Before Cyberpunk 2077 came The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, CD Projekt Red’s massively popular ARPG. The game is almost a decade old, but that doesn’t stop it from receiving plenty of love from the gaming community. One of the biggest changes to the game was the free next-gen update back in 2022, which introduced graphical improvements such as ray tracing, upscaled 4K textures, and even integrated community-made mods such as the ‘The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project’.

However, the mod’s creator, Halk Hogan, didn’t stop there and continued to work on the project. They have now released it in its final version, raising the game’s visuals to the “highest level yet” which enhances it to “a truly next-gen masterpiece.” Benchmarks for the game have now been posted online with the kitted-out graphics to see how well performance holds up.

Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project mod for next-gen

First off, the mod – The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project NextGen Edition – is available to download over on Nexus Mods. Mod installation isn’t too difficult either; it all comes in a single package. We recommend checking out the release preview video below if you want to see the difference the mod makes.

The visual improvements are impressive, and perhaps more impressively, the mod’s creator claims that it doesn’t cause a massive hit on performance. So, we recommend it to anyone who has no problems running Witcher 3 as is.

Performance tested in 4K max settings

Thanks to new benchmarks posted by the German site PC Games Hardware (PCGH), we can check out the performance of the game with the mod installed. Looking at benchmarks for max settings with ray tracing on, only the RTX 4090 manages to average above 60 FPS. PCGH put the game through its “Dustwood” test scene, which it claims is GPU-heavy and essentially represents a worst-case scenario; no other area of the game should cause a problem in comparison.

• Max details including ray tracing (except Hairworks) with DirectX 12
• 67% upscaling (DLSS/XeSS/FSR 2 Quality), no Reflex or Frame Generation
• Tested with Intel Core i9-14900K, Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master, 32GB Corsair DDR5-7200

As we can see from the benchmarks above, the RTX 4090 overclocked to 3.07GHz manages a top-score average of 67.2. The 1% lows are just 10 FPS below that, which is relatively steady and stutter-free. Keep in mind that according to the test conditions, this is utilizing DLSS quality, so some upscaling is involved.

Separate benchmarks without ray tracing – and no upscaling or frame gen – show the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC card managing an average of 69 FPS, so the use of DLSS is the price you pay if you want the full ray-traced experience. Even still, there’s still room for frame generation as Witcher 3 does indeed support DLSS 3, which will boost frames significantly higher.

Dropping down the resolution with 1080p rasterization (no upscaling or frame gen), GPUs that averaged just above the 60 FPS mark include the RX 6700 XT (60.5 FPS), Arc A770 (66.1 FPS), and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB (66.2 FPS). Overall, the results show that The Witcher 3 is still a demanding game when you utilize its top-end graphics settings, but plenty of modern hardware will deal with it just nicely, especially at lower resolutions or without ray tracing.

About the Author

Charlie Noon

Charlie is the Affiliate manager for PC Guide. He has a vast understanding of most PC hardware and consumer essentials, using his knowledge to provide the best products and the biggest deals.