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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