The Witcher 3 Next-Gen - PS5 vs Xbox Series X - DF Tech Review - RT and Performance Modes Tested! 

Raytracing is nice I guess, but choosing between 30 and 60 fps is no choice at all.

There is no amount of graphical features and new technology that could make me play in 25 FPS. Not happening anymore.

I’m half-way through it on Xbox Series X. RT mode is not smooth, but the graphics look far more realistic. I really like it, but it’s not smooth enough to play and enjoy. I wish I could play with RT… but performance mode will have to do. Incredible game though! I’m playing it for the first time 🥳

Thank you! Great video! Hope there will be more paches for RT mode. Love to play it in RT

Prioritizing RT AO over RT reflections was the right call. Still it's a shame it can't even hit a consistent 30fps. Hopefully they can optimize it in a patch.

I really appreciate the time you spent investigating the input lag. That kind of information is super useful. Thank you!

I really appreciate that they are giving us a follow-up review. I feel like a lot of reviews. Just do opening 10 hr and call it a day.

Awesome as usual! And I also hope the patch lands soon and that is fixes some of these issues! Do we know if the menu on PC runs in 60 now, or is it still locked at 30?

Sadly I start to appreciate when devs give us a 60fps option (it should be a non negotiable industry standard by now)

I’m about 40 hours in on ps5. Gotta say. It looks great. It’s one of my favourite ever games, so to finally replay it at 60fps, it is as good as I hoped it would be.

Great video guys, keep it up! From my time playing this on my Series S, it didn't feel like it was locking to 60. So i'll be sticking to pc for this playthrough

Do I need to change something in the settings? I feel the game is so damn clunky even by playing on Performance mode. Tried the Ray Tracing mode on my LGCX and I just can't with the 30fps.

I will always go for performance over RT in any game if I can't get both, but it's good to have the option for those who choose different. It's weird to me that the performance mode has a higher resolution, which is another plus for the better framerate option. I would like to see a comparison between consoles and PC, especially performance mode on consoles and no RT on PC to even the odds. I think it's a huge upgrade, the 60 fps mode alone makes it a better game and a very attractive option even over the PC version for those who don't have the hardware to run it properly.

I played the game years ago on PS4 and have started a new run since the patch released. I am loving the game yet again and it's impressive how the game is still so good

What I can see in terms of what you tested in performance (second run having better FPS) and the foliage/shadow issue on Xbox, I think these are simply things that might get patched. Really awesome demonstration folks! =D

Hello, I have an important question ⁉️. In another video there was a conspt or term ( PC latency ) and now with consoles there is a nother one ( response time ). Is both of them a measurement of input lag or latency?

Ty tom, always a pleasure to watch your vids

The more I've learned about bounce lighting and how it colours the environement, the more I appreciate how effective it is at conveying an extra layer of realism to my brain in games. I think even in the outdoor shots the RT adds a lot in that respect. I think it's worth having on in this game if they can patch in a smooth 30fps personally especially given the nature of the gameplay.

Great video, thanks. I've only had one crash on my PS5 thankfully. I tend to switch to RT if i know i'll be indoors for a while, but mostly just leave it on Performance.

You know it's a Tom Morgan joint when a top-notch intro sequence kicks off the vid!

After seeing the RT implementations in Witcher 3 and GTAV I'm blown away with what Insomniac was able to do with the RT Performance mode in Spiderman. All the games look amazing mind you but nailing RT reflections on full skyscrapers with 60fps is incredible. I wish all devs would have this mode at lower res.

Tom your output has been stellar. Presentation, editing and all that. Great stuff man

Is Tom running on older code...?? The grass density was never lower on Seried X as shown here? Its full range exactly the same as PS5, I've just loaded up those areas and even a few days ago these grass patches were a march for PS5 settings?

12:01 about rendering distance, did they fix this on series X after last few patches or is this still an issue ?

19:32 Damn PS4pro load times were crazy. On X1S load times were lowered to 36 iirc when using an external HDD.

My Ps5 absolutely struggles in Ray Tracing mode, lack of vrr and other features on my tv might not help, but in locations like Novigrad it’s borderline unplayable with the drop in frame rate

Tom is a great reviewer! Always enjoy his reviews best!

DF, did they fix some of the gameplay/quest bugs though? I played the game on PS4 Pro about 2 years ago and there were quests that were completely broken. It also appeared that the developers had no intention to fix them as there hadn't been any patches in a very long time.

It would've been nice if Photo Mode automatically switches to Ray Tracing even if it is set to Performance mode. It's a hassle to go between menu just to toggle.

Great video Tom. Only one thing I would question is I’m playing it on Series x and the foliage is being rendered the same as you’re showing the ps5. It’s rendering all the way to the horizon pretty much? It’s definitely not cutting of as close as in your video.

Trouble started from Velen! I was amazed at the beginning of the game how well it moved with RT ON and I left it like that because I liked it, but when I got to Velen they dropped drastically I think somewhere below 25fps, I switched to performance mode but there were big drops of fps and here in some areas and for a few seconds the game freezes!

That’s interesting on the draw distance and foliage density as another side by side said the opposite - more robust and more of it on Xbox series X. I wonder if it depends on what patch they were tested on?

In performance mode the next gen versions often have worse shadows for things like fire, and Geralts hair loses physics in the performance mode too, which is present on old gen.

Playing in performance mode on ps5 , runs beautifully , had no crashes only real problem I've had was after saving frame rate in performance mode went terrible but a reload fixed that and haven't had it since

Quality video DF. It's a decent start but tweaking is most definitely needed too get the Frames Running Smoother and get rid of those Crashes.

I'm playing on ps5 with RT mode and I love it, but there's some minimal stutter here and there when updating quest status and some frame issues on dense forest locations. Still an amazing update!

It now almost looks like the pre launch footage from 7 years ago

You can speed up loading as the game will load things slower IF you don't press a button to skip. Press X and it loads much faster than what DF says here.

Will there be a video about the new patch in the next few days? The performance should have been improved here

Thanks Tom. I’ll wait till after the inevitable patches to smooth out that RT mode which has been explained in depth by NX gamer. In it he explains the possible reasons why the RT mode has issues.

Look on the bright side RT mode will only benefit Virtual Photographers and for someone who likes photography like myself this is definitely beneficial for those kinda people and they can switch back and fourth if they want to play the game or take an in game photo mode

I noticed latency was pretty high in RT as I kept missing parrys but never did on Performance

Finally we see what this latency is, thank you, its also on PC and its such a strange thing I've never really noticed before in any other game. It almost feels like i'm playing with a bad bluetooth connection with my controller or something.

Will you be doing a Series S rundown? Thanks!

What if you turn motion blur, blur and camera lens effects all off? Would that improve the frame rate on the PS5 for both the Performance and Ray Tracing modes?

As much as I love the new update, I feel like it removed one of the most impressive grafics features od TW3, namely that amazing ripple effect that would appear in water when casting Aard

Older engines are coming to their limits to squeeze out more performance. It seems not easy changing the game code base to improve the visual effects like ray tracing. It must also be possible to make comparisons with first-party studios how do they handle such improvements.

Thanks Tom, your excellent console focused content is the reason why I stay subbed to this channel.

PS5 surprisingly performs better than XSX in many games even though XSX has a slightly more powerful GPU, how come?

I wanna mess around with photo mode but can’t because whenever I use it, my screen turns red. Any other pc players find a fix for this?

Glad you picked out the shadows and extra tree bush here and there because I sure could not ,especially while on the move. But performance mode is for me, 30 fps faster is something I can notice.

Thanks Tom - tried it out on PS5 yesterday - RT felt rough, especially the input lag as you described. Really hoping they can patch to a locked 30 fps

Have not tried this yet, does enabling VRR resolve any screen tearing and smooth out any dips (as you’d expect)?

The draw distance on my series X is completely different than what is shown in the video. Must be a bug.

I'm playing on Series X and I really liked the look of the RT mode, but I just couldn't keep playing on that mode because of the frame rate inconsistency and input latency. It was giving me a headache and felt terrible to me just to walk around... So, I ended up in the same boat, playing on performance mode exclusively. I really hope they keep some people working on the performance issues and improve the performance in future patches. I'd be completely fine with 30 fps if it was consistent with less input lag.

Does the PS5 update utilize the DualSense properly? I have the game on PC, but I'd get it on PS5 if the controller feedback improves the immersion.

RT mode needs some work to be stable 30 fps. Game drops way too much fps

if Ray Tracing mode was a stable 30 at all times, that would be my easy go to. Too many dips right now but damn it looks so good on this mode. The grass generating their own RT shadows makes it looks so much more realistic! The shadows between the sword and the back in RT mode also just looks so much more natural in RT mode as well. Update: much smoother on my series x than the ps5.

Cool video, a small chapter about Series S would be nice. The 30 FPS mode has no RT, but it look far better than the best olden gen version. It seems to be the 60 FPS mode of the Series X running in dynamic 1440p and at 30 FPS. The 60 FPS mode has low detail, but the framerate is far better than the One performance mode.

Does the forced VRR feature on PS5 help the RT mode hit 30FPS more often? Especially in the dense city sections of the game?

I've noticed more and more third party releases recently that have higher resolution on XSX but improved graphical settings on PS5

Looks great. Based on the performance issues with ps5 and series x in different areas and just inconsistent performance in the same area when attempting to go through it different times the game really needs another patch.

Hey, do you guys recommend motion blur on or off? I can never decide.

Great vid, Tom! Thanks!

I noticed the late draw in of the shadows also on Series X. Very strange. Especially when the resolution is so high on performance mode. It really drags the experience down. Once you see it you cannot unsee it. It is very destracting when you are on foot in Novigrad - on every building basically.

Something ist wrong with your Xbox version. I could have sworn that my draw distance on Xbox is much farther then yours so I checked it and yeah. Foliage distance is on par with PS5 for me. I stand at the exact same places as you do and I see the foliage and shadows from much farther away.

@DigitalFoundry Why can’t the put options for RTAO and RTGI as seperate options on PS5 ? I’d rather play with RTAO only on PS5 if it were possible. Surely the FPS would be better no ?

Heres hoping they can fix the RT mode, because it looks gorgeous. I dont mind lowering the resolution more if it means a stable 30fps, or even 40fps like Spidermans RT Performance mode.

Not gonna lie, this is the first game where I'm really enjoying the ray tracing application. You can see the difference, I would suggest turning motion blur on.

I think I'd take 60 fps over ray tracing any day. In these examples you provided I thought the improvements ray tracing provided weren't enough to warrant using it. Especially since texture quality seemingly took a dip on RT mode.

Nice coverage, Tom.

I'm getting a weird blur effect on character models but it's only in cut scenes it's really annoying 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Series X might have a marginally more powerful GPU than the PS5 (on paper) but DX12 can sometimes get in the way and cause processing inefficiencies in certain workloads (just look at PC gaming). This is most likely why many third party games slightly favor the PS5 in performance (especially rasterization) as its API is probably a bit more efficient and utilizes the hardware a little better.

The graphics and visuals look good! And VRR can smooth out those small drops in 60fps mode. Hopefully they can optimize the 30fps RT mode better in future patch

The issue I had with draw distance was torches. I can literally see the torch isn't lit like 30ft away then I watch it light up the closer I get then go out once I pass it another 30ft like it's so noticable I'm getting frustrated seeing it while I explore. I want to see the fire in the distance. I don't want to see it go out or light up after 30ft of distance from it like seriously breaks immersion. Same thing with foliage pop ins I see it a lot in this update. Another gripe I have is why they never changed the way roach spawns. He spawns way too far away if you're by water he won't spawn sometimes until you move away and if you are even close to a building most likely he's gunna spawn behind the entire building and kind of just sit there waiting for you to run all the way around. Roach should just spawn like right behind you and walk up to you and you should be able to hold the call button like assassin's Creed and automatically jump on and go. I find myself having to spend extra time just trying to get to roach after calling him

silly suggestion, but evenly framepaced 24fps option for 120hz displays? Seems like it would actually help the RT modes

They've added the option to pause during cutscenes, so I flip between RT and performance pretty often. I've played the game many times, if I know I'm about to settle in to a long story sequence, I flip RT on and keep it on for exploring or easy fights. In tougher encounters, I switch to 60fps. It would be great to have a quicker toggle but there's no loading or black screen to switch so it's not a big deal.

Impressive to see them target the PS4/Xbox1 performance

Does PC version get the visual upgrade too? Any performance loses if so?

So is it worth it on ps5? Are there more background characters? (Crowd density)

I would trade the SSR water reflections for a stable 30FPS RT mode with the RTGI and RTAO since they are the most impactful - water looks in some ways better on the performance mode. I think they should offer some RT toggles like this. The textures, and foliage density are significant, and seeing XSX having pathetic LOD is really strange...because the world fills very dense on PS5 even in performance mode with lots of grass, and vegetation, but the RTGI/AO is hard to give up since it makes everything feel so much more rich.

I didn't realize there was such a texture quality dropoff for Ray-Tracing mode here. I usually take 30fps for higher fidelity, but in this case it's actually a *downgrade* compared to the 60fps.

There’s been 3 more hotfix patches, nearly one every day after it’s first big update. About 2GB on pc. Had crashes on the non-hotfix first update.

I have no worries about the RT stuff - I really haven't noticed any loss while playing performance mode, it certainly hasn't affected my enjoyment of the game. I've not had any crashes either, although I do have a weird bug where the map just appears as a green screen. But my biggest problem is the auto-save stutter! The longer I play the longer the stutter and turning on the cross-progression cloud saves made the whole thing intolerable! I ended up turning it off and I will manually go back in when I want to transfer a save file. I hope that gets patched soon.

Been playing this on Series X in mostly ray tracing mode. Switching between ray tracing and performance highlights just how bland the lighting was. It's an incredible difference to the experience in my opinion. Night time and Caves are actually dark. The torch is actually useful! The shadows the torch draws are very impressive also. Just a shame the performance is not quite there yet, and the latency issue....it's heavy to play for sure and has some weird camera stutter but it looks magnificent. It's just a shame that we get an amazing looking mode which just isn't where it should be.

60 fps any day no matter the resolution

why u didn’t mention on 17:21 the ps5 have much density in the grass than the xbox series x ? maybe that could say why it’s performing lower

So if I only have the standard edition it won’t be as good enhanced as the complete edition? I thought the upgrade is for the game regardless if you have it Standard, Gold, Deluxe or Complete! This is weird if true!

Is this Groundhog Day? I swear I’ve already seen this.

I dont get motion sickness from games often but the judder on PS5 really messed with me. I really hope they can fix it

As a PS5 player playing with performance mode, the updated version nearly feels like a new game. Since higher framerates have become the norm for consoles, spoiling me more and more, revisiting this game over the years got a lot harder to do. It's a night and day difference. I'm loving it

I remember back in the day every hardware review on DF had that horse riding bit from this game in it, oh those were the days

Anyone notice the frames cut in half during witcher vision

These consoles should have focused on 4k/60fps 1080/120 instead of worrying about RT implementation on all titles.

I didn’t hear it mentioned but there’s a weird blurring effect on characters going on pretty distracting in cutscenes once you notice it. It’s like for a sec or 2 an entire character model like Geralt will blur like it’s out of focus then it goes back to normal then a few seconds later happens again. Over and over like a blur-flicker. It’s strange

Does anybody get an inventory screen glitch where the image of Geralt is glitching out. It frequently occurs for me.

Draw distance on Series X seems to be a bug as I can't recreate the same results as in the video on my Xbox, this is in both modes. My results are the same as the PS5.

I would love to play in RT mode, but outside white orchard, it is barely playable... framerate is often below 25 FPS, sometimes 20 on XSX (without talking about the weird visual glitchs that happens only on RT mode). For now, performance mode is the only way to play the game...

Is there ever gonna be a showcase or mention of the series s version, weird to have missed it out usually you guys cover it too

How well does high on life run? Can you test it?