Is Ray Tracing worth it? | Alan Wake 2 Optimised Settings

alen wig 2 is easily one of the best looking games of this generation and it's quite easy to see why from its impressive view of lighting to Super Reflections and path tracing it's a stunning looking title that can bring even the bohem of that is lx490 to his knees but do you need all those bells and whistles fully enjoy all the visual buffet that this game has to offer well join me in this short video comparing different settings to ATI and seeing if it's all worth the hype I will aim to answer the question if ATI is really worth it and if to low-range gpus are able to enjoy the game with decent looking visuals without sacrificing all of the performance let's start the comparison here with the biggest body of water you'll be seeing throughout the game uh which is the lake I'm starting here with a baseline of low settings and Screen space Reflections off it's a decent looking image but you can clearly see that something is missing the only thing being properly reflected is the sky this creates uh a disconnect between the building and the lake so we can already see that this is not the most ideal saying to use setting the SSR to low introduces proper reflection um I'll be a little shimmery the performance only drops by about 3 to 5% on average and it greatly enhances the scene setting SSR to high resols some of the shimmering but it does drop our overall performance uh another 5% so we'll come back to that setting in a little [Music] bit um and just for fun and I said this SC with r Trac into medium it's beautiful and very detailed however it drops the performance by around 50% so in this case unless you're planning to use frame generation I would leave this set to [Music] off the next setting I wanted to highlight showcases the use of Puddles or rather like thereof as we can clearly see I have set the SSR to off in this scene this just just emphasizes the fact that SSI should always be set to medium uh as if you look in this next shot it's a night and day difference between the two [Music] settings and in this last shot I have set the SSR to high just like I did with the leg improves the image quality slightly however we lose between 5 to 8% of our performance and in my opinion the improvements image quality does not justify it in this next example we add the diner we have set everything back to low and here I wanted to focus your attention on the Shadows present in the scene uh and how low settings without any use of Ray tracing creates an incredibly distracting shimmery effect which is further enhanced as the camera moves closer to [Music] it [Music] setting at T to low here makes it look incredible but it costs way too much performance for any mid to even higher GPU from the previous [Music] generations so my solution to Shadows is that we're going to leave everything that low but we are going to turn on just one slightly less demand in RT setting transparencies you can see that even when transparencies are set to low it helps to resolve some of some of the shimmering not all of it um we were experiencing just a minute ago and it adds proper glass Reflections which can have a huge impact on the visuals uh just look at the difference here um with the side by [Music] side let me give you another example of how much of a difference transparencies make uh I want you to focus on the Windows of this car and how nothing is reflected to it in this shop I also want you to focus on the shadow lines present on the car doors uh that are cast by some phone lines just behind me now let's look at the van packs just behind it notice how the Shadows um they become increasingly less detailed given a very pixelated and unpleasant look now going back let's look at those exact same scenes with just the transparencies set to low notice how we now have a proper reflection in the window and how the Shadows are properly diffused with a less sharp and more realistic look to [Music] them moving back to the van notice how even though the Shadows are not perfect here they are presented in a much less jarring Mana um and all of that for a mere 10% drop in performance before I tell you my recommendations for this game uh with a list of all the settings I would use let me showcase the best case scenario with everything completely maxed out for the sake of comparison now for my recommended settings for Mid to low range gpus um I've tested and benchmarked all of the presets and it settings available for any mid-range gpus such as the RTX 2080 super 2080 TI the 3070 and app in the 30 series and anything above the 4070 in the 40 series I recommend setting the game to the medium preset with some minor tweaks once you set the game to medium scroll down until you see the fog quality uh terrain quality and LOD I want you to set those three settings to medium instead of high they will have minimal impact on the visuals and they will help you compensate for the next setting that we're about to turn on uh after you've done this scroll all the way down until you see the retracing section I want you to set transparencies to low as we've established earlier it's one of those less expensive RT settings with a huge benefit to the visuals and if you rocking anything lower than the gpus mentioned set the preset to low and if you have a 2070 or equivalent in power GPU keep transparencies on low just remember to utilize dlss and FSR um I have a video token about those two technologies in the description so if you would like more detail please follow the link down there and it will explain to you what the difference is but spoilers dlss is slightly [Music] better Alan wig 2 is a stunning love letter to the fans of the original game it is demanding but a beautiful title that in my opinion will spend a test of time he Rivals the likes of cyberpank in his attention to visuals and worthiness of being a benchmark title for the next few generations of gpus to come it makes even the mighty RTX 490 work for its money and without the use of frame generation I honestly doubt it would keep a consistent 60 FPS with everything max out I would know um I have made a video Linked In the description if you like um showcasing that you can even draw below the 30 FPS Mark with everything set to the highest H and yes it's a beautiful game but at the end of the day you got to ask yourself if it's all worth it um I'm new to YouTube and would love for you to drop a comment uh tell me if you like the video or if there's anything you didn't like about it but um other than that I hope to see you in my next video and I hope you enjoy all week 2 it's it's a beautiful and stunning game

Channel: 8K Gamer

Views: 9,829

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Id: VA5QPhUjNJs

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023