Vulkan mod makes Alan Wake 2 playable on older graphics cards

Alan Wake 2 has just been released and it has some of the highest system requirements of any game to date. According to the developers, modern graphics cards are required to play at all. Naturally, players and modders saw this as a challenge, and now a user is claiming izy on the Techpowerup forum He has developed a module that converts Alan Wake 2 from DirectX 12 to Vulkan and provides significantly increased performance on older systems.

On a technical level, the mod uses code from Linux projects to run DirectX games via Vulkan, the same technology that also made it possible to play Diablo 4 on Mac computers equipped with Apple Silicon chips, for example.

This mode has been tested by a number of users on the Techpowerup forum, and specifically gives cards like the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070, 1080 and 1080 Ti an extra boost in the game. One user’s computer compressed 50 percent more frames per second with the mod – 37, compared to an almost unplayable 22 frames per second without the mod.

Both developer izy and others who have tested it point out that it’s not a miracle cure for heavy rowing. First, performance improvement varies widely. Many users also reported choppy motions despite high frame rates. Second, the game doesn’t work at all for many people who have tested it – the screen freezes and then the game crashes on the desktop.

Tom’s devices He notes that this modification may herald a future where the latest games require newer graphics cards due to various DirectX 12 features, but can be made to work usefully on older hardware via Vulkan conversion.