Remedy Entertainment has revealed that patch 1.0.16.1—for Alan Wake 2—will optimize graphics card performance on older architectures. Digital Foundry's Video Producer, Alex Battaglia, previewed these improvements earlier in the week—he noted that Remedy's Northlight Engine-powered 2023 visual masterpiece was: "one of the most demanding for older hardware. Owing to its use of DX12 Ultimate mesh shaders, the game could run on older hardware but often delivered an unplayable experience, especially on Nvidia's GTX 10-series GPUs built on the Pascal architecture." That generation's lack of mesh shader support is observed as its main "undoing in Alan Wake 2," where a substantial portion of visual delivery is reliant on said technologies. Battaglia observed that: "the game does function on GPUs that don't support mesh shaders, but poor performance and visual errors are the problem: the GTX 1060 at 1080p on FSR 2 quality mode, married up with PS5's performance mode quality presets delivers a game typically running under 60 FPS, more usually hitting circa 15 FPS. Game frame-rate is so low, even game speed and audio playback are compromised."

Today, Remedy's Alan Wake social media account announced the release of the game's latest update: "We've been optimizing the PC version of Alan Wake 2, and as a result the minimum PC system requirements have been lowered. Please check the updated image (below)! These changes take effect with update 1.0.16.1, out on PC now." Certain owners of Team Green Pascal-era hardware, as well as Team Red RDNA 1.0/Navi 10 preservationists will be pleased to find out that Alan Wake 2's minimum specification tier now accommodates NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 and AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards. Digital Foundry's preview piece did mention incremental improvements for Vega-based GPUs, albeit with optimizations introduced within earlier Alan Wake 2 patches.Battaglia observed performance improvements across a range of graphics card models: "In a run through the forest in the first chapter, the upcoming patch increased performance by an impressive 45 percent—an impressive boost bearing in mind the lack of mesh shader hardware support. Pascal GPUs actually fared even worse in Saga Anderson's Mind Place and with the new patch, there's an almost 3x performance multiplier. Curiously, as you move up the Pascal stack of GPUs, the performance increases with the new patch rise still further. The same tests on GTX 1070 delivered a 57 percent increase in the forest, rising to 85 percent with the GTX 1080. Moving up to the now legendary GTX 1080 Ti (still a reasonably powerful GPU today), performance effectively doubles. At 1080p, the 1080 Ti is now delivering a good VRR experience on 60 Hz panels. It's a game transformed...So, based on our testing, I would say that the base Pascal GPU that can play Alan Wake 2 respectably is the GTX 1070, which can do a good 30 FPS on the low settings, or the PS5's performance mode-equivalent settings—effectively low with medium ground detail."


Digital Foundry: "we were fortunate to receive access to a new Alan Wake 2 patch, landing on March 6th 2024—and it's exceptionally good news for owners of GTX 10-series Nvidia graphics cards based on the Pascal architecture, with substantial performance boosts that make the game viable for play on millions of older systems. Alex takes a more holistic look at how the game has improved since launch, checking out general performance and UI enhancements, before delivering the good news for owners of older Nvidia hardware."