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Delayed a touch, owing to lack of review code and Xbox patches lagging behind other formats by a couple of days, we're happy to present our findings for the Xbox versions of Alan Wake 2, while also going into much more depth on what separates quality and performance modes, aside from resolution and frame-rate targets. Xbox Series code does have some bugs and issues, but in performance terms, Series X runs smoother than PS5. Meanwhile, Series S has resolution and quality cutbacks, but still seems to deliver a decent experience bearing in mind the reduced power available.

00:00 Overview
00:55 Series X and PS5 settings
06:12 Series X and PS5 performance
08:35 Series S
11:31 Analysis and conclusion


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Original PS5 only video topic:

Digital Foundry: Alan Wake 2 - PlayStation 5 DF Tech Review - Remedy Raises The Bar Yet Again

We've been waiting for this one with eager anticipation and Remedy does not disappoint. In our first Alan Wake 2 video, Oliver Mackenzie dissects the visuals, stacks up the PlayStation 5 version up against PC maxed out, comments on image quality and performance before delivering the verdict on...

www.neogaf.com

 

[MoreJRPG]

Looks like it runs better in performance mode on the X compared to PS5 per the article. Interesting how they sent out PS5 codes before Xbox given that’s the result of DF’s testing.

With it seemingly doing well enough on Series S I wonder if that opens the door to a Switch 2 port, which should be able to achieve similar results with the baked in DLSS.

 

[adamsapple]

Summary:

- PS5/SX offer Quality and Performance modes.
- Performance mode cuts other stuff beyond resolution to reach 60 FPS target.
- Foliage, grass, scattered foliage, terrain detail, texture filtering, volumetric lighting, fog quality and shadow filtering/coverage take a hit in Performance mode over Quality mode.
- LoD, pop-in, screen space reflections also take a hit.

Resolution:
- PS5 and Series X have identical visual metrics.
- Quality: SX: 1270p upscaled to 2160p with FSR2
- Perf: 847p FSR2 to 1440p
- Image breakup in Performance mode more noticeable than Quality

Performance:
- SX offers a very consistent 60 FPS with only occasional minor dips.
- SX in Quality mode offered 100% locked outside of 1 momentary drop in DF testing.

- PS5 consistently runs at 50 FPS in Forest area where SX ran at consistent 60
- PS5 Quality mode also runs frequently at high 20s, achieving 30 most of the time.

- Load times ~7 sec on PS5 vs ~9 on SX in tested area.

Series S:
- Visual settings are identical to PS5/SX's Performance mode
- Most textures resolution also identical, but certain textures (specifically in Mind Place) are lower quality.
- SSR is a bit more grainy but a biproduct of lower resolution.
- Internal 720p using FSR2 upscaled to 1440p. UI renders at 1440p.
- Series S does not have a 60 FPS mode, only one 30 FPS mode.
- Performance is very consistent 30 with minor drops. DF puts it between PS5 and SX in 30 FPS performances.

Conclusion:
- SX is the console of choice for the premium consoles with better performance over PS5.
- Series S performs respectably for its specs.
- A beefy PC with path traced lighting etc is above the consoles, however.

 

[Vergil1992]

In this game it's an absolute win for Xbox Series X. I don't think there's any argument about that. In any mode its framerate is much more stable.

 

[mrBarrelNut]

More teraflops, more performance!

 

[Big Baller]

Phil put in that work!

 

[Mister Wolf]

Series X handling those mesh shaders well.

 

[sinnergy]

Yeah, I figured , here the extra CUs and meshshaders come into play. I didn’t notice slowdown in the woods.

 

[Mr Moose]

Series S:
- Visual settings are identical to PS5/SX's Performance mode
- Most textures resolution also identical, but certain textures (specifically in Mind Place) are lower quality.
- SSR is a bit more grainy but a biproduct of lower resolution.
- Internal 720p using FSR2 upscaled to 1440p. UI renders at 1440p.

This first part doesn't make sense with the rest of it. How can it be identical but with worse textures and resolution?

 

[MasterCornholio]

Good job with all versions. Premium consoles are close while the Series S is still pretty decent. Nudge to the Series X for the small performance advantage.

 

[Lysandros]

XSX is noticeably ahead on this one apparently, no question. PS5 version needs some additional work to stabilise the performance.

 

[adamsapple]

This first part doesn't make sense with the rest of it. How can it be identical but with worse textures and resolution?

Visual settings like shadows, volumetric lighting, draw distance, LoD are identical.

99% of the textures are also identical, just the specific ones in the Mind Place are lowered, which makes sense since those are resident in the memory all the time at the touch of a button.

Accommodating Series S's lower memory.

The only other setting which is lower is the SSR grain but that's because of the native rendering resolution also being lower.

 

[Horseganador]

The PS5 version is a disaster in both modes, they need to patch it soon, not even the 30fps mode is stable.

 

[adamsapple]

I was legitimately surprised at how smooth the 60 FPS version is, but it does have notably softer image quality. I'm currently playing through the game in its 30 FPS Quality mode, but will switch to Performance when the story is done and I'm replaying / reloading for achievement mop-up.

This seems like a fairly reasonable 1000G/Platinum game.

 

[Jibran#one]

Where are all the DJ Khalid sticker and memes ?

 

[Vergil1992]

The PS5 version is a disaster in both modes, they need to patch it soon, not even the 30fps mode is stable.

I don't think it's a disaster. It has good performance in general and in fact, it is the most promoted by Remedy and it also seems that it is more "ahead" than Xbox in terms of updates, DF said that Remedy did not send the Xbox codes because updates were still missing. In the patch notes they indicate that they are still fixing bugs on Xbox platforms that were already fixed on PS5, updates come out later, etc.

I think there is not much margin here. The XSX GPU is simply more powerful, as is already known. It is logical that it is more stable. AW2 on PS5 doesn't perform badly at all. It is similar to A Plague Tale: Requiem. GPU-dependent games that are also studios with experience working for PC/Xbox... It is an expected result.

 

[adamsapple]

Where are all the DJ Khalid sticker and memes ?

AnotherOne is slacking

 

[nowhat]

I was legitimately surprised at how smooth the 60 FPS version is, but it does have notably softer image quality. I'm currently playing through the game in its 30 FPS Quality mode, but will switch to Performance when the story is done and I'm replaying / reloading for achievement mop-up.

I'm usually all for 60fps, but in this case I've opted for "quality" and it works well. It's not a twitchy shooter by any means. Some FSR 2 artifacts are still very much visible though (shouldn't FSR 3 be coming to consoles as well?)

 

[Pedro Motta]

Northlight engine usually favors DX12 GPUs.

 

[SlimySnake]

Series X handling those mesh shaders well.

the framedrops are consistent with the 18% tflops advantage. Same thing we saw in the control photo mode comparisons.

If you want to see what happens to RDNA1 GPUs with no mesh shader support, look no further than the 5700xt which is completely failing to run the game. Dropping to 12 fps in the mind palace and consistently performing 50% worse than its equivalent tflop rdna 2 gpus.

if the PS5 was struggling to handle the mesh shaders, it wouldve been running at either half the framerate or half the resolution of the xsx version. the 5 fps advantage is in line with the tflops difference. Tflops do matter.

 

[Mister Wolf]

the framedrops are consistent with the 18% tflops advantage. Same thing we saw in the control photo mode comparisons.

If you want to see what happens to RDNA1 GPUs with no mesh shader support, look no further than the 5700xt which is completely failing to run the game. Dropping to 12 fps in the mind palace and consistently performing 50% worse than its equivalent tflop rdna 2 gpus.

if the PS5 was struggling to handle the mesh shaders, it wouldve been running at either half the framerate or half the resolution of the xsx version. the 5 fps advantage is in line with the tflops difference. Tflops do matter.

Well we know PS5 uses primitive shaders. Do you think there is more overhead for Remedy getting their engine to work on the PS5 vs Series X that just supports mesh shaders natively?

 

[SEGAvangelist]

 

[SlimySnake]

Series S:
- Visual settings are identical to PS5/SX's Performance mode
- Most textures resolution also identical, but certain textures (specifically in Mind Place) are lower quality.
- SSR is a bit more grainy but a biproduct of lower resolution.
- Internal 720p using FSR2 upscaled to 1440p. UI renders at 1440p.
- Series S does not have a 60 FPS mode, only one 30 FPS mode.

This is the right choice. no need to ship a 60 fps mode when you have to drop resolutions to fucking 360p like lords of the fallen does or 480p like immortals. like have some self respect. People buying a $300 console know its not going to do 60 fps.

this is a game designed to run at 30 fps. I find it hilarious we are complaining about poor IQ in 60 fps modes. These games shouldnt even be shipping with 60 fps modes. you cant have industry leading visuals in $500 consoles running at 60 fps at higher resolutions.

Devs need to stop bending over to these people. most games if not all have been 30 fps. all the classics. all the gotys in the past 20-25 years have been 30 fps games. no one cares. make the game you want to make. i played FF16, zelda and now Spiderman 2 at 30 fps. they were smooth games. these silly compromised 60 fps modes are hurting the fidelity and artistic intent of these games and causing more drama thanks to DF than its worth.

 

[Gaiff]

- A beefy PC with path traced lighting etc is above the consoles, however.

I think this is the part of the analysis that shocks us all the most.

 

[Darsxx82]

It's an extension of the results seen in Control but expanded. It would have been interesting to see how much of a difference the framerate is as XSX locks at 60fps even when on PS5 it drops to low 50 (or even 40 highs as seen in other comparisons).

It's courios that Remedy didn't offer the XSX version for Reviews, but i think it clearly had to do with marketing deals ( or that the Xbox version was less debugged of graphical glitches and bugs even though the performance was better.

PS. XSS version is pretty decent.

 

[shamoomoo]

The PS5 version is a disaster in both modes, they need to patch it soon, not even the 30fps mode is stable.

No, the areas where the PS5 drops are outliers and not representative of general gameplay.

 

[FoxMcChief]

It's an extension of the results seen in Control but expanded. It would have been interesting to see how much of a difference the framerate is as XSX locks at 60fps even when on PS5 it drops to low 50 (or even 40 highs as seen in other comparisons).

It's courios that Remedy didn't offer the XSX version for Reviews, but i think it clearly had to do with marketing deals or that the Xbox version was less debugged of graphical glitches and bugs even though the performance was better.

PS. XSS version is pretty decent.

Competent devs can make the lesser console shine.

 

[T4keD0wN]

Alex has said that a 3070 runs it better by over 40% better, according to this consoles absolutely wipe the floor with my 3070ti which went into the 30fps range at just 720p in multiple chapters (for very long sequences of time).

Are they testing just the first 2 hours or what?

 

[shamoomoo]

I don't think it's a disaster. It has good performance in general and in fact, it is the most promoted by Remedy and it also seems that it is more "ahead" than Xbox in terms of updates, DF said that Remedy did not send the Xbox codes because updates were still missing. In the patch notes they indicate that they are still fixing bugs on Xbox platforms that were already fixed on PS5, updates come out later, etc.

I think there is not much margin here. The XSX GPU is simply more powerful, as is already known. It is logical that it is more stable. AW2 on PS5 doesn't perform badly at all. It is similar to A Plague Tale: Requiem. GPU-dependent games that are also studios with experience working for PC/Xbox... It is an expected result.

Except the Series S is a bit more stable than the PS5 at 720p than PS5 in both modes, especially in performance mode at 847p and 60 fps. Doesn't that seem a little odd?

 

[Gaiff]

Alex has said that a 3070 runs it better by over 40% better, according to this consoles absolutely wipe the floor with my 3070ti which went into the 30fps range at just 720p in mutiple chapters.

At the same settings. If you crank everything to max, then yeah, it can probably have some severe drops. Or your rig has a problem.

 

[Desprado123]

Series X handling those mesh shaders well.

Yes because this game is first build for DX12 in mind, which is opposite of many developers do. Capcom, Remedy and some other developers first design the game on PC, which automatically helps Xbox Series because of DX12.

However, RTX 2070 Super nearly 8% slower compare to PS5 in this game.

 

[T4keD0wN]

At the same settings. If you crank everything to max, then yeah, it can probably have some severe drops. Or your rig has a problem.

I used the "medium preset" which is close to console quality settings at the time with zero rt turned. The only tweaks ive made was disabling vignette, film grain, DoF and motion blur. Happened in chapter return 4, 5 and start of 6.

Seems like they didnt test past the start of the game or i had some memory leak after playing for like 4 hours straight.

 

[rofif]

I can confirm that ps5 version runs like hot trash.
Quality mode never holds 30in forests and stutters like hot poo because of it.

And the image quality is one of the worst I've seen this gen. Mega ssr grain, mega fsr breakup, mega specular shimmer...There is also no reason There are no mirrors reflections at all. They have absolutely no fallback from RT to no rt on consoles.
And I am so tired of looking at FSR hair this gen. Like... most hair this gen looks worse than last gen because of stupid fsr. It's trash

This is pretty bad.

And to imagine people had a problem with FF16 image quality and motion blur. FF16 motion blur is 10x lighter and cleaner looking and image quality got only som slight shimmer in comparison

 

[Pedro Motta]

Alex has said that a 3070 runs it better by over 40% better, according to this consoles absolutely wipe the floor with my 3070ti which went into the 30fps range at just 720p for very long sequences.

Are they testing just the first 2 hours or what?

Using console settings?

 

[proandrad]

I can confirm that ps5 version runs like hot trash.
Quality mode never holds 30in forests and stutters like hot poo because of it.

And the image quality is one of the worst I've seen this gen. Mega ssr grain, mega fsr breakup, mega specular shimmer...There is also no reason There are no mirrors reflections at all. They have absolutely no fallback from RT to no rt on consoles.
And I am so tired of looking at FSR hair this gen. Like... most hair this gen looks worse than last gen because of stupid fsr. It's trash

This is pretty bad.

And to imagine people had a problem with FF16 image quality and motion blur. FF16 motion blur is 10x lighter and cleaner looking and image quality got only som slight shimmer in comparison

FSR looks like trash in motion I wish console devs would just go back to checkerboard rendering.

 

[Darsxx82]

Competent devs can make the lesser console shine.

Clearly.It's true that no one can expect miracles, and XSS users know what to expect. But there have been cases of blatant negligence from some Studios that have distorted the true capabilities of XSS That's when cases like Street Fighter 6 are embarrassing and can't be understood. when ,for example, Tekken 8 beta and MK 1 have fantastic XSS versions.

I could understand it from Studios indi and with fewer resources for whom XSS becomes an extra optimization time that they don't have and that they even have to share with XSX and the latter can lose but not for big bugets Studios.

 

[Gaiff]

I used the "medium preset" at the time with zero rt. The only tweaks ive made was disabling vignette, film grain, DoF and motion blur. Happened in chapter return 4, 5 and start of 6. Seems like they didnt test past the start of the game.

The Medium preset is a lot more demanding than what the consoles are using in performance mode. In fact, the Medium preset has higher settings than consoles even in Quality mode. The biggest performance hog is the post-processing setting which using Medium defaults to High, meaning post-processing effects will be done at your native resolution which can massively tank your fps.

 

[Gaiff]

FSR looks like trash in motion I wish console devs would just go back to checkerboard rendering.

Checkerboard rendering isn't better than FSR though. It would also completely fall apart with a base resolution of sub-900p.

 

[SlimySnake]

I used the "medium preset" which is close to console quality settings at the time with zero rt turned. The only tweaks ive made was disabling vignette, film grain, DoF and motion blur. Happened in chapter return 4, 5 and start of 6.

Seems like they didnt test past the start of the game or i had some memory leak after playing for like 4 hours straight.

there is a memory leak.

 

[Senua]

FSR looks like trash in motion I wish console devs would just go back to checkerboard rendering.

Checkerboard sucked lol there's a reason devs moved away from it

 

[Desprado123]

Why PS5 is using FSR, where i think it has it's own dynamic resolution scaling, which is better FSR.

 

[DanielG165]

Impressive from the Xbox consoles; the Series S especially is performing very well on what is arguably the most demanding game of the year, outside of Immortals.

 

[proandrad]

Checkerboard rendering isn't better than FSR though. It would also completely fall apart with a base resolution of sub-900p.

Then they need to come up with something better. Copy whatever insomniac games are doing.

 

[Lokaum D+]

sponsored by MS

 

[Thirty7ven]

Remedy done the PS5 dirty with the 30 fps mode. And the dual sense support sucks too.

 

[sinnergy]

Well we know PS5 uses primitive shaders. Do you think there is more overhead for Remedy getting their engine to work on the PS5 vs Series X that just supports mesh shaders natively?

Mesh shaders are more to the metal, so who knows.

 

[Vergil1992]

Except the Series S is a bit more stable than the PS5 at 720p than PS5 in both modes, especially in performance mode at 847p and 60 fps. Doesn't that seem a little odd?

Xbox Series S is slightly more stable than PS5 in quality mode (30fps and better graphics settings) and a native 1260p resolution rebuilt to 4K. In XSS it runs at native 720p rebuilt at 1440p and with worse graphical settings.

XSS has no performance mode. I don't see what's strange here. They are logical differences.

 

[sinnergy]

I wonder if they can move FSR in quality mode to post filtering, would help shimmering , if there is headroom, like on pc.

 

[skyfinch]

Series X is a god damn monster! It's darrenflops and harddrive are no joke. Ps5 pro needs to step its game up.

 

[shamoomoo]

Xbox Series S is slightly more stable than PS5 in quality mode (30fps and better graphics settings) and a native 1260p resolution rebuilt to 4K. In XSS it runs at native 720p rebuilt at 1440p and with worse graphical settings.

XSS has no performance mode. I don't see what's strange here. They are logical differences.

I'm talking about the performance mode probably being similar to the Series S minus a few settings going off the Series X. If it's true that the Series S is bit more stable than the PS5,why not compare their relative performance drops in the same areas?