As shown on the Compusemble channel in the performance tests below, the new game from Remedy Entertainment is Alan Wake 2 boasts incredibly high NVMe SSD utilization, reaching a maximum throughput of 2.74 GB/s, especially during the trippy scenes of the Mind Palace game.
Like Control, Alan Wake 2 became known as a test of modern GPUs with real-time ray tracing, but it went even further, requiring mesh shaders across the board, adding path tracing support, and aiming for an even higher degree of realism.
Alan Wake 2 content can clearly put a lot of stress on the drive, causing the NVMe Gen 5 used in testing to consistently be at the higher end of optimal temperatures, although thankfully outside the range of proper thermal levels. This is an inevitable side effect of the 2.74 GB/s peak read speed during scene transitions. The game also constantly loads the SSD with a bandwidth of about 1.6 GB/s.
Alan Wake isn’t the only game of its kind that more or less requires an NVMe SSD to run smoothly. Games DirectStorage и RTX I/O similarly built on next-generation storage systems as an expectation rather than an afterthought. Recent major games to use these technologies include Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Portal Prelude RTX.
For non-NVMe users, and especially non-SSD users, most games don’t require SSDs at all. However, even if the game is not optimized for SSDs, using them will significantly improve loading times.
If the game supports DirectStorage and recommends an SSD as a requirement, you’ll likely want to follow this advice. For example, Ratchet & Clank runs very quickly on an SSD, unlike a hard drive.
Those looking to use an NVMe SSD for gaming won’t have to look long, as Ratchet & Clank and Alan Wake 2 show that an SSD is definitely a necessity on PCs, and judging by the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, similar games will eventually become only more common.
