The Witcher 3 Remastered: CD Projekt Red recommends turning off HairWorks on PC if performance suffers
CD Projekt Red advises PC players of The Witcher 3 Remastered to disable NVIDIA HairWorks if performance drops.
- The official Witcher account shared a comparison showing HairWorks off, HairWorks on, and HairWorks on with path-traced hair to highlight the difference.
- Kotaku also points to the community mod Path Tracing and Ray Tracing Optimization (Remastered) as a second temporary workaround; modder HourLines says it can be up to 30% more efficient in some areas.
What happened
CD Projekt Red has responded via the official Witcher account to reports of performance issues in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on PC. The studio recommends that players disable NVIDIA HairWorks when the framerate drops, while it works on further optimizations or a patch.
Alongside that message, the account shared a comparison of three hair settings for Geralt: HairWorks OFF, HairWorks ON, and HairWorks ON + Path Traced Hair. The comparison makes it clear that the hair setting can have a measurable impact on PC performance.
Kotaku also mentions a second temporary fix: the community mod Path Tracing and Ray Tracing Optimization (Remastered). According to the article, modder HourLines says the mod can improve efficiency by up to 30% in some areas, although the source does not provide a full test setup or hardware list.
The available sources do confirm that several PC fixes arrived shortly after release, but not that a patch has already been released that definitively solves the HairWorks issue itself.
Timeline
29 September 2026 — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered is released, according to the supplied context.
30 September 2026 — Kotaku publishes an article about two temporary fixes for the PC performance issues.
30 September 2026 — The official Witcher account advises PC players to turn off HairWorks if performance is suffering.
30 September 2026 — A comparison with HairWorks off, HairWorks on, and HairWorks on with path-traced hair is shared via X/Twitter.
1 October 2026 — CD Projekt Red releases a PC update that, according to the sources, fixes a DLSS issue in the Xbox Play Anywhere version on PC.
1 October 2026 — A later PC hotfix addresses several bugs, including a voiceover issue and a save file error, according to Kotaku.
Background
HairWorks is an NVIDIA technology for more realistic hair, but in the supplied sources it is explicitly named as a feature that can affect performance in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered. CD Projekt Red’s official comparison suggests the studio has identified the issue around that setting.
The remaster also received several updates soon after launch. According to the sources, one patch first fixed a problem where DLSS was unavailable in the Xbox Play Anywhere version on PC, followed by another hotfix that addressed several PC bugs. In the same reporting, CD Projekt Red also says a bloom fix was still on the way, but the exact details of that later change are not included in the supplied sources.