Alan Wake 2 - Ray Tracing OFF vs ON vs Path Tracing | Comparison

[@AMGameGoesOn]

We don't notice much difference when turning RT to Low from off because the game by default has software based RT turned on even with hardware based RT turned off in settings.

[@oropher1234]

I think there is a pretty big difference between RT on and off, but a small difference between the path traced indirect lighting on and off. Performance difference between PT off and RT on with them both on, is also rather small.

[@loganwolv3393]

Exactly, this is the first game that dosen't have full rasterization, otherwise the difference would be bigger. Still this game looks extremely good, heck it looks good even on the lowest settings (except if u turn reflections to low).

[@Terrylovesjougurt]

So basically, little to no difference especially without the A/B comparison during the gameplay but 30% of the FPS and price of gpu x 3. Got it. Brilliant.

[@curtisaxel4291]

exactly my thoughts

[@kaisyaya8492]

the difference with RT on and off is uncanny ! especially if you take a close look to the top right corner of the screen !!!

[@qing9367]

its because RT off still doing ray tracing from software side

[@loganwolv3393]

2007: Can it Run Crysis? 2023: Can it Run Alan Wake 2?

[@qing9367]

crysis was unoptimized mess. alan wake on low still look one of the best games of 2023

[@NBWDOUGHBOY]

The last 2 scenes were the ones that made a world of difference with Path Tracing. Alot of the other scenes look just fine with low RT.

[@b0rg1010]

My eyes must be bad as I cannot see any difference on my phone. Before and after look exactly the same. 🤣

[@AMGameGoesOn]

Major differences in areas are first the reflections then shadows and finally the lighting. Also watching on a small screen isn't gonna be that great for this video.

[@b0rg1010]

@@AMGameGoesOn thanks for explanation. I'll take a look on a bigger screen as I've just purchased a 4070ti so I'm interested in your video. Thanks. Very much appreciated. 👍

[@krizztykrab2297]

The game actually uses Lumen like technology of Unreal Engine 5 which basically replaces path tracing working way faster using the same resources, which is by default On hence why "mesh shaders" are required. It means that game already has some level of ray tracing by default so there is little to no difference between default and path tracing.

[@AMGameGoesOn]

@@b0rg1010 I am also looking to buy 4070 Ti or Super or whatever they release next year.

[@b0rg1010]

@@AMGameGoesOn yeah, I game at 2k resolution and come from a 1080ti and see a huge gain in performance on modern games (Cyberpunk being one of them) and my previous Zotac AMP Extreme wasn't slow.

[@Dullahan_1]

the game already kinda uses raytracing even with it toggled off , software emulated for lighting and ssr for reflections not perfect but still great

[@spitfire1789]

Game looks incredible even without RT/PT. I like RT but for me, the difference is barely noticeable in this one, even in a side by side. The glass reflections are the best part and most noticeable followed by some shadows (3rd scene). Also, the stuttery feeling as soon as PT gets ton on in unmissable and lastly, idk if this is by design but the game feels way more grainy at native compared to PT (it looks horrible at fsr native but decent at quality which makes me think there's likely a fix on their end).

[@cosmic_gate476]

The PT is only useable with frame generation imo, this game has dense geometry that shows off the perfect occlusion of PT very well. The average person will not notice the 3 bounce limitation for traced rays, and in the future I'm excited for full path tracing with even more bounces and samples per pixel to be the norm in games. I expect it right around the release of next gen consoles.

[@Danuxsy]

The entire game is using RT even when you have RT off, how come? Because the lightning is BAKED using RT. Just like Counter Strike games has been doing since the early 2000s but at a lower resolution.

[@kevindellatore]

Global reflections only works when I have path tracing on, so unless my game is glitched then only the PT feature has reflections.

[@rika017games]

Fkkkkkk

[@piotrkowalski3869]

The only noticeable differences are in dark areas whit small light sources. With no RT they are unnaturally bright while with RT on (even no low) they are properly dark with only subtle lightning where it naturally would be applied. In well lit and open world locations in daytime the difference is barely noticeable. As for the reflections its nice to see world and character reflections in windows, but reflections in water surfaces barely see any change.

[@NBWDOUGHBOY]

I would love to be able to tune the settings the way I want them. I would do Path Tracing Reflections and RT Low Global Illuminations and Shadows.

[@dwatts64]

I love this game but the performance is so polarizing at times that it's frustrating. I finally just settled to where anytime I'm playing in Alan Wake's sections, i turn RT+Path tracing on and everything maxed out, and i average 65-80fps. Then wherever i switch to Saga's sections, i switch RT off and turn some of the volumetric settings down so i can get that 60-75 average. It's crazy how much harder the engine has to work the moment there's any grass or trees onscreen. Specs: Ryzen R7 5800X 32 GB RAM @3200MHz RTX 3070Ti OC installed on Western Digital black NVME drive on 16x Lane

[@AMGameGoesOn]

That's exactly how I played the game on my streams, RT+PT or at least RT on when playing as Alan, and turning off RT PT when in Saga section. Foliage in any engine will hit performance hard but much harder on this one.

[@dwatts64]

@@AMGameGoesOn yeah I expected hers to be the harder sections, but I didn't expect the 40% hit it takes on performance in her parts. Though I did find that if I turn RT on but not PT, it could maintain the 60fps if I set my DLSS to Balanced or Performance. Though, with this game using the Mesh Shaders, if you're not using the PT and direct lighting and all the bells and whistles there's not really a point to turning it on. The Mesh Shaders are about as good as the plane old RT in this, though you lose some of the fine details, but while playing you don't notice it much. So I just turned it off because without the PT on it wasn't worth the performance hiccups with Saga. Though the SSR is worth turning off of you don't use RT. Once you get used to RT reflections, Screen Space Reflections make your eyes bleed. Especially janky ones like this and RE2Remake. They need to make the SSR reflections populate the frame buffer BEFORE the 3rd Person character model is laid over the top. That's how a few games do it and it looks great. If you don't do it, reflections on the ground that are supposed to be in front of your character will somehow reflect your character. It is so distracting that I turn them off.

[@JustThePR]

You should not even be using Path Tracing with a 3070Ti.

[@dwatts64]

@@JustThePR I know that's what everyone has said, but my experience has not been this. Even have like Cyberpunk, if I use DLSS I can get consistent 50+fps performance on my 3070Ti with path tracing on high. I started putting the DLSS on balanced, locking the framerate at 45, and using Lossless Scaling for frame gen and it is a pretty butter smooth 90fps with PT on in just about everything that has it now (this is all at 1080P or 1440P depending on the game). Obviously it's not the 120+fps performance I'd like in a perfect world, but holding 60+ fps in PT visuals with a GPU from like 2020/2021 is pretty damned impressive, and pretty playable imo.

[@GFS695]

Its not worth the huge hit in frames for sure, RT just seems like its a demo feature still.

[@Misz1986]

I think CP77 has just low quality rasterization, thats why Overdrive is so cool :) . Maybe this game is good example why CDP is changing game-engine to UE.

[@zero2006xl]

High level rasterization is very expensive. Cyberpunk was designed to fit somewhat on old gen consoles and it is a big open city. You cannot compare. Plus CP2077 was released on 2020.

[@Danuxsy]

this game is already using RT (offline rendered and baked) so even with RT off you are seeing RT lightning but it isn't real-time. Even counter strike have been doing this since the early 2000s.

[@VSN-wb2ly]

So the next witcher game will be using UE5? that's both a good news and bad news, god news is finally there'll be less glitches and maybe the combat could be improved, but the bad news is obviously performance

[@easezgin]

PT is I guess short for "Puddle Tracing". Amazing detailed puddles in the last 2 shots. Others were the same.

[@92angelguzman]

I honestly don't see a difference in my rig. When I turn off rt in my 7900xt. It's looks like it's running rt lol when I turn on rt everything is blurry and light doesn't bounce that well

[@JustThePR]

Thats because AMD's RT acceleration is a generation behind NVIDIA. I own both cards and NVIDIAs RT cores handle RT WAYYYYYYY better. 7900XT and 4080 Super.

[@Hogo69]

It's crazy how demanding rt and pt are. I turn it off and get 100+ fps maxed at 1440p with dlss / frame gen w/ my regular 4070. With PT and RT medium I have to run the everything in medium - low to get decent frames. Guess a 4080 + is required for rt and pt.

[@itsaUSBline]

Medium and low in this game still look excellent, honestly as good or better than ultra settings in a lot of other games. I also have a 4070, been running it at 4k medium preset DLSS performance and getting a solid 60 (most of the time). I really don't mind turning things down a bit in this one, because the game still looks pretty amazing. It would be smarter, performance-wise, to just turn the output resolution down to 1440p, but I have a 4k TV I use for games, and 1440p ends up looking really blurry on it.

[@collateral7925]

This game looks pretty much similar with some small detail changes in shadows and window reflections. In a game like Cyberpunk 2.1 you really see a significant difference, especially with path tracing enabled.

[@AMGameGoesOn]

It is cause this game already has software-based RT on by default unlike in Cyberpunk.

[@omer-ir4ye]

Their pipeline without hardware RT enabled is already stunning. Besides for the control no other game can even compete. The behavior of the light, indirect illumination and subtle shades of the light, contact shadows of GI and ambient occlusion and such. It looks insane. Except for the horizon forbidden west which was already chosen as the game of the year in terms of graphics. This game also proves that most games get released without even slight refinement. Even compared to non-rt settings of AW2 cyberpunk with path tracing looks really awful. Except for some minor cases most of the characters, walls environment etc. look awful. Their denoising or compisiton of the indirect illumination during the pipeline blurs everything too much it looks like there is no rt at all

[@ranvirgarcha5620]

Quick question, would a i7 9700k pair good with a 3070ti, random question but it would be hella helpful to get ur opinion if that’s okay, i’ve been so confused because some people say it’s good and some say it’s bottlenecking hella. Thank you!

[@AMGameGoesOn]

My previous CPU was the i7 9700K. I have done numerous benchmarks using that cpu and this 3070 Ti. What I have found is that in CPU heavier games like BF2042 the 9700K struggles a lot and causing CPU bottleneck. Otherwise games which are GPU heavy like this one it should be just fine with 3070Ti. So its up to you now what types of games you generally play and what work you do on the pc and decide your CPU. At this point I would rather go for i5 12th gen rather than the 9700K (which you are probably getting from used market at this point I think).

[@Asian_Import]

I would look into the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Same price and much better especially for gaming (3x faster in most cases). You'll need an AMD-compatible motherboard as well, but if you haven't ordered any of the parts yet it's worth it!

[@powercoder]

In the final scene, the PT high looks unnatural to me! The reflection is so clear that should be more blurry in real life. It looks like old fashioned hand creafted lighting works better in many cases!

[@DOGOID]

yes ,the reflection is crisper and clearer than the thing it's reflecting in the scene.

[@JustThePR]

Reflection blurriness versus clarity is so random in reality. I've seen puddles of water and reflections were crystal clear but then saw reflections in a lake that were fuzzier than a wolvers butthole. Idk what reflection exactly you're referring to in the video, but it's probably based on the surrounding area and lighting.

[@damianedo]

the 3070 begs for mercy

[@VSN-wb2ly]

ray tracing is my option, path tracing is just too intensive, and it doesn't really that much different aside from puddles and the table scene

[@curtisaxel4291]

My honest opinion - that kind of difference is nice, but 100% not worth the fps loss I have a laptop with rtx 4080, but I'm not sure that I'll get 60 fps with rt enabled, and if not - I will disable it without any hesitation

[@shpek_shpek]

Yeah, this video is a clear evidence for me that RT is total gimmick that would eat huge chunk of performance in exchange of a bit sharper shadows in some places and some nice reflections on some windows... Amd graphics card is a preferred choice to buy instead of overpriced nvidia ones

[@AMGameGoesOn]

Indeed. But the game looks really good even without rt and pt.

[@shpek_shpek]

@@AMGameGoesOn agreed 👍

[@Grue_ni]

The FPS 😂

[@powercoder]

RT is just gimmicks! Developers have been working for a long time to find a workaround for real lighting that in many cases work better than the actual RT!

[@c-sync9223]

i have a 4090 and the ray tracing on maxed out vs off is so much better and different> he couldnt of picked worse shots or angles in fact i can tell he doesnt even know what to look for based on the shots he is choosing to showcase and also with a card thats jus not... capable enough. look at the shadows things creatw the way light bounces of everything the tiniest of things from a laced window curtain shadow bieng a blur to ecatly like the lace like it would in real life... paht tracing is something inasne your pc needs to handle it but especially when it comes to water, mud, glass, metal. window, reflective surrfaces its so much more realistic... i promise this video is to make this guy feel like he isnt missing out but.. trust me being able to max all settings and ray tracing settings and never drop below 70ish fps in the most dense heavy parts of the game well... you notice one hell of a difference, first time ive ever used ray tracing and really felt and saw its value. shadows and lighting and reflections and tiniest details are all now so more abundant and as clear as can be in 4k

[@sandboy5880]

Can't see shit. Looks the same to me. Not worth it completely for how much the performance gets hit.

[@glive5070]

капейка

[@clintonwatson1295]

Im so glad i went amd this time what a hoax fr

[@indiakimakiiiiiiii]

bruhh