Alan Wake 2 Performance Benchmark

[Wasteland]

Are you an Epic games rep? Let me give you my two cents:

1. The game is NOT coming for Steam because it is published by Epic directly. There is no 1-year exclusivity contract here.
2. EGS is pure garbage. I just bought the game on it because I see that I don't have any other choice, and while it was installing, my monitor wouldn't go to sleep. This is some ludicrous level of software writing bollocks. Not to mention, there is nothing graphical in the storefront, it's a plain dark grey canvas with a web-based UI. There is no reason to keep my screen awake, especially when the app is minimised.
3. There is zero customisability. I can't even set up the app to show my games on startup instead of the store! Not to mention, the store is just a basic web page with no relation to my library whatsoever. It is still offering me to buy Alan Wake 2, despite the fact that I already have it.
4. There is ZERO other feature in the app. It literally has no reason to exist other than to launch your games, which you could do by clicking on the .exe or the desktop icon.

All in all, Epic is a pure steaming pile of horse manure that wouldn't survive a single second against Steam and GOG if not for the shady as F exclusivity deals and occasional free games.

Sorry to shatter your illusions. The next time you register for a forum, maybe start with something other than telling people what to like.

Might check out the Heroic Launcher as an alternative: https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher

It works quite well. You can even buy games on the Epic/GOG stores through Heroic (though thus far I've only ever claimed free games in this fashion). The only caveat is that lately the Windows version sometimes causes my main monitor to flicker. Toggling VRR off and back on fixes it. The Linux version, naturally, works flawlessly.

Or, and this is my preferred method ATM on Windows, you can use Playnite as your catch-all launcher. With this app, you can set up EGS games such that Heroic's GUI never even needs to launch when you play your games. (You do still need it installed, though, and ofc you'd need to run Heroic to claim or buy EGS games--but not to launch them.)

All in all I agree with your assessment re: the Epic Games Store/Launcher. There are surprisingly effective ways to work around it, though.

 

[AusWolf]

Might check out the Heroic Launcher as an alternative: https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher

It works quite well. You can even buy games on the Epic/GOG store through Heroic (though thus far I've only ever claimed free games in this fashion). The only caveat is that lately the Windows version sometimes causes my main monitor to flicker. Toggling VRR off and back on fixes it. The Linux version, naturally, works flawlessly.

Or, and this is my preferred method ATM on Windows, you can use Playnite as your catch-all launcher. With this app, you can set up EGS games such that Heroic's GUI never even needs to launch when you play your games. (You do still need it installed, though, and ofc you'd need to launch it for claiming/buying EGS games--but not for launching them.)

All in all I agree with your assessment re: the Epic Games Store/Launcher. There are surprisingly effective ways to work around it, though.

Good point, just I don't want to install another launcher only to get rid of Epic's turd.

I'm wondering, can you import Epic games into GOG or Steam? Of course you lose automatic updates, but oh well...

 

[Wasteland]

Good point, just I don't want to install another launcher only to get rid of Epic's turd.

I'm wondering, can you import Epic games into GOG or Steam? Of course you lose automatic updates, but oh well...

Yeah, actually this is one of my favorite things about Heroic--it allows you to automate adding games to Steam, or rather, it makes adding EGS/GOG games to Steam a one-click affair. This is more relevant to me on Linux, where the benefits of running through Steam are much more pronounced (and also where Playnite doesn't exist), but it works on Windows too. (Again, though, you do need to leave Heroic installed after importing the game to Steam; adding it to Steam simply lets you access the game from your Steam library, use Steam overlay/controller features, etc. It also makes Heroic's contribution a background thing, launching it through CLI. You can't get around certain games needing certain launchers, but you can minimize their presence.)

I used to use GoG Galaxy, mostly because it allowed me to list all of my owned games in one place--very helpful during a sale, to prevent you from buying a game twice, lol. But GOG Galaxy has been a beta product for years now, and it shows. Its Steam plugin routinely breaks.

You're right of course to be skeptical of extra launchers. Tinkering with launchers can become a job in and of itself. Playnite for example has enough options and plugins to make your head spin. But leaving Playnite aside, and to be super clear: Heroic REPLACES the Epic launcher. It isn't a supplement. I haven't had the Epic Launcher installed in more than a year.

 

[AusWolf]

Heroic REPLACES the Epic launcher. It isn't a supplement. I haven't had the Epic Launcher installed in more than a year.

Now that's something! I might do just that myself, although I'm pretty sure Alan Wake Remastered and AW 2 will be my only ever games on Epic. Return to Moria caught my attention, too, but it's not released by Epic, so I'm hoping it will come to Steam eventually. I can easily wait for a year to get it, just like I waited for Metro: Exodus, and didn't regret it. I have lots of games to play in the meantime.

 

[gffermari]

Man Native with no fancy tech looks nice but PT+DLSS+RR+FG sure elevate Alan Wake II to another level in term visual/performance

4K Native vs 4K DLSS.B+PT+FG+RR

I find the differences huge when there is movement. The still images do not show how RT or PT affects the graphics.
In general, if the developer does a good job for the prebaked lighting, the difference between RT/PT and raster is minimal or non existent.
The GI/AO is what you can only distinguish in still images. Even the reflections could be 90+% the same in certain camera positions and angles.

 

[izy]

Look at this mess (1080p) , seems that there is a lot of noise without PT on (look at the mirrors, many "random" pixels) , native resolution (same with Quality DLSS) - DLSS DLAA and FSR NATIVE Maxed out, tried all the options and only one that seems to fix it is turning Path Tracing ON / rest of RT settings can be disabled.
1) High Preset - DLAA PT OFF, 2) High Preset - DLAA PT LOW , 3) High Preset - DLAA PT HIGH , 4)My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality - PT OFF 5) My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality PT low, 6) My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality, PT HIGH - all RT options maxed.
Edit1: tested at 1440p and its the same thing, seems that the game was built with PT in mind and hardly you can play with PT ON without having an RTX 4070+
Edit2: seems that turning off Global Reflections fixes the issue (when not using PT) but the overall quality is worse in my opinion , you are getting a nice fps boost tho.

 

[VictorLGC]

Look at this mess (1080p) , seems that there is a lot of noise without PT on (look at the mirrors, many "random" pixels) , native resolution (same with Quality DLSS) - DLSS DLAA and FSR NATIVE Maxed out, tried all the options and only one that seems to fix it is turning Path Tracing ON / rest of RT settings can be disabled.
1) High Preset - DLAA PT OFF, 2) High Preset - DLAA PT LOW , 3) High Preset - DLAA PT HIGH , 4)My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality - PT OFF 5) My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality PT low, 6) My Custom Preset - DLSS Quality, PT HIGH - all RT options maxed.
Edit1: tested at 1440p and its the same thing, seems that the game was built with PT in mind and hardly you can play with PT ON without having an RTX 4070+
Edit2: seems that turning off Global Reflections fixes the issue (when not using PT) but the overall quality is worse in my opinion , you are getting a nice fps boost tho.
finetly looks like a bug. Normal Ray Tracing should handle mirror reflections just as fine.

Definetly looks like a bug. Normal Ray Tracing should handle mirror reflections just as fine.

 

[dyonoctis]

The difference is obvious. Its also way too pronounced, every reflective surface is polished to perfection, the glass is stainless, and yet, people just had dinner. Contrast is higher, too.

Still this is better than Cyberpunk, where reflective surfaces are utterly ridiculous in RT. But a 'new level' of visuals... I guess if you really want to call it that, it's true.

Dirt/dust/scratch on glass is generally a texture that is applied on the roughness channel. It's basically changing the way that light behave when it goes through the glass. I know that this effect can get pretty heavy in offline 3D, and it seems that it's the same for rasterized 3D.
Glass is part of those things that games are pretty mediocre at rendering. It's going to look good in a few select area, but most of time it looks odd if you stare at it for too long/get too close.

Real time Ray traced/Path traced transparent/translucent materials is the one thing that I don't see plausible to do even in a decade from now

 

[izy]

I found something interesting on reddit about Mesh Shaders which without this game does not run well, i also noticed that i can OC my GPU higher than in any other games without crashing , somehow i think the game is not using some features of the GPU so hard when using mesh shaders , not sure how it works.
I think we can get a good idea why 1080ti and RX 5700xt are doing so bad, huge fps boost with mesh shaders.

Edit:
It would be nice some 3DMark Mesh Shader feature benchmarks here on TPU with all the GPUs and see what performance we can expect from futures games with our GPUs. (and mesh shader performance scaling with different GPUs)
Numbers i found over internet for performance improvement of using mesh over vertex: : 250% (GTX16), 400% (RTX20), 500% (RDNA2), 700% (RTX30)

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/lho6e1

 

[StingingVelvet]

Dirt/dust/scratch on glass is generally a texture that is applied on the roughness channel. It's basically changing the way that light behave when it goes through the glass. I know that this effect can get pretty heavy in offline 3D, and it seems that it's the same for rasterized 3D.
Glass is part of those things that games are pretty mediocre at rendering. It's going to look good in a few select area, but most of time it looks odd if you stare at it for too long/get too close.

Real time Ray traced/Path traced transparent/translucent materials is the one thing that I don't see plausible to do even in a decade from now

One issue I have with RT is I feel like as a half-measure it looks weird. Someday when we can really go all out and do it to the max I think it'll be an amazing thing, but in most games today I find stuff like lower res mirror reflections of only half the environment to be more distracting than planar reflections. Same with a sewer pipe or whatever that tries to have RT and guess the roughness cutoff and ends up looking like half a mirror versus a simple pixel shader that simulates bounce light.

Maybe it's my age and what I grew up with and am used to, but when I compare stuff like Hitman 2's planar reflections to Hitman 3's SSR and RT reflections I honestly prefer Hitman 2's solution most of the time.

 

[W1zzard]

seems that the game was built with PT in mind

I seriously doubt that. There's plenty of scenes where even RT off clearly looks like "this is what a designer sat down for and hand-crafted it"

 

[theouto]

I ask again just in case @W1zzard

Have you gotten the chance to test the game with amd gpus while running the alan wake 2 drivers? And if you have, was there really that negligible of a performance difference?

It also seems like the game is heavily bandwidth dependant, which would explain why a 7800XT is beating a 6900XT, and why the 30 series advantage over the 60 series is so high at 1440p or above, since the difference is usually noticeable, but never this much

 

[izy]

I seriously doubt that. There's plenty of scenes where even RT off clearly looks like "this is what a designer sat down for and hand-crafted it"

Yeah , ive played a bit with the settings and it seems that there are some problems with Global Reflections in some situations (like those mirrors), i disabled m_bVignette, m_bDepthOfField and m_bLensDistortion like you did in the review , maybe it has something to do with it ? (guessing not)

 

[W1zzard]

i disabled m_bVignette, m_bDepthOfField and m_bLensDistortion like you did in the review , maybe it has something to do with it ? (guessing not)

These are post-processing effects and shouldn't affect things like shadow and lighting .. and at least you don't have to suffer due to the blurry look

 

[VictorLGC]

I seriously doubt that. There's plenty of scenes where even RT off clearly looks like "this is what a designer sat down for and hand-crafted it"

I agree. And that corroborates with the fact that the game was also designed with the limitations of the consoles in mind. They absolutely can't do path tracing without turning the game into a slideshow.

So the hand-crafted illumination (aka rasterization) is there. The good news is that on PC you can have both.

Real time Ray traced/Path traced transparent/translucent materials is the one thing that I don't see plausible to do even in a decade from now

I wouldn't go that far. I've read that it could be possible in the next generation or two... A dev said that the RTX 5070 or RTX 6070 would be able do path tracing at playable (60fps) rates without frame generation or DLSS.

We'll have to wait and see. Nvidia has a monumental job making this viable on "consumer level" cards.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

might be worth a look on my 3080.

 

[izy]

These are post-processing effects and shouldn't affect things like shadow and lighting .. and at least you don't have to suffer due to the blurry look

Tested with m_bVignette, m_bDepthOfField and m_bLensDistortion back on , same results, it had nothing to do with the pixelation as guessed, look at this doors , PT off vs Global Reflections off vs PT on (Low) , something is bugged, sucks!! , it just looks terrible without PT.

 

[theouto]

Tested with m_bVignette, m_bDepthOfField and m_bLensDistortion back on , same results, it had nothing to do with the pixelation as guessed, look at this doors , PT off vs Global Reflections off vs PT on (Low) , something is bugged, sucks!! , it just looks terrible without PT.

View attachment 319321View attachment 319323View attachment 319324

The "pixelation" (grainy-ness) is an artifact of screen space reflections

 

[izy]

The "pixelation" (grainy-ness) is an artifact of screen space reflections

Yeah , i guess so , it looks bad in some places with it on and not great without it, it is what it is

The guys that made this game were on something for sure, the game has some psychedelic scenes

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Just tried this on my PC, seemed to run fine on all med, no RT or DLSS. 93/4% GPU/2% CPU good temps

 

[VictorLGC]

might be worth a look on my 3080.

Runs good on my 3070, everything on high, Ray Tracing and Ray reconstruction. Just the path tracing is off. Mins of 35fps in rare instances, 50+ fps most of the time.

Your 3080 will be fine.

 

[Trunks0]

The "pixelation" (grainy-ness) is an artifact of screen space reflections

I wonder if Remedy implemented the experimental FSR 2 SSR denoiser? Although figuring out what the cmd is would probably be near impossible if it's not there in the renderer.ini already.

 

[sblantipodi]

What about a CPU test?

 

[W1zzard]

What about a CPU test?

No plans at this time, but I'm tempted to include the title in our CPU reviews

 

[sblantipodi]

No plans at this time, but I'm tempted to include the title in our CPU reviews

It all depends on how CPU intensive the game is...