Your 16GB vram gpu isn't enough anymore (Alan wake 2)
(enough for highest quality at 4K) yes the game seems to have s* optimisation.
RT = Ray tracing PT = Path Tracing FG = Frame Generation
Source : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/alan-wake-2-performance-benchmark/
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Since that gpu has 24 GB of vram the game might be using more than it really needs, just because it can. The best way to test the importance of vram would be to get two cards of the same tier with different vram amounts (like the A770 8GB and 16GB) and see how that impacts performance.
Looked at the review. 4070ti (12G) and 3090ti (24G) scale similiarly until 4K RT / 4K PT, at which point most 12G cards stop scaling and drop to a couple fps. 6700xt (12G) and 7700xt (12G) doesn't seem affected in RT. With PT only 7700xt survives, with a whopping 7 fps. Similar thing happens at 1440p to 8GB cards
Edit: edited out a750
According to the posted picture this should happen at 1440p with >14GB VRAM used. It doesn't. 4k native is unplayable territory for every 12GB card anyway
Per their charts, the 4080 (16G) does fine and outperforms the 3090 Ti even at 4K.
4080 is decisively better than 3090ti in general
There are also plenty of totally reasonable settings that require less than 12GB, 1440p maximum settings for example. If you want the best of the best, obviously you have to pay for the best of the best.
(It's still a lot and a minimum of 12GB is already ridiculous. I'm just saying the claim of 16GB being not enough is kinda dishonest)