On 29 September, a game an awful lot of us already own comes back around. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered arrives as a free upgrade for anyone who owns the original on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, GOG or the Epic Games Store, and Switch owners can claim it on Switch 2. If you only ever bought the base game, the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions come with it at no charge either.
That's a good deal. It's also why I expect a run of "why is it stuttering now" messages in early October. A free upgrade to an eleven-year-old game sounds harmless, but on PC this one asks a lot more of your machine.
What CD Projekt Red actually changed
The big change is the lighting, which has been rebuilt: full path tracing, ray reconstruction, hair tracing and a native DirectX 12 renderer that spreads work across CPU cores properly, which the 2015 engine never did. Path tracing is the expensive one. Instead of faking bounced light with pre-baked tricks, the game traces it for real. It looks superb in Velen at dusk and costs a fortune in frames.
The requirements, in plain numbers
CD Projekt Red published three tiers. TechPowerUp has the full breakdown. Here's the shape of it:
| Minimum CPU | i5-8400 / Ryzen 5 2600 |
| Minimum GPU | GTX 1660 6GB · RX 5500 XT 8GB · Arc A580 |
| Recommended CPU | i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600X |
| Recommended GPU | RTX 2060 Super · RX 6600 XT · Arc B580 |
| System memory | 12GB minimum · 16GB recommended |
| 4K with ray tracing | RTX 3080 / RX 6800 XT · DLSS or FSR on |
| Storage | 70GB on an SSD · no hard drive listed |
| Operating system | Windows 11 64-bit |
The original Witcher 3 ran on a GTX 660 and a mechanical drive. The minimum here is roughly a 2019 mid-range card, and the top tier assumes you're leaning on upscaling rather than brute force. My read: the ray tracing tier is built for people who already have the hardware, not for people about to buy it at this year's prices.
So do you need to spend anything?
Mostly, no. Work down this list before you open a shopping tab:
- On PS5, Xbox Series X|S or Switch 2: nothing to do. Free upgrade, no decision to make
- Windows 11, any RTX 20-series or RX 6000-series card: you're fine at 1440p with upscaling on and ray tracing off or low
- Still on Windows 10: that upgrade is free and takes an evening. Do it before you look at hardware
- Game installed on a hard drive: move it to an SSD, or expect loading and texture pop-in the remaster was never tested against
- Under 70GB free: clear space now. A failed 70GB download on rural broadband is a miserable evening
- Chasing path tracing at 4K: that's a GPU conversation, and this is a poor year for one
That last point matters. Memory, storage and graphics cards have all climbed this year, so a card bought in a hurry now is bought near the top of the market. A remaster of a 2015 game is a weak reason to do it. If the machine is due an upgrade anyway, that's different, and then it's worth thinking about how much VRAM you actually need rather than which model number sounds fastest.
My verdict
Most people will get this for nothing, which is as it should be. The PC version just has a sharper edge than the console one: Windows 11, an SSD, 70GB free and a card from roughly 2019 or later. Check those four, leave the settings at High, and it'll look better than you remember without costing you a penny. Path tracing is a different conversation, and it's about hardware prices, not Geralt.
