General improvements
- Geometry is greatly improved overall. In Novigrad, the cobblestone is now in 3D geometry instead of a flat texture
- Improved textures and materials all around and on NPCs
- Hero characters such as Geralt get more detailed shadows that were otherwise reserved only for cutscenes
- Individual torches now cast shadows
- Greatly improved grass and foliage density
- Improved draw distances
- Improved NPC density (also applies to creatures and animals)
- The intro's FMV in Kaear Moran is now real time and no longer locked to 30fps at console settings
- Improved mesh LOD. One of the most readily visible upgrades that is not RT.
Ray tracing (DX12 only)
- RTGI, shadows, reflections, and AO, are all there
- Dramatic improvement over the old version
- Bounce lights, diffused shadows, bodies of water reflecting the world around them
- NPC armors are no longer using cubemaps but ray tracing
- The hue of the game completely changes at times going from a blue/grey color to a warmer, yellowish/orange tone coming from the sun
- Foliage has proper shadows, giving them a much more grounded appearance
- RT shadows are sharper up close and softer at a distance as they should be. The level of sharpness is mostly the same all around in the original version
- Distance objects also have shadows
- Shadows have flickering issues at times
- Fidelity of the shadows can change based upon the camera and movement, distracting the presentation
- They appear in and out of existence but overall, it's not recommended to turn them on at the moment
- In a particular scene in the beginning, Geralt's hair isn't properly shaded being too dark
- Imperfect RT reflections. In some instances where the water is flowing, the reflections don't warp and remain still like in a mirror
- Not all objects render in the reflections. Trees and other objects pop in and out of the reflections based on the distance
- CDPR is working on fixing those issues with the reflections
- Even considering the issues, the improvements are great
Performance
- DX12 without RT and DX11 version appear identical
- Even without RT, the DX12 version is about 30% heavier on the CPU
- The DX12 version is heavily single-threaded. One or two threads show 70%+ usage while the others remain unused
- The frame rate gets so bad in Novigrad that the CPU performance drops even more than Flight Simulator
- The issue is lessened when in the wilderness. It's a major problem in populated areas
- The 12900K is unable to lock at 60fps with Ultra+settings and RT no matter what you do. It drops to the 40s at times
- The 3600 suffers worse, dropping to below 30fps in Novigrad
- RTGI alone drops the performance by 35% on a 12900K+RTX 4090
- The 3600 loses 37% of its performance with RTGI
- Other RT effects further drop performance incrementally with reflections having the greatest impact. About a 15% further drop from Ultra+ with RTGI
- CPU limits can be greatly reduced with DLSS3 frame generation
- Latency with frame generation goes from 56ms to 59ms but performance can more than double
- There are a few shader compilation issues. Nowhere near as bad as games like Callisto Protocol
- The camera is jittery and appears to stop and fast-forward at times during stutters
- Overall, great visual improvements but has major issues, especially in regards to performance
- The game still needs a lot of work
