The Witcher 3 PS4 Pro vs PC 4K Graphics Comparison

CD Projekt Red started working on the Witcher 3 PS4 Pro version back in July. The task took them a great deal longer than they expected, but the good news is it’s finally here. The PS4 Pro patch 1.51 landed this week, bringing the 4K support for the game.

Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry tested the PS4 Pro update to see the extent to which it delivers 4K, as well as how it stacks up against the PC version of the Witcher 3.

First thing first, Witcher 3 PS4 Pro is 2160p image that’s been achieved through checkerboard rendering. The horizontal resolution is cut, and so the console renders half the number of pixels compared to a true 4K image.

The results is a little blurrier than you might expect, although Pro tries to make up for the quality loss using pixel information from the previous frame.

That being said, the image still looks visibly sharper than that on a regular PS4. It also renders beautifully when downsampled for 1080p users, thanks to visual upgrades offered by the patch.

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Moving to PC at native 4K, you will notice a big difference in sharpness which comes at the expense of a lot of horsepower thrown at the game. The image quality clearly benefits, but that doesn’t mean Pro is a slouch at all. The console’s output is still remarkable given the limited GPU power available.

The patch brings some exciting visual enhancements to The Witcher 3 on PS4 Pro. For instance, ambient occlusion is improved on the machine with a more taxing, higher resolution form of the effect. Additionally, Pro gets a setting that is on par with PC’s top 16x anisotropic filtering.

These upgrade, however, come with a “side-effect in performance,” says the Foundry. “It doesn’t affect the game at large, and PS4 Pro operates at 30fps for the most part. However stress areas involving heavy alpha effects run worse on PS4 Pro by an obvious delta.”

To conclude, The Witcher 3 PS4 Pro support offers a number of improvements. Yes, the performance is not as good as the native 4K on PC, but you still get a great image all around. It will be interesting to see how the Pro version will compare with the Xbox One X when it arrives this November.