Alan Wake 2

Yeah shadows resetting to medium is annoying.

Now that I've made it to the city streets as Alan, the debris and clutter is rather beautiful.Comparison of Ray Traced vs Path Traced vs Raster at 3440x1440, DLSS Quality, Frame Gen OFF, Ray reconstruction ON, and all other max manually set settings:

https://imgsli.com/MjE2OTQ5

^ There is a 32fps difference between Ray Traced and Rastered. The visual difference is essentially zero.
^ There is a 47fps difference between Rastered and Path Traced. There is a visual difference, especially with shadows and reflections. Some might call it minimal/subtle, but it is there.

Love how the city looks:

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I have noticed a few quirks with the rendering, there is black crush but only in certain distances, like when you get too close to a dark corner, black crush sets in , otherwise the colour grade has a faded black tone much like how Cyberpunk used to have that faded black look and still does but minimal. This feels intentional to look cinematic like a movie, not sure if I like it or not because I'm on OLED, so want inky blacks at all times, not 50% of the time.
 
On a 4090, completely maxed out at 4K, I’m getting about 65 FPS - but I have to set DLSS to Quality and I have to enable Frame Generation.

Is this in-line with what you guys are seeing?

Seems kind of demanding?
 
Hershy said:
On a 4090, completely maxed out at 4K, I’m getting about 65 FPS - but I have to set DLSS to Quality and I have to enable Frame Generation.

Is this in-line with what you guys are seeing?

Seems kind of demanding?
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Have you not looked at any of the ass load of performance reviews of this game? What you are getting is spot on.

dlss-pt-3840.png
 
63 FPS with DLSS Quality and PT? Does performance improve later on or something? 4k/PT/DLSS RR/DLSS Quality was in the 40-50 range for me during the opening scenes.
 
CaptainClueless said:
63 FPS with DLSS Quality and PT? Does performance improve later on or something? 4k/PT/DLSS RR/DLSS Quality was in the 40-50 range for me during the opening scenes.
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I was in the low 50s when I checked early in the game in the forest. I was right at 450 watts usage which I have never seen before in a game. Frame generation has some obvious artifacts so I don't want to use it but my native res is 1440p so I am using that now instead of 4k.
 
Hershy said:
On a 4090, completely maxed out at 4K, I’m getting about 65 FPS - but I have to set DLSS to Quality and I have to enable Frame Generation.

Is this in-line with what you guys are seeing?

Seems kind of demanding?
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Which location?
 
This game is outstanding. Easily game of the year for me even with all the other great games that came out this year, and an easy choice as it was only $50 compared to $60.

Playing this game this time of year with it snowing outside reminds me of playing Max Payne many years ago.

From what i've played so far i'd rate this game one of their best. Likely #2, #1 being Max Payne.
 
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Mchart said:
This game is outstanding. Easily game of the year for me even with all the other great games that came out this year, and an easy choice as it was only $50 compared to $60.

Playing this game this time of year with it snowing outside reminds me of playing Max Payne many years ago.

From what i've played so far i'd rate this game one of their best. Likely #2, #1 being Max Payne.
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This is what I’m hoping for. (Yet again, the weekend that was meant to be all about playing this one game has fallen through… I just end up sleeping and doing mindless stuff on my phone. I’ve got to focus.)
 
I am on initiation 2 and it is OK. Maybe it improves a bit later on. Think people might be enjoying it as it starts with a fat guy with a small dick dying.
 
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Mchart said:
This game is outstanding. Easily game of the year for me even with all the other great games that came out this year, and an easy choice as it was only $50 compared to $60.

Playing this game this time of year with it snowing outside reminds me of playing Max Payne many years ago.

From what i've played so far i'd rate this game one of their best. Likely #2, #1 being Max Payne.
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This one has a lot like of Max Payne. The atmosphere, NYC, the leather jacket, the gameplay, it's superb.
 
Hershy said:
On a 4090, completely maxed out at 4K, I’m getting about 65 FPS - but I have to set DLSS to Quality and I have to enable Frame Generation.

Is this in-line with what you guys are seeing?

Seems kind of demanding?
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I enabled 1440p dlss quality upscaling and it looks as good imo and performs better at “4k” on my setup.



In general this game is fantastic… really enjoying it!!
 
The combat in this one is much improved. More like the modern Resident Evil games.

Always thought the combat in the original Alan Wake was boring and bland.
 
evhvis said:
The 3080 is a 3 year old card and runs the game fine when skipping ray tracing. Granted this game on medium RT or higher is a showcase for RT, but it still looks quite good without the RT. It runs fine native at high @1440p if you can stand having occasional dips into the high 40s and low 50s or DLSS quality for 1440p and DLSS performance for 4k if you need stable 60+ fps. The issue is more for those on say a 2070, 2060, 3060 etc. as the graphics settings do not scale that well.
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The issue with all of RTX 3000 series is Nvidia, everyone thinks the tech is 3 years old when it really is not, people had to wait over a year plus to afford one because of the dumb Bitcoin mining fools and the greed of Nvidia selling pallets of cards just to miners before the public ever even got ahold of the product. RTX 4000 series should even exist right now as not needed, Nvidia needs to get off their lazy azz and improve RTX 3000 series with drivers being they took well over one year off not selling the product to the public.
 
crazycrave said:
The issue with all of RTX 3000 series is Nvidia, everyone thinks the tech is 3 years old when it really is not, people had to wait over a year plus to afford one because of the dumb Bitcoin mining fools and the greed of Nvidia selling pallets of cards just to miners before the public ever even got ahold of the product. RTX 4000 series should even exist right now as not needed, Nvidia needs to get off their lazy azz and improve RTX 3000 series with drivers being they took well over one year off not selling the product to the public.
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Lol revisionist history at its finest. I paid $779 for my evga 3080 ftw3 ultra hybrid (aio cooled) in Dec 2020. The launch was in September, so they are indeed 3 years old. I'm not sure where you got the conspiracy theory that rtx 3000 didn't launch then or could somehow match the 4000 series if Nvidia's driver team put in more hours, but please go on.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Lol revisionist history at its finest. I paid $779 for my evga 3080 ftw3 ultra hybrid (aio cooled) in Dec 2020. The launch was in September, so they are indeed 3 years old. I'm not sure where you got the conspiracy theory that rtx 3000 didn't launch then or could somehow match the 4000 series if Nvidia's driver team put in more hours, but please go on.
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I couldn't get a 30 series at MSRP, had to pay as much as a 4090 for a 3080ti. Was BS. However, I don't pretend that it's not a 3 year old card.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Lol revisionist history at its finest. I paid $779 for my evga 3080 ftw3 ultra hybrid (aio cooled) in Dec 2020. The launch was in September, so they are indeed 3 years old. I'm not sure where you got the conspiracy theory that rtx 3000 didn't launch then or could somehow match the 4000 series if Nvidia's driver team put in more hours, but please go on.
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I don't know why, but some people seem to think that nVidia in particular could release much faster graphics cards if only they really wanted to. That they are just sandbagging and holding down performance and they could make way faster cards if they just really felt like it. No idea why this doesn't apply to AMD.

It is also easy to see as false just based on how their cards do before, and generational gains. The 4000 series, for whatever you want to say about their price, are a jump up over the 3000 series not only in terms of total performance but performance per watt. They made some big efficiency gains between the two. Then, at the high end, they pushed the power envelope even further in to fairly ridiculous territory. The 4090 seriously can and does draw 450 watts. So they pushed how much they could do with a given amount of power, and then pushed how much power they are using. It really is a situation of throwing everything at the wall to get performance increases.

You can sure as hell give nVidia shit for their pricing and naming on the 4000 series. The cards are expensive, and they changed around what kind of hardware you got in a given category. You can't give them crap for the performance improvements. Those cards perform well for a given power target, and they scale to stupidly high power targets at the high end.
 
This game is 42$ (code OCT17) at gmg too if anyone still wants it.. Personally so far i don't like it better then AW1. The performance hit doesn't warrant the gfx either.. But it does look good no mistake about that. I figure in 3-4 months it will run better... ( Control went though this too.. actually seems to be the normal now for all GAMES... )
 
crazycrave said:
The issue with all of RTX 3000 series is Nvidia, everyone thinks the tech is 3 years old when it really is not, people had to wait over a year plus to afford one because of the dumb Bitcoin mining fools and the greed of Nvidia selling pallets of cards just to miners before the public ever even got ahold of the product. RTX 4000 series should even exist right now as not needed, Nvidia needs to get off their lazy azz and improve RTX 3000 series with drivers being they took well over one year off not selling the product to the public.
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...what? You want them to continue selling old technology when they have newer, faster cards with better technology support (frame generation)? You're telling me you'd prefer a $500 RTX 3070 over a $600 4070, $900 RTX 3080 over a $1000 RTX 4080, etc.?

If you couldn't get one due to the mining craze that certainly must have sucked, but not sure why you wouldn't want newer, faster products now.
 
crazycrave said:
and the greed of Nvidia selling pallets of cards just to miners before the public
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This is quite the misremembering, do you not remember the sell your Turing card before the 3080-3090 launch talk ?

Ampere launched september 2020, bitcoin was under $11k, ertherum was around $500 USD, it was around november that the mining craze started, the Ampere lines, online and on sidewalk (like for the 5000 amd series line or PS5 or Xbox X) were gamers.

I really doubt Nvidia sold pallets of Ampere cards to miners, have we seen signof specially high ratio of founder edition availability on the second hand market once the mining busted... ? or specially high amount of FE in minings rigs ? I remember AIB models much more.
 
What happened to Saga Anderson? I vaguely remember her looking a little different in the last game. Very interesting times we live in ;) Guess I'll try the game to see if I can ignore such a political slap in the face.
 
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My RTX 3070 LHR cost $859 Nov 2021 from Zotac Store, if that the way it goes in Nvidia land.
 
Just remember, when next generation of Nvidia cards hit, next gen Nvidia titles and updated ones will play like shit on your current gen hardware. And you may have to pay over $1000 for a 70 series card. Actually this game plays good in even lower end cards, just turn off the RT options, game still looks like no other game out there.
 
Sycraft said:
I don't know why, but some people seem to think that nVidia in particular could release much faster graphics cards if only they really wanted to. That they are just sandbagging and holding down performance and they could make way faster cards if they just really felt like it. No idea why this doesn't apply to AMD.
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AMD reportedly has had a lot of trouble with their GPUs and yeah, can't really release anything faster at the moment. Their next gen GPUs are also heavily rumored to be trouble, and they may not have a high end card again.

The 4090 doesn't max out the die. Nvidia could release a faster GPU. Its likely they didn't, becuase they didn't need to (no competition). and could therefore have more full wafers available for their professional sales.

They also could have put more than 12GB on their $600 and $800 4070 and 4070 ti. Additionally, $200 extra for the $4070 ti, for 10 - 20 more FPS. and no extra VRAM over the 4070. And then the 4080 is $400 more, for an additional 15 fps and finally 4GB more VRAM....

Their whole stack could have been better segmented, at the least.
 
chameleoneel said:
The 4090 doesn't max out the die. Nvidia could release a faster GPU. Its likely they didn't, becuase they didn't need to (no competition). and could therefore have more full wafers available for their professional sales.
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It is really hard to get a die that big with no errors. The reason you see them with a part disabled (the 3090 was the same) is that the failure rate is too high with everything enabled. So it's gotten pretty common to have extra units and to disable the one that doesn't work and still sell the card. Regardless, even if they did release an expensive moonshot one with all units enabled, it wouldn't increase performance much.

chameleoneel said:
They also could have put more than 12GB on their $600 and $800 4070 and 4070 ti. Additionally, $200 extra for the $4070 ti, for 10 - 20 more FPS. and no extra VRAM over the 4070. And then the 4080 is $400 more, for an additional 15 fps and finally 4GB more VRAM....
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Again, I said you can criticize pricing as well as how they choose to name things, but that's not an issue of "they could have made a better chip if only they wanted to."

My point isn't that nVidia is giving people a good deal for the money or anything, it is that their cards are really fucking fast at a given power level, and there really isn't performance being left on the table that they could magically unlock if they only felt like being nice. They throw down massive amounts of performance, it is just that people want even more. There are real limits to what you can get out of hardware though. It isn't like we could simply make massively more powerful GPUs if we really wanted to.
 
noko said:
Just remember, when next generation of Nvidia cards hit, next gen Nvidia titles and updated ones will play like shit on your current gen hardware. And you may have to pay over $1000 for a 70 series card. Actually this game plays good in even lower end cards, just turn off the RT options, game still looks like no other game out there.
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Intel released a new driver 4900 for Alan Wake II, been playing some on the A770 and it's not too bad with PS5 settings.
 
Sycraft said:
It is really hard to get a die that big with no errors. The reason you see them with a part disabled (the 3090 was the same) is that the failure rate is too high with everything enabled. So it's gotten pretty common to have extra units and to disable the one that doesn't work and still sell the card. Regardless, even if they did release an expensive moonshot one with all units enabled, it wouldn't increase performance much.


Again, I said you can criticize pricing as well as how they choose to name things, but that's not an issue of "they could have made a better chip if only they wanted to."

My point isn't that nVidia is giving people a good deal for the money or anything, it is that their cards are really fucking fast at a given power level, and there really isn't performance being left on the table that they could magically unlock if they only felt like being nice. They throw down massive amounts of performance, it is just that people want even more. There are real limits to what you can get out of hardware though. It isn't like we could simply make massively more powerful GPUs if we really wanted to.
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Well, I think probably the reason that 2024 is only slated for an Ada refresh from Nvidia, is because they don't have to release anything new. Because AMD maybe still won't have anything to put pressure on Nvidia's top end or Nvidia's RT performance, at any price level.

And so by the time they do release RTX 50 or whatever it will be----it will probably be pretty good for their margins, compared to if they had to release something by say, May 2024. And RTX 50 is otherwise rumored to be another pretty dang large performance jump, at the top end. Its also another monolithic die. So, they still aren't forced to explore multichip/chiplet solutions, to make better GPUs.
 
Honestly the musical chapter is something else, visually absolutely stunning but also one of the weirdest things I have ever experienced in a game, and the tune ABSOLUTELY SLAPS! Those Old Gods of Asgard are awesome lol.

wGHreV9.jpg


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And Watery itself is rather atmospheric:
DrPfSzj.jpg


I have come across a few graphical glitches too, like an all blacked out area that randomly appeared:
NYZoQRW.jpg


I'm also now playing with Frame Gen off, have noticed that there's some mouse camera panning judder very similar to how Last of Us used to have before it was patched out, but only when Frame Gen is enabled. It's not major and only noticeable if you slowly pan the camera side to side. For me it's enough to be an annoyance given how smooth everything else is though so have kept it off, yeah I get less than 100fps in most areas on DLSS Quality, but it's still well over 60 so this is fine.
 

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noko said:
Just remember, when next generation of Nvidia cards hit, next gen Nvidia titles and updated ones will play like shit on your current gen hardware. And you may have to pay over $1000 for a 70 series card. Actually this game plays good in even lower end cards, just turn off the RT options, game still looks like no other game out there.
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This isn't accurate at all. We've now reached a level where path tracing can be done at over 100fps if you have a 4090 and 4080 1440P or above. Path tracing is exactly that, it runs at the same performance in this game as it does in Cyberpunk more or less and both look stunning. The NV technologies now available will just be refined next generation. I don't expect we will see new HW features of the API technologies right now like path tracing, it will only get faster so the fps is higher in order to utilise the new gen of monitors coming out (240Hz and 360Hz OLED monitors).

If you have a 4080 or 4090 then you're set for several years easily if you currently game at 144Hz and 1440P or 4K and desire ray tracing and/or path tracing.
 
crazycrave said:
The issue with all of RTX 3000 series is Nvidia, everyone thinks the tech is 3 years old when it really is not, people had to wait over a year plus to afford one because of the dumb Bitcoin mining fools and the greed of Nvidia selling pallets of cards just to miners before the public ever even got ahold of the product. RTX 4000 series should even exist right now as not needed, Nvidia needs to get off their lazy azz and improve RTX 3000 series with drivers being they took well over one year off not selling the product to the public.
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My 3080 arrived in November 2020 so it is about 3 years old and cards started shipping more than 3 years ago. When people felt they could afford one doesn't change the age of the cards. The inflation adjusted price of my GeForce 3 was more than I paid for my 3080, but the GF3 was obsolete after less than 2 years (struggled on low to medium settings in the newest games). My Asus 580 matrix platinum, which ran on a 20% OC was struggling to run above medium after just 18 months and that was also a fairly expensive card. Granted most of the cards in the 20x0 series and 40x0 series have a poor price/performance ratio, but that doesn't change that the previous gen is old tech. I've mostly had 70 and 80 class cards, basically best or second best single chip cards for more than 2 decades and the 3080 is along with my 1070 are the only cards that haven't been horrible to game on 3 years after launch. Sure 1-2 titles that make them struggle, but generally fine other than that.

People have just gotten spoiled by lack of graphical progress due to consoles holding graphics back. It is not like the 3080 was a beast in RT back in at launch. DLSS was needed at 1440p in games like Control and Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020 so to expect it to ace RT in 2023 is asking too much. I'm happy that I can run at 50-70 FPS with high settings in Raster with DLAA and if I need RT then I would order a 4090, but Alan Wake 2 was the last game for a while on PC that was high on the priorities list. Games like Starfield etc. run good with some minor performance tweaks.
 
CaptainClueless said:
She wasn't in the last game...
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I think that there was something from Quantum Break that honestly looked like they filmed in the Remedy break room.
Regardless
I spent most of my time re-recalibrating my monitor's HDR settings and waiting for the outside temperature to go down.
I've taken my AC out of the window for the season, it's been warmer than usual for this time of year. This game turns my computer into a heat engine, and I just don't have the space to vent it all.
 
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