Witch Hunt 3 issue - Can't use ray tracing

[Boss-Starstreams]

I've had this game for over a year and it always played super smooth. Not a drop in FPS. Now I'm playing it for the first time after the developer released a HUGE update a few months ago and It's not even playable,. The choppy freezes feels like I'm playing on a computer with no graphics card. This update broke something. I'm seeing tones of posts on line about it but none of the solution's fixes it. I've verified my files in steam, and even tried disabling //camera.PlayAnimation( animation )

Windows 10 Pro Just installed OS.
i5 4670K
32 GBs corsair DDR 3 / 10.10.10.27 ver 8.22
nVida RTX 3060 T1 8GB GDDR6 (driver 545.92)
Samsung SSD for my OS drive as well as a 4TB SSD for the game drive. Very fast drives.

All my other games play smooth as glass, Doom 3, ArmA 3, GTA 5, Destiny, Warhammer, Metro..ect. No issues in any other game.

 

[devivre]

For this problem this is probably the best support article:

Performance issues — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.

support.cdprojektred.com

If none of that helps you can contact cdpr support by clicking on “Contact Us“.

That being said, turning Ray Tracing off can improve performance a lot.

 

[Boss-Starstreams]

Turning Ray tracing off fixed it.

So why is this an issue? The game is advertised as having ray tracing. I have a RTX 3060 TI.
All my games have ray tracing and they play extremely smooth. Can you guys at least provide a specific reason why this has become and issue all the sudden with the latest update? Just curious more then anything.

someone here mentioned that the Dx 12 version needs to be launched? I don't understand. I just have what ever version installed when I bought it and it was updated via steam. I'm running DirectX12 on Windows 10 Pro now.

Thanks

 

[devivre]

As can be seen here, TW3 with ray tracing on is very demanding on gpu and cpu, since there is a lot more happening on the screen that needs processing:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt System Requirements — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.

support.cdprojektred.com

If you want to use ray tracing all you can do is try lowering some of the settings (especially resolution) and see if you can find a good performance compromise.

Only DirectX12 supports RayTracing, so if you are able to select Ray Tracing features you are already running the DirectX 12 version of TW3.