Alan Wake 2 Patch Jumps Across ‘Outdated’ GTX 1060 That Makes Horror Sequel Much More (Nightmarish?) Easy to Play

Alan Wake 2 may have released to loads of critical acclaim in 2023, but the horror classic also featured jaw-dropping graphics that stunned players. Predictably, the game also demanded hefty hardware requirements, particularly for older systems.

The culprit? The game’s utilization of mesh shaders in the DirectX 12 Ultimate API, which helped balance playable framerates with gorgeous visuals. Sadly, users of Nvidia’s old-but-still-popular GTX 10-series (Pascal architecture) were left behind due to the hardware not supporting this feature. Thankfully, a recent patch rectifies the situation for Pascal users.

GTX 1060’s Popularity Isn’t Good Enough For Alan Wake 2

The GTX 1060 has consistently ranked among the highest on the PC graphics card popularity charts. According to Steam’s February 2024 Hardware Survey, it’s still the fourth most popular card among PC gamers, which is bonkers considering how old it is.

As popular as it is though, in Alan Wake 2, the 1060 often stuttered and delivered unplayable frame rates, even at low resolutions. This tracks back to the Pascal hardware non-support for mesh shaders. However, Remedy has issued a patch slated for release on 6 March that brings impressive improvements.

Digital Foundry tested the patch, and headline figures are indeed striking: a 45% performance boost in Chapter 1’s forest area, and a near 3x increase in Saga Anderson’s Mind Place, which has proven to be a demanding section in the past.

Interestingly, the performance uplift increases as you move up the Pascal family, with the GTX 1070 seeing a 57% improvement in the forest, rising to 85% for the GTX 1080. The beefy GTX 1080Ti effectively doubles performance from pre-patch code.