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It's the biggest update so far for The Witcher 3, with patch 1.07 demanding chunky 7.3GB of space on your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. With that HDD footprint comes some suitably big features - most anticipated of all being a new stash system for your inventory, and an alternative animation system designed to make control of Geralt more responsive. But contrary to expectations, its touted benefits to performance aren't apparent on close examination. In fact, frame-rates in many areas are noticeably worse on both platforms once the patch is installed. Suffice to say, we weren't expecting that.Let's start with Xbox One. Our analysis shows Microsoft's console retains its advantage in frame-rate over the PS4, but there's a downgrade in effect with the transition from patch 1.05 to 1.07. A horseback tour around Novigrad city remains largely stutter free on the latest update - as was the case before. However, charging through Crookback bog during heavy rainfall tells another story as we stress the engine to its fullest.
Essentially, gameplay on Xbox One now appears to rely on a similar double-buffer v-sync set-up to the PS4 game, locking its frame-rate to 20fps during these lulls in performance. This means that the reading on our graph is consistently lower on patch 1.07 as compared to 1.05, where it was free to waver between 20-30fps freely. On a matching route through the bog, frame-rate can be up to 8fps slower on the latest version of the game.
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