Digital Foundry's technical verdict on Alan Wake 2 for Xbox Series X|S is here, and it's pretty good news all round. The tech-focused outlet deems the Xbox Series X version the best console release so far, while Series S fares rather well for a less-powerful machine too.
To sum things up, Xbox Series X and PS5 are largely a match when it comes to raw resolution figures, but Series X is a much smoother affair in the frame rate department. This is true across both the quality and performance modes present on Xbox Series X.
"In terms of resolution, the Series X version renders at 1270p in quality mode, with a 4K FSR 2 output resolution. In performance mode, we're looking at a 847p resolution, with an output of 1440p. This makes it a match for the PlayStation 5 version, which extends to visual quality generally.
Frame-rates are where the two systems diverge. Series X, for its part, delivers a very smooth rendition of Alan Wake. In performance mode, it offers close to a locked 60fps, with uncommon exceptions. We can drop a frame or two sometimes during traversal, and there are a few spots that cause momentary frame-rate drops, but the game feels quite smooth in general play."
Over on Xbox Series S, we have just one visual mode running at 30 frames per second. Here's how Digital Foundry sums that version up, along with how it stacks up to PS5:
"Internally, the Series S is operating at or around 720p. That's down from the 847p resolution in the Series X performance mode. Output resolution, though, remains at 1440p, as the two consoles exhibit very similar clarity in stills - and the rare snippet of UI that isn't anti-aliased comes in at a 1440p pixel count.
Performance-wise, the Series S manages a pretty stable 30fps with an update that is a bit more consistent than PS5 but falls slightly short of its more powerful sibling. There are some occasional moments in tougher areas where it can drop frames, though it tends to be well-behaved elsewhere.
For a cut-price console, I think the Series S is delivering a perfectly fine update here, and the excellent motion blur and slower-paced gameplay render the lack of a 60fps option less of an issue than it would be in many other titles."
In general then, the outlet believes Xbox Series X|S is turning in a fine rendition of Remedy's latest classic in Alan Wake 2. If you'd like to read up on our thoughts of the game in general, do check out our full written review - we gave it a very high score!
Are you happy with this turnout for Alan Wake 2 on Xbox? Leave your thoughts on all these technicalities down below.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 42
Let’s not also forget series x VRR runs down to 20hz to 120hz so in quality mode at 30fps you can get another advantage there.
I think the PS5 VRR doesn’t kick in until 48hz to 120hz which won’t help the quality mode at 30fps.
To the best of my knowledge this is the first game to use mesh shaders on PC and xbox Series S/X and on PS5 they use the geometry engine on primitive shaders to produce a similar result. I read an interview with one of the developers before the game launched. Maybe it could help explain the performance increase?
@Sakai ...and the fact there is a 20% performance differential when properly optimized.
But, yeah, I do wonder if Mesh Shaders are just more performant than the primitive shaders that the PS5 uses.
Series X for (most) multiplats.
PS5 for exclusives.
This is the way. 🧐
That PS5 SSD, amirite.
Series X is more powerful and also more efficient (less heat and noise) than PS5, but not many developers make the most of it. It's very interesting that this is the first game to use mesh shaders on a console. There are also those built-in CPU features and DirectX optimisations available on Series S|X.
I went with the X version, happy days! Not sure what difference to performance mesh shaders actually make, I wish DF would have at least given some indication, but they can’t dump on their golden goose console.
Either way it just goes to show, optimise properly for the Series X and there should be an advantage going forward, especially as games get graphically more demanding like Wake 2.
@IronMan30 true that. I'm finding the loading on Starfield incredibly painful versus the instant loads I'm getting used to on PS5. Am really confused why as Spiderman is huge open world with instant load times and more impressive visuals / FPS while Starfield open world is generally very small with some loading being just a house but taking irritatingly long. Poor development I assume or is it the SSD?
@BobaTheFett you seem like the perfect sucker to drop another £600+ on a PS5 pro console. Enjoy 😂
@Xbox360Gamer ah cheers. So it probably makes a small difference. I would have liked the video to mention it , even if it made no difference, but they didn’t. They just drilled home how unexpected it was that it performs better on Series X, which I found a little bizarre tbh.
@Banjo- They have no reason to typically. The PS5, with a single rendering pipeline is our selling the S+X 3:1.
Meanwhile the S is out selling the X roughly the same. So it makes most financial sense to just do a basic port of anything due to the poor expectation of sales on Xbox compared to literally everything else.
@BobaTheFett
Tired to look this up and supposedly the series x does run Low Frequency Compensation which can take it down to 20hz.
Also series x only needs your tv to have HDMI 2.0 for VRR as where PS5 needs HDMI 2.1 on your TV to work.
Then again Sony never make there consoles or TVs or blu ray players simple without some sort of compromise or thing you need to have.
@Strawbnyan yes.
I'll get it on ps5 ,after watching the full video ,the differences are minimal, so ps5 it is for the better pad.
@OldGamer999 I did not know this..cheers
@Mephisto2869
Didn’t know what? Please
@OldGamer999 that the series x allows you to use hdmi 2.0
@Strawbnyan I really don't care, I just knew that my comment would upset some users on here, specifically the ones who insist a certain other console has the best games on the planet yet rarely seem to actually play their video games. Most of which I ignore, but they tend to show themselves on articles like this, where a game actually has better performance on their least favorite system (that most normal people won't notice anyway, like 95% of other video games).
@Mephisto2869
Yes it does with VRR.
Why the PS5 doesn’t is anyone’s guess.
Probably because they want to sell you a new tv as well.
@BobaTheFett "This site is so insecure and it so often shows. Our console is less popular but sometimes better... right?"
Aren't more insecure posters that obviously dislike Xbox and post on a site called "Pure Xbox" just to piss Xbox users off?
@BobaTheFett
Yes series x supports free sync which has LFC
AS BELOW.
Meanwhile, LFC kicks in for every game on the Xbox Series X, resulting in a smoother experience with games where the frame rate drops into and below the low 40s
@Strawbnyan This is the one of the three with the highest ratio of trolling, especially lately. It wasn't like this before. I was here before the site's resurrection. I assume that most PX readers don't bother to comment anymore. On Nintendo Life, most complaints are made by Nintendo fans and they have a point. Push Square is an alternative reality.
It's funny because they are more "worried" about the potential issues of Xbox than the Xbox players and they spend more time bashing Xbox than playing the supposedly better PS exclusives, which I find worse than Microsoft's since the last generation. I say this because it's not true that Sony's games are better, that's subjective. Same for Nintendo's and Microsoft's games. That argument is pointless because it's 100% subjective, unless you compare an awful game to an excellent one but, overall and considering all games, it's subjective. I love State of Decay 2 and it got bad reviews, but also because it was much worse at launch. It's just a single example of a game I consider awesome (now).
If you read the threads, you see that Xbox users might be concerned about certain things to a certain degree, but some users you don't see often are predicting Xbox's doom on any thread, being 100% negative about everything that involves Microsoft and Xbox. It's like they are trying sooo hard to change things and make Microsoft fail to maintain a gaming division, but this is a little tiny community and they won't ever make a difference. Many of them pretend to be multiplatform and unbiased, but it's obvious that they aren't.
@Strawbnyan I'm also primarily a Switch gamer, but I have built a solid Xbox library and generally like the people here so I come to this site for Xbox news.
I love both consoles, but I went with the PS5 because of the DualSense and its features.
@Banjo- hey bud, not seen you for a while glad to see you again.
You’re right, this community is tiny compared to NL and PS, neither of which I bother visiting or commenting on, but I like the little community here. I don’t find it ‘toxic’ I despise that word in modern day language, it’s lazy.
A few of us were here talking about mesh shaders, which ps5 lacks, and the difference they can make because that’s an interesting discussion to have and certain individuals like to come in and say we’re ’toxic’. Get out of here 😂
@Fenbops Hey, nice to know that somebody misses me when I'm gone for a little while 😊. I also appreciate your comments because you are a long-time genuine Xbox player. Yeah, this little community is likeable! I just wished more people cared to post when visitors come here just to call us insecure and toxic, just because we are liking what we're getting, as if Xbox could bring joy to no one 🤣.
@Banjo- i think you find Series X an Playstation 5 are pretty much identical. Xbox used in their advertising “THE MOST POWERFUL GAMES CONSOLE ON THE MARKET!!!”
The were forced to alter to “MOST POWERFUL XBOX ON MARKET!!!”
@OldGamer999 I believe the VRR floor is only 20fps if you are in 120Hz mode, which is only relevant in a few games. In most games the VRR floor will be 40fps on Xbox. Still better than PS5's 48fps.
EDIT: and as @BobaTheFett right pointed out most TVs don't handle VRR lower than 40fps. E.g. most LG OLEDs are 40-120Hz
Though in reality this game doesn't really go below this threshold on PS5 in 60fps mode so performance would be identical with VRR in that mode. In quality mode, or without VRR, Xbox has a slight edge but as the video clearly states "most of the time PS5 does hit it's 30fps target", it's not the big advantage some are stating.
@GamingFan4Lyf 20% performance differential? Where are you getting that from? Raw specs? They just don't work like that, it's the whole system as a whole that matters. It's akin to saying a 1,216hp supercar could get round a track faster than a 1028hp one. On the right track, under the right conditions sure, but not always.
Reality is this gen we've seen very close performance on most games and slight performance advantages on individual games. It's pretty evenly split. This is one that is slightly on Xbox side (for now, it may be patched) but as the DF review clearly states the PS5 version holds it's target fps "most of the time", and they praise both versions.
@themightyant No, I am basing on the "right track, under the right conditions" that you just said. I mean, yes, on paper, it is 20% more powerful which is where I got that number, but it's definitely not an "out of the box" type differential.
I am not knocking the PS5 version at all! This generation has been pretty close performance-wise. But under the right conditions, the Series X can have an advantage.
Remedy managed to find whatever advantage there is and used it.
I think it's okay to admit that the Xbox has a performance advantage without it being some kind of an insult to PlayStation. I'm giving credit where credit is due.
Remedy has done an incredible job getting the Series S version looking the way it does as well as getting the PS5 and Series X versions looking and running the way they do. In this case, the Series X edges out the PS5 in certain scenarios.
"Right track, under the right conditions"
Oh oh…. I predict a twitter outrage calling Digital Foundry biased once more…
@GamingFan4Lyf I agree. It's just that for one engine we see advantages on one console and on others it favours the other. This uses Remedy's excellent Northlight Engine which we already know runs better on Xbox. Even the base XBO model outperformed the base PS4 in Control for example, which was a rarity last gen.
@GamingFan4Lyf @Sakai @Xbox360Gamer @Fenbops I think the performance difference is unlikely to be Mesh Shaders. DF covered this briefly in their latest weekly video. PS5 uses it's own solution here and there is no MAJOR drop off between the two.
Whereas on PC when you drop from a 2080 WITH Mesh Shaders to a 1080 Ti WITHOUT Mesh Shaders performance falls off a cliff. We're talking from 62fps to 22fps. Not the much smaller delta we see on Xbox vs PS5.
While we don't know exactly what PS5's on silicon 'geometry engine' does we have seen enough leaks and twitter posts from devs that suggest it does occlusion culling, simplification of vertices and other techniques that are similar to Xbox. Add to that the fact Alan Wake 2 performs very similarly, albeit a bit worse in a few specific places, suggests PS5 has similar features and it's more likely to be general engine performance and pure compute giving Xbox the slight edge.
None of that is conclusive of course, but logically all the evidence suggests Mesh Shaders aren't a big differentiator between the two.
@Pimpernel hey correct. Did you enjoy Forza?
@themightyant if the Mesh shaders are more performant at the same task than the Geometry engine, the increase in performance could be down to that. Obviously it is just an educated guess as nobody will really know, but it does make logical sense.
I have never seen anyone measure the difference between the two to come to that conclusion, and this is the first game to support mesh shaders on console. Very little information is known about the Geometry Engine. Could you point me in the direction of the test that came to that conclusion. I would be interested in reading it
DF and Remedy both confirmed the use of Geometry Engine, but they did not say there is no performance difference between the two methods
You mentioned Control and that is interesting, because that game had more even performance between PS5 and XBox series X (With Series X actually stuttering more)
Maybe this is more evidence that the extra performance has come from Mesh shaders, as Control did not support them, and their last game was more even between the 2 consoles in performance terms.
But with Alan Wake 2 there is clearly a more performant console version at this moment, when watching the graphs on the DF video, and mesh shaders is the main difference that we know of between the 2 versions of the North Light Engine, used in Control and Alan Wake 2
@themightyant The Geometry Engine is based on AMDs Primitive Shaders.
Doing a quick search, they work in very similar ways but apparently aren't as efficient as Mesh Shaders, which is why Microsoft chose not to use them for DX12 Ultimate in favor of Mesh Shaders. 🤷♂️
While it's not a "big differentiator", it could be one part of the reason why the PS5 takes a minor performance hit in more complex areas - on top of the fact that Northlight Engine has fantastic DX12 (and by extension Xbox) performance - an area where a lot of games still struggle on PC.
I find all this stuff fascinating. I do hope other developers take a look at what Remedy has done and adopt Mesh Shaders/Primitive Shaders because they appear to provide some insane graphical detail and able to run on supported lower-end hardware.
I look at the sheer level of geometric detail in Alan Wake 2 and I am just amazed by it all. AW2 has probably the best forest area I have ever seen in a game!
@Sakai You are right that the small performance delta could potentially be that the Geometry Engine is less performant at doing a similar task to Mesh Shaders.
I was more making the point that whatever the Geometry engine DOES do - we don't know for certain, it's under NDA - it obviously does something SIMILAR to Mesh Shaders otherwise we would see a similar drop off to what we see on PC without them i.e. 62fps to 22fps on cards that are usually quite closely matched.
The evidence there is no MAJOR drop off between Mesh Shaders and whatever PS5 is doing is the Alan Wake 2 performance itself. Same graphical settings and similar performance with Xbox having a small performance delta. DF said PS5 holds it's frame target most of the time, but they show the worst dips, they aren't the norm. If there was a major difference in performance, like on PC, there would have to be a trade off somewhere like resolution, graphical presets etc. Hence, logically, there is no major performance drop off between the two features.
Xbox does still have a small advantage on this game. It could be that PS5's solution is slightly less performant as you say. It could also be that the Northlight engine runs better on Xbox as it did last gen. It could be Xbox's on paper specs are the differentiator. All are possible.
@GamingFan4Lyf Like you I find it all fascinating. I am not saying I conclusively have the answers, quite the opposite, i'm stating we don't know, but we can logically look at where the data is pointing and speculate. Alan Wake 2 is one game with more we will have more data.
@themightyant
I think my Lg c2 does have LFC?
The VRR is a bit perplexing to be honest.
As on my LG TV C2 if my series x is set to VRR and 120hz mode in the settings.
When you check the LG C2 tv you get information and even when the game is say 30fps or 60fps the tv is running live with about 118fps.
I guess this is to do with the series x set to 120hz mode in picture settings and the LG tv picking that up.
So dam confusing.
@themightyant of that there is no doubt, the PS5 does something similar with triangle culling etc, as I mentioned in my first post about Geometry Engine and Primitive Shaders. Another example is the xbox uses hardware vrs, but the ps5 uses a software version, with hardware vrs having an advantage.
I was just theorising on a possible reason for the extra performance, as their last game Control had more even performance between the two, with the ps5 even out performing in some scenarios.
Whereas with Alan Wake 2 it seems that the results are less even this time with one offering better performance when measured
@Sakai yes we are both just theorising. All is possible. But I believe some of these things are baked into the PS5 silicon in their 'geometry engine', not just software including a VRS equivalent
As engineer Matt Hargett posted on Twitter when overzealous fans were speculating 'XSX ruins PS5 due to VRS' etc.
Other devs lightly broke NDA and said similar things, effectively saying Mesh Shaders, VRS etc. weren't the silver bullet some were claiming them to be, that PS5 had them covered.
Again none of that is conclusive. It's all just speculation but from developers not the rabid Twitterati.
If I had to make an educated GUESS based on all the small slips of information I have seen i'd posit that the 'Geometry Engine' is based on an earlier spec of RDNA2, they just didn't wait for RDNA2 to be fully ratified. It takes years for these specs to become concrete but most features don't change much towards the end. They are probably very similar to RDNA2, with a sprinkling of their own custom features.
It reminds me of my TV which is NOT HDMI 2.1 as it released around when HDMI 2.1 was first certified. And yet my HDMI port has all the HDMI 2.1 features I could need 4K@120fps + VRR + HDR even though it is officially an HDMI 2.0 port and shouldn't be able to do those features all at once. It's not limited to 18Gbps like 2.0, it allows 40Gbps, but not the full 48Gbps of 2.1. I suspect that PS5's fabled "it only has RDNA1" features are more akin to that with more RDNA2 blood than we know.
But this is a complete assumption based off little bits of evidence over many years.
The Control example is super-interesting. I don't think I've seen that video before. I forgot it had a native next-gen version. Weird that it ran better on XBO than PS4 but better on PS5 than XSX in the remaster. That IS an anomaly! lol
@themightyant interesting post mate. The last game I remember that compared VRS was Resident Evil Village (i think) with xbox hardware vrs producing better imagine quality than the ps5 software equivalent. But maybe the GE has a hardware accelerated version that Capcom did not use? I would be very surprised, as they would have used it, but it's not impossible.
The control results are why I theorised Mesh shaders, as its the biggest difference between the 2 versions of North Light. But who knows!
@Fenbops i did thank you. It very fast! I love riding fast!!! 🫨🤭
@Sakai I've now watched the DF video you linked on next-gen Control performance, thanks for that, I also watched a few DF follow ups.
It's true they reported some stuttering issues on XSX, but more generally they still discuss a slight performance advantage on XSX. In fact when they unlock the frame rate via photo mode the XSX outperforms the PS5 by around 16% across the 20 samples Alex took. About in line with the on paper raw specs advantage of the XSX.
Again the cause of this isn't conclusive, it could be the raw on paper specs advantage of the XSX as DF posit, it could also be the engine just runs better on Xbox, or a combination of a lot of other variables, which they acknowledge.
Personally I think it's likely a bit of everything, it usually is, but it seems likely the Northlight engine just runs better on Xbox is a PART of that. I say that as the game ran consistently better on Xbox One S than it did on base PS4, a rarity last gen. We've seen this with other engines, which just run more efficiently on one architecture and set of APIs to another.
Which brings us back to Mesh Shaders. Again it could also be a factor in the performance difference. But I think i've demonstrated it certainly isn't the only big variable here. And if the PS5 didn't have a similar on silicon feature, and fell back to a software solution like on older PCs, the performance drop-off would be MUCH more severe.
None of this is important of course but, like Digital Foundry, I find it all interesting. Happy gaming.
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