Alan Wake 2 GPU Performance Review – GeForce RTX 40 Series vs Radeon RX 7000 Series

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GPU Comparison – HIGH Quality Preset – HIGH Ray Tracing Preset – Upscaling

On the previous page, we tested the “High” Ray Tracing Preset without upscaling, but now it is time to turn on upscaling using DLSS or FSR 2 and see what is playable at each resolution. In the tests below we are running the “High” Quality Preset with the “High” Ray Tracing Preset and turning on “Quality” DLSS or FSR 2. DLSS is used on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR 2 on AMD GPUs.

Remember, in this game, when you enable the “High” Ray Tracing Preset it enables the Path Tracing mode and turns everything up to the highest levels. That means at the “High” Ray Tracing Preset the Path Traced Indirect Lighting is also on the “High” quality setting, so that means Ray Tracing is maxed out on these tests at the absolute highest possible level in the game. On NVIDIA GPUs Ray Reconstruction is used, but on AMD GPUs they don’t have this feature so just the default game denoiser is used, but these are the DEFAULT settings you get in this game with these settings with each video card shown below. The graphs are sorted from fastest to slowest, NVIDIA is in green, AMD is in red, let’s go.

4K

Alan Wake 2 4K Upscaling DLSS FSR 2 Ray Tracing Quality Preset High GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs versus Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs performance graph

Even with upscaling enabled, we were still limited to cards we could actually test here because many were just too slow to worry about. The GeForce RTX 4090 was not playable on the previous page when upscaling wasn’t used, but now that we have Quality DLSS enabled it is very much playable at 69 FPS. However, it really is the only card that is playable, the GeForce RTX 4080 is iffy. The GeForce RTX 4090 is 39% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080. The RTX 4070 Ti is not playable, and none of the AMD GPUs are playable either with FSR 2, not even the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

1440p

Alan Wake 2 1440p Upscaling DLSS FSR 2 Ray Tracing Quality Preset High GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs versus Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs performance graph

Moving down to 1440p and enabling DLSS and FSR 2 opens up the game for a few more cards, but not many. That “High” Ray Tracing mode is really putting the hurt on everything still. The GeForce RTX 4090 is playable, the GeForce RTX 4080 is playable, and the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is playable but the RTX 4070 is iffy. The GeForce RTX 4090 is 28% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080 and has narrowed the gap from 4K. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is also iffy on performance, it matches the GeForce RTX 4070 here, some may be ok with this performance level, and for the most part, it could be fine, but it’s not the smoothest experience always at this performance level.

1080p

Alan Wake 2 1080p Upscaling DLSS FSR 2 Ray Tracing Quality Preset High GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs versus Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs performance graph

What’s really shocking is that even at 1080p WITH upscaling DLSS or FSR 2 enabled, many cards are still not playable with “High” Ray Tracing Preset! Yep, the GeForce RTX 4060 really struggles, and the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7600. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti doesn’t hit 60 FPS, but the game is still enjoyable below 60 FPS here, since it is a slower-paced game. Every card above that is very smooth and enjoyable and playable, which means finally the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX are playable at “High” Ray Tracing, but it takes 1080p with FSR 2 to do it.

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Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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