Resident Evil’s back, splitting the survival horror action between stealth-only and all-out gunfight scenes with a new character and old favourite Leon. Also back is RE Engine, Capcom’s proprietary engine that first made an appearance with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and now boasts a path tracing option for even more realistic lighting, shadows, reflections, and whatnot.
RE Engine generally has a good reputation, or at least it does when it comes to being used in the relative confines of Resident Evil games. Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, both of which also use the engine, haven’t exactly helped matters, but I can give a short and sweet summary right off the bat.
Resident Evil Requiem looks superb and runs pretty well, too. As with all games, there are some caveats to the latter and I’ll cover all of those in this performance analysis, but in general, if your gaming PC meets the very light system requirements, you’ll have no problems getting the balance of visuals and frame rates you desire.
Test PC specs
Asus ROG Ally, 15 W + 6 GB VRAM modesRyzen 7 7735HS (54 W), 16 GB DDR5-4800, GeForce RTX 4050Core i7 9700K (65 W), 16 GB DDR4-3200, Radeon RX 5700 XTRyzen 7 5700X3D (105 W), 32 GB DDR4-3200, GeForce RTX 3060 TiCore Ultra 9 285K (125 W), 48 GB DDR5-8400, Radeon RX 7900 XTRyzen 9 9950X3D (170 W), 32 GB DDR5-6000, GeForce RTX 5090Monitors: Acer Nitro XV282K KV / MSI MPG 321URXOperating System: Windows 11 25H2Drivers: Adrenalin Edition 26.1.1 / GeForce Game Ready 591.86
To examine what kind of performance you can expect to get on your gaming PC with Resident Evil Requiem, I used as broad a range of systems as I could. Unfortunately, as the game uses Denuvo, I was somewhat restricted as to the number I could cover, as the system limits the number of installs you can do in a given period.
Hence, there’s somewhat of a jump between testing relatively low-end systems before shooting off into the GPU stratosphere. There’s still enough data, though, to get a useful enough insight into everything.
I used Leon’s introduction to the game as my benchmark sequence, as it’s one of the most demanding parts: lots of lights, shadows, and reflections, plus lots of NPCs running about and reacting to what you do.
Handheld gaming PC
720p Lowest preset | No ray tracing (RT) | FSR Balanced upscaling
Our first port of call is a handheld gaming PC, specifically the Asus ROG Ally, with its power set to 15 W but with the GPU VRAM forced to 6 GB, instead of the default 4 GB. Although Capcom doesn’t say anything about whether Resident Evil Requiem is supported on handhelds, the minimum PC requirement is so light (e.g. Core i5 8500, GeForce GTX 1660) that a decent handheld should be able to run it.
Alas, no, as you can clearly see above. No matter what settings I used, this is as good as it gets. Even using the handheld’s 30 W power mode and FSR Ultra Performance upscaling made no difference.
It’s not a VRAM limitation (proof of which is just down below): there’s simply too much rendering going on for the small shader count in the integrated GPU. If you look closely at the character and environment models, you should be able to see that everything is still pretty detailed, even with the lowest-quality preset.
In the preview game code I used, there was one preset below Lowest, but that was crossed out, which suggests that Capcom might do something for handhelds in a later patch. So, not a great start to things, but don’t worry, it gets a lot better from here.
Entry-level gaming laptop
1080p Low preset | Normal RT | DLSS Quality upscaling
What a difference a discrete GPU makes, even one as tiny as the GeForce RTX 4050 with its paltry 6 GB of VRAM. I make the point about the memory amount because it’s this that prevents the Acer Nitro V 15 laptop from running with a better quality setting. But the fact that it runs with that amount of memory proves that the dire performance of the handheld isn’t a VRAM problem.
This basic laptop is also perfectly happy with ray tracing enabled, albeit in the simplest mode of the three options (Normal, High, Path Tracing).
The somewhat unstable frame times do show that it’s not a perfect picture: the first time you pick up a new item, you get a big spike as everything slows down while it loads in the assets for the inventory model. I experimented with different settings to see if I could remove or reduce this but to no avail.
But at least the overall performance is still more than acceptable, and in the game sections that take place indoors, the frame rate is even higher and a lot more consistent. One might argue that the use of ray tracing isn’t helping but in general, there’s little difference between it on or off, and the better reflections make it worth enabling.
We’ll take a closer look at the ray tracing options later in this analysis.
Minimum spec gaming PC
1080p Normal preset | No RT | FSR Balanced upscaling
Okay, so a combination of an Intel Core i7 9700K and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT isn’t quite as min-spec as Capcom’s minimum system requirements, but the CPU and GPU are almost eight and seven years old, respectively. The PC that they’re housed in is old and very cranky, with a Windows installation that’s a landfill of old apps and other mess. So if a game runs well on this, it should run fine on anything.
The messiness of the Windows installation is why I used to use Intel’s PresentMon to show performance metrics instead of MSI’s Afterburner, and although the overlay isn’t as easy to read, you can at least see that the overall frame rates are perfectly fine.
Do note that the old eight-core, eight-thread CPU is getting absolutely hammered here, and this somewhat contributes to the slightly under-par 1% low frame rates. They’re not terrible, but they’re not great either. And where the little RTX 4050 coped fine with ray tracing, the lack of hardware support in the RX 5700 XT meant it was a no-go for selecting it with this test PC.
You can switch it on, and I presume Capcom is using some kind of shader fallback system to handle the basic ray tracing, but there’s a noticeable performance hit. At least everything looks pretty decent without it.
Mainstream gaming PC
1440p Normal preset | No RT | DLSS Quality upscaling
Just as with the ‘min spec’ PC, this isn’t quite a mainstream configuration. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a little too potent for such a sector, though the RTX 3060 Ti is about right, as it has 8 GB of VRAM and a reasonable level of rendering throughput.
While I didn’t use ray tracing for the above capture, this particular gaming PC was just as fine with it activated as the RTX 4050 laptop. You do get a bit more inconsistency in the frame times, but in general, it’s fine to use. Equally, if you want better overall performance, then just knock it off and enjoy the visuals.
Or you could use a lower resolution, increase the setting for Lighting and Shader Quality, and enable ray tracing.
However, the one thing I was unable to do anything about was the frame time spikes. These seem to kick in the first time anything ‘new’ is performed by the game, such as the CQC finishing move you can see in the above video. Sometimes it’s not a problem, but occasionally it really sticks out.
Hopefully, these will all be smoothed out in future patches, though they’re hardly deal-breakers.
High end gaming PC
4K High preset | High RT | FSR Performance upscaling
For high-end testing, I spent some time comparing using 1440p Balanced upscaling and maximum quality settings, and 4K Performance upscaling with slightly lower settings for textures, shaders, and lighting. On a PC sporting a Core Ultra 9 285K and Radeon RX 7900 XT, I got roughly the same performance, so which combination you’ll want to use will come down to what monitor you have.
AMD’s RDNA 3 GPU architecture isn’t quite as happy with the ray tracing settings as Nvidia’s systems are, and the reason why you’re only seeing an average frame rate of 60 to 65 fps is down to the use of High RT. Knock that down to Normal, and you get a decent bump of around 10 to 15 fps.
You might be wondering why I didn’t use the maximum quality settings, given that the RX 7900 XT has 16 GB of VRAM. The reason is simple: the slight gains in visual fidelity you get with that preset aren’t worth the small hit to performance (between 5 and 10 fps, depending on the scene).
The one thing that I did find pleasing was the FSR implementation, as I couldn’t see any signs of smearing or ghosting, no matter how quickly I whipped the camera about. It greatly helps, of course, that every level is tight and narrow, and very linear, with relatively little in the way of fast-moving objects.
But if you watch the NPCs run past the camera, you’ll see that they retain their full details, despite the heavy use of upscaling.
Ultra high-end gaming PC
There’s one setting in Resident Evil Requiem that’s pretty much the preserve of the most powerful graphics cards money can buy, and it’s the path tracing option. It does a superb job of making lighting, shadows, and reflections look absolutely fantastic, but the performance cost is huge. I’ll dig into this in a little more detail shortly, but suffice it to say, with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RTX 5090 gaming PC, you can max out every setting.
You will need to use a lot of upscaling, though, and if you want more than 70 to 80 fps in scenes with lots of lights and reflective surfaces, then you will definitely need to enable frame generation.
Of course, you can just switch to High RT and enjoy a huge jump in performance, but if you’re spending a gazillion bucks on an RTX 5090 gaming PC, then you kind of owe it to your wallet to use every rendering gizmo the game has to offer.
Frame generation implementation
(Image credit: Capcom)
We’ve almost certainly reached a point, in the history of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, that most gamers will be happy to use it. As long as the systems have been well implemented into a game, you get a nice performance boost and improved visuals, due to the better anti-aliasing.
Naturally, there’s always going to be the counter-argument that upscaling is simply a crutch that’s being used by developers to avoid having to spend time and money on optimising performance, but if a setting works as intended and doesn’t produce any drawbacks, then why wouldn’t you enable it?
However, frame generation isn’t on par with how good all the different upscalers are, and the fact that it inherently increases input latency is always going to put some people off its use. For Resident Evil Requiem, I strongly suggest that you use it.
FSR 3.1 frame generation | RX 7900 XT
Now, you do need a decent baseline performance before enabling frame generation, especially with AMD’s shader-based FSR 3.1, and you won’t get a doubled frame rate, either. But what you will get is a healthy boost to the overall smoothness and fluidity of the game.
I tried using frame gen on the ‘min-spec’ PC, and while it worked well enough, there was a little too much input latency for my liking. Resident Evil Requiem certainly isn’t a twitchy shooter, but a lot of the combat sequences are close-quarters, where fast reactions make the difference between surviving to fight on for another day or being a zombie’s breakfast wrap.
DLSS 4 Frame generation | RTX 5090
All of the same provisos for the use of FSR frame generation apply to Nvidia’s DLSS FG, though as you can see from the above PCL figures (overall system latencies), there’s only a five to ten millisecond hit to using frame gen with an RTX 5090. As the RTX 3060 Ti has no native support for DLSS FG, you have to use FSR and it’s not quite as good.
I also tried frame generation with the RTX 4050 laptop, but it eats into the tight VRAM budget too much for my liking. You do get a boost in the overall frame rate, but the frame times become even more inconsistent than they already are.
DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation | RTX 5090
However, if you have an RTX 50-series graphics card, then by all means jump into enabling DLSS Multi-Frame Generation. It’s not quite as impressive as the implementation of it in Doom: The Dark Ages, but it’s still pretty good.
It would be nicer if the PCL figures remained well under 30 milliseconds, but that’s to be expected in 4x mode. Drop it to 3x, and you get the same kind of times as you do with 2x. In all cases, though, there’s nary a hint of blurring or ghosting, and it’s especially pleasing to see that Capcom has done a good job of implementing frame generation as a whole.
Apart from Intel’s XeSS, that is, which isn’t an option at all. That’s a huge shame because even though the number of Arc GPU owners pales in comparison to GeForce and Radeon users, the system is very robust and produces better results than FSR 3. Will it get added in a later patch? I suspect not.
Is ray tracing worth using?
Before I close off this performance analysis of Resident Evil Requiem, I want to take a closer look at the game’s ray tracing options. Due to time constraints and the annoyance of Denuvo, I could only investigate things on the RTX 5090 test PC, which is so ridiculously over-powered when it comes to compare no ray tracing and normal RT, that the analysis is almost moot.
That said, just take a look at the above and below videos. I’m using 4K Max preset, along with DLSS Performance upscaling, and the first video is without ray tracing. Those are some serious frame rate figures, right?
Now cast your eyes below and watch it all again, this time with the Normal RT option enabled. Unfortunately, you can’t switch modes in-game, hence why the runs aren’t identical.
What I want you to pay attention to are things like the lights on the cars and the reflections in the puddles of water on the road. With Normal RT, it’s a little more detailed but also a little darker in places, as the use of ray tracing produces better shadows from objects. Reflections, though, don’t look a whole lot different—or at least, not until you look closely.
It’s quite hard to spot all of this during the middle of an action sequence, so here are some screenshots of every different ray tracing option. Be sure to expand each image, and click on the ‘View Original’ to get a closer look.
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Focus on the patch of yellow light on the road, to the right. It’s a reflection of the drug store’s neon sign and it best shows the differences between the ray tracing modes. With an RTX 5090, there’s no performance difference between no, Normal, and High RT, but you can see that this reflection improves with each setting.
And then there’s path tracing. Notice just how realistic that reflection now looks? And then there are all the various shadows being cast by the bodies on the ground. It’s a visual treat, but sadly one that’s going to be wasted in a game where you’re not encouraged to take your time and enjoy the view.
To top it all off, take a look at that performance drop, too. Going from 157 fps with High RT to 77 fps with path tracing is pretty brutal, and if this is what it does to an RTX 5090, you can easily picture what it will do on any other RT-capable GPU.
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the use of ray or path tracing in Resident Evil Requiem. The above indoor screenshots easily justify its use, because without RT, the game world looks dull and flat. With path tracing, it’s almost photo-realistic and for all the stealth sequences, it really draws you into the grimy world.
It’s just that I’m a little puzzled that Capcom went to all that effort into making the path tracing mode look so incredible, when it’s something that can realistically only be used by a very small number of gamers. I don’t know how many people own an RTX 5090 compared to an Arc card or a handheld gaming PC, but I suspect they would be far happier to see genuinely low settings or XeSS upscaling, rather than super-special lighting.
Final thoughts
(Image credit: Capcom)
Compared to the disappointment of Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, in terms of graphics and performance, Resident Evil Requiem is a breath of fresh air. But then again, it should be, as it’s not an open-world game and the levels are generally quite compact. It would seem that RE Engine really is best suited to this format than anything else.
This isn’t to take anything away from how good Requiem is, though. In all my testing, I experienced just a single crash. The shader compilation sequence at the start is relatively brief, and the game even appears to be using DirectStorage to speed up asset transfers and loading times (still waiting on confirmation about this, though the relevant files are present in the main folder).
I came across relatively few stutters and hiccups, and other than the Asus ROG Ally, Resident Evil Requiem looked and ran just fine on all my other test platforms (disable the awful chromatic aberration, though). Survival horror games might not be your preferred cup of hot beverage, but if they are, at least you know that your gaming PC should run Requiem like a peach.
