Epic Games and Remedy have released Alan Wake 2 on PC. Powered by the Northlight Engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC platform.
For our Alan Wake 2 benchmarks and PC Performance Analysis, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 545.92, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 23.20.17.05 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Remedy has included a respectable amount of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Volumetric Lighting, Global Illumination and more. The game also supports DLSS 3.5 and FSR 2.0, as well as Ray Tracing and Path Tracing. Those interested in these technologies can find our DLSS 3.5, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing benchmarks in this article.
Alan Wake 2 does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our GPU benchmarks, we used the forest area from the “Invitation” chapter. This appears to be one of the most demanding areas in the game, so it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs.
Unfortunately, we could not properly test our CPU as our RTX4090 was used to its fullest even at 720p with DLSS Ultra Performance Mode on No-RT Max Settings. What this means is that most of you will be bottlenecked by your GPU and not by your CPU.
Before we continue, you should know that the “High” preset won’t give you the best non-RT settings. Some settings will remain at Medium. So, for our tests, we manually cranked everything to High. At 1080p/Max Settings, you’ll need at least an NVIDIA RTX3080 or an AMD Radeon RX6900XT for 60fps. As we can clearly see, this title favors NVIDIA’s hardware. And although you can run Alan Wake 2 on GPUs that do not support Mesh Shaders, you won’t be getting any playable framerates on them.
The only GPUs that were able to provide a 60fps experience at 1440p/Max Settings were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX4090. As for Native 4K/Max Settings/No RT, there isn’t any GPU that can come close to 60fps.
Thankfully, you can make Alan Wake 2 run better on your PC by lowering its graphics settings. In order to get a 60fps experience on the RTX4090 at Native 4K, we had to lower our settings to Medium. Now the good news here is that Alan Wake 2 looks great even on Medium Settings. For some extra performance, you can drop the settings to Low or – manually – to Lowest.
Graphics-wise, even without its Ray Tracing or Path Tracing effects, Alan Wake 2 looks incredible. Remedy has crafted one of the best-looking games on current-gen platforms. There are some minor issues though. For instance, you can’t interact with some tree branches. There are also numerous noticeable pop-in issues, even in the game’s path-traced mode. So yeah, it’s not perfect but it’s undoubtedly a great-looking game that certainly justifies its GPU requirements.
All in all, Alan Wake 2 looks stunning on PC. And, to be honest, we were kind of expecting this. After all, this is Remedy we’re talking about; the studio behind Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break and CONTROL. All of these titles looked incredible at their time of release. So, we were kind of expecting Alan Wake 2 to be a graphical showcase. And yes, it is. As I said, though, it’s not perfect. The game currently has some annoying stutters during cut-scenes (or when opening menus). It also has some image quality issues with Path Tracing. And then there are the noticeable pop-in issues of distant objects. Let’s also not forget that Alan Wake 2 requires a powerful GPU, even for gaming at Native 1080p. However, contrary to other games like ARK: Survival Ascended or Cities Skylines 2, Alan Wake 2 justifies its high GPU requirements!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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This seems very reasonable for how it looks. And it also scales very well. Games should be judges by the ratio of visuals/performance and not performance alone.
It “scales very well” ?!?!
This is one of the worst scaling games ever.
A Plague’s Tale on a 1050Ti runs at 43 fps and looks amazing.
Alan Wake 2 on a 1050Ti stutters at 11fps and looks like a pixelated mess.
image comparison:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b7a89ff47c65701bb33088b65e9dbca5210c37b09f857f2795211e8c3803379.png
It “scales very well” ?!?!
Alan Wake 2 scales like absolute garbage.
A Plague’s Tale on a 1050Ti
-43 fps average and looks amazing
-1% lows still 37fps
Alan Wake 2 on a 1050Ti
-11fps average, a pixelated mess
-1% lows down to 4fps
image comparison:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b7a89ff47c65701bb33088b65e9dbca5210c37b09f857f2795211e8c3803379.png
No mesh shaders in 1050ti
True but the 1650 and up do have them ….. The 1650 and 1660 are basically 20 series without AI or Ray Tracing cores
To be honest, both games look really bad in this comparison. The screenshots look more like upscaled 360p, so you can’t even see the details and compare them.
But I understand why you made the comparison. You want to see greater advances in game graphics, because if modern games require 10x stronger GPUs, the graphics should also look 10x more impressive even on low quality screenshots, right?
The difference between PS2 and PS3 games was so great that even low-resolution screenshots would show a noticeable difference in graphics (for example we can compare GTASA graphics on PS2 to GTA5 on PS3). I think gamers like you would like to see similar difference now between PS4 vs PS5 graphics.
The problem is however, PS4 games have already reached a certain level of quality, and if old games like Uncharted 4 or Plague Tale already looked good, it’s harder to impress people with progress, simply because there’s not much to improve besides small details.
For example, Ark Survival Ascended runs on the latest UE5 engine, but when I played the game the jungle environment wasnt much more impressive than Crysis junge (a 16 year old game!). It wasn’t until I started looking at the details from up close that I could see why Crysis looks more dated.
In my opinion, the biggest difference between old games and modern ones is the quality of the lighting. Unfortunately most gamers may not notice this difference immediately, as pre-baked lighting can look good in certain situations (games with static TOD). You really need to understand how lighting works to really appreciate what modern GPUs are doing in real time, because that’s where GPU resources go.
Personally, I don’t like cheap lighting techniques like SSR because I get distracted by reflections that fade and pop when you move. The other problem is mirror reflections. It’s totally impossible to create mirror reflections with SSR, because the screen space data lacks details that you can’t see on the screen, so in typical game mirrors were just cubemaps. In some games (Uncharted 4), developers tried to use planar reflections, but that’s basically rendering the same room twice, a very expensive method that’s still far from perfect.
As a photographer and lighting artist, I can see immediately when a game lacks indirect lighting, or when shadows look fake, so I like to see more raytracing in games instead of cheap gimmicks like SSR, cubemaps, shadow maps. Yes, something like the GTX1050ti can run impressive looking games like Metro Exodus, Uncharted 4, or Plague Tale, but modern games that make full use of ray tracing/path tracing are in a different league when it comes to lighting quality, so I understand why games like Alan Wake 2 require the latest hardware to run.
It gets even harder when you have dynamic day/night cycles and dynamic weather which necessitate the need for dynamic lighting to match.
I think that all the dislikes and hatefull comments about AW2 performance on PC are coming from people that own outdated PC configurations, configurations that were PS4 even PS4 Pro killers,yet they fail to understand that if you game on PC you need to keep up.
On consoles you buy the generation one and maybe the refreshed update(so 2 build/1000$ for their entire life span) while on PC in order to maintain Max settings and above 60fps you need to keep up and at least for every 3 years buy new GPU,change socket for faster CPU and Ram.
Maybe in 2016 a PC with 16 ddr4 i7 6700 and a gtx 1080 was a beast for 2000+$ but that “beast” in 2023 is useless in games like AW2 same as a PS4pro is useless in newer games.
People think that if they spend thousands on a PC build they will have 10y of max settings or something.
Wait till RTX6000 will make RTX 2000 obsolete if not RTX5000 series with more AI stuff(dlss4.0 or something) and all future games starting with AW2 will use more and more features that are locked on older gpu’s.
On PC it was allways like that,i know because i had PC builds since Intel pentium 3 and Geforce 4,back then was dx and pixel shader problem and maybe sse instruction on CPU’s(for example my last PC had an Amd phenom II black edition 4.6 ghz 24ddr3 and Asus Strix R9 390 OC edition 8gb 512bit 2ghz also a very good motherboard but that build even if it had “raw”power enough to run AC Origins…it didn’t because SSee 4.1 not on my CPU. So to fix that i had to change motherboard,CPU and ram for faster freq.I sold the PC and bought a PS4 pro,yet i payed more on the GPU 6 months prior to my PS4 pro purchase in upgrading my PC)
When PS5 Pro will come out i will sell my PS5 to compensate and this way i will be set for upcoming years for only 250$,in my region euro.
Also FSR3 will be supported on PS5pro so quality mode in games will be 60fps.
I think that all the dislikes and hatefull comments about AW2 performance on PC are coming from people that own outdated PC configurations, configurations that were PS4 even PS4 Pro killers,yet they fail to understand that if you game on PC you need to keep up.
On consoles you buy the generation one and maybe the refreshed update(so 2 build/1000$ for their entire life span) while on PC in order to maintain Max settings and above 60fps you need to keep up and at least for every 3 years buy new GPU,change socket for faster CPU and Ram.
Maybe in 2016 a PC with 16 ddr4 i7 6700 and a gtx 1080 was a beast for 2000+$ but that “beast” in 2023 is useless in games like AW2 same as a PS4pro is useless in newer games.
People think that if they spend thousands on a PC build they will have 10y of max settings or something.
Wait till RTX6000 will make RTX 2000 obsolete if not RTX5000 series with more AI stuff(dlss4.0 or something) and all future games starting with AW2 will use more and more features that are locked on older gpu’s.
On PC it was allways like that,i know because i had PC builds since Intel pentium 3 and Geforce 4,back then was dx and pixel shader problem and maybe sse instruction on CPU’s(for example my last PC had an Amd phenom II black edition 4.6 ghz 24ddr3 and Asus Strix R9 390 OC edition 8gb 512bit 2ghz also a very good motherboard but that build even if it had “raw”power enough to run AC Origins…it didn’t because SSee 4.1 not on my CPU. So to fix that i had to change motherboard,CPU and ram for faster freq.I sold the PC and bought a PS4 pro,yet i payed more on the GPU 6 months prior to my PS4 pro purchase in upgrading my PC)
When PS5 Pro will come out i will sell my PS5 to compensate and this way i will be set for upcoming years for only 250$,in my region euro.
Also FSR3 will be supported on PS5pro so quality mode in games will be 60fps.
Trouble is if you are only getting 60 FPS with frame generation then the game is going to feel like it’s running at 20-25 FPS because of the increased system lag generated …… For frame generation to work well you need to be able to do 60 FPS without it first, then kick it in and shoot for 100-110 FPS as your target
Trouble is if you are only getting 60 FPS with frame generation then the game is going to feel like it’s running at 20-25 FPS because of the increased system lag generated …… For frame generation to work well you need to be able to do 60 FPS without it first, then kick it in and shoot for 100-110 FPS as your target
I know 60fps is sweet,but i don’t need 60fps(as a main and after well the frame generation) i need 30fps stable then with frame generation double.
VRR works kinda the same way,but smart TV had that VRR TECH before under different name.
I had an LG 3D TV full HD in 2014 something,i don’t remember exact date,but it had a “motion” something setting that made almost all channels look like an soap opera(framerate wise).
Movies,for example,most of them if not all are in 25fps max,with that option ON,they look double the framerate.
When i played on my PS4 with that TV option on on smooth…well i didn’t even knew stuff like 30fps va 60fps until i watched videos on you tube.
All my life i played games even on PC al lower frames,but didn’t realise it.
Or maybe i’m used to 30fps.
i allways crank the settings on Max(on PC) if the game lags and i notice the lags i change settings till i get stable frames.
From 2003(first PC build) till 2015(last PC owned) i never knew the term of FPS other then Game genre(First Person Shooter) and in my region,every child was happy to run the game at low settings,i was unhappy if it didn’t run on Max+ mods.
I know the difference between 60fps and 30,but what ever is above 60 i don see it,and i was at some people that have crazy builds and stats on the right corner,bot for me 120fps was same as 60 fps in perception.
On short,if AW2 runs 30fps native max settings i’m ok,if it runs 60fps max settings even better.
If it runs 30fps low settings=garbage.
Again the problem is not the frametime, it’s the system lag so if you are getting 100 ms lag at 30 FPS then using Frame Generation will increase that lag to 125-150 ms and make the game feel like it’s only running at 20-25 FPS and you’ll be able to feel the delay in your keyboard or gamepad
Movie FPS and game FPS are two entirely different things because the video is rendered by two completely different methods plus a movie doesn’t give a rat’s a*s about system delay since there are no inputs to worry about.
I got you,but still i’m fine with 30fps(stable) and 60fps for shooters,but performance mode on PS5 or i guess on xbox series X is not supposed to exist.
Who wants to play a 2023 game with same graphics as in early 2015 but in 60fps…wtf,i allways rather play games in max settings in min 30fps than mario 2d retro graphics 120fps(maybe because i played games since the term retro was “actual”,now i just want a justify for those almost yearly GPU and CPU launches.
Here is a difference that you can see,Assassin Creed Black Flag PS4 vs Mirage PS5(same Anvil Next engine).
I hope that PS5 Pro will have something(FSR3) so in games if I want(me not,but overall people want high fps and crappy graphics) to play in 60fps,i can without lowering the settings(sweet spot).
In all multigen games that are PS4 and PS5,the performance mode on PS5 is PS4 version but unlocked frames and maybe a boost to res,but in fidelity settings they are same,makes me wondering,what is next gen?…when RTX4080 is the same as RTX3080(and 3080 is same as 2080 in raw power,GB, freq,but software is better,or Intel I913000 vs i914000.
All you do in this game is walk around. Sometimes you pick up items or solve a few puzzles, but you mostly just walk around. The game should be called: Alan Walk.
Can you even call it that since it looks like half the game is spent not playing as Alan?
More than half
Saga Walks then.
See that’s it’s right there… WTF is going on with that? Does that mean in the next Control game I get to spend half of it not playing as the chick. Because it would be only fair. I saw review for this game and I’m like, where the fuq is Alan Wake?. Truth be told I think this game was made in 6-8 months, a 18 months tops
The tediousness of many of these bloated AAA games doesn’t make any sense.
To play Alan Wake 2, you will need:
-willingness to set up a stupid Epic Account
-download a 85GB game
-install a 85GB game
-changing far too many settings to get these bloated AAA games to run #pcmasterrace
-slogging through the actual tedious walking simulator, diguised as a game, itself
It’s not worth spending $60 on the game. It’s not worth buying $1,000+ hardware for. It’s not worth putting hours into it.
AAA gaming is terrible. I can just boot up a $10 indie PC game or boot up my Switch in a few seconds and jump into the game. Why would I want to deal with AAA gaming.
I am enjoying the game. The story presentation is very good. Combat feel is also good with amazing sound. Its a fantastic game!
Is a good game, but a horrible Alan Wake sequel, it has none of the first game elements, and even Alan feels like a side character.
Because they wanted to make saga woke and only put alan in it for brand recognition
Because they wanted to make saga woke and only put alan in it for brand recognition
I didn’t find the first game enjoyable. I did manage to complete it, but I found it to be quite dull and repetitive. I’ve never really enjoyed games from Remedy, with the exception of Max Payne.
I feel the opposite, after Alan Wake 2 and the constant Epic exclusive deals, I feel like ignoring Remedy future titles.
Epic deals I really dont care. But if this is the game direction they are taking I am all in.
I think you are inflating your opinion of the game because of the graphics. There is not much “game” to Alan Wake 2.
I am not about graphics but graphics in this game is a plus. It has the theme of the movies I enjoy watching. Also the cult horror is really well done. Whatever you consider it a game or not I am enjoying it.
The tediousness of many of these bloated AAA games doesn’t make any sense.
To play Alan Wake 2, you will need:
-willingness to set up a pointless Epic Account
-download a 85GB game, install a 85GB game
-changing far too many settings to get these bloated AAA games to run #pcmasterrace
-slogging through the actual tedious walking simulator itself, which consists of a literal TV show for half the game
It’s not worth spending $60 on the game. It’s not worth buying $1,000+ hardware for. It’s not worth putting hours into it, when you get so little out of the game.
AAA gaming is terrible. I can just boot up a $10 indie PC game or boot up my Switch in a few seconds and jump into the game. Why would I want to deal with AAA gaming.
Or better yet, Alan Walked, since the dude is almost gone and all that’s left is Shaniqua.
You described every game in existence. Every game is a random key press combination of wasd, shift ctrl and spacebar.
I was getting 30 to 50fps ( mostly upper 30’s) in the forest area at 4k max settings including path tracing on max, dlss on performance and frame gen on, with my 4070. And I don’t see anything in the ini file to turn off dlaa when using native resolution either.
They didn’t include a lot of settings that could make a difference like vignetting, lens distortion, dof, fov etc that you have to go to the ini for. I don’t know but they might be bundling pt into the high setting? Most people who play modern games are going to have a card that can handle it at some setting and if you’ve got an old card it’s like one game out of thousands millions etc that is largely a no go or must upgrade, who cares. Game makers and hardware makers are hand in hand bottom line, quarterly report anyways, efem. I’d actually just check a video by a person, not a gaming site or known sales shill, who was to optimize this themselves for an older card to get the real story. AW story was done in 1, this just “franchise” stuff.
The game looks so good on low that they should have offered an even lower setting for those with slower cards. That said it is so refreshing to finally have a new game look and run great with no hitching and stuttering.
The main problem is pretty much all of the slower cards don’t support mesh shaders which really need to be used more going forward because when done properly they reduce the need for culling planes and add culling to objects that can’t normally use culling planes such as complex objects like trees. That’s why GPUs that don’t support mesh shaders perform so poorly because they are forced to render a lot of objects that can’t be seen behind the objects you do see especially in the forest scenes.
Like it or not the anything over 5-6 years old is essentially obsolete in the 21st century …..
Here’s a little proof to back up what I’m saying
AMD is retiring driver support for the RX580 and the Vega 64 which are ….. 6 years old
Here’s a little proof to back up what I’m saying
AMD is retiring driver support for the RX580 and the Vega 64 which are ….. 6 years old
No it does not. Alan Wake does not look better than any of these games but has far higher system requirements and lower FPS. Alan Wake is an unoptimized mess.
Image comparison:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1e4f365932f78a2fc2a36fe32afef717ae12b344ce240dbc7c60ace95f93df3.jpg
When crysis 1 came out, it was truly looking next gen , looked miles better than all other titles , yet scaled well on most gpus. Now days, average crap like this comes out and john, like the moron he has always been loving to be in bed with the likes of remedy , sucking their balls, praises the none existent superiority of the visuals . What is so incredible here john? Why do you praise a game that looks nothing spectacular compared to it’s system requirements and fps it produces, so much? oh it’s remedy , the morons that created quantum break with forced hardcoded multisampling giving blurry crappy mess and idiots like you all said: INCREDIBLE.
now Go get your due payment from remedy. shame on you and your bullsh*t Lies about gpu power being wasted justificaitions.
Crysis 1 will forever be the epitome of PC graphics! It was one-of-a-kind and to this day with mods looks stunning!
And it is still an unoptimized pos game. Only a clown would claim it scales well because it does not. CPUs that are orders of magnitude faster than what was around at that time still cant maintain 60 fps. In cpu limited areas my 4770k would drop into the low 40s and my 9900k would drop into the low 50s which is laughable for that game. Even from a GPU standpoint it is a joke performing worse than many modern games that look several generations better.
Even Crysis remastered is badly optimized but at least after several months they finally gave that version an update that better utilized the cpu. My 9900k went from low 60s to upper 80s in the very cpu limited area I was testing it.
EDIT: You idiots giving thumbs down must hate actual objective facts about the performance. Nostalgia and ignorance are a dangerous combination.
From what I remember the first Crysis wasn’t really about the game although Crytek did make an effort. It wasn’t about how well it ran either. It was a tech demo to showcase how great the Crytek engine was with graphics when developers really pushed it and when GPUs for mainstream gamers finally caught up with the performance potential of the Crytek Engine.
It was incredible visually and Crytek gained a lot of respect but unfortunately they p*ssed that goodwill away over the years, nearly went bankrupt, closed several studios and couldn’t pay their employees for several months multiple times.
It’s a shame but poor decisions produce poor results no matter what your past reputation was. CDPR can definitely relate to that after the Cyberpunk 2077 disaster.
hey as*hole, even if Crysis one was unoptimized, it still performed way better for how it looked.
morons like you are the reason for catastrophic quality of game’s performance these days.
you may think yourself as someone who knows about such things but we, in the end know what you are, a FOOL.
hey as*hole, even if Crysis one was unoptimized, it still performed way better for how it looked.
morons like you are the reason for catastrophic quality of game’s performance these days.
you may think yourself as someone who knows about such things but we, in the end know what you are, a FOOL.
You clearly have the IQ of a fishstick and lack the ability to even comprehend the simplest of things. Even on medium settings, Alan Wake 2 looks better than most games maxed out. Get a faster gpu paired with any halfway decent cpu and Alan Wake 2 will scale accordingly unlike Crysis, you mental midget. Crysis has been little more than a joke and a meme for the last 15 years.
oh i see you are a butt hurt fan because i say the truth. You know nothing about performance/visual quality ratio f*king a**hole. this game looks nothing worth the power it needs you FOOL. So SDFU moron.
GPU wise, Crysis 1 was very well optimised. For many years other developers struggled to deliver a game that looked as good, and even in 2015 extremely demanding games like ARK looked worse and required much better GPUs. My 8800Ultra could only run Crysis at around 30fps with the settings maxed out, but the game looked stunning compared to other games, so I wasnt complaining. It really was next gen looking game and even many years later (PS4 era) games wasnt looking that much better. Also Crysis scaled very well on better GPUs. Something like GTX480 was enough to play the game with good framerate and I could totally max out crysis on the GTX680 at 1080p (80fps average in benchmark).
The CPU optimisation was not perfect because quad CPUs were not used at all, but we have to remember that such CPUs were just coming out and it takes a lot of time to rewrite the whole engine to take advantage of additional CPU threads. Crysis 2 was already optimised for multiple CPU threads.
I have played Crysis 1 remastered just recently and I was surprised how well optimised the game is. Compared to the original game even medium settings look far better and I got around 100-120fps at 1440p on very old GPU (GTX1080). For comparison in the original game my PC is always CPU limited and I get much worse results 70-80fps average with dips to around 40fps in some places. Of course crysis remastered can be very demanding with every settings maxed out, but that should be not surprising given how demanding raytracing is.
Yes the biggest issue down the road was the CPU in that game but it was not apparent on release with the GPUs at the time being the limiting factor. And it was not just because of not being well multi threaded though because CPUs with several orders more of single thread performance a decade later where still dropping into the 40s in CPU limited areas. And again even from a mainly GPU limited standpoint it runs worse than many modern games that destroy it in visuals.
Again the remastered version was patched several months after it came out and finally got some proper optimization. Before that it was still laughably CPU limited in many areas and my 9900k would struggle to even get 60 fps with my GPU dropping to under 50% usage. And even though it does perform much better now it is still crazy how CPU limited it can be as my 9900k was in 80s where as my 13700k is now in the 140s in the same areas. It really depends on where you test the game as literally one direction can be severally CPU limited and turn the other way and be GPU limited.
The lighting in Crysis Remaster uses a form of software ray tracing, so that’s why the GPU requirements have skyrocketed in comparison to the original crysis. But given how well this game runs on my ancient GPU (even nintendo switch version offers dynamic GI in this game) I think their dynamic GI solution is extremely well optimised. Some modern games like Plague Tale Requiem have worse indirect shadows than Crysis Remaster. Of course, Plague Tale looks better overall, but only because of the far superior quality of the assets.
There’s always going to be a bottleneck somewhere. It’s impossible to code a game that uses 100% of the CPU and GPU resources at the same time. You get 140fps on your 13700K and that’s more than enough to play this game.
Yes we know crysis is still very terrible when it comes to optimization. But you’re missing the point the Op is making. .. and those so called remasters looks worse than the original. The point is it’s 15 years later and crysis still is a powerhouse comparing to the cookie cutter mess we’ve been getting.
The lighting in this game is truly next-gen even compared to other games. IMO Not even cyberpunk in it’s overdrive mode impressed me that much. Alan Wake 2 is also the first game to be built from the ground up with mesh shaders in mind, so the assets in the game are extremely detailed in comparison to the other games, and they hold up well even when you look at them up close.
Obviously, the game requires high-end hardware to run but the quality of the lighting (path tracing) justifies it. Even without hardware raytracing the lighting in this game is dynamic (similar to lumen in UE5) and look stunning even on consoles. On PC the RTX 4080 can max out Alan Wake 2 at 1440p with around 45fps. Maybe that’s not impressive compared to the other games, but we are talking here about path tracing here, instead of prebaked and flat looking lighting. With DLSSQ image quality is still the same and performance jumps to around 70fps (and over 120fps using frame generation), so unlike Crysis we don’t need to wait for next-gen hardware to play this game at max settings right now. With lower settings Alan Wake still looks impressive and can run at 60fps on the RTX3070 (with better settings than PS5 console according to digital foundry settings analysis).
I saw how Alan Wake 2 looks maxed out in HDR on the 1500 nits OLED and I’m still blown away, because playing Alan Wake 2 is a bit like watching a CGI film.
Check your eyes man
The lighting is essentially software based Ray Tracing which takes a lot of GPU power (and no hardware acceleration) but does look really good.
I believe that John does get kickbacks from all things epic. It’s been said in a lot of other places. I do enjoy this site and I don’t want to attack the man in his own home. But the rumors are looking to be true and even more true everyday. The funny thing is all the butt buttlickers that are quick to thumb you down. People should be enjoying a long time classic looks Alan wake, but if you’re y on PC you have to suffer even more. Especially with this Epic exclusivity crap. What’s even worse if that remedy have their own engine and you can tell that they would never use unreal. But here we are with another exclusive. Asian wake remastered haven’t even graced anywhere else.
I’m surprised we finally got ‘Control’ anywhere else. Remedy and 4A games are over here double dipping in the Epic money bag. You know the next metro game will be the same FOOLISHNESS. And to think, if epic didn’t get lucky with fortnite, they wouldnt be near the trouble they are now. Before fortnite, they were still biching at Microsoft and company to give them a fair play chance to compete. Now they are bazillionaire, they use their money to make our lives a fuqin hell.
i agree Sr. Chalice with all your points. i needed to tell the truth even if it is john’s home man. he has been sucking their balls for too many times.
as for down votes, it is not the first time my comments show a small scale of how many as*kissers we have here. you sure remember other examples like fake tracing and …
My guy, Fake Tracing is one of the biggest scams it’s no coincidence it landed alongside with Fake Frames, right after they destroyed the only thing that could make it viable, Multi-GPU support. What has always made the PC platform great is that it’s modular. Now they want to replace that with “AI”… But yet every other forms of computing other than gaming is still utilizing multi GPU. But no they wanted to keep these prices up and inflated. Fake Tracing is so premature and IS OVER 15 years off before you can get 1 single GPU to run it with ease. But the manufacturers knew what they were doing, give the consumer a taste of something and be sure to drop bread crumbs everywhere to tantalize their ignorance.
Only a said few people seems to see and understand the hustle. I’m tired of hearing, “but it look so good”, all im thinking is “IT’S NOT FUQIN READY!” another obvious play to justify high prices. I’ve worked in the automobile industry for years and this is the exact reason why they never release concept cars to the public. Concept cars look good, BUT THEY DON’T WORK! 😂🤣🤷🏾♂️ A concept cars is something that build from not to be build on. Hang in their man, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
another pathetic thing about morons who love the new trend is this, they say things like fake tracing is the REAL light path and it is how real light behaves in REAL world, then they have to use AI or whatever upscaling technic to produce FAKE image and then add FAKE frames so that they can experience that REAL light path which actually is a complete lie because WE ARE NOT THERE YET. what the hell man using FAKE images and frames to see REAL light path??!!!
Alan 2 Woke
No it does not. Alan Wake does not look better than any of these games but has far higher system requirements and lower FPS. Alan Wake is an unoptimized mess.
Image comparison:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1e4f365932f78a2fc2a36fe32afef717ae12b344ce240dbc7c60ace95f93df3.jpg
And I bet you if this game had not been sponsored by Nvidia, it would not have these insane system requirements.
We are at an inflection point in graphics, where graphics can not be easily improved. You should know John, you keep posting these pointless HD texture mods where every comment tells you there is no difference.
This inflection point would mean people would stop upgrading their GPU. So Nvidia pushed the industry into raytracing, path tracing, and lots of other graphical baloney that hardly makes a difference, so they can keep selling new GPU.
The game doesn’t have DRM so you can download it for ‘free’ and try it for yourself. The promotional material and screenshots online don’t do the game justice.
Its not really that true…reqs are highs, but i’ve olayed all the games in the screenshot above and for example re4 remake is not even half close of requiem and Alan 2. Rdd2 is awesome too but is not as dense as Alan and plague, is not only light but geometry too, every where is full of details and 3d objects, that are lacking in both re4 and Rdd2 (but being this one open world is ok, plus it have stunning landscapes). Only requiem is a game that pretty much matches Alan Wake 2, and guess what? On my 2070s laptop is runs at about the same fps of Alan Wake, not counting the settings used (i olayed both at 1440p at dlss b ultra for plague and medium high dlss b for Alan, both runs from 40 to 60 fps depending by scene without big trouble for my gsync monitor)
THIS^^^
Fantastic comparison. Turns out “Remedy isn’t remedy for PC at all.”
All these 3 games look and play absolutely wonderful on PC even with way lower systems. Clearly the “northlight engine” isn’t optimized for PC. It lacks scalability, chugs hefty amount of resources even when nothing is going on screen and has plenty of animation bugs that justifies its “pristine” requirements.
And I bet you if this game had not been sponsored by Nvidia, it would not have these insane system requirements.
We are at an inflection point in graphics, where graphics can not be easily improved.
Diminishing returns. You should know John, you keep posting these pointless HD texture mods where every comment tells you there is no difference.
This inflection point would mean people would stop upgrading their GPU. So Nvidia pushed the industry into raytracing, path tracing, and lots of other graphical baloney that hardly makes a difference, so they can keep selling new GPU.
Nvidia has to sell its ludicrously overpriced GPU’s somehow.
True. Nothing justifies this high requirement. This is unoptimized,
like other Remedy games.
you are right,alan wake is another pos unptimized crap. unfortunately there are so many morons here.
just curious will there be more performance patches coming out ?
This thing being this picky about the GPU’s that can run it, it’s going to have a hard time on sales.
A game that runs on such few specific hardware should be called a demo. And when it runs poorly even on these specific scenarios, then it should be called a shïtty unoptmized demo.
the way i see it, Nvidia is pushing unoptimized and redundant new techs to justify its 5000 and 6000 series price jump while having marginal increase in actual rasterize graphical fidelity. i mean every thing in rendering pipeline is fake now whats the point to make some effects simulating realistic lighting and shading with high cost while adding more fake frames in between. SSR and cube maps were relatable enough and they could have pushed the industry toward more physical interaction and user interaction with the world to have more innovation yet they’ve opted for the same gameplay loop with more shadows and global illumination.
Pretty much. Nvidia knows GPU are already good enough to render highly detailed worlds.
So they pay developers like Remedy to add crap that lags like crazy to get those GPU to their knees, like rAyTRaCiNg where they make every game look like a damp rainforest with wet puddles everywhere.
Otherwise no one would upgrade their GPU to play the latest bloated raytraced walking simulator like Alan Wake 2.
You have channels like Digital Foundry that feed into this, where 3 clowns who never found a real job, zoom into every pixel in the game instead of actually playing games like a normal person does. No one notices what these nerds talk about when actually playing the game.
personally i prefer art style to technical graphics
Plus one of those DF guys whines about hot girls in games
At least they know what they talk about. Unlike you, who has no clue.
Everything in a rending pipeline is and always has been fake ….. It’s all just 1’s and 0’s ……. a mathematical model that simulates reality
alan 2: walking the woke path
This thing being this picky about the GPU’s that can run it, it’s going to have a hard time on sales.
A game that runs on such few specific hardware should be called a demo. And when it runs poorly even on these specific scenarios, then it should be called a shïtty unoptmized demo.
It supports 3 generations of Nvidia and would have supported 3 generations of AMD if they hadn’t dropped the ball and failed to include mesh shaders in the 5700XT …. So basically anything made in the last 5 years and anything older than 5 years is essentially obsolete hardware like it or not
“anything older than 5 years is essentially obsolete”
People aren’t companies to have their hardware obsolete in 5 years. Get a grip of reality.
I do have a grip on reality …. and 45 years experience working with computers and 35 years experience using and building computers on the x86/ATX platform. Even back in the 80’s a 10 year old computer was considered obsolete and now 40 years later with computer technology at an ever increasing rate it’s now 5 years ….. That IS Reality …..
BTW big corporate and especially government are notorious for using computers that are well past their expiration date, some are still from the XP era …..
muh rAytTracEd puddles
pathetic Remedy needing Nvidia $ because no one wants to play their boring walking simulators
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6c6b41f56d1170557c8ed5a327c7f194a40c6a243363bfdfef21128ac021f42.jpg
The first patch is out. No change in performance, just a few bug fixes.
The game looks nice but it doesn’t mater because this is an Epic S@it store exclusive.
torrents
this is the first game that my 1080ti can’t handle
Alan wake the titular protagonist doesn’t even have half the playtime of entire playthrough on his own game. They wanted to make a strong independent black woman game and decided to add alan wake to get people buy this woke crap
I don’t have a problem with a black woman game or any woman game, but don’t fuqin call it Alan wake. It’s the same problem I have with Miles Morales and any other Spiderman, that is NOT Peter Parker. It’s just so lazy and it’s theft.
Mary sue jane somehow is more op than both spidermen in their own game. Yeah. We have a m!sandrist fem!turd epidemic going on in video gaming.
I definitely have a problem with ugly black woman game
“As we can clearly see, this title favors NVIDIA’s hardware. ” Maybe with RT or PT on but a 7900 XTX beats a 4080 without them on at 1080, 1440 and 4K…
The game runs perfect in terms of smoothness on AMD, and in such a moments I don’t care much about whether nV has a couple of FPS more or not…
This game isn’t even wortg pirating. See you don’t have to spend money on Denuvo just make a POS game. No one will want to illegally download this game where the protag is only in it for 15% of the game.
Game looks awesome and runs silky smooth on 4770k + 7900xt. All max except raytraysing (all settings turned off).
Saw laments about 7800x3d + 7900 xtx configs ran badly. Won’t give any advise but my example shows opposite.
Game is luring and interesting
Nobody wants to play the ugly black female simulator