The Witcher 4 RTX Mega Geometry demo hits 4K 80fps on RTX 5090
NVIDIA's new foliage tech renders 60 million plants with 5 trillion triangles in The Witcher 4's demo. RTX 5090 handles the massive geometry at 4K 80fps, while RTX 4070 achieves 58fps at 1440p using DLSS Quality upscaling.
NVIDIA's RTX Mega Geometry foliage demo for The Witcher 4 achieves 4K@80fps on a GeForce RTX 5090 with DLSS Quality, according to performance data revealed by Wccftech. The demo, showcased at GDC 2026, features 60 million plants and 1 million trees across a 5x5km terrain. Martin Stich, Senior Director of Engineering at NVIDIA, confirmed the demo contains over 5 trillion triangles when flattened at full level of detail.
Key Takeaways
- NVIDIA's The Witcher 4 RTX Mega Geometry demo runs at 4K@80fps on RTX 5090 with DLSS Quality.
- The demo features 60 million plants and 1 million trees across a 5x5km terrain with over 5 trillion triangles at full detail.
- RTX 4070 achieves 1440p@58fps with the same DLSS Quality settings.
- The Witcher 4 is expected to launch in 2027 with this technology included.
- CD Projekt RED previously showed the game running at 60fps with ray tracing on base PlayStation 5.
What is RTX Mega Geometry foliage rendering?
According to NVIDIA's Martin Stich, RTX Mega Geometry is a level-of-detail system for foliage that requires "no new APIs or hardware" since it builds on existing Mega Geometry APIs. The system renders highly detailed forest environments with path tracing while maintaining performance through advanced optimisation techniques.
The technology enables individual plants and trees to be modeled as actual geometry rather than alpha maps or cards. Each larger tree contains up to 10 million polygons, with individual pine needles rendered as proper geometry. The system achieves this complexity through instancing of small sub-objects called "twigs" — each large tree uses around a dozen twig pieces, instanced hundreds to thousands of times.
NVIDIA's engineers developed a multi-stage LOD system that progressively merges sub-meshes into fewer instances as distance increases. At the furthest LOD, each tree becomes a single instance. The company uses Opacity Micro-Maps (OMMs) to manage memory efficiently across different detail levels.
Performance breakdown across RTX graphics cards
The GDC 2026 demo achieved 80 frames per second at 4K resolution (upscaled from 1440p with DLSS Quality) on a GeForce RTX 5090. An RTX 4070 managed 58 frames per second at 1440p (upscaled from 960p with DLSS Quality) using the same settings.
Most of the frame budget goes to path tracing, which NVIDIA implemented using a simple two-bounce path tracer. DLSS technology handles both upscaling and denoising with Ray Reconstruction, consuming another significant portion of processing power.
The demo terrain holds the entire 5x5km environment in memory without streaming, eliminating pop-in or typical LOD issues. Everything features fully dynamic path-traced lighting with pixel-perfect shadows, and all vegetation can be uniquely animated.
What this means for The Witcher 4's final performance
These figures represent work-in-progress performance from demo technology, but the assets were confirmed to come from The Witcher 4 development. CD Projekt RED has confirmed RTX Mega Geometry will feature in the final game, expected to launch in 2027.
The studio previously demonstrated The Witcher 4 running at 60 frames per second with ray tracing on the base PlayStation 5 console. This suggests the PC version should perform well across a range of hardware configurations beyond flagship RTX cards.
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 6000 Series was originally planned for 2027 but may be delayed to 2028 due to memory shortages, according to recent reports. This means players may experience The Witcher 4 on current-generation graphics cards when it launches.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NVIDIA's RTX Mega Geometry?
RTX Mega Geometry is NVIDIA's level-of-detail system for foliage, built on existing Mega Geometry APIs. It renders highly detailed forest environments with path tracing without requiring new APIs or hardware, using advanced instancing and LOD techniques.
What performance did The Witcher 4 demo achieve?
The demo ran at 4K@80fps on GeForce RTX 5090 and 1440p@58fps on RTX 4070, both using DLSS Quality upscaling. Performance figures come from NVIDIA's GDC 2026 presentation of the technology.
When is The Witcher 4 expected to launch?
The Witcher 4 is expected to launch in 2027. CD Projekt RED has confirmed RTX Mega Geometry technology will be included in the final game, with previous demonstrations showing 60fps ray tracing on PlayStation 5.
How many plants are in the demo scene?
The demo features 60 million plants of 200 different species and around 1 million trees across a 5x5km terrain. The entire scene contains over 5 trillion triangles when flattened at full level of detail.
Will RTX 6000 Series cards be available for The Witcher 4?
NVIDIA's RTX 6000 Series was originally planned for 2027 but may be delayed to 2028 due to memory shortages. Players may experience The Witcher 4 on current RTX 5000 and 4000 series cards at launch.
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