Conclusion
Alan Wake II is the first game to support Nvidia DLSS 3.5 from the start. In addition to the technological aspect, there is also the high popularity among gamers. This gives us the basic reasons to take a close look at the performance under different settings. In diving in with the gaming performance, we will be interested not only in the visual side, but also the power consumption. Not just of the graphics card, but the CPU as well.
Conclusion
The key DLSS 3.5 technology – Ray Reconstruction – has a significantly greater impact in Alan Wake 2 than it does in Cyberpunk 2077. At higher image quality we measured a 13–21% higher framerate with RR. In Cyberpunk 77, the gain from this technology was only 1–4%, and that was with an even more powerful graphics card (the GeForce RTX 4090) than the ones used for the tests now – the RTX 4070 Super, the RTX 4070 Ti Super and the RTX 4080 Super.
Additionally, without Ray Reconstruction, Alan Wake II’s performance dips significantly in certain situations. The RTX 4070S at max graphics settings without RR can’t handle things at native 1440p anymore. From an average of about 41 fps, the smoothness drops to an unplayable 6 fps when Ray Reconstruction is turned off. The RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super behave similarly, but only at 2160p resolution. These graphics cards feature the same 16GB of memory, while the RTX 4070 Super only has 12GB. So the bottleneck here may or may not be the VRAM size. Whatever the reason, this is where Ray Reconstruction comes in handy. With it, the RTX 4070 Super can run Alan Wake II fairly smoothly even at 1440p with DLAA, i.e. without upscaling where fps drops below 60 only sporadically. However, Frame Generation must be active for this to happen.
Combined with DLSS Quality, average fps is already above 100. This is, of course, where lower image quality comes in. If the goal is to keep it up while still achieving fast framerates at higher resolutions, there’s the 24% faster RTX 4070 Ti Super. Or then the RTX 4080 Super. Even with this graphics card, though it’s the most powerful of the trio tested, don’t count on completely smooth gaming at 2160p. For this it is necessary to reach for DLSS, or alternatively to reduce the graphical detail.
With DLSS Balanced though, you’re already averaging at a rather nice 90 fps with the RTX 4080S, and whether that will still look good enough you’ll have to judge for yourself. Flickering of distant objects in motion (such as power line cables) persists in some form in DLSS 2.x, but only very low resolution settings suffer from it. For example, 1080p in DLSS mode on Performance or Ultra Performance or 1440p on Ultra Performance. The “2160p” (16:9) render with Balanced is already relatively high resolution (2227×1253 px).
Beyond visual quality and speed (fps), operating power consumption can also be a factor when deciding on the optimal setting. There is also some variance in this, also with regard to CPU power consumption. It can’t be generalized, but the consumption of a graphics card usually goes up with higher resolution, and it’s the other way around for the processor. Its consumption increases towards lower resolutions. We have also mapped this in our measurements.
Unless you are trying to achieve a lower power consumption of the graphics card (e.g. to achieve lower noise level of its cooler), the total power consumption – GPU + CPU will usually be the guideline. There, the differences are already smaller, with the RTX 4080 Super (with Core i9-13900K) fitting in around 40W across settings. The highest power consumption, when wringing the maximum possible out of the hardware, is about 399 W, at 1440p natively, with DLAA, both Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction enabled (with ray tracing on “high”).
The lowest consumption, unless you count the setting with RR off, where (for extremely low fps) a strong bottleneck is evident, is native 1080p with DLAA, with DLSS on Ultra Perforance, with Frame Generation on, at full raytracing graphics with RR. In this setting, the highest fps is achieved, albeit at the expense of the lowest visual quality. Users looking for a balanced setup will consider a different option, especially with an upper-midrange GeForce graphics card.
So under what circumstances does Alan Wake II perform best, optimally? Everyone will probably see it a little differently.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
- Contents
- Visual analysis I
- Visual Analysis II
- How we tested
- Game performance tests...
- ... and power consumption tests
- Conclusion
