The first-party benchmarks for Alan Wake 2 are out. NVIDIA has shared the first performance numbers for Remedy’s upcoming title, and things look dire especially if you’re an AMD user. The below benchmarks were conducted at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K (2160p) using the “RT High” Full Ray Tracing preset on the RTX 40 series GPUs. Considering that higher RT presets enable path tracing, DLSS 3.5 is pretty much a given. The numbers below show just how GPU-intensive Alan Wake 2 really is:
At native 4K “RT High”, the GeForce RTX 4090 averages a paltry 32.8 FPS. Enabling DLSS 3.5 “Performance” mode buoys the frame rates up to 134.4 FPS. The RTX 4080 behaves similarly with an average of 22 FPS at native 4K “RT High.” DLSS 3.5 allows for a more reasonable average of 104 FPS for this $1,200 GPU. The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti struggles with a mere 17 FPS at 4K native, only to push out a healthy 82 FPS with DLSS 3.5.
Despite everything, the GeForce RTX 4090 manages to achieve an average of 60 FPS+ at 1440p native “RT High.” The RTX 4080 hovers over 40 FPS at the same setting, followed by the RTX 4070 Ti with 35 FPS. With DLSS 3.5’s interpolated frames, these GPUs average over 100 FPS led by the RTX 4090 and 4080 at 170 FPS and 133 FPS, respectively.
At 1080p “RT High,” even the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti offers a smooth experience without an upscaler. The RTX 4090, 4080, and 4070 Ti average 89 FPS, 68 FPS, and 55 FPS at native 1080p, respectively. The GeForce RTX 4070, 4060 Ti, and 4060 hover at 44 FPS, 34 FPS, and 27 FPS and require DLSS or FSR for a more tolerable experience.
| Ray Tracing Presets | Low | Medium | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Path Tracing In Use | None | Full (3 bounces, RT AO on the last hit) | Full (3 bounces, RT AO on last hit) |
| Path Traced Indirect Lighting Quality | OFF | MEDIUM | HIGH |
| Ray Traced Direct Lighting | ON | ON | ON |
| Ray Traced Transparency | LOW | HIGH | HIGH |
The above table explains the differences between the three ray tracing presets. At “Low,” you’re leveraging basic, one-hit direct lighting and limited transparency. Medium enables 3-hit path tracing while improving the starting ray count. High focuses more on indirect or diffuse lighting, also known as global illumination.
| NRD Direct Lighting Denoising Quality | LOW | HIGH | HIGH |
|---|---|---|---|
| NRD Indirect Lighting Denoising Quality | N/A | MEDIUM | HIGH |
All RTX GPU owners can leverage “Ray Reconstruction” for higher-quality upscaling and better denoising quality. However, Radeon and older GTX card owners can opt for NRD Indirect Lighting Denoising. I feel like this is just an obligation. The use of indirect lighting on GTX 10 series cards or even Radeon RX 7000/6000 GPUs will absolutely kill the performance. It simply won’t work well.
