The Witcher 4's gorgeous reveal trailer was "pre-rendered" on Nvidia's $2,000 RTX 5090

The Witcher 4 screenshot showing the stunning Unreal Engine 5 fidelity

(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

The Witcher 4's full reveal trailer opened with the notice that it was "pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU." Now that Nvidia has lifted the veil on its eye-wateringly expensive RTX 5090, the GPU maker has confirmed that the Witcher 4 trailer was made using the $2,000 GPU.

"The long-awaited sequel, The Witcher IV, recently premiered with a stunning reveal trailer, which we can now confirm was pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5 on a GeForce RTX 5090," Nvidia confirms in a news post. "NVIDIA has been working with CD PROJEKT RED since the beginning of the game’s development, and once it’s ready to ship, The Witcher IV will launch with the latest RTX-powered technologies."

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Nvidia is, of course, being quite vague on the technical details of this video being "pre-rendered" on a hyper-expensive (but still technically consumer-grade) GPU. The implication from Nvidia and the devs seems to be that The Witcher 4 will look just as good as it does in the reveal trailer running on a 5090, but the fact that it was all pre-rendered renders that implication effectively meaningless. Until both the game and the graphics card are in our hands it's impossible to guess just how realistic that projection might be.

CD Projekt Red has gone on the record in saying that the trailer was "powered by the same tech that The Witcher 4 is being built on," and that it's "a cinematic look at the kind of experience The Witcher 4 is aspiring to give to players." Which is all to say that it's sure to be a gorgeous game. The only question is what kind of hardware we're going to need to run it.

If you've got a couple of grand to burn, here's where to buy RTX 5090.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.