A lot of frustration surfaced earlier this month when Remedy’s Lea-Newin claimed that the game would require DX12 Ultimate and Mesh Shaders. And since Remedy has just lifted the review embargo for Alan Wake 2, we can finally confirm that the game will NOT prevent you from running it on older/unsupported GPUs. In fact, we were able to launch it on an NVIDIA GTX980Ti.

When you first launch the game on older/unsupported GPUs, you’ll get the following warning message. Yes, the game requires Mesh Shaders for optimal performance. Remedy’s Lea-Newin did not lie about it. However, it won’t block you from running it.

So, here’s how the game runs at 1080p/Max Settings/No Ray Tracing on the NVIDIA GTX980Ti. So… yeah… while Alan Wake 2 does launch on this old graphics card, it’s nowhere close to being described as playable. We also got some crashes when we tried to change the resolution.

Not only that but we experienced major visual glitches. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the warning message mentioned them. So, here is a lovely screenshot showcasing these glitches. Man, these artifacts look similar to those you get when a GPU has completely broken down.

What this basically means is that yes, you will be able to run Alan Wake 2 on the NVIDIA 10 series and AMD 5000 series. However, performance won’t be optimal and you may encounter numerous visual glitches.

I should also note that Alan Wake 2 does not use the Denuvo anti-tamper tech. A lot of our readers have been wondering about it. So, rest assured that you won’t have to deal with this anti-tamper tech in this particular title.

Our PC Performance Analysis for Alan Wake 2 will go live this weekend. Until then, you can go ahead and check out our “DLSS 3, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing” benchmarks.

Stay tuned for more!