Alan Wake 2 will soon run faster on GTX 10 series
The patch will deliver optimizations for cards lacking Mesh Shading support.
Alan Wake 2 is set to receive an important patch soon. This update will update the game engine compatibility with older GPU architectures that lacked Mesh Shading support. When the game came out last year, it mandated Mesh Shading support to run at the desired performance level. Effectively, this rendered older cards like the GTX 10 series are not fast enough to provide a good gaming experience.
The Mesh Shaders allow game developers to process polygons with more power and control. It was a necessary update to traditional vertex shaders geometry, considering that modern games will soon render billions of triangles around the screen. Future games will only get more visually demanding, so such tech is essential for cutting-edge visuals.
Currently, Mesh Shading is only supported by DirectX12 Ultimate tier, which means it works on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20+ GPUs, AMD Radeon RX with RDNA+ and Intel Arc GPUs. It does not work on GeForce GTX 10 series, which do support DirectX12 but not the highest tier. These graphics are still quite popular despite their age. The upcoming Alan Wake 2 update will bring optimizations for such cards.
Although it was possible to run the game on non-DX12U GPUs, the game would show a message that it does not support Mesh Shading and the game would run at really low performance.
Alan Wake on GTX 1060 comparison, Source: Digital Foundry
With the new patch, gamers can expect a 45% to 100% increase in performance as per Digital Foundry testing:
Alan Wake 2 walking scene in the forest (1080p, FSR2 Quality, PS5 Performance Preset)
- GTX 1060 : ~45% FPS increase
- GTX 1070 : ~57% FPS increase
- GTX 1080 : ~85% FPS increase
- GTX 1080 Ti : ~100% FPS increase
- RX 580 : crashes
- RX 5700 XT: ~2% FPS increase
Overall, the bigger the GPU, the more increase gamers can expect from this patch. The GTX 1060 can surpass 30 FPS on average with the patch, but it is still not recommended for optimal experience. Instead, Digital Foundry concluded that GTX 1070 is the baseline GPU compatible with this game.
Alan Wake on GTX 1070 comparison, Source: Digital Foundry
The new patch has no release date yet, but it is confirmed for this week. There are still some things that Remedy (developer) could improve, such as allowing gamers to lock the framerate with more options or add AMD FSR3 with frame generation integration.
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