Test Setup
For our testing, we are using an AMD X670E AM5-based motherboard, with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU on board with the latest BIOS. We are running DDR5-6000 memory and have EXPO I enabled in the BIOS as well as Resizable BAR/AMD Smart Access Memory. We are running the latest chipset drivers at the time, as well as the GPU drivers which are GeForce 546.17 dated Nov. 14th, 2023, and AMD Adrenalin 23.11.1 dated Nov. 2nd, 2023. Both of these drivers were released after Alan Wake 2 was launched, and contain the latest updates for the game. These were the latest drivers at the time of testing. We have also upgraded our OS to Windows 11 23H2.
Manual Run-Through
We are testing Alan Wake 2 with patch version 1.0.12. Alan Wake 2 does not ship with a benchmark, so we performed a manual run-through in the game a bit deeper into the gameplay than our initial article. This new run-through is in the “Initiation 5: Room 665” chapter. The area is a mindscape, in a nighttime city street, with a lot of light reflection, and light bounces including a lot of world clutter and dense area. The flashlight is used, and this map is a great representation of what is experienced in the game in terms of the lighting and shadows and is also a great test for Ray Tracing.
This is one of the more graphically oriented areas that displays the graphics in the game very well and provides a perfect test bed for GPU comparison testing. It is also one of the more intense areas, compared to some others. Our manual run-through takes us on a walk through the street, in a long pattern that goes one way, and literally the opposite way, to take in all the views from every angle in our run-through, so that all angles of lighting and reflections are tested.
Discussion (3 replies)
Join Discussion →Nice review I love to see the just bring all your cards knock down drag out sort of review. :) Even if the card I bought isn't dominating the charts. It falls in line with what I spent! ;)
Thanks for the write up! I got lucky and had a code for this game with my new laptop. Ironically I haven't had a chance to play it on it yet but I did fire it up on the 4090/OLED rig last night and yeah, it's beautiful. I don't know when I'll get around to playing this but I'm looking forward to it.
I've been playing this on the laptop, 4080 SUPER, and 4090 for the last few weeks and have very much enjoyed the visuals. The laptop at 2500x1600, and 4080 SUPER at 4K, perform very similarly with max settings but also using DLSS w/ framegen. The lag is noticeable with framegen but otherwise I'd say it is very well implemented.
The best experience is, of course, with the 4090 at 4K. There are moments I can turn off frame gen for 60+ FPS but I've left it on for the mostly 90-115+ FPS.
Visually speaking, I've really enjoyed the look of this game as I did briefly live in the backwoods of the Northwest (Aberdeen WA in the mid 80s, which looked a lot like most of this game). HDR is also well used.
I've enjoyed it the most out of the various Wake/Control franchise games I've played but it's getting a bit depressing and I've got enough things to bring me down these days so I'm going to drop it and switch over to something else, probably Baldurs Gate 3 since I could use a decent fantasy RPG to get lost into for a bit.