Previously, in version 1.32, with a 3070 and a 5600X I could run the game beautifully at 1080p with everything maxed out (even the Hairworks for all with MSAA X4) at 144 fps (or higher since it was capped at 144) with sporadic drops to ~120.
Now, with this "next-gen update", it's not that RT is very heavy or not, or that it's poorly optimized or not: it's that they broke the game. Without RT and with a similar configuration with the previous version the game runs between 80 and 100 fps, even going down to ~70, that is, 33 to 50% performance loss for no reason.
But that's not all, on top of that now it has graphical problems that it didn't before: for example, they added stones and wooden wands to the paths but they appear on your nose; overall now has a painful pop-in, clearly visible on shadows and grass.

It is completely absurd. I thought that CD PR would want to redeem themselves with this but they are going from bad to worse.

You're warned.

I can confirm all of this. Also, the 1.32 download links aren't working. I hope they fix that ASAP.

I'm honestly thankful to you guys for going ahead and trying it out. With the recent history of CDPR, I would rather not download 80GB just to be disappointed.

Regretfully, I downloaded the "update" before reading forums. I feel like such a frickin' fool for trusting CDPR after what they have already done...

Man I was so supportive of CDPR even with the stupid mistakes they did on Cyberpunk.
But now I cannot believe the fucked up the witcher game.

I just can't. What the hell are they smoking???

No more support for them. They just ruined a perfect game. And I wanted to have one more playthrough this holiday season. Oh boy!

Is there a way to contact them? Do they see these forums?

There is no official answer to all these issues that have been reported here the last hours.

Part of the problem is that a Russian studio was working on the upgrade and then got screwed over due to Biden Regime and the Polish Regime (terrorist regimes) sanctioning innocent Russians because of Ukraine. So, after CDPR's current team having already proven to be incompetent with CP2077, I read that they worked on the "upgrade," in-house.

The buck stops with CDPR. They should have sued their terrorist-regime government over the sanctions since the evil sanctions targeted innocent Russians, which screwed the project. They should have been up Saber's ass to make sure that this "upgrade" was sound, and they clearly FAILED to test the "upgrade" on common, high-end hardware. The "upgraded" visuals on a 2015 game are nothing which should cripple my 5900x/6900xt/32gb 3600Mhz RAM/fast SSD build. CDPR drove off all of their good talent, replaced them with incompetent wokesters, and screwed the pooch twice in a row now: CP2077 and now this "upgrade" which was two years in the making, with PC users (the ones who helped make CDPR into a large company by buying their first PC game) being the ones screwed over, here.

I'd accept that if the bugs were related to the amount of content (i.e. some quests not working etc.). But they did not touch all that content, they touched the core GFX engine, and that is not a volume of change too hard to oversee, as it's centralized systems across all levels/maps.

Also, for example God of War had a nearly flawless port (not just some GFX updates, a full console->PC port) around this time last year. It had some patches, but none of the issues where major. Some studios do manage to re-release older games without starting the whole bugfest over again. Not to mention that this was already delayed for months or even a year following the CP2077 disaster.

I can only agree with the general gist of this thread, in that I'm losing my faith with GOG.