Alan Wake 2 Performance Benchmark

[QRpeach]

What about low-end turing GPU - 1660? (or 1660ti)

 

[jarebear603]

Had the same impression.

There are also instances where path tracing adds a shadow, but that only happens ON objects: in the first screenshot for example the sign by the road and the sign in front of the house.

When the object that shadow needs casting on is further away, Path tracing seems to fade it away. Gimmicky indeed. Also, Maximum vs Path tracing? I wouldn't care one bit, maximum every day of the week given the perf benefit.

RT: the problem looking for solutions we already had.

I mean shadows should cascade from sharp to blurry the farther the shadow gets away from the source. I'm just not sure if I'm so used to fake raster lighting and shadows that getting more psychically accurate throws me off.

 

[Pumper]

Medium looks pretty good and doesn't run at 3fps, lol.

 

[Vayra86]

I mean shadows should cascade from sharp to blurry the farther the shadow gets away from the source. I'm just not sure if I'm so used to fake raster lighting and shadows that getting more psychically accurate throws me off.

Yeah, good point, but this pronounced? Similarly I don't quite get why the chairs in that room also have that fading shadow already, the contrast in the room is high, and its direct light, so why is that shadow not sharper?

Consider the streetlight you're walking under. Or the sun...

Also visually I like the raster shadow a lot better. It adds to the scene. The PT shadows remove a key element here.

 

[kane nas]

Wouldn't it be more correct to test only the Nvidia cards since there is no driver for AMD or at least wait for the AMD driver? Because someone could say that you are promoting Nvidia, I say this because Nvidia does not need such a thing because it is far ahead of the competition of the least expensive cards.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Yep, when the RTX3000 series launched, I said, I called it, 16GB VRAM is the bare minimum all the cards should have, now even the RTX4000 is showing how mediocre the product was, with no DP2.0 for high refresh/resolution OLED panels, nor enough VRAM. Everything sub 4080 was a turd right out of the gate. Overpriced turds.

 

[3211]

What's a big no-no in my opinion is that Remedy is releasing the game as an Epic Games Store exclusive. No doubt, Epic's money can be tempting, but not having the game available at launch on Steam means excluding a substantial player base. There's tons of gamers who aren't willing to put up with Epic's business practices and their launcher, which has seen only minimal enhancements over the years. Given that there is no Denuvo, everyone interested in playing the game will likely have already done so before Remedy eventually releases Alan Wake 2 on Steam in approximately a year, probably leading to disappointing sales.

Buddy. At least try to do the bare minimum of research before. Epic funded the entire game. Its the publisher. The entire reason the game exists is because Epic made it to exist. This is not a moneyhated Epic release coming to steam after a year. This is an Epic only game, for all eternity, because they paid for the entirety of the project

 

[3DVCash]

Probably the effect of VRAM being saturated, and the 3D cache factor.

Ohh, good call on the infinity cache! Not sure I've seen a scenario where it made such a massive difference before.

 

[VulkanBros]

Hmm...so I need a RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 to play it, with all the whistles and bells at 1980 x 1080..... (or nVidia makes a RTX 4070Ti with 16GB VRAM).....VAUW

 

[W1zzard]

First page, last paragraph mentions another game, Lords of the Fallen. Copy paste much?

Fixed, thanks! Yeah I always copy the previous article

FYI article says there is no driver for AMD but there is a driver here: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-20-17-05-alan-wake-2

Meh .. and I asked AMD this morning for driver guidance ..

What about low-end turing GPU - 1660? (or 1660ti)

Will test and add soon. I simply didn't have the time to test the usual cards, so I had to prioritize

since there is no driver for AMD or at least wait for the AMD driver?

I'll do some testing with the new drivers and update this review accordingly

Buddy. At least try to do the bare minimum of research before. Epic funded the entire game. Its the publisher. The entire reason the game exists is because Epic made it to exist. This is not a moneyhated Epic release coming to steam after a year. This is an Epic only game, for all eternity, because they paid for the entirety of the project

Interesting. Do you have an official source for that? /remindme 1 year

 

[VulkanBros]

Interesting. Do you have an official source for that? /remindme 1 year

Epic is also funding 100% of dev costs for Alan Wake 2, which is targeting a 2023 release date

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/86349/epic-games-funded-alan-wake-remaster-at-loss/index.html

 

[AnotherReader]

Thanks for the review @W1zzard . I especially appreciate the INI tweaks. Do you have any idea why the hit from path tracing is much less than Cyberpunk? Even AMD manages to do fine in path tracing considering how it brings their GPUs to their knees in Cyberpunk. It also looks like Remedy's recommendations for GPUs were rather pessimistic.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The performance is, frankly, appaling. 39 FPS on a 6700xt when said 6700xt is stronger then either home console? How poorly optimized is this?

And forced upscaling. Utter trash. Will skip.

Applies only to cards with sufficient VRAM apparently, lol a 4070ti is sometimes slower than a 16GB 4060ti because it's running out of VRAM.

Which is absolutely hilarious. Everyone who was so smug about how 16GB was useless and people were overreacting to 8GB cards getting it smothered all over their face that, no, 8GB is in fact NOT enough for modern GPUs.

 

[W1zzard]

Do you have any idea why the hit from path tracing is much less than Cyberpunk?

I guess they don't let the rays bounce as much, or cast fewer of them

 

[sethmatrix7]

Under 60fps in 1080p with a 3080. Yea- there is no way I am buying this. Do better.

 

[fevgatos]

Under 60fps in 1080p with a 3080. Yea- there is no way I am buying this. Do better.

Lower the settings....?

 

[progste]

They seem to have worked a lot on lighting but some textures and models looks like they're from Skyrim.
Not worth these absurd hardware requirements.

 

[darkx]

Thanks for the testing, impressive how this game scales going by other reviews. Moreover, we're seeing some good usage of having that VRAM on the highest-end cards, although I'd like to see how the recommended settings (medium) would have fared.

Interesting. Do you have an official source for that? /remindme 1 year

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-publishing-announcement

The Epic Games approach to publishing fundamentally changes the developer/publisher model, and aims to have the most developer-friendly terms in the industry, so that creators can focus on making great games.

• Full creative freedom and ownership. Developers retain 100% of all intellectual property and full creative control of their work.
• Fully-funded projects. Epic Games Publishing will cover up to 100% of development costs, from developer salaries to go-to-market expenses such as QA, localization, marketing, and all publishing costs.
• 50/50 profit sharing. Developers earn a fair share for their work -- once costs are recouped, developers earn at least 50% of all profits.

Alan, wake up – Announcing Alan Wake 2

A familiar face appeared on screen at The Game Awards, and an equally familiar voice was heard. We are beyond excited to have finally reached the point of talking to you about what we’ve been working on for so long.

www.remedygames.com

Along with our partners at Epic Games Publishing, we have worked tirelessly to shed some light on what has long been obscured by darkness. After 11 long years, the writer’s return is a reality and the dangers lurking in the dark are even more sinister than the Taken roaming Bright Falls.

Control sequel might not be EGS exclusive?
But EG can still moneyhat that;

The sequel to Control: Remedy Entertainment signs a co-development and co-publishing agreement with 505 Games for Control 2

Remedy Entertainment and 505 Games have signed an agreement under which they will co-develop and co-publish Control 2 (formerly known as Codename Heron), a sequel to the award-winning game Control. For more details, refer to our investor website. Read on for a message on Control 2, from Mikael...

www.remedygames.com

 

[pinkflamingo]

Remedy deserves praise for their decision to employ their in-house Northlight engine, which sets them apart from most developers currently favoring Unreal Engine. With Alan Wake 2, they've taken it a step further by upgrading the engine to support ray tracing, path tracing, NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, DLSS Frame Generation, and a range of other cutting-edge capabilities. As expected, DirectX 12 is used as rendering API.

the engine already supported most of that, forget about Control already?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Lower the settings....?

Do Better?

 

[AnotherReader]

Under 60fps in 1080p with a 3080. Yea- there is no way I am buying this. Do better.

Play around with the ray tracing presets or switch to rasterized only rendering so that your 3080 goes well beyond 60 fps at 1080p.

@W1zzard Which presets did you use in the ray tracing section?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Going back and forth between Pathtracing and High makes it an easy choice. I'll take twice the frames for slightly different presentation. Slightly worse here, slightly better there.

2x FPS wins

 

[Vayra86]

Wouldn't it be more correct to test only the Nvidia cards since there is no driver for AMD or at least wait for the AMD driver? Because someone could say that you are promoting Nvidia, I say this because Nvidia does not need such a thing because it is far ahead of the competition of the least expensive cards.

There are raster only results in the perf bench, they even have their own page. I think this article does every vendor a service: it shows the visual differences and the performance gap.

You dont get it much more neutral than this imho.

 

[fevgatos]

Do Better?

Better than what? What does that even mean?

Yes, they could rename low settings into ultra and then a 3060 plays 60 fps at ultra I guess...

 

[Vayra86]

Going back and forth between Pathtracing and High makes it an easy choice. I'll take twice the frames for slightly different presentation. Slightly worse here, slightly better there.

2x FPS wins

Yep same as in Cyberpunk honestly. Better is a matter of perception - quite literally.

In my mind PT is Ansel 2.0, you get nice screenshots out of it. No banding etc. For gameplay? Pointless exercise