A comparison published October 3, 2026, found that DLSS 5 brought Ray Tracing closer to Path Tracing in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, especially in character detail. Path Tracing still had better lighting in the cited scene, and the tester reported that default Path Tracing ran faster than Ray Tracing with DLSS 5. The game did not natively support DLSS 5 in this test; the feature was enabled with RHI Mod.
This follow-up shifts from NeoTeo’s earlier coverage of an unofficial DLSS 5 performance test to the visual comparison with Path Tracing.
What the comparison found
Ray Tracing with DLSS 5 improved character detail and made the image look more like Path Tracing, but did not fully match it. In the scene discussed, Path Tracing retained the stronger lighting. The tester also reported that Ray Tracing with DLSS 5 ran slower than default Path Tracing in his tests.
How DLSS 5 was enabled
The game lacked native DLSS 5 support in this test, so the tester enabled the feature with the latest version of RHI Mod. The system included an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32 GB of DDR5 memory at 6,000 MHz, NVIDIA RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards, Windows 10 64-bit, and NVIDIA Game Ready driver 617.14.
Most DLSS 5 settings stayed at their defaults; the tester lowered Color to preserve the game’s original tone. He reported that more extreme settings could produce inconsistent results, artifacts, and white lines, while the less aggressive settings were more consistent across the tested environments.
The reported 4K result
Path Tracing with DLSS 5 ran at a reported 45–49 FPS on the RTX 5090 at 4K/Ultra+ with DLSS Performance Mode. That figure belongs to this specific test setup. The comparison also reported that Ray Tracing with DLSS 5 was slower than default Path Tracing, but did not provide a complete set of mode-by-mode frame rates in its text.
