Alan Wake 2 performance optimization guide: Best settings for optimal performance

Alan Wake 2 arguably is one of the most impressive games out there, both in terms of its gameplay, narrative innovations, and raw graphical prowess. Remedy Entertainment has always been on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to the visual presentation of its games, and Alan Wake 2 is no stranger to this rule.

Remedy Entertainment's proprietary in-house engine - Northlight, is the most graphically proficient out there, rivaling even the likes of Epic's Unreal Engine 5.1, as well as CD Projekt Red's Red engine. From real-time ray tracing to advanced global illumination, the Northlight engine has many modern graphical features.

However, all that graphical horsepower comes at the cost of being very demanding in terms of resources, especially on mid-range PC hardware. Fortunately, Remedy's latest title comes packed with plenty of options to tweak in order to squeeze every ounce of performance without compromising on visual clarity or fidelity.

Here's a comprehensive guide on properly optimizing Alan Wake 2's graphics settings on your PC to get the best performance.

---

PC optimization guide for Alan Wake 2

Being built on the Northlight engine, Alan Wake 2, much like Remedy's previous title, Control, features hefty use of volumetric and other post-processing effects to enhance its visuals. Alongside volumetric, the game also uses an advanced lighting model, complete with support for ray and path tracing.

First, before you try running Alan Wake 2 on your PC, make sure your system configuration meets the minimum and recommended system requirements stated by Remedy:

Minimum – Low graphics preset, 1080p/30FPS:

• GPU: GeForce RTX 2060/Radeon RX 6600
• VRAM: 6 GB
• DLSS/FSR2: Quality
• CPU: Intel i5-7600K or AMD equivalent
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 10/11, 64-bit
• Storage: 90 GB SSD

Recommended – Medium graphics preset, 1440p/30FPS:

• GPU: GeForce RTX 3060/Radeon RX 6600 XT
• VRAM: 8 GB
• DLSS/FSR2: Balanced
• CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 10/11, 64-bit
• Storage: 90 GB SSD

Recommended – Medium preset, 1080p/60FPS:

• GPU: GeForce RT 3070/Radeon RX 6700 XT
• VRAM: 8 GB
• DLSS/FSR2: Performance
• CPU: Rozen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 10/11, 64-bit
• Storage: 90 GB SSD

Ultra – High preset, 2160p/60FPS

• GPU: GeForce RTX 4070/Radeon RX 7800 XT
• VRAM: 12 GB
• DLSS/FSR2: Performance
• CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 10/11, 64-bit
• Storage: 90 GB SSD

Alan Wake 2 also requires GPUs with support for mesh shaders, which ease up the process of texture rendering load on GPU and CPU, freeing up resources for better performance. However, you can run the game without mesh shaders, albeit with a heavy performance penalty.

While the system requirements might suggest that Remedy's latest survival-horror title is not well-optimized for PC, it can't be further from the truth. You can actually run the game on systems far below the minimum requirements stated by the developer with compromises on graphical fidelity.

Fortunately, if you're hovering right along the minimum requirements, you can actually run the game with pretty decent frame rates without too many graphical compromises. We tested the game out on a system with Ryzen 5 5600, RX 6600, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a gen3 NVMe drive using the following settings:

Display

• Display mode: Fullscreen
• Display resolution: 1920 x 1080
• Render resolution: Native (You can also use FSR2 Quality for a few extra frames)
• Resolution upscaling: Off
• Vsync: Off
• Brightness calibration: As per preference

Effects

• Motion blur: On/ As per preference
• Film grain: On/ As per preference

Quality

• Quality preset: Custom
• Post-processing quality: Low
• Texture resolution: Medium (for 8GB VRAM GPUs), High (for 10+GB VRAM GPUs)
• Texture filtering: High
• Volumetric lighting: Low
• Volumetric spotlight quality: Low
• Global illumination quality: Low
• Shadow resolution: Medium
• Shadow filtering: Low
• Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO): On
• Global reflections: Low
• Screen space reflections (SSR): Low
• Fog quality: Low
• Terrain quality: Medium
• Far object detail (LOD): Low
• Scattered object density: High (For CPUs with six or more threads)

Ray tracing

• Ray tracing preset: Off
• Direct lighting: Off

While most of the settings we chose were on the Low preset, the game scales quite well with each of its graphical options. Even on the Low preset, Alan Wake 2 looks quite good, with the only compromise being the volumetric density, which is reduced on both Low and Medium presets to help improve performance.