Upscaling Alan Wake II
Alan Wake II is a survival horror game and the long-awaited sequel to Remedy Entertainment’s cult classic, Alan Wake. This time, the story takes a darker turn, delving deeper into the psychological and supernatural elements that made the original so compelling. Players can expect a chilling atmosphere, intense combat encounters, and a mind-bending narrative that will keep them on the edge of their seats.
With Alan Wake II, we weren’t able to manually choose between different DLSS models, so our focus is on the performance improvements when enabling each level of upscaling. Starting with DLSS, which was set to balanced across all our tests, the results were immediately impressive. The average FPS more than doubled compared to native rendering, with a substantial 102% increase. Latency also saw a noticeable reduction, dropping from 48.41ms at native to just 25.27ms, cutting it nearly in half. While that alone is a strong result, the real gains came with frame generation, which boosted performance by 210% over native, adding around 60 extra frames per second, though latency crept back up slightly to 34.04ms.
Building on this, enabling Frame Generation X3 pushed performance even higher, delivering a 320% increase compared to native rendering which added another 60 FPS to the total, making a noticeable difference, although latency continued to rise, landing at 37.35ms. Then when we enabled Frame Generation X4, the gains were slightly smaller but still significant, with a 49 FPS jump over the previous setting and this brought the total performance increase to an incredible 403% over native, with the frame rate landing just shy of 300 FPS, while latency increased to 40.99ms. Even so, X4’s latency remained lower than native, showing that the performance improvements come with minimal sacrifices in responsiveness.
Turning on raytracing provided similar trends, but with smaller overall performance gains compared to non-ray-traced settings. From native rendering, enabling DLSS delivered a 138% performance uplift, equivalent to a 36 FPS improvement, while reducing latency from 100.97ms down to 45.41ms which is a significant improvement. Adding frame generation made an even bigger difference, pushing performance up by 308% over native and adding another 80 FPS, though latency did climb a bit to 57.09ms. The jump from just DLSS to frame generation wasn’t as dramatic, with an increase of 44 FPS, and the trend continued with Frame Generation X3 and X4, where the final performance increase hit an astonishing 627% over native rendering. At this point, latency rose to 63.36ms, but it still stayed well below the 100.97ms we got with native rendering.
The performance gains are impressive, but the way latency scales across these settings is equally worth noting. In both ray-traced and non-ray-traced scenarios, DLSS alone halved the latency compared to native, offering a substantial improvement in responsiveness. As we moved into multi-frame generation settings like X3 and X4, latency began to climb back up slightly, but even at its highest, it never exceeded native rendering levels. This demonstrates that while the advanced settings add complexity, they still manage to deliver both performance and responsiveness in a balanced manner.
Overall, the upscaling and frame generation technologies in Alan Wake II provide more than just higher frame rates—they deliver smoother gameplay and improved latency, even under the most demanding settings. This showcases how features like DLSS and Frame Generation X4 can redefine the gaming experience, ensuring better performance without sacrificing responsiveness.
