Alan Wake 2 Can Now Run on Your Old Gaming PC

Originally posted on Parade | By Rahul Majumdar | Last updated 3/4/24

Alan Wake 2 is one of the best-looking games of this generation, and that came at the cost of leaving behind old graphics technologies. The game looks stunning on current-gen consoles and PCs with modern graphics cards, but players with older systems were left in the dust due to the game requiring mesh shaders. This meant that PC gamers with GPUs like Nvidia’s GTX 10 series had to sit this one out, but developer Remedy is going to fix that.

A new patch for Alan Wake 2 will let you play the game on your aging GPU without a total loss in performance. As tested by Digital Foundry, the game’s upcoming patch improves performance on GTX 10-series cards from anywhere between 45 to 85%, making the game playable on older GPUs.

In the video comparison, the GTX 1060 delivers a drastic increase in frame rate, hitting a playable 30fps, and sometimes above, on PS5-like settings. Sure, the image quality isn’t the best with AMD’s FSR 2 in use, and you’ll still need a beefy CPU to not get bottlenecked. The GTX 1080, on the same settings, can soar above 50fps. Owners of AMD cards from the same era, like the Radeon RX 580, should still be looking for a GPU upgrade.

Modern GPUs will also deliver slightly better performance, although the optimizations aren’t targeted for all cards. The RTX 30 series barely sees any uptick in frame rate, but the RTX 40 series sees around 14% improvement with the same settings. Alan Wake 2 is fairly heavy on modern systems, and no patch is going to magically double its performance. Still, given how "next-gen" the game looks, the new patch puts the game in a good place.

Beyond the performance optimizations, the patch also adds more quality-of-life features, such as an improved settings menu. The new patch will go live on March 6, 2024.

Alan Wake 2 is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S consoles.

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