingly on consoles, Last gen RDNA2 wasn't as good as Nvidia, neither is RDNA3 but it's improved.

Series x has 2fps more in same mode and still drops to 28-29 in same sections, Slightly more consistent.

I still think RT probably has better methods it can use to gain more performance. Seems brute force.

RT is CPU Intensive which would explain the slight increase in fps on Series x. 3.5ghz vs 3.8GHZ.

But it's an Old game on an old 2015 engine being brought upto scratch.

I completed it in 2015 and enjoyed it very much.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Check this out, on a 3080.

[anast]

It doesn't run like a $2000 PC...

[Fonsecap]

Performance on consoles will always come down to optimization, if the game isn't well optimized for that specific console we will have results like this, and this red engine is much more optimized for pc, consoles always struggle to run they're games, that's why I think they switch to ue5, because it runs very well on all platforms.

[EvertonFC]

Yet another game to wait for a few months of patches I guess

[Flewid638]

Even on PC, ray traced games take a huge hit. Screen Space Reflections gives you a similar effect without the cost. Shit, even both of these things turned off and you can still have a pretty game.

[isarai]

Thank goodness it's an option cause the visual difference is almost none, so i'm just going to play at 60fps

[fffaustyyy]

TL;DR: beautiful, looks great, but had pretty big issues across multiple platforms

It looks pretty great, but honestly I had a lot of issues. First off, I have the PS4 disc version of The Witcher 3, so I loaded it into my PS5 and began downloading everything. For whatever reason, it didn't activate the enhancements in full, graphically speaking (I didn't even have the option to swap from Performance and Ray Tracing). Yet, on the title screen it clearly said Version 4.00. So there's that.
Then I downloaded on my PC which is pretty decent with a 3070 ti, and although it downloaded correctly, my game was running pretty badly. I'll admit that I have to tweak some of the settings to find a sweet spot, but I didn't expect to not be able to run it properly even with all of the bells and whistles.
Lastly, when I was done playing/struggling on my PC, I decided to transfer over to my Steam Deck, and lo and behold, loading up my save game would CTD straightaway. I tried loading up previous save games, starting a fresh game, and nothing would work. After that, I just gave up and went to bed.

[dazzysima]

You have to select the PS5 Free Upgrade from the dashboard.

By putting in the PS4 disc and installing all you have done is upgrade the PS4 version to 4.00 which will allow you to use cross progression to upload your save to the cloud to use on PS5 when you unlock it.

[ZycoFox]

I agree, RT is a gimmick, at least for the moment. I much prefer things already built into the game engine most of the time, for example the Havok physics in Source games like Half Life 2, in 2004 it was really good, still good today! And it actually enhanced interactivity a lot. RT is a lot like Nvidia Physx, if you play a multiplayer game with it enabled it's only you that sees the changes, literally does nothing else except be an effect.

Besides, the only games that have looked nice to me so far with RT is Quake 1/2, the original Doom games and that's about it, everything else has limited RT due to how demanding it is.

[Einhander1971]

Again not the hardware, Spiderman runs with RT features perfectly well.

[antikbaka]

but it's for FREE!!!!!!

[46player]

Hopefully they can fix that sometime. RT at 40fps would be alright. Performance mode is smooth though and graphics look much better.

[Abear21]

Ray Tracing is a waste, turned it off on Gran Turismo and the it’s a much better experience. It’s nice to have the option but performance mode ftw. 60 fps makes the games look better and much cleaner even if there’s less going on on screen.

[Knushwood Butt]

Pretty sure I enabled performance mode from the first time I played it so I've never seen it running with ray tracing. How is it? I use cockpit view anyway.

[darksky]

The game runs at around 50 fps @ 4K on an RTX 4080 with DLSS. If the PS5 can get a stable 30fps then that is an achievement. Just like Cyberpunk, CDProject cannot get decent fps with raytracing enabled.

[GoodGuy09]

RT is always heavily demanding even on PC. You sacrifice 30+ frames for it. I would just prefer full 1080/1440 at 60 performance mode.

[jznrpg]

Sounds poorly optimized as there are games with better graphics running RT. Obviously not full RT as that’s not possible this gen and not possible without spending a stupid amount of money and there is still come issues .
That being said you don’t notice is so much when your in hectic situations as you won’t pay attention to the small details . I’d rather have better particle effects and other details over RT . Demons Souls remake didn’t have RT and it looks amazing .
It’s nice and all but if it’s bogging down the game I’m not going to turn it on . It isn’t necessary at all .
Next gen RT should be better but AMD hardware just isn’t there yet but with this game they could have done better . Maybe 10 patches from now they will figure it out

[PrinterMan]

I heard on other sites that this was a great next gen patch. Hmmm. Yes, ray tracing is taxing on ALL platforms including PC. Nothing new here.

[babadivad]

Is it just as bad on Xbox?

[Bathory666]

I have series x and ps5, both versions are identical. RT looks great, but that 30fps is awful. You can switch back and forth in options on the fly to see the difference. Stick with performance. You get higher resolution and 60fps. VRR eliminates any Judder on both consoles at 60fps. But honestly i haven’t seen any judder in performance on my second tv which has no VRR. Still smooth. Game looks much better than it did prior. They did a great job and it’s a free upgrade. The haptic feedback is great on ps5. Ps5 gets the win for me because of the controller haptics.

[got_dam]

It's a free update.