Hello there, if you're reading this guide then you likely ran into some issues when playing the new update, whether it be FPS or crashing, etc. All the current guides seem to not be helpful at all, so here I am to try and save your day :)

Just F.Y.I, these may not work on your setup, while it also might work very well, I'll try my best to share as much information as possible to help everyone, but unfortunately there's a limit to how much I can do.

I was able to reach around 50-60 fps on my rig with RTX on, although it tends to go down to a solid 30 after playing for a while and in crowded areas.
Without RTX on full Ultra+, I get a solid 60 (capped) with a max of about 95 frames in general locations, although its unstable if not capped at 60.

Here is my setup if you are wondering:
MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio (no OC)
i7-10700K (stock/no OC)
16GB RAM

Also, thank you to everyone who upvoted this guide and left an award, you're all lovely. <3

First and foremost, make sure your graphics drivers are up to date, for Nvidia cards you can use GeForce Experience to get the latest drivers easily.

If you are on a "higher end" computer, make sure the game is installed onto your SSD and not a normal hard drive.

I also recommend to change graphics settings in the main menu, its fine to do it in game but for the first big changes I'd do it from the menu first, then tweak it as you play in game.

DX11 vs DX12

Many people have mentioned that the DX12 that CDPR has added is not truly DX12, instead its some workaround, and this may have led to a lot of confusion for most and unnecessary stress.
Let me put it simply,
Use DX12 if you are on at least a 30 series card, or if you plan on using RTX/DLSS.
Use DX11 if on an older pc, or if you don't care about RTX and just want the game to run more smoothly.
While it may not be true DX12, it's still a good idea to use it if your on a newer card.

It's important that you do not delete any of the files like some have mentioned in other guides,
your game will stop working and will probably crash if you do so, although if something works for you then by all means go ahead and do it.

Now lets get into some actual fixes, shall we?

Graphics Settings

Now we're at the part you're all prob here for.
Below you will find two sections, one for RTX and one for just normal Ultra quality.
Like I said before, this guide is mostly for higher end PC's, but perhaps you can still learn something from this if your on older gen hardware.

Ray Tracing Enabled

• Turn on Global Illumination

Do NOT turn on the 3 options under it for Ray Traced Reflections, Shadows and Ambient Occlusion, UNLESS you have a really good GPU that can handle it, like atleast a 3080 ti or
3090, you only really want to max this game out if you got top of the line hardware, cdpr went kinda crazy with it and its a little messed up, but it is what it is, the game still looks fantastic with just only Global Illumination imo

• Use DLSS Quality or Balanced mode, with Low Sharpening or None

DLSS is just the best thing you can use especially with newer Nvidia cards, so take advantage of it,
if you are on a 40 series card, make sure you turn on the DLSS Frame Generation setting in the Display tab.

Now for this section, I will tell you the graphics settings I use in just a quick list.

• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion = On
  
• Screen Space Reflections = High (Try Low if running into issues, or just turn these off.)
  
• Motion Blur to Camera Lens Effects = I have all of these On besides motion blur, these are mainly personal preference and don't really affect FPS much if at all.
  
• NVIDIA Hairworks = On (Without hairworks it just looks so weird, its worth keeping it on)
  HairWorks AA = 4, 8 is fine aswell.
  HairWorks Preset = High

Now for the important part.

Main Graphics Settings
With this new update, there are new updated textures which are labeled Ultra+. They look fantastic and add a lot of new little details and stuff to the game which are overall a lot nicer, the only thing is the cost of performance is very high with these options and its mainly for Raytracing. I've tested playing on full Ultra+ without RTX and it runs really well and looks amazing, but this may not be a good option if you are on a "lower end" PC. Play around with these settings and find what works best for you.

Generally, use Ultra+ if on higher end, only use RTX with Ultra+

Ray Tracing Enabled

• I like to keep everything on Ultra+, except I turn the number of background characters to High, or Ultra. I also keep Foliage visibility range on High/Ultra.

Ray Tracing Disabled

• Without RTX, I recommend keeping everything on Ultra, unless you can handle running the Ultra+ options. The game looks fantastic without RTX on max Ultra+ so its worth a try.

Feel free to adjust certain settings to your liking, this is just what I use.

This section is pretty simple, but I'll put it here regardless.

• Display = 1 (Main Monitor)
  
• Display Mode = Fullscreen is recommended
  
• VSync = OFF
  
• Resolution = I play on 1920x1080, go 1440 if you want.
  
• Max FPS = 60 (Do not leave it Uncapped unless you are not using RTX and wanna hit 144. I still would recommend just capping at 60 since ingame menus and gwent can drastically change the FPS you're getting and make the game unstable, I've already crashed a few times doing this. You can also try capping at 30 fps if needed to stabilize on higher settings.)
  
• DLSS Frame Generation (40 Series Cards) = On if it lets you use it. I don't have this so for me its Off.
  
• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency = On + Boost
  
• Hardware Cursor = Off

Now for the final section.

Now you should have some pretty decent settings ready to go, but there is a few things that I must mention that are important.

Others have mentioned this problem already but, mostly when using RTX, as time goes on the game will get more and more laggy and your FPS will drop. This might not be the case for those with 4090's but I have ran into this issue already a few times.

The best fix I found for this problem is to just make sure you are saving often while playing, whether it be through quicksaves (F5) or just normal saves, so that when it does start lagging a lot, just save the game and reload the latest save, and it should be fixed temporarily.
This sucks a lot but its just a small price to pay right now if you want the best experience, RTX is definitely worth it!
If this is too much of a problem for you, then I recommend just playing on Ultra, perhaps Ultra+. Without RTX, the game still looks fantastic, but having the global illumination really does make a big difference in a lot of areas and scenes.

Well thats it for the guide, thank you for reading, I hope this helped in some way, I know its not perfect but this is what works for me currently.
CDPR has already released some hotfixes recently that fixed a lot of issues with crashing and performance, I still think there's a lot that can be improved but for now it works and it looks good!

Good luck on the path, friends, and take care :)

In short,

• Leaving all 3 RTX options off besides just the global illumination seems to help A LOT with fps, at least on my 3070.
  
• Use Ultra+ if you are using Ray Tracing. Can be used without RTX.
  
• Do not delete/replace any files unless you want to risk crashing the game.
  
• Capping at 60 fps helps A LOT with stability and quality.
  
• Save often and reload whenever it gets too laggy with RTX.

List of known Bugs/Issues that may crash the game:

• With RTX on, the game will get more laggy as time goes on, requiring you to reload saves.
  
• Other bugs seem to have been fixed, not 100% sure. Will update if I personally find more.