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[Solved?] Alan Wake 2 - Performance seems poorer than it should be?

I was wondering if anyone could offer some insights.

Bit the bullet and purchased Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Game Store. With the DLC on the way I just can't wait any longer and maybe this one will never come to Steam? (With Epic as publishers, who knows)

I've installed Heroic Game Launcher, downloaded the latest Wine-GE and Proton-GE, downloaded the game and managed to get it running. Tried it with both Wine-GE and Proton-GE. No noticeable difference.

My specs:

  • Intel Core i7 10700K
  • 48Gb RAM
  • Radeon RX 7800 XT 16Gb
  • Manjaro Linux, kernel 6.9
  • Mesa 24.1.1 (using the mesa-nonfree repo)
  • Game is installed on my 1TB NVME drive

I'm running things on Medium/High, with FSR2 on Balanced, in 2560x1440

No raytracing enabled anywhere.

Honestly, it doesn't matter what resolution I choose. Even when running is 720p on Low, the framerate is the same.

I get around 27 fps with regular dips into the lower 15-20 when I spin the camera around quickly.

I've finished the first chapter (just in the morgue) and the framerate got choppier and choppier. I get Bright Falls has a lot more going on than the intro woodsy bit. But at this rate, I'm just not sure what to do.

When I look at other people on YouTube, their framerates are much higher. Even on Linux. And with less powerful hardware. Other games run MUCH faster. I get AW2 is demanding, but I can play CP2077: Phantom Liberty at 140+ fps in Dog Town on High in 1440p with FSR2 enabled, so I don't feel that AW2 should tank my PC that hard.

Is there something I'm overlooking here? I've tried the CyberFSR as well, made no noticeable difference.

Mangohud shows my CPU is consistently around 50% and my GPU is around 40% so there's definitely room to push things more, I feel. So why isn't AW2 using these resources?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I love this game and want to play it, but the framerate is stopping me from really enjoying it.

12
12 comments

  • I don't own the game so I can't offer a lot of help but have you tried ProtonDB?

    There are two posts saying that they needed to use an older version of Proton.

    https://www.protondb.com/app/202750

    It doesn't seem like there's much else there or on the PCGamingWiki related to it besides the audio issue fixes.

    • Alan Wake 2 isn't American Nightmare, that's an expansion. There isn't a protondb page of alan wake 2 because it's not on Steam

      • Ah my mistake. I wasn't sure if it was a subtitle like Alan Awake 2: An American Nightmare.

        You may want to try searching around GitHub. There's a few posts regarding vkd3d.

        https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/1754

        If you scrolls down to the bottom there are a few potential fixes mentioned in the form of launch commands.

        There was this comment on Reddit as well

        well there is some good news and bad news...the good news that i got it some fixes from other sites that it all need to do add env command line to your proton terminal is add this

        export VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_EXT_mesh_shader VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_0 VKD3D_SHADER_MODEL=6_5 %command%

        then my fps went from 12 to 45 to 51 fps...and fbi lettering is restored as well, weird??

        it looks like it disable vk_extension_mesh shader from use since vkd3d-proton is broken and bad news is its running 60% slower than windows 11 23h2 during testing both os...i lost fps is not cool dude who make vkd3d-proton 2.10, better fix it soon with next revison sooner

        Still mostly spitballing but maybe it will get you going in the right direction or someone else can elaborate.

  • I've the same card.

    By non-free do you mean you are using amdvlk?

    Don't do that, Vulkan performance is nearly double on RADV.

    If you have multiple drivers installed, (amdvlk, amdpro, vulkan-radeon) you can install amd-vulkan-prefixes to select which one a given application should use.

    Then add vk_radv as a command prefix to use the open source implementation, vulkan-radeon. It's the best performing one and as such should be your first choice even before the non-free drivers, unless it has problems with a given game.

    Alternatively, simply uninstall amdvlk completely leaving vulkan-radeon as the only installed driver.

  • Thought I'd post an update. Performance is better now, playing in 1440p with FSR2 on Balanced, graphic settings on Medium. I'm getting around 45FPS.

    I'm not quite sure what the fix was in the end, but I've installed proton-ge-custom-bin from the AUR, so I've got Proton GE installed onto my system (not just within Heroic). Both the AUR and Heroic are on Proton-GE 9.7. I then added the AlanWake2.exe file to Steam, and forced compatibility to use Proton GE. So whatever extra was happening with Heroic was taken away.

    I tried changing my Mesa drivers, but it appears Manjaro is even with the nonfree repo at this point, so I'm still on Mesa 24.1.1, only on the Manjaro-approved version, not the mainline Arch version.

    It appears that somewhere within that combination of (1) running the game directly from Steam, (2) using the system-installed Proton-GE package, and (3) reverting to the Manjaro Mesa package the framerate got bumped from lower 20-s to mid-40s. CPU and GPU usage still hover around the 40%, so I feel there would be more improvement to be had perhaps?

    I tested the game on my second PC, which is running ChimeraOS, has a 5800X3D chip, 32Gb RAM and a 7600 XT card, where it's easily hitting these framerates and better (but with higher GPU usage, hardly any CPU usage, that 5800X3D is a beast). So I wonder if my 10700K might be a bit of a bottleneck? ChimeraOS' version of Mesa is on 23.2 so maybe there are just some kinks to be worked out in the 24.1 branch?

    Anyway.... long story short: I'm happy with the overall performance at this point. Happy to dive into the Overlap and deal with Nightingale!

  • Try main Mesa branch

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