Ahead of launching, Alan Wake 2 made the news because it required graphics cards with hardware support for DirectX 12 Ultimate's Mesh Shaders feature. That left unsupported GPUs like NVIDIA's GTX 1000 series and AMD's RX 5000 Series in the dust.
Digital Foundry revealed in a new video that developer Remedy Entertainment is about to release a new patch for the PC version of Alan Wake 2 that aims to improve performance for those GPUs. They were able to test the update before its public deployment (currently scheduled for Wednesday, March 6), reporting great news for NVIDIA's Pascal graphics cards.
According to DF's Alex Battaglia, the GTX 1060 registered a 45% performance improvement on average, with an uptick that goes up to an impressive 3x in specific areas like the Mind Place.
The GTX 1060 actually got the lowest performance gain out of all Pascal GPUs after this Alan Wake 2 update. The GTX 1070 received a 57% improvement on average; the GTX 1080 leaps by 85%, while the top-of-the-line Pascal GPU, the GTX 1080Ti, now runs over twice as fast as it did when Alan Wake 2 launched, nearing 60 frames per second (at 1080p with AMD FSR 2 set to Quality and PlayStation 5-like graphics settings).
Other graphics cards without hardware support Mesh Shaders don't fare as well, though. The AMD RX 580, for instance, seems to crash a lot and also runs far worse than the GTX 1060, at around 15 frames per second. The newer AMD RX 5700, on the other hand, received a meager 2% improvement with this patch and still suffers from frame time spikes.
Interestingly, Digital Foundry also measured noticeable improvements with Ada Lovelace GPUs from the latest NVIDIA RTX 40 Series. The RTX 4070, for instance, ran 14% faster without path tracing enabled and 6% faster with path tracing.
Remedy recently confirmed that Alan Wake 2 sold over 1.3 million units to date, becoming their fastest-selling game yet. The Finnish studio plans to release two DLCs (Night Springs and Lake House) later this year.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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