Should You Select DX11 Or DX12?

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is widely thought to be among the finest games of the past decade, and for good reason. Despite being nearly nine years old, it continues to perform well on Steam charts. Should you’re among the many few who haven’t played the sport yet or are returning to it, your first decision shall be whether to make use of the older DX11 version or the newer DX12 version.

This alternative is not straightforward, as each versions have their very own pros and cons. Ultimately, it is dependent upon what you value most in your gaming experience. The guide below will make it easier to make a more informed decision.

What Was The Next-Gen Update For The Witcher 3?

A number of years ago, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt received a free next-gen update for consoles and PC. While the console update may not concern you, the PC update definitely does. This free update introduced recent content, highly requested features, quality of life improvements, officially integrated mods, bug fixes, and far more. Listing all the things it added would require a wholly separate guide.

What’s most relevant here is the introduction of a brand new DX12 version of the sport, while the unique only used DX11. Fortunately, a lot of the improvements — aside from just a few graphical features — were made available for each the DX11 and DX12 versions. Nevertheless, the DX12 version offers some benefits that the DX11 version doesn’t, albeit at a really steep cost. There are valid reasons to decide on either version, so proceed reading on and choose for yourself.

Reasons To Select DX11 For The Witcher 3

The first reason to decide on the older DX11 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the performance. The sport runs significantly higher on DX11 when using equivalent settings in comparison with the DX12 version, mainly as a consequence of superior CPU optimization in DX11. Playing any a part of the sport on DX12 with the identical graphics settings ends in roughly a 30% performance loss with none visual improvement.

Nevertheless, DX11 has some major limitations, equivalent to the dearth of support for brand new features like ray tracing, upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR, and Nvidia Frame Generation. On the intense side, you may still use AMD Fluid Motion Frames through AMD Software, because it’s supported for all DX11 titles.

One other notable advantage of DX11 is that you would be able to use the newly added Ultra+ graphics preset, allowing you to reinforce the sport’s visuals beyond the initial 2015 release, even without ray tracing.

Select DX11 When:

• You’ve a weaker CPU.
• You’re playing at 1080p (as CPU utilization is higher at this resolution).
• You prioritize achieving the best possible FPS.
• You don’t care about ray tracing.
• You should not planning on using upscaling technologies.

Reasons To Select DX12 For The Witcher 3

The most important draw of the DX12 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the brand new features it unlocks. These include various sorts of ray tracing, equivalent to RT reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and more. DX12 also allows players to benefit from upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR, together with Nvidia Frame Generation.

As mentioned earlier, the largest drawback of DX12 is its high performance cost. Ray tracing demands substantial computing power, making upscaling technology almost a necessity. Nevertheless, the visual improvement provided by ray tracing, especially in low-light areas, is undeniable.

One other issue with DX12 is a bug that happens when using each ray tracing and HairWorks, causing Geralt’s hair to show brown, which looks very bad — not to say immersion breaking. This bug has been around for over a yr and is unlikely to be fixed at this point. Because of this, you may have to choose from superior lighting or higher hair, a compromise that might push many players towards the DX11 version, where HairWorks might be enabled without the unnecessary performance loss. The one major downside is losing access to upscaling technologies.

Select DX12 When:

• You’ve a particularly high-end PC.
• You need to utilize the newly added ray tracing features.
• You are satisfied with a playable FPS and don’t need the best framerate.
• You are playing at a resolution higher than 1080p, where the sport will rely more on the GPU (though DX11 will still yield more FPS).
• You don’t mind missing out on HairWorks.

Final Advice For The Witcher 3: DX11 Or DX12

Considering the benefits and drawbacks of each versions, using the DX11 version delivers the optimal experience. It offers almost all the things that DX12 does but without the poor CPU optimization. While the ray tracing features in DX12 are a pleasant addition, the performance impact continues to be too significant to justify using it unless you’ve a top-of-the-line PC.

The performance boost from upscaling technologies in DX12 is essentially offset by the CPU performance hit anyway, so it isn’t value selecting DX12 only for upscalers. The unique DX11 version is the better option.