We've revisited the PC performance of The Witcher 3 Remastered following community feedback regarding the game's behaviour in CPU-limited scenarios. Our original analysis, conducted on hotfix 5.00c, observed significant frame-rate drops in the demanding Hierarch Square area of Novigrad when using path tracing. These results were met with scepticism by some, so we're back to have a look at performance using the latest patch, 5.01.

Once again, we started with our high-end system built around a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RTX 5090 at 4K resolution with DLSS in performance mode. While the performance remains sub-60fps in the square, there has been a marked improvement versus the prior patch. It's difficult to get exact like-versus-like testing, but we saw a frame-rate increase of around 10fps here, moving the performance floor from the mid-30s up to around 45fps.

To ensure the GPU was not creating a performance bottleneck, we also tested with a 1080p output resolution and DLSS remaining in performance mode, which corresponds to a 540p internal resolution. Despite this huge reduction to the graphical workload, frame-rates remain largely unchanged, confirming the system is CPU-limited even on the fastest currently available gaming CPU.

We also double-checked our hardware configuration and software settings. The test system is using fully updated Windows 11 drivers and AMD chipset drivers, alongside a clean Nvidia driver installation. Furthermore, CPU behaviour in Task Manager shows that the game is correctly using the CCD equipped with 3D V-Cache rather than the CCD without it, which is as we'd hope.

We ran similar tests on a second system equipped with a more mid-range processor and graphics card combination: a Ryzen 7 5700X3D and an RTX 4070 Ti Super. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D delivered a frame-rate advantage of just over 50 percent, which is about what we'd expect from these two CPUs - and suggests that our hardware setup here is not likely to be suffering from any performance-sapping issues.

In conclusion, the most likely factor driving improved performance is the move from hotfix 5.00c to patch 5.01 - and there may be more room for CD Projekt Red to improve performance in future patches. 5.01 has also had an impact on console performance, and we're currently revising our console-focused video with new testing to account for the latest patch - so stay tuned for that.