The Witcher 3 Remastered Adds Path Tracing and DLSS 4.5 on PC

CD PROJEKT RED will launch The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on September 29, 2026. The studio describes it as a free upgrade for existing owners on qualifying PC and current-generation console platforms, with upgrades to visuals, performance and gameplay rather than a separate paid PC remaster.

For PC graphics, NVIDIA has now detailed a new path-traced rendering option, DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, an upgrade to DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation. Those features extend the ray-tracing stack introduced by the 2022 next-gen update instead of merely repackaging its existing settings.

NVIDIA says Remastered lets PC players upgrade to path tracing and adds line-swept-sphere, or LSS, path-traced hair rendering to enhance the game's HairWorks technology. DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction is being introduced alongside that path-traced pipeline to reconstruct ray-traced lighting data.

That is distinct from the current game's separate ray-traced lighting, ambient occlusion, shadow and reflection effects. A path-traced mode changes a broader part of the lighting pipeline, while Ray Reconstruction addresses reconstruction and denoising of the ray-traced signal. Neither should be treated as another resolution-upscaling preset.

NVIDIA says Dynamic Multi Frame Generation can provide up to 6X frame multiplication on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs. That wording describes the frame-generation multiplier, not a claim that the game itself becomes six times faster in conventional rendered FPS.

DLSS features also have different hardware boundaries. The presence of DLSS Super Resolution or Ray Reconstruction should not be used to infer that the same GPU supports Dynamic Multi Frame Generation. Players should evaluate each feature against NVIDIA's current GPU support matrix and the options exposed by the released game.

NVIDIA released GeForce Game Ready driver 617.14 on September 22 with explicit Game Ready support for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered. The same driver also targets CONTROL Resonant, Gears of War: E-Day and AION 2.

Having the driver available a week before launch removes one obvious day-one prerequisite for GeForce users, but Game Ready labeling should not be converted into an unsupported performance claim. NVIDIA's release notes describe optimizations and support; they do not provide a hardware-independent FPS guarantee for the remaster.

CD PROJEKT RED says Remastered also includes gameplay and presentation changes such as a reimagined skill system, overhauled animations, improved combat, cross-platform mod support, immersive meditation and an expanded photo mode. The studio is also bringing the game to Battle.net on September 29.

The PC rendering changes remain the most hardware-sensitive part of the release. Once the final build is public, the useful follow-up questions will be the cost of path tracing, VRAM behavior, CPU scaling, shader and traversal stability, and how the reconstruction modes compare under controlled conditions. None of those measurements should be inferred before release.