Conclusion
In our Alan Wake 2 GPU Performance Review, we took a deep dive into NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs performance. We compared 11 GPUs to each other, looking at performance across the board in the latest current generation from NVIDIA and AMD in December of 2023. We gave the game, and drivers more than a month to mature, to provide a meaningful look at the kind of performance you can expect.
In our head-to-head review, we were able to hone in on native resolution performance, game quality setting performance, upscaling performance, and ray tracing performance in Alan Wake 2. We were able to provide recommended game settings for each GPU and give gamers a good head start on honing in the right video card for you, and the right game settings to target for a great gameplay experience.
Performance Summary
In our testing, we thought initially that NVIDIA GPUs would dominate in raw native resolution rasterized performance, but that was not the case. Each AMD GPU was positioned well, generally overtaking the performance of the NVIDIA counterpart at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p. This was widened when upscaling (DLSS/FSR 2) was used, and when the resolution decreased.
Our testing indicates some sort of driver CPU inefficacy, or deficiency on NVIDIA GPUs, or perhaps AMD GPUs just have that much less overhead as you become more CPU-dependent. As the upscaling increased, or the resolution decreased, the AMD GPUs overtook the NVIDIA GPUs by larger margins in performance. To the point that the Radeon RX 7900 XTX can even overtake the GeForce RTX 4090 at 1080p with Upscaling.
The story flips, however, when you introduce Ray Tracing and turn this feature on. With Ray Tracing, in any quality mode, NVIDIA dominates the show, period. We found in our testing that specifically it is the Path Tracing feature that kills performance on AMD GPUs, causing a 50% drop in performance from an already deficient performance level to begin with. Ouch.
When you enable any Ray Tracing mode above “Low” on AMD GPUs, you will not have a playable experience except only on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX at 1080p with Upscaling. Otherwise, you will be forced to run at the “Low” Ray Tracing Quality Preset mode on AMD GPUs, and even then select ones that are playable using Upscaling. Simply put, NVIDIA dominates Ray Tracing performance here, and doubly so with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction supported.
Game Quality Settings
Looking at the Game Quality Settings, we found that they all scaled very well from Low to Medium, to High to Maximum quality settings. We can say that Alan Wake 2 is optimized very well, with linear scaling of graphics settings. We sometimes do see larger performance drops between Medium to High, and this is more so on the AMD side of things.
While the “High” quality preset sets good options, it doesn’t enable the highest quality setting in the game. We found that you can turn the quality settings even higher, to a custom “Maximum” setting, and this can be playable without Ray Tracing. If you are not a Ray Tracing fan, make sure to hit that Maximum settings ability and enjoy the game at its highest immersion.
Final Points
Overall, Alan Wake 2 is an amazing game, and a very forward-looking game in terms of graphics and Ray Tracing abilities. We like the use of Ray Tracing in this game, it works very well and looks very good. This game is a strong selling point for DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction done right with Path Tracing. If this is the future of gaming, we want more, we want it all. Not just lighting, this game feels full and vibrant with world clutter, and high-quality textures which are very important for image quality with Path Tracing. Alan Wake 2 is phenomenal and will be a long-lasting game we will use for GPU performance testing on this website for years to come.