Alan Wake 2, Radeon RX 5700 XT vs. GeForce RTX 2060 Super

[Music] welcome back to hard BR box today we answering the question of how well alen wake 2 runs on graphics cards that don't support mesh shaders a topic that came up in our recent Q&A episode that we wanted to address after the game launched this all stems from a comment made by one of Alan W 2's developers stating the game is built to use mesh shaders and isn't supported on Old the GPU architectures as a result this was a problematic for owners of older graphics cards in particular the radon RX 5000 series from AMD and GeForce 10 series from Nvidia the most recent line from either brand that doesn't support mesh shaders basically mesh shaders were introduced with direct X12 ultimate and the first architectures to support the full dx12 ultimate feature set were nvidia's touring and amd's rdna2 in particular this threw up an interesting comparison between rdna 1 and churing which were both released at around the same time a popular product like the radon rx5700 XT did not support mesh shaders at launch but the competing GeForce RTX 260 super did and the argument some were making is that it's this direct X12 ultimate support that would make the RTX 2060 super age better in contrast we recommended the 5700 XT and found last year that it still beat the RTX 260 super by 133% on average across 33 games at 1440p using rasterization alen wake 2 is the first game to heavily utilize mesh shaders so we received a few comments asking us whether this game would make us re-evaluate our stance and recommendation from 4 years ago but the talk of alen wake 2 not working on cards that didn't support mesh shaders was a bit premature as the game actually does launch and run on those older graphics cards albeit with a warning at the start so it's not the case where you can play the game on an RTX 260 super but can't launch it at all on the rx5700 XT both gpus are capable of launching the game but launching the game is one thing playing the game is another so let's find out whether this key feature difference between the 5700xt and RTX 260 super leads to a noticeable difference in performance and overall experience this isn't our full GPU Benchmark video which might come next week but an early look given we just talked about this topic a few days ago all testing was done on my AMD ryzen 7 7800x 3D test system equipped with 32 gig of ddr5 6000 memory the latest display drivers were used for both the GeForce and radon gpus as of the time of filming both of those did support Allen wake 2 with Day One updates so let's get into it first up I have some gameplay footage of the RX 5700 XT running Allen wake 2 at 1080p using the low preset this is native 1080p but because the game only has dlss and FSR rendering path you can't use a traditional Native resolution with TAA for example this is FSR 2 with the render scale set to Native 1080p now there's good and bad news here the good news is that the game works and despite the developers warning of poor performance visual glitches and crashing those haven't been major concerns during my time testing it I haven't experienced any crashing and visual glitches don't seem to be common place even performance seems relatively stable the 5700 XT doesn't produce horrific St ing for example the bad news though is performance is generally pretty poor hovering around 30 FPS during the most intensive parts of the game that we've found so far which is this opening section in a foliage heavy Forest Area and it's not a consistent 30 FPS there were noticeable dips into the 20s as well as other sections that run more around 40 to 50 FPS this area in particular near the car park really did not run well and that was on the low preset at 1080p now the low preset in the game isn't entirely the lowest possible settings there are several individual settings that can be turned down further but I don't recommend doing this as the game looks significantly worse on Su low settings it doesn't even improve performance all that much on the 5700 XT delivering near or below 40 FPS in intensive areas so the low preset is pretty much what you'd want to use and with that configuration Allen wake 2 really isn't playable on the 5700 XT 30 FPS it's not a good experience in 2023 and even then the 5700 XT is incapable of a consistent 30fps the low preset in my opinion actually looks very good as far as low presets go so I wouldn't say this is unoptimized or ridiculous but it does restrict alen W 2 to more powerful Hardware what happens if you purchased a graphics card back in 2019 that did support mesh shaders that being the RTX 260 super which was available at the same $400 price point as the 5700 XT again good news and bad news here the good good news is that the 2060 super is quite a bit faster than the 5700 XT in this intensive area of alen wake 2 nvidia's equivalent tring GPU is able to push out around 40 FPS using native 1080p with the low preset with occasional dips into the 30s and some areas where performance is closer to 50 FPS definitely a better experience than what the mes Shader lacking 5700 XT can do however I wouldn't class the60 super as being especially playable in this title Aver performance is only around 41 FPS in the area we primarily tested and that's the low preset at Native 1080p even with the dlss quality setting which is not great in terms of image quality though better than most of the FSR settings we only improveed that to 48 fps on average which is still well short of our minimum 60 FPS Target at an unimpressive level of detail whether or not that is playable to you will depend on your definition of playable there are of course some Gamers that believe believe 30 FPS is playable which I would strongly disagree with but I think it's safe to say the overall performance of the60 super in this game at 1080p using low settings is not good and the 5700 XT is even worse terrible would be the right word to use there here's how the two gpus stack up across the main presets as well as upscaling using the quality mode FSI 2 for the AMD GPU and dlss for the Nvidia GPU which is likely how most people would play we really do not recommend using upscaling at 1080P and if you have to the Quality mode is the only suitable mode once you start talking about balanced or performance mode upscaling at such a low render resolution you may as well not bother unless you love an extremely blurry presentation anyway using the low preset the RTX 260 super has a sizable Advantage without pushing the GPU into very playable territory in this area the 2060 super was about 30% faster a margin that is pretty consistent using the medium and high presets as well most notably the 260 super has much better 1% lows showing that in those most performance intensive areas the Nvidia GPU suffers the least when upscaling is factored in the60 super ended up 28% faster which again is as expected based on the native resolution testing however as the quality difference between FSR 2 quality and dlss quality is very noticeable at 1080p these numbers are a bit pointless and if anything benefit the red team this is why Nvidia Fanboys shouldn't be pushing for NVIDIA gpus to be tested with DSS and AMD gpus to be tested with FSR as AMD is effectively cheating in this performance chart achieving a similar FPS uplift to dlss at a lower output image quality and this is indeed the difference in image quality between FSR 2 quality and dlss quality at 1080p the dlss image is generally more stable and better resolves fine detail but in neither case would I call the image quality great generally it's pretty blurry when you're upscaling at 1080p while the 5700 XT loses comfortably to the RTX 2060 super in alen Wake 2 and shows the pain of not having mesh shaders in rdna 1 it's even worse if you have a pascal era GPU from Nvidia something from the GeForce 10 series I happen to have a Titan X Pascal on hand it was in my partner's PC so I quickly ripped it out of there for testing hopefully she won't notice that her computer now doesn't work at all while I'm testing lenway 2 anyway the next Pascal one of nvidia's fastest Pascal gpus delivers an abysmal level of performance in Allen wake 2 using 1080p low settings even with upscaling enabled the titanex is really only capable of about 20 FPS at best and while some may disagree about 30 FPS gaming there is no argument here 20 FPS is unplayable I would expect that all Pascal GPU owners will need to upgrade to play Allen wake 2 even if they were targeting 1080p gaming on low settings what's surprising about this is that generally speaking in other games the titanex Pascal is faster than the 5700 XT the Titan X is usually around the performance of the GTX 1080ti and we had the 1080ti as being 7% faster on average compared to the 5700 XT in Alan W 2 though comparing amd's fastest non- mes shaded GPU to nvidia's near fastest non-mesh shaded GPU it has the 5700 XT delivering over 65% more performance not that this makes the 5700 XT especially playable but that's a large difference more than I anticipated when looking into the cards without mesh Shader support and finally a quick look at rate tracing on the RTX 2060 super even when playing at 1080p using the low preset with the rate tracing preset also set to low and using dlss quality upscaling the 20160 super delivered an unplayable level of performance at just 26 FPS on average in the Intensive Forest Area we looked at in the best cases you might see above 30 FPS but for the most part this GPU is totally unplayable with rate tracing enabled and if we are revisiting predictions and opinions from 4 years ago this type of experience we're seeing here shows why it was foolish to purchase a mainstream touring GPU for the promise of R tracing four years on we're starting to see these sorts of Next Generation ra traced games and the RTX 2060 super is simply incapable of accessing that experience I'm not even talking about path tracing here just the standard R Trac effects applied using the low settings at 1080p this was always going to be the case as rate racing matured gpus that weren't powerful enough for rate racing to begin with weren't going to age well over time so was the minor controversy around Alan Wake 2 not supporting mesh shaders overblown I think it was because the types of gpus that don't support mesh shaders really aren't powerful enough for this demanding beautiful PC game while the performance of the rx5700 XT and Titan X Pascal would likely be a bit better in in the game were they capable of mesh shading it wouldn't have transformed a relatively slow GPU by modern standards into a GPU that delivered a really playable experience we can see that from cards of similar levels of performance like the RTX 260 super delivering pretty underwhelming levels of performance at low resolutions and quality settings it's not surprising or unusual that the 7-year-old Pascal architecture is not fast enough for modern AAA PC games these days but AMD did Dodge a bit of a bullet here by their fastest rdna 1 GPU being just the 5700 XT this rdna A1 GPU is a little over 4 years old so not in any way a modern card but if AMD did have an rdna A1 GPU more in the range of the RTX 2080 TI the fastest GPU at the time it could have been problematic for them in games like Allen wake 2 the 2080 TI would have aged a lot better it's playable in this game while the mythical high-end rdna A1 card would have an outdated feature set and be effectively unsupported in alen W 2 with likely mediocre performance do these findings change anything about our initial recommendation to purchase the RX 5700 XT no while the RTX 2060 super here is undoubtedly the better GPU for allenway 2 after 4 years we're in a situation where the 5700 XT is typically around 133% faster in other games on average while being 24% slower in Allen wake 2 as most Gamers with a card in this sort of performance range would be strongly considering an upgrade at this point one outlier at the end of the gpu's life is simply not going to change that recommendation retroactively we'd need many more examples at this point and examples where the equivalent Nvidia GPU was capable of a nice playable experience even if Allan Wake 2 didn't work at all on gpus without mesh shaders that still would have been unlikely to change our opinion for similar reasons in fact the lack of direct X12 ultimate support on the 5700 XT including the lack of support for both mes shading and rate tracing it hasn't been that big of a factor over the lifespan of the car to this point if anything the biggest feature difference between these products ended up being DSS which is totally separate to dx12 Ultimate while at the launch of a card like the RTX 260 super dlss was fully irrelevant it has since grown into a great feature especially around 12 to 18 months after the releasee of those super models so for the second half of these cards life Nvidia buyers were treated to generally lower performance but better upscaling on the other hand RX 5700 XT owners had the opportunity to essentially upgrade their GPU into an RX 6700 XT for free during the mining Booms that was another unforeseen development that occurred after the card's release if 5700 XT owners did take our advice there and proceeded with that upgrade you'd be sitting pretty happy right now playing Allen wake 2 without too many dramas as it stands right now both of these gpus really aren't fast enough to play Allen wake 2 at a decent level of performance the 5700 XT definitely not the RTX 260 super probably not for most people so yeah if you do have these gpus pretty much you'd be considering an upgrade at this point and if you were thinking of buying a used GPU to use for Allan Wake 2 Gaming I believe the 5700 XT they're about $130 used at the moment the 260 super per about $140 to $150 used at the moment it's probably not worth buying one of these cards specifically for this game or really any games at this point maybe I mean it depends on the games that you're playing of course if it's like a lower end game like an Esports title or something then you probably go with the 5700 XT because it is the faster and slightly cheaper used GPU but in general if you wanted that card that's going to support you for AAA titles like alen wake 2 and future gpus at the moment you probably will need to spend a little bit more money anyway that's it for this early look at Alan W 2 GPU performance in a configuration that I think was reasonably interesting given the whole situation with mesh shaders and rdna 1 if you do want to give Steve some encouragement to work on that Allen W 2 GPU performance big Benchmark sort of video then please do leave some comments in the comment section below uh giving him some nice positive feedback so we can get that encouragement keep going make some nice GPU benchmarks for us if you want independent testing and all the videos that we do right here on hard run box then the best way to do that is via patreon or float plan links are in the description below and you gain some access to cool benefits like our Discord Community which has been yeah very much talking about alen W too over the last couple of days so thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next [Music] one [Music]

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 131,611

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: UiduP4Y7RSw

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023