In 2015, my GTX 770M laptop crumpled like a paper bag after a run-in with Witcher 3, and my hunger for more power inspired me to build a GTX 1080 desktop a year later; in 2020, that noble beast, this time by Cyberpunk 2077, was a 1080p I could hardly maintain a stable 60fps at low resolution.

The seasons change, the tide rises, and CD Projekt destroys my computer. The sturdy and expensive RTX 3070 I just got last year can just barely reach 40fps with Witcher 3's new ray tracing implementation. If you are like me and want to get even more performance out of Witcher 3 Next Gen's ray tracing, you might try modder alikoko's Optimized Raytracing (opens in new tab) at NexusMods

Basically, you can use the following settings.

Basically, alikoko's mod reduces the number of probes that generate bouncing rays in certain scenes in the game, reducing the load on the GPU while providing ray-traced lighting. I believe it is like a user hacked high/medium/low setting slider for RT Global Illumination in The Witcher 3, and alikoko cites a 20-30% performance improvement with RTX 2060 Super. Other users in the comments section have noted similar gains, and alikoko's mods were helpful in my setup, often producing 50 fps or more with the DLSS Performance "Performance" preset, RT Global, mostly Ultra settings.

However, alikoko warns that the lighting in indoor scenes can be inaccurate, and the mod has not yet tweaked the RT sub-settings for shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion. Other issues with The Witcher 3 Next Gen, such as inefficient CPU usage (open in new tab) and memory leaks related to ray tracing (open in new tab) reported by Digital Foundry, are still present as well.

Alikoko's mod is a worthy tool for the average Joe who wants a taste of the RTX 4090 life, but I finally threw in the towel: with RT turned off and everything else set to Ultra+ (and the dreaded Hairworks enabled), 1440p, I got a pretty hard floor of 70 fps in DLSS quality.

For my next Witcher 3 lighting mod experiment, I'm going to try jojolapin102's Better SSAO (opens in new tab). There are similar guides for Henry Cavill's armor (opens in new tab), which was added in 0, and for the first set of Witcher schools (opens in new tab) and cats (opens in new tab).