Friday, October 20th 2023
Alan Wake II System Requirements Released, Steep RT Requirements Due to Path Tracing
Alan Wake II by Remedy Entertainment promises to be the year's most visually intense AAA title. The publisher put out the various tiered system requirements lists that highlight just what it takes to max the game out. As with most publishers these days, the company put out separate lists for RT and non-RT experiences. The common minimum requirements across all tiers include 90 GB of SSD-based storage, Windows 10 or Windows 11, and 16 GB of main memory. At the bare minimum, you'll need a quad-core Intel Core i5-7600K or comparable processor. For all other tiers, Remedy recommends at least an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent processor (which would mean at least a Core i7-10700K), or an 8-core/16-thread processor that's as fast as the 3700X.
The bare minimum GPU requirement calls for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600. With this, you can expect 1080p @ 30 FPS, and can use the "quality" setting with DLSS 2 or FSR 2. The non-RT "Medium" list, is either 1440p @ 30 FPS or 1080p @ 60 FPS. For 1440p @ 30 FPS, you'll need a GPU at least as fast as a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT. 1080p @ 60 FPS requires at least a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT. The "Ultra" non-RT preset with 4K @ 60 Hz, which is the best experience you can possibly have without ray tracing, demands at least a GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon RX 7800 XT. Ray tracing is a whole different beast.
The "Low" ray tracing tier, which is medium raster graphics settings with low ray tracing, for 1080p @ 30 FPS, demands at least a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6800 XT. The "Medium" ray tracing tier, which is medium raster graphics settings with medium ray tracing and path tracing enabled, for 1080p @ 60 FPS gameplay, demands at least a GeForce RTX 4070. There's no AMD Radeon GPU with the ray tracing performance of an RTX 4070 in its price-range, so Rockstar didn't recommend an AMD option. The "High" ray tracing preset, which combines high raster graphics with high ray tracing, and path tracing; for gameplay at 4K with 60 FPS; requires a GeForce RTX 4080.
The bare minimum GPU requirement calls for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600. With this, you can expect 1080p @ 30 FPS, and can use the "quality" setting with DLSS 2 or FSR 2. The non-RT "Medium" list, is either 1440p @ 30 FPS or 1080p @ 60 FPS. For 1440p @ 30 FPS, you'll need a GPU at least as fast as a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT. 1080p @ 60 FPS requires at least a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT. The "Ultra" non-RT preset with 4K @ 60 Hz, which is the best experience you can possibly have without ray tracing, demands at least a GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon RX 7800 XT. Ray tracing is a whole different beast.
157 Comments on Alan Wake II System Requirements Released, Steep RT Requirements Due to Path Tracing
I hate this, can we stop doing this
we reached the loony bin status - thank you all the mouth pieces that preached and praised the upscaling cult :kookoo:
These used to be junk aside from a quick glance of what performance you approx need, but you're best of just binning it and checking a benchmark.
And why the fuck do the CPU requirements change if resolution/quality change?
The CPU dictates in the vast majority of cases how much fps you can expect (notable exception for RT), the fact that the CPU scaling has nothing to do with the target fps makes me think the CPU requirements are total BS.
/rant
Idiocy. All of it
Unfortunately, I don't see a way out of this wave of terrible games... It's time to ignore gaming for a while IMHO.
You cannot explain to me that games without RT are not possible.
Sure, you can enable it, but with the 4080 delivering a 30fps experience using DLSS performance (effectively a 1080p internal render resolution) it's quite clear that fully raytracing a scene is just too damn expensive on the technology we have (at eye-watering cost).
95%+ enthusiast gamers willing to spend >$500 on a GPU alone do not want to replace their investment with a high-end 40-series card, and given that people who trusted Nvidia with their money for 30-series cards are already feeling betrayed by the lack of feature support, I'm suggesting this will be another tech demo feature that few, if any, actually bother using.
How many times have we seen one system being recommended by the developer, and the game running just fine on another system with half the computing power?
Even if the requirements are legit, it's not going to turn into Superman 64 just because you disable path tracing. :laugh:
The point is there is a way to add RT improving visuals while not making the game unplayable on anything that doesn't have a 2000$ price tag.