Alan Wake 2 won't run on old GPUs due to lack of DX12 Ultimate features

[DuckDodgers]

The upcoming sequel to Alan Wake is already famous for its rather outlandish PC system requirements, but that's not all. A large swath of PC systems will simply not be able to run the game at all. 

 

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As you can see, neither NVIDIA's GTX 10 Series nor AMD's Radeon RX 5000 Series are supported. If you're wondering why, Remedy's Lea-Newin revealed that it's because those graphics cards do not feature hardware support for Mesh Shaders.

 

The original tweet was deleted, but DSO Gaming captured a snapshot. Moreover, the Remedy developer subsequently said a talk or blog post about the Mesh Shaders implementation in Alan Wake 2 could be on the way.

 

You could be easily forgiven if you thought this technology was new, given how little time it's been in the spotlight. However, NVIDIA first demonstrated Mesh Shading with the Asteroids demo released in December 2018. Mesh Shading aimed to reinvent the geometry pipeline by bringing the benefits of the compute programming model to the graphics pipeline's front end. Thanks to advanced culling and pre-culling, it can also improve performance and/or allow much higher levels of geometry. Mesh Shading was subsequently added to Microsoft's DirectX12 Ultimate. The first NVIDIA driver certified for Mesh Shading (and other DX12 Ultimate features) rolled out in April 2020.

 

Here's some supplementary material on the expected PC graphics card compatibility for the game:

 

 

Source:

https://wccftech.com/alan-wake-2-dev-says-gtx-10-and-5000-gpus-arent-supported-due-to-lack-of-mesh-shaders/

[starsmine]

God. remember when just 7 years ago all PC gamers did was bitch and moan about how consoles were holding gaming back?

Now that a game comes out and uses the new DX features baseline they bitch and moan that they are the ones holding gaming back. 

Gamers, please note, you dont have to play it when it comes out. The game will be just as valid in a year when you buy a Lovelace Next xx60 part to replace your 8 year old 1060

Or in 3 years when you buy a lovelace next next xx60 part to replace your 1660.

[Alex Atkin UK]

28 minutes ago, starsmine said:

God. remember when just 7 years ago all PC gamers did was bitch and moan about how consoles were holding gaming back?

Now that a game comes out and uses the new DX features baseline they bitch and moan that they are the ones holding gaming back. 

Gamers, please note, you dont have to play it when it comes out. The game will be just as valid in a years when you buy a Lovelace Next xx60 part to replace your 8 year old 1060

Or in 3 years when you buy a lovelace next next xx60 part to replace your 1660.

I saw this coming a mile away.  I was laughed at when I said once games start being optimised for the current consoles, PC gamers would need to upgrade as their hardware would not be able to keep up.

 

Mark Cerny was quite clear for example that the PS5 hardware decompression block would have taken 6 of the PS5s CPU cores to do in software.  It was clear this would mean PC users would need faster and more cores to compensate, but PC users just blame it on poor optimisation.  Which sure, that is an element but if that optimisation means completely rewriting the engine then of course there will be compromises if the cost would outweigh releasing it on PC at all.  Plus if you DO make those optimisations then naturally that's likely to mean DX12 Ultimate.

 

I'm actually amazed we managed to get Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart on PC without GPU decompression.  Even with GPU decompression, its inherently less efficient on PC due to bottlenecks moving between the GPU and system RAM, whereas the PS5 has the benefit of that unified memory so once its loaded into main memory, GPU and CPU can access it.

 

Were returning to a time where consoles can punch above their weight due to more efficient integration of their architecture.  Yes PCs still have faster GPUs, but its a lot harder to utilise that when ported from console as we have very different bottlenecks.  Shuttling data between system RAM and VRAM is expensive.

Its rather like complaining that people should be able to get to their destination just as quickly on the back roads as they can on the motorway/highway.  Its completely unrealistic.

[StDragon]

PC game launches have been introduced as a wet fart lately. Some of them will reach redemption later on and improve with age (CyberPunk 2077 and Halo Infinite for example), others not so much. Will Starfield reach redemption without the need for mods? Who knows.

Buying the latest GPU can be viewed as a way to play last gen PC games that have reached a polish state, and just launched titles in a shitty quasi-beta state. It's pathetic really. Console gamers have it good.

[CarlBar]

2 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I saw this coming a mile away.  I was laughed at when I said once games start being optimised for the current consoles, PC gamers would need to upgrade as their hardware would not be able to keep up.

 

Mark Cerny was quite clear for example that the PS5 hardware decompression block would have taken 6 of the PS5s CPU cores to do in software.  It was clear this would mean PC users would need faster and more cores to compensate, but PC users just blame it on poor optimisation.  Which sure, that is an element but if that optimisation means completely rewriting the engine then of course there will be compromises if the cost would outweigh releasing it on PC at all.  Plus if you DO make those optimisations then naturally that's likely to mean DX12 Ultimate.

 

I'm actually amazed we managed to get Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart on PC without GPU decompression.  Even with GPU decompression, its inherently less efficient on PC due to bottlenecks moving between the GPU and system RAM, whereas the PS5 has the benefit of that unified memory so once its loaded into main memory, GPU and CPU can access it.

 

Were returning to a time where consoles can punch above their weight due to more efficient integration of their architecture.  Yes PCs still have faster GPUs, but its a lot harder to utilise that when ported from console as we have very different bottlenecks.  Shuttling data between system RAM and VRAM is expensive.

 

This isn't about upgrading hardware for optimisation though, it's about upgrading hardware to play at all. PC gaming has generally had a thing where systems significantly behind the curve could still play new games by turning the settings way down. And in this specific instance i think the problem is being made worse because GPU prices have been so elevated for so long.

 

Personally i've never heard of this game, so i've no idea how big of a deal it is amongst gamers, but this is a lot more than just consoles allowing games to push furthar.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Like it or not, when a game is fully optimised for console, its not easily scalable to PC.  Xbox main benefit is developers can not bother to do such optimisation so it will scale to both, at the cost of not performing as well as it could on Xbox if fully optimised.

 

With so many developers being absorbed into big conglomerates, the bean counters just don't want to spend the money to pay for the game to be so heavily re-written for PCs limitations (compared to console).

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

This isn't about upgrading hardware for optimisation though, it's about upgrading hardware to play at all. PC gaming has generally had a thing where systems significantly behind the curve could still play new games by turning the settings way down. And in this specific instance i think the problem is being made worse because GPU prices have been so elevated for so long.

 

Personally i've never heard of this game, so i've no idea how big of a deal it is amongst gamers, but this is a lot more than just consoles allowing games to push furthar.

You're missing my point, I wasn't referring to optimisation in the sense of "it performs better", I was referring to optimisation needed to make the game run at all on PC if its designed around hardware accelerated decompression and a single pool of RAM.

 

The same code simply wont work on PC at all without major modifications.

[StDragon]

8 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm actually amazed we managed to get Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart on PC without GPU decompression.  Even with GPU decompression, its inherently less efficient on PC due to bottlenecks moving between the GPU and system RAM, whereas the PS5 has the benefit of that unified memory so once its loaded into main memory, GPU and CPU can access it.

It also supports Direct Storage in which decompression occurs on the GPU. FPS is about the same with and without, but with GPU decompression, the 1% lows are vastly improved. Your average gamer probably wouldn't notice.

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, StDragon said:

It also supports Direct Storage in which decompression occurs on the GPU. FPS is about the same with and without, but with GPU decompression, the 1% lows are vastly improved. Your average gamer probably wouldn't notice.

It also will have required a lot of re-working to do that, as the compression PS5 uses is not supported on PC GPUs.  Plus like I said, GPU decompression on PC still has to move the data between system RAM and VRAM, eating up PCIe bandwidth and adding latency.

 

There's also the fact it was an early game, clearly not pushing the PS5 to its limits.  When we finally get Spiderman 2 I think the requirements are going to be a LOT higher.

 

Were also seeing the reverse problem too in games using UE5.  Where the engine is more optimised for how PCs work, so doesn't scale well to console.

 

With all the recent layoffs by the bigger conglomerates, this is not boding well.  They don't want to spend the money to make good ports.  I think the huge migration to UE5 is they thought Epic would put in all the effort to automatically scale games between platforms, but were seeing so far this is clearly not the case.  With even Epic losing money now.

[StDragon]

17 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

It also will have required a lot of re-working to do that, as the compression PS5 uses is not supported on PC GPUs.  Plus like I said, GPU decompression on PC still has to move the data between system RAM and VRAM, eating up PCIe bandwidth and adding latency.

The issue is with the OS itself. The GPU can't access the NTFS vol directly, specifically if it's encrypted with BitLocker. All DirectStorage requests must go through the CPU to have the fetching done by NTFS.SYS. Direct block storage access to a volume isn't supported. Perhaps one day some revision of DirectStorage will allow for a dedicated NVMe drive for game assets to be cached there just for direct GPU to block level storage access from an NVMe drive. But for now, DirectStorage in its current form is still useful primarily because of the massive parallel I/O requests and GPU decompression.

PCs rarely ever jump to revolutionary paradigms, but instead play the long path of planning iteratively to get there to maintain compatibility while all HW and software in the chain catch up to where it ultimately needs to be.

Note: You can install a game that uses DirectStorage on a volume that's encrypted with BitLocker. Just making the point it all goes through the CPU anyways.

[porina]

I'll just throw in this observation in case people missed it.

 

Minimum = Low

Recommended = Medium

Ultra = High

 

High is Ultra. Medium is the step-down for the masses, not High.

[CarlBar]

30 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You're missing my point, I wasn't referring to optimisation in the sense of "it performs better", I was referring to optimisation needed to make the game run at all on PC if its designed around hardware accelerated decompression and a single pool of RAM.

 

The same code simply wont work on PC at all without major modifications.

 

And? Thats been true to an even greater degree for consoles in the past, never stopped developers developing and releasing on PC. The whole "it would be more work" argument just doesn't fly when doing that extra work is considered normal for releasing on a platform. Hell look at all the developers releasing on switch, thats an even bigger jump.

 

10 minutes ago, porina said:

I'll just throw in this observation in case people missed it.

 

Minimum = Low

Recommended = Medium

Ultra = High

 

High is Ultra. Medium is the step-down for the masses, not High.

 

The issue seems to be, (based on the OP), that no matter the settings if your in the not compatible bracket it won't run at all even on low settings.

[RejZoR]

Alan Wake wasn't exactly a global shocker where entire world would be awed by it. It was a rather niche game and while it looked nice (especially dynamic lights and shadows), it was pretty repetitive. Giving it some insane requirements now, why? I remember days when we bought new graphic cards just to run latest Quake game in all its glory. But those days are long gone and now hardly anyone buys new high end graphic cards just to experience 1 game fully.

 

Which is why most optimize engine to run on as many graphic cards and as fast as possible. I think one of best showcases of that is actually Doom 2016 and partially Doom Eternal. They booth look really good, but at the same time run on near potato level hardware. Are we really returning to the days of "it either looks good and runs like poo or it runs great and looks like poo" ? Because most current games look really good even when running at Low settings while running on ancient stuff like GTX 1060 or RX 580.

[Alex Atkin UK]

11 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

And? Thats been true to an even greater degree for consoles in the past, never stopped developers developing and releasing on PC. The whole "it would be more work" argument just doesn't fly when doing that extra work is considered normal for releasing on a platform. Hell look at all the developers releasing on switch, thats an even bigger jump.

Which consoles of the past did you have in mind?  Because for the most part, PC has been well ahead of consoles in brute force that completely offset the differences.

 

Last generation the consoles were extremely weak in comparison.

The previous generation Xbox 360 was the primary target, which again wasn't all that great compared to PC and was specifically designed to make porting from PC to console easier, rather than the other way around.

 

Its only PS3 where a few developers were able to really tap the hardware, and those games never got ported to PC because of it.  Its taken emulators 20 years of PC improvements and software hacks to get close to running those games on PC.

 

PS2 was similar, games which really optimised to the hardware didn't get PC ports.  Games were also much simpler so making concurrent versions for console and PC was more common.

 

The current consoles however were much more forward thinking than has happened for several generations.

[dizmo]

If it makes the game look better, I'm all for it.

Shame for those that rock older hardware for sure, but I'm sick of improvements being held back by people that hold onto aging technology.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Its like the vocal minority who are moaning about Spiderman 2 using RT in all modes.  They aren't happy that it runs at "only" 60fps in performance mode.

 

Fact is, unless developers start utilising this newer tech, game development is going to stagnate.  They need to be using the latest tech so that more silicon on future GPUs can be dedicated to that tech, making it more performant and eventually we move on to 100% RT games, so developers have to focus less on lighting, shadows and AO hacks - and more on the actual game mechanics.

 

Its nothing new, people moaned when programmable shaders came out because it was stealing silicon from making fixed function shaders faster in new GPUs.  Its tiring seeing the same arguments again, though granted most people moaning probably weren't born during the last major upgrade.  They've become complacent with just more of the same only faster, which we can't do any more as were hitting technical limitations.  So we have to find new shortcuts which inherently means eventually no longer supporting the old ones, thus new GPUs required.

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

And? Thats been true to an even greater degree for consoles in the past, never stopped developers developing and releasing on PC. The whole "it would be more work" argument just doesn't fly when doing that extra work is considered normal for releasing on a platform. Hell look at all the developers releasing on switch, thats an even bigger jump.

Kind of, lots of console games never game to PC and a lot of them simply couldn't for the time. Square/Square Enix for a long time would make bespoke game engine specific to the generation console hardware (PlayStation) and it would literally only ever work on PlayStation. Games of the era that have eventually gotten PC ports run essentially though software emulators and run like garbage for what they are, only made possible through steer force of generations newer performance just to get playable what was possible ~8 years prior on the console.

 

And that's not because the console 8 years ago was that much faster than PCs of the time. sometimes yes compares to the average to higher end, but it's simply down to how the engine and game was designed in the first place.

 

The bad PC port reputation started because of the issues, before consoles were x86 and the situation has actually improved since the migration to x86 console.

 

So lot of games and developers were stopped in the past from releasing on PC due to these problems. You used to only be able to reliably count on the likes of CoD etc be available across platforms and the PC version was at it's core different to the console version, which required lots of resources (people, time and money). But also lets not forget just how massive the gaming market is and how much money can be made. Where the economics support it games will get support on as many platforms as makes sense no matter the technical challenges to do so, the mighty dollar always wins out eventually (CoD on Wii).

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

…though granted most people moaning probably weren't born during the last major upgrade.  They've become complacent with just more of the same only faster, which we can't do any more as were hitting technical limitations.  So we have to find new shortcuts which inherently means eventually no longer supporting the old ones, thus new GPUs required.

Feature set hasn’t moved appreciably for a long time. And even today, a lot of games still use DX11. For a decade, gamers didn’t have to take heed of features, and instead, just looked at performance, and even when new features were employed, they were optional. 
 

This is also part of why VRAM is such a sore spot while games move beyond 8 GB, as this goes well against the long-held convention of performance being the only consideration of a card. Now, we’ve seen cases where the 12 GB RTX 3060 has outperformed 8GB 3060 TI and even the 3070, when VRAM was pressured. 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Like it or not, when a game is fully optimised for console, its not easily scalable to PC. 

im not sure thats true... 

 

i think its more a design philosophy if everything (read: they're lazy af) also you're implying the game runs *perfectly* on consoles  - and i don't know if it does, but typically these sort of games don't. 

 

13 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its like the vocal minority who are moaning about Spiderman 2 using RT in all modes.  They aren't happy that it runs at "only" 60fps in performance mode.

thats another yet similar thing, ive seen people complain about a "bad port" even though on average the game ran actually better on pc than consoles...

 

14 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its nothing new, people moaned when programmable shaders came out because it was stealing silicon from making fixed function shaders faster in new GPUs.

agreed, but i feel nowadays people are looking for any reason to upgrade at least twice a year, so this sort of "AAA business" is probably a very welcome trend to them.

 

PLUS they get to bitch about it on the internet!  Perfect!

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

7 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Feature set hasn’t moved appreciably for a long time. And even today, a lot of games still use DX11. For a decade, gamers didn’t have to take heed of features, and instead, just looked at performance, and even when new features were employed, they were optional. 
 

This is also part of why VRAM is such a sore spot while games move beyond 8 GB, as this goes well against the long-held convention of performance being the only consideration of a card. Now, we’ve seen cases where the 12 GB RTX 3060 has outperformed 8GB 3060 TI and even the 3070, when VRAM was pressured. 

That's my point, its been a long time since we've really had a generational shift in render technology BECAUSE they didn't want to force people to upgrade.

 

However the current consoles and UE5 being more forward thinking, things have to change.

 

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

agreed, but i feel nowadays people are looking for any reason to upgrade at least twice a year, so this sort of "AAA business" is probably a very welcome trend to them.

 

PLUS they get to bitch about it on the internet!  Perfect!

What you have to remember is, the people moaning on the Internet are not the majority (not just gaming).

 

I'm not sure a single person on any of my gaming friends lists has ever said a single thing about gaming, they just get on with it.

[leadeater]

I remember when games started requiring GPU hardware T&L support, I brought the latest Medal of Honor game and it wouldn't launch at all with a prompt saying "Hardware T&L support required".

 

I'm surprised and in a way sad this doesn't happen more, literally means lots of generational specific hardware GPU features aren't being used or aren't being fully leveraged so older hardware can stay supported.

 

Those that care and find this annoying just be thankful it doesn't happen more often, which it should.

[StDragon]

UE5 is the gold-standard for engines. If only more titles would utilize it. If developers would stop reinventing the game engine (unless it's really that much better than UE5 and Unity) and focus on content and play mechanics, we wouldn't have the shitty launches we have now.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, StDragon said:

UE5 is the gold-standard for engines. If only more titles would utilize it. If developers would stop reinventing the game engine (unless it's really that much better than UE5 and Unity) and focus on content and play mechanics, we wouldn't have the shitty launches we have now.

I'll forever support Square Enix doing it haha, they actually do a decent job of it (despite delays from nobody agreeing on what it needs to be).

 

Luminous Engine back in 2015 was so much better than anything else and it took ages for anything to match it, problem was... Square Enix lol

Edited October 23, 2023 by leadeater

[Techstorm970]

"wAaAaaAaH mY 7 yEaR oLd hArDwArE wOn'T rUn sHiNy nEw tHiNg wAaAaAaAaH!"

 

Dude.  Stop.  That's normal.  That's completely normal.  If your finances don't allow you to upgrade then I'm sorry that's the case.  In the meantime, you really shouldn't be expecting great performance on the latest-greatest AAA games anyway if your hardware is on the older side.

 

This literally reminds me of all the games that came out in 2015-2016 when the current gen GTX 970 recommended and GTX 660 minimum was becoming normal.  GTX 660 was two generations & a tier behind the GTX 970.  And now, with Alan Wake II, an RTX 2060 is two generations & a tier behind the RTX 4070.

 

Mad at the pricing?  Welcome to the club.  Besides, that's an NVIDIA problem, not an Alan Wake developer problem.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm not sure a single person on any of my gaming friends lists has ever said a single thing about gaming, they just get on with it

im not sure i understand... what you talk about if not games?  i get there are more subjects than that obviously,  but the vast majority of people i play games with,  or are on any of my "friendslist"... we talk about games, and new trends in gaming, etc *all the time*