Alan Wake II: playable on the ARC A770 16GB LE?

[mindplay]

I read somewhere that the latest Intel ARC driver had been optimized to play Alan Wake II, so I went and downloaded the latest ARC driver (31.0.101.5084) and bought the game on Epic Games.

Something is really wrong here... at launch, I get an error message saying:

Your GPU does not support all the recommended features. This might lead to poor performance, visual glitches or crashes. A GPU with the following additional features is recommended:

- Mesh Shader
- The amount of video memory in this system does not meet the minimum specification of 6 GB. Your experience may suffer as a result.

This is obviously all nonsense - the card has 16 GB of RAM and definitely (lol) supports shaders.

But even with the low preset, the game runs at maybe 1 or 2 FPS.

I enabled the overlay to see what's going on - here's a video:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GWjGvFxSB5HC5wEWA

As you can see, the game initially runs smoothly with GPU activity sitting comfortably at 14%, CPU at about 2%, right up until the camera closes in on the character - then the GPU activity drops to about 2%, CPU to about 1% and the frame rate drops to 1-2 FPS.

It's as though the game isn't even using the GPU - or the CPU for that matter?

I've tried both windowed and full-screen mode.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900 with 32 GB of RAM.

The game is installed on a very fast M.2 SSD drive with plenty of space.

I've run the "verify" function in Epic, which didn't report any problems.

Game version is 1.0.14.1.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello mindplay

Thank you for posting on the Intel® ARC™ Graphics Communities.

We have received another report of low performance in Alan Wake 2, however, the report on the other thread is not as bad as the performance you are reporting, we are at the moment setting up a lab to test the game and to check if this issue needs further investigation. I would advise that you reinstall this game on your system, even though the Epic Store reports everything seems ok, it would be better to do a fresh installation as well as a fresh installation of the driver 31.0.101.5084 using Display Driver Uninstaller.

If the issue persists, please share with us a report from the Intel® System Support Utility so we can get more details of your hardware configuration.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[mindplay]

Hi Hugo,

I don't know how many times I've been asked to DDU and reinstall everything - it has never helped anything, but... I did it again, and I also waited patiently for 20 hours downloading this massive 90 GB game again from scratch.

Nothing changed - it runs the same as before, nice high framerate during the opening scene, then drops to about 1-2 FPS.

I have to wonder, if a complete reinstall with reboot is the only way your driver even installs correctly, why doesn't your driver installer just do that? Having to download a dodgy-looking third-party freeware tool to remove your driver isn't exactly convenient and frankly does not inspire any confidence in your software product.

Also, submitting my system information via your SSU utility still doesn't work - I made my way through the online service center and did manage to find the support case you created, and have attached the SSU report there.

(Based on my history with this card, I'm not expecting much. I've been patiently fighting issue after issue for going-on a year now, and I'm pretty close to just pulling the card and getting a 4060 instead. )

[mindplay]

I had a weird suspicion about this game and decided to plug the DisplayPort cable into the onboard plug on the motherboard

Presumably this means it's now using the very limited AMD Radeon graphics on the motherboard, right?

I don't see any difference at all - same smooth animation at the beginning, then drops to 1-2 FPS.

Is it possible the game has somehow decided to use the crappy onboard graphics instead of the GPU?

There is no performance difference whatsoever.

And it would make sense with the warning message it gives at startup, about not supporting shaders and not having the required 6 GB RAM - the onboard GPU likely doesn't meet those requirements.

But I'm getting that same warning if I boot the system with the DP cable plugged into the GPU.

What do you think??

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello mindplay

If you are using an iGPU it would be better to disable it through your system's BIOS to make sure that only the Arc GPU is being used, there is certainly a possibility the game is using the iGPU instead of the Arc Graphics. You can check what GPU is under the performance tab within the task manager, and you can try to disable the AMD graphics from the device manager as well:

• Go to Device Manager
• Go to Display Adapters
• Right-click on AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics
• Click on disable
• Test the game

Another step you can do is to force the game to use the Arc GPU:

1. From Start Icon, type "Graphics Settings" and Click the results from System Settings.
2. Click Desktop App.
3. Browse your application. If your application is not on the list, you will need to browse for the folder where the .exe file is located.
4. Clickon the application name/icon.
5. Click Options.
6. Set the application to your preferred GPU.
7. Click save.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[mindplay]

I decided to just disable the integrated GPU in BIOS - it worked! The warning is gone, and the game runs.

How was it that even possible though?

The integrated GPU wasn't even plugged in - yet it somehow manages to broadcast it's image over the Intel GPU? how? why??

Very strange and confusing.

But I suppose the game is to blame here? Why would it pick the unsupported GPU and then complain that it doesn't meet the requirements. That is just bizarre. They probably ought to know about this issue, but I couldn't find any support or contact options - you can refund the game via Epic, but that's all, I don't see any option to report bugs.

Anyway. Thanks for the help!

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello mindplay

It is good to know the game is now working fine after disabling the GPU, it might be an issue with how the game detected the main GPU on the system, in case you want to report this issue to the developer you can also contact Epic support. We are glad to know we were able to help you with this problem. Let us know if you have further questions or if you would like to close this thread.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[mindplay]

Yeah, so, no, this does not work properly.

Here are some screenshots to show you what I'm seeing:

As you can see, all the characters have weird glowing eyes.

You need to view that last screenshot in full resolution to understand what's going on there - the "mind room" is full of glistening crazy "snow flakes".

I tried tinkering with the graphics settings - one thing that affects the glitches is the "transparency" setting, which:

* when on: the game itself looks mostly okay but the "mind room" is full of "snow flakes".

* when off: the "glowing eyes" effect shows both in-game and in the "mind room", but the "snow flakes" in the "mind room" do not.

But now, here's where things get really weird - let me walk you through what happened, step by step:

* I went and updated the driver to 31.0.101.5085 (from the previous version) via the Driver & Support Assistant, without rebooting - launched the game, and all of the glitches went away, both in the "mind room" and in the game itself.

* I was even able to turn off "transparency", and everything kept working fine.

* Everything was fine until I switched off my computer last night.

* Then today, I turned on the computer, and all the glitches are back, exactly the same as before the driver update.

* I decided to use DDU again (which is what you would have told me to do anyway) and removed the drivers, in safe mode, and rebooted.

* I downloaded the full driver installer from here, reinstalled the driver, and rebooted again.

* Launched the game, and all the glitches were once again gone! With or without "transparency" switch on, it was fine.

* It was fine for about an hour, then suddenly, in the middle of a cut scene (in the morgue, right after the corpse guy looks at Saga through the glass wall) the "snowflakes" and glowing eyes both came back!

For reference, here are all my current graphics settings:

Very frustrating.

This is supposedly one of the best PC games in years, but there is just no way to enjoy this.

Let me know if there's anything else I can try.

[mindplay]

For the record, I systematically tried changing every setting from top to bottom.

I managed to get something that looks mostly okay, with these settings:

With GR=OFF, the whole screen inverts:

With GR=LOW, SSR=LOW, it's snowflakes.

With GR=LOW, SSR=OFF things look mostly okay.

So with transparency turned on, the game is playable, mostly, I guess - unless these glitches start showing up again out of nowhere, like they did before.

And the frame rate is meh, since I can't turn off transparency.

[mindplay]

Hm, even with the settings described above (with transparency turned on) some areas still have crazy windows.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello mindplay

The white artifacts and corruption you can see in the character's eyes is currently a known issue we have identified and we are working on it the issue is outlined in our driver release note and we advised at the moment to use transparency either low or high as a workaround. At the moment there is no estimated time for the issue to be resolved, however, we will keep track of this thread and will let you know once we have an update.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello mindplay

I checked this with our team and taking into consideration that the original issue being discussed on this thread was de 1fps performance problem we will need you to open a new thread to keep track of the other graphics corruption problem you reported. You can also keep track of this thread for future updates in case you do not want to open a new topic.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.