Should You Choose DX11 Or DX12?

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

This choice isn’t straightforward, as both versions have their own pros and cons. Ultimately, it depends on what you value most in your gaming experience. The guide below will help you make a more informed decision.

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

A few 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 certainly does. This free update introduced new content, highly requested features, quality of life improvements, officially integrated mods, bug fixes, and much more. Listing everything it added would require an entirely separate guide.

What’s most relevant here is the introduction of a new DX12 version of the game, while the original only used DX11. Fortunately, most of the improvements — except for a few graphical features — were made available for both the DX11 and DX12 versions. However, the DX12 version offers some advantages that the DX11 version does not, albeit at a very steep cost. There are valid reasons to choose either version, so continue reading on and decide for yourself.

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Reasons To Choose DX11 For The Witcher 3

The primary reason to choose the older DX11 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the performance. The game runs significantly better on DX11 when using equivalent settings compared to the DX12 version, mainly due to superior CPU optimization in DX11. Playing any part of the game on DX12 with the same graphics settings results in roughly a 30% performance loss without any visual improvement.

However, DX11 has some major limitations, such as the lack of support for new features like ray tracing, upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR, and Nvidia Frame Generation. On the bright side, you can still use AMD Fluid Motion Frames through AMD Software, as it’s supported for all DX11 titles.

Another notable advantage of DX11 is that you can use the newly added Ultra+ graphics preset, allowing you to enhance the game’s visuals beyond the initial 2015 release, even without ray tracing.

Choose DX11 When:

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

Reasons To Choose DX12 For The Witcher 3

The biggest draw of the DX12 version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the new features it unlocks. These include various types of ray tracing, such as RT reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and more. DX12 also allows players to take advantage of upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR, along with Nvidia Frame Generation.

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

Another issue with DX12 is a bug that occurs when using both ray tracing and HairWorks, causing Geralt’s hair to turn brown, which looks very bad — not to mention immersion breaking. This bug has been around for over a year and is unlikely to be fixed at this point. As a result, you might have to choose between superior lighting or better hair, a compromise that could push many players towards the DX11 version, where HairWorks can be enabled without the unnecessary performance loss. The only major downside is losing access to upscaling technologies.

Choose DX12 When:

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

Final Recommendation For The Witcher 3: DX11 Or DX12

Considering the advantages and disadvantages of both versions, using the DX11 version delivers the optimal experience. It offers almost everything that DX12 does but without the poor CPU optimization. While the ray tracing features in DX12 are a nice addition, the performance impact is still too significant to justify using it unless you have a top-of-the-line PC.

The performance boost from upscaling technologies in DX12 is largely offset by the CPU performance hit anyway, so it’s not worth choosing DX12 just for upscalers. The original DX11 version is the better choice.