NVIDIA Reveals Alan Wake 2 Game Performance: 4K 120+ FPS With GeForce RTX 4090 With DLSS 3.5 & Path Tracing

NVIDIA has published the first performance numbers of Remedy's upcoming thriller, Alan Wake 2, which features full path tracing & support for DLSS 3.5.

Alan Wake 2 is one of the two games to fully make use of groundbreaking visual technologies by NVIDIA which include DLSS 3.5 and RTX Path Tracing. We have already seen some insane visuals delivered by these two technologies in Cyberpunk 2077 and now we are getting the second game where both technologies come together to deliver lifelike visuals.

Today, NVIDIA is sharing the first performance figures of Alan Wake 2 across multiple GeForce RTX 40 GPUs. The GPU vendor says that GeForce RTX 40 gamers will receive the "Definitive day-one" experience in the game with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Sampling, and Reflex giving an average boost of 4.5x at 4K resolution.

Just like Cyberpunk 2077, enabling DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction within Alan Wake 2 will replace two denoisers with an AI-infused algorithm that accurately calculates ray tracing, delivering better visual fidelity and even better performance. If DLSS Ray Reconstruction is disabled or not available, the following fallbacks will apply (two denoisers will instead be enabled, with the quality and the performance cost scaling across the three presets): 

NVIDIA is also unveiling the exact details of each ray tracing preset and how each setting affects them. When RT is set to low, there will be no Path Tracing used since a minimum "Medium" setting is required to enable partial Path Tracing which includes 1 ray bounce with RT AO on the last hit. The "High" setting enables full Path Tracing with 3 bounces and will be the most taxing.

Similarly, Path Tracing indirect lighting quality will be set to "off" on the low settings, "Medium" on medium settings, and "High" on high settings. The ray tracing direct lightning will be enabled by default for all three settings while the transparency will be set to "Low" on low settings and "High" on both Medium and High settings.

So coming to the performance figures, NVIDIA has published a few performance figures within Alan Wake 2 running across multiple GeForce RTX 40 series cards. These numbers are with DLSS 3 super sampling and frame generation enabled, hence the higher 4x uplifts. At 1080p, the RTX 40 series is delivering up to 190 FPS with everything maxed out. For 1440P, you will be getting 80+ FPS on RTX 4070 and above using the same settings while for 4K, NVIDIA recommends going 4070 Ti or above.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 manages over 120 FPS at 4K resolution while the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti see a 4.7x boost through the use of frame-generation, delivering 80 FPS and above.

Based on the numbers, it looks clear that the GeForce RTX 40 GPUs will have to utilize frame-gen in order to deliver the best performance in Alan Wake 2 if you plan on using Path Tracing. The graphical feature is expected to be very taxing but with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, you can look forward to a 14% performance boost which will come in handy.

NVIDIA already announced Alan Wake 2 as a part of its latest RTX bundle and we can expect the latest game-ready drivers to become available on the 26th of October, a day ahead of the launch of Alan Wake 2.