Nvidia has announced a new promotional bonus for its new graphics cards, throwing in a free copy of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt with the purchase of a GeForce 900 series card from participating retailers. What Nvidia has grandiosely dubbed the "Undeniably Epic" bundle encompasses all three of Nvidia's currently available 900 series desktop GPUs, the GTX 960, 970, and 980, as well as notebook computers with the 970M or higher. It does not include the forthcoming GeForce GTX Titan X, though if you're playing with enough money to actually seriously consider buying one of those you can probably pay for a $60 game with change that's fallen between the cushions of your couch.
The GeForce 900 series is Nvidia's most recent line of gaming GPUs, with the GTX 970 and 980 released in September of 2014 and the cheaper, more modestly powerful GTX 960 following in Jnuary 2015. There's also the upcoming Titan X, for the hardcore PC enthusiast/oil baron who buys graphics cards that cost more than most entire computers.
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is the upcoming newest title in CD Projekt RED's series of RPGs that began with the The Witcher in 2007, scheduled for release on May. It continues the story of heroic swordsman/monster hunter/sorcerer/alchemist/medieval performance-enhancing substance aficionado Geralt of Rivia, hero of the novels of Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski. It will be the first Witcher game to be released simultaneously on PC and consoles, though that doesn't seem to be making CD Projekt RED pull any of its punches with the PC version.
Unlike some developers. Not naming any names. Any baleful glaring in the general direction of the suburbs of Paris is purely coincidental.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was a visually stunning game that could push even powerful PCs to their limits at maximum settings. (As anyone who ever wondered what the “Ubersmapling” option in The Witcher 2 graphics options does and discovered that the answer is 'turn the game into a slideshow” can attest.) The Witcher 3 is carrying on that tradition, with minimum system requirements including a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7870 graphics card, and a GTX 770 or Radeon R9 290 as recommended specs.
The Witcher 3 is also optimized for Nvidia hardware, making extensive use of Nvidia GameWorks tools like PhysX, which Nvidia has recently released the source code for to developers, and HairWorks. (Yes, “HairWorks” is an actual thing. Animating hair well is really, really hard, and you can't swing a dead cat in The Witcher 3's trailers without hitting somebody with long hair flying all over the place.) So the promotion makes sense as a way for Nvidia to further press its advantage with a popular, technically demanding game that will probably be spurring quite a few PC gamers to update their graphics cards.
The bundle comes in the form of a voucher provided by the retailer/builder which must be redeemed at Nvidia's site before May 31st, so make sure you're buying from a seller that's offering the bundle if you want to take advantage of this. Participating retailers offering the bundle vary by country; in the United States they include major retailers like Amazon.com, Newegg, and TigerDirect, as well as a number of PC-builder companies like iBuyPower and AVA Direct. See Nvidia's page for complete lists by country if you're interested.
