Game runs poorly on a pc above minimun requirements even on low?

[Mad Trasher]

Hi there, I bought this game as it seemed it had really low minimun requirements, but even when I try to run it with everything on low on 1024x768 resolution, the game still runs pretty slow and has massive FPS drops when a light is anywhere to be seen.
my PC has
Graphics: GT 610
Processor: Intel Quad Core 2,33 ghz
RAM: 4 GB
Does anybody knows what could be happening?

[0The-Pain0]

ACTUALLY I HAVE A LOW SPECS PC ASWELL, AND I TRIED EVERYTHING TO GET IT SMOOTHER BUT ITS NOT POSSIBLE MAYBE BUY A NEW PC

[Er0]

Hey try using the 'lowest' preset (do not use custom and set everything to low). The lowest present removes transparencies and removes AA completely. When using custom settings, you cannot disable AA since transparencies rely on MSAA

[EbonHawk]

Copied from here, just for information's sake: https://community.remedygames.com/forum/games/alan-wake/alan-wake-help-issues/6830-alan-wake-pc-graphics-settings

Originally posted by MarkusRMD at the Remedy forums..

This post is meant to describe the graphics settings of Alan Wake in some detail, and tell how they affect performance.

RESOLUTION - Resolution can be adjusted freely based on what your graphics card / monitor tells our game it can do. The game supports different aspect ratios too. Increasing resolution is fairly GPU-heavy as the game also increases the resolution of many of the internal rendering buffers.

Alan Wake needs a minimum 1024x768 resolution to run. When you first run the game, it tries to run in your desktop resolution unless you have a very slow system (there is a very light-weight automatic performance detection on the first run).

If you have low performance we recommend you run the game at 1280x720 or 1024x768.


VSYNC - You can enable or disable the vertical sync. Disabling it causes the game to render "as fast as it can" meaning your frame rate may go up, but also will cause the game to "tear" and the frame rate to feel more uneven.


GRAPHICS QUALITY - Low, Medium, High or Custom. A few pre-defined settings for different performance levels.


ANTIALIASING - 2x, 4x, 8x - defines the full screen MSAA level. 8x is pretty expensive for the GPU. Best performance & visual compromise is 4x setting and FXAA set to high. Antialiasing can't be disabled in Alan Wake, as the engine has been designed so that AA is on at all times. If you disable it from e.g. driver's control panel, the game will likely work but you will see visual artifacts.


FXAA - Off, Low, High. FXAA is a complementary post-processing anti-alias technique. It's not really expensive, but should be turned off on low-end systems. High uses a slightly slower, better quality technique.


ANISOTROPIC FILTERING - Off, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x - sets the texture filter mode. Makes the textures look sharper/nicer.


SHADOW QUALITY - Low, Medium, High. Low is meant for older, low end systems. This setting really affects CPU and GPU performance. Low renders one shadow region less and the shadow draw distance is small. Medium corresponds approximately to what the Xbox360 build does, and high has increased resolution and filtering.


SSAO Quality - Off, Low, High - Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is a post-processing effect that makes objects look like they fit better in the scene by shadowing the edges. Needs purely GPU power. High uses better quality effect and takes quite a lot of power, Low can look a bit noisy at times.


BACKDROP QUALITY - Low, Medium, High - affects the rendering quality of the game world's backdrop beyond draw distance (see below). A good compromise on a medium PC may be lowering draw distance but keeping this setting at medium or high, as the performance effect is not huge, but the Low quality backdrop can look a bit blocky.


GODRAY QUALITY - Off, High. God Rays from the sun are on only during daytime scenes. On a low end graphics card this can take a lot of performance for little visual benefit - it's a cool but rather subtle effect. This setting has no effect on performance or visuals during night time.


VOLUMETRIC LIGHT QUALITY - Low, High. Filtering and resolution of the Volumetric light effects in the game. This is a night time setting only. High makes lights look really pretty and is not massively expensive for the GPU to render.


DRAW DISTANCE - Slider that affects the landscape and object draw distance. It also affects the landscape tessellation distance which is a CPU intensive process. Minimum is 650m, max is 1500m during daytime and 1000m during night time. This slider has a large effect on CPU power in the game, but also affects GPU performance. Recommend turning to minimum for low end systems.


LOD DISTANCE - Slider that changes the distance when objects change from lower level of detail models to the high detail models. It also affects how far small objects are rendered. This can have a rather big impact on performance, both CPU and GPU power. Recommend turning to low on slow systems.


FOV (under control options) - Slider that affects the FOV factor compared to the default FOV. The FOV in the game is affected by aspect ratio as well as many in-game events (sprinting, boosting), thus this has to be a multiplier rather than a fixed angle setting. Our default FOV in 16:9 is about 80 degrees. Increasing the FOV requires more processing power both from the CPU and GPU - a larger area with possibly more visible objects is rendered.

-noblur COMMAND LINE OPTION
This option disables the vector blur in the game. While we think Alan Wake should be played with the blur on, we understand some gamers don't like it. Disabling blur gives a slight performance boost. Note: Initial release has a bug that turns the blur back on at some points in the game, this will be fixed in the first patch.

There you go, straight from one the Developers himself.

You can even try older drivers, as sometimes they work considerably better than current ones. I'm currently using Nvidia version 392.88, and the game looks and plays epically. :-) (And these aren't even scenery shots, which look even better!)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723508896
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723508815

[EbonHawk]

Some more helpful info for older systems.. in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/108710/discussions/0/154644045361633967/

Originally posted by Panda X4 Vassili:

First of all, thanks for all the reply. By the way, what I did:

- DVR xbox setting, checked.
- Installed older driver, done.
- Reboot the PC, done
- Turn off Geforce experience, done
- Vsync off
- 720p and lowest setting, done.

I monitored frequencies, and from what I saw, cpu ran at the maximum clock, 3,8 ghz. Gpu the same, I don't how to check the ram.

And I want to point out that Alan Wake is the only game with performance issues, no other games works bad.

[Cryiox]

GT610 is anything *but* above Min Reqs. It's vastly slower than a GeForce 8800 GT or Radeon HD 2900 Pro, lol.

[Rico]

i had the same problems years ago, this game runs like ass on min req

[KillingArts]

Originally posted by Cryiox:

GT610 is anything *but* above Min Reqs. It's vastly slower than a GeForce 8800 GT or Radeon HD 2900 Pro, lol.

Where does it say anything about a 8800GT or 2900 Pro? The store page simply says "DirectX 10 compatible with 512MB RAM".

[EbonHawk]

Originally posted by KillingArts:

Originally posted by Cryiox:

GT610 is anything *but* above Min Reqs. It's vastly slower than a GeForce 8800 GT or Radeon HD 2900 Pro, lol.

Where does it say anything about a 8800GT or 2900 Pro? The store page simply says "DirectX 10 compatible with 512MB RAM".

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/alan-wake/11295

[KillingArts]

Originally posted by EbonHawk:

Originally posted by KillingArts:

Where does it say anything about a 8800GT or 2900 Pro? The store page simply says "DirectX 10 compatible with 512MB RAM".

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/alan-wake/11295

I know that site, but it is not official and I can't see anything about where they got that info.

It's actually funny how everybody seems to have different minimum specs for this game. Quick google search brought those up:

https://www.pcgamer.com/alan-wake-pc-release-date-set-for-february-system-requirements-detailed/
https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=72&game=Alan%20Wake

[EbonHawk]

Originally posted by KillingArts:

Originally posted by EbonHawk:

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/alan-wake/11295

I know that site, but it is not official and I can't see anything about where they got that info.

It's actually funny how everybody seems to have different minimum specs for this game. Quick google search brought those up:

https://www.pcgamer.com/alan-wake-pc-release-date-set-for-february-system-requirements-detailed/
https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=72&game=Alan%20Wake

You can't see it?

Here are the Alan Wake System Requirements (Minimum)

CPU: Info
CPU SPEED: Dual Core 2 GHz Intel or 2.8 GHz AMD
RAM: 2 GB
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
VIDEO CARD: GeForce 8800 GT or Radeon HD 2900 Pro
PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
VERTEX SHADER: 3.0
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 8 GB
DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB

Copied for you.

I wasn't endorsing the site, just offering an idea of where someone could get that info from.

[KillingArts]

Just found an official statement. Those are the real minimum specs:

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
PROCESSOR: A dual core processor is required:
AMD: Athlon X2 2.8GHz
Intel: Core 2 Duo 2GHz
MEMORY: 2 GB
HARD DRIVE: 8 GB
VIDEO CARD: DirectX 10 compatible or later with 512MB RAM
AMD: ATI Radeon 3650, 4450, 5550, 6450 or higher (per series)
NVIDIA: GeForce 8600GT, 9500GT, GT120, GT430, GT520 (per series)
SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible
INPUT: Mouse and keyboard, Xbox360 controller also supported

https://community.remedygames.com/forum/games/alan-wake/6784-alan-wake-pc-faq

[KillingArts]

Originally posted by EbonHawk:

You can't see it?

Sure I can. I meant I cannot see where they got this information. There is no source linked or anything like that. And I found other sites quoting different requirements. Remedy posted requirements in their own forum that differ from the ones on systemrequirementslab.com.

[EbonHawk]

Oh ok. I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying the info is out there, regardless of its accuracy.

[KillingArts]

Originally posted by EbonHawk:

Oh ok. I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying the info is out there, regardless of its accuracy.

Absolutely. I don't want to argue with you or anything. I just find this whole thing very interesting. :)

From what I can tell, the GT 610 is actually not that far from minimum specs. Remedy lists the Radeon HD 6450 as one of the cards there. Also the nVidia 8600GT. And the GT 610 is not that far below those cards. In facct, in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark it's actually a little faster. It loses in other categories like memory bandwitdh, for example. And that may be why it performs badly with Alan Wake. But it's somewhat understandable why the OP thinks the 610 is matching the minimum requirements. It kind of does, depending on which benchmark you look at.

[Draxuss]

I just downloaded the game and did a test run. Max settings v-sync on, i'm getting avg 135 fps
at 1440p. Game looks and runs great so far. Sounds like it's time for you guy's to consider upgrading.