Alan Wake II performance test – High requirements, but amazing graphics. A true next-gen needs powerful hardware

You can often read in the comments that you are disappointed with the level of visuals in computer games, you expect a revolution and truly next-gen effects. Alan Wake II should finally satisfy your appetite, using the potential of modern graphics systems… However, when the official hardware requirements of Alan Wake II were recently published, many PC users were slightly shocked when they looked at the minimum recommended configuration. An additional surprise was the recommendation to turn on upscaling regardless of the graphics system you have. Well… revolutions are rarely bloodless. The question is whether the technical layer will actually be revolutionary?

Author: Sebastian Oktaba

Alan Wake II is an original production with numerous artistic values, because it is an ambitious thriller that requires associating facts, thinking outside the box and absorbing a oneiric-delirious narrative. In many respects, the gameplay resembles forgotten adventure games, consisting of looking for clues, connecting dots, solving puzzles, etc. Of course, you can skip the detective elements (analysis of evidence, profiling suspects), focusing only on operational and arcade aspects, but the production will then lose its criminal depth. Alan Wake II also offers a lot of well-made cutscenes, a lot of classic scaring and shooting at unnatural enemies. A powerful lure is also the disturbing atmosphere straight from Stephen King’s novels, the first season of True Detective or some episodes of The X Files. I would also like to mention that currently Alan Wake II is included with select NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards and laptops with Ada Lovelace family graphics chips.

Alan Wake II offers beautiful graphics and a rich palette of ray tracing effects, but it also has huge requirements. Here, Frame Generation, upscaling and additional image enhancement techniques (Ray Reconstruction) are almost necessary. Otherwise, performance will be really poor…

Alan Wake II’s hardware requirements are divided into rasterization and ray tracing sections, with the weakest suggested graphics card being NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 6600. Additionally, it is advisable to use upscaling to obtain a stable 30 frames per second at a resolution of 1920×1080 and the lowest settings. Alan Wake II will probably hold the record for the highest entry threshold. Then the situation becomes even more interesting, because in addition to a more powerful graphics card, it is recommended to use more and more aggressive upscaling. Finally up to a resolution of 3840×2160 with High settings, the developer suggests NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 / AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT supported by DLSS / FSR Performance. The weakest version of ray tracing requires NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, while in higher modes there is not even an AMD equivalent provided. If you do not intend to replace the equipment, you can alternatively use GeForce NOW servicesbecause Alan Wake II will be available in the NVIDIA cloud from the moment of its premiere.

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What are the reasons for the high hardware requirements of Alan Wake II? The original Northlight engine provides impressive graphics even in standard rasterization, where, among others, an advanced model of volumetric lighting, screen space reflections (SSR), a high density of realistically reproduced vegetation, etc. The whole is complemented by a comprehensive implementation of ray tracing, taking into account global illumination, lighting and reflections, accompanied by indirect lighting using the path tracing method. NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 also includes Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction, improving the quality and stability of ray-traced effects. Alan Wake II was packed to the brim with the latest solutions, looking really phenomenal in places, but at the expense of high hardware requirements. If you need to upgrade your computer, at least you can save on purchasing Alan Wake II alonebecause the production will be added to some NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards.