Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Benchmarked

The Game And Graphics Options

Long awaited by fans of the Resident Evil franchise, this seventh installment brings back basics that made the series so successful: wave goodbye to the action genre and say hello to survival/horror with a good dose of exploration, all in first-person. In short, everything is meant to scare you, even more so since the game is designed for VR, and available for Sony's PSVR.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
WARNING: Before getting into specifics, the game's Mature 17+ rating is completely justified; numerous scenes may shock the sensitivity of many players!

From the technical side, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is based on Capcom's new RE Engine. Forget about the first- and second-gen MT Framework foundation used to develop previous Resident Evil games. This is a new multi-platform engine (Windows, Xbox One, PS4) optimized to accelerate the development of future titles, and offer the best possible experience in and out of VR. We're only disappointed that Resident Evil 7 is not DirectX 12-enabled. On the flip side, it's playable in HDR if you have a compatible display.

Steam's page on Resident Evil 7 includes a list of minimum and recommended system requirements for play on a PC. The lowest-end configuration aims for at least 30 frames per second in Full HD (with texture quality compromises, since higher settings gobble up on-board memory), while the recommended hardware makes it possible to hit 60 FPS, also at 1920x1080.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ConfigurationMinimumRecommended
ProcessorCore i5-4460 or FX-6300Core i7-3770
Memory8GB8GB
Graphics CardGeForce GTX 760 or Radeon R7 260X (at least 2GB)GeForce GTX 1060 (at least 3GB)
Operating SystemWindows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit only)Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit only)
Disk Space24GB24GB
AudioDirectSound CompatibleDirectSound Compatible

Radeon vs GeForce

While Resident Evil 7 is part of Nvidia's “The Way It's Meant to be Played” program, it's also optimized for current-gen consoles packed full of AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture. It's hard to imagine that one company or the other got a significant leg up, given the stakes.

Based on our analysis, you can be sure that GeForce and Radeon cards serve up the same picture at comparable graphics settings, aside from a few small differences attributable to anti-aliasing algorithms. In the end, though, their output is otherwise identical.

Graphics Options: Highly Configurable

Capcom imbues the PC version of Resident Evil 7 with a large number of detail settings. The resolution is configurable, of course, but so is texture quality, texture filtering, mesh quality, anti-aliasing technology, effects, shadow quality, ambient occlusion, volumetric lighting, lens flares, reflection and diffusion quality, chromatic aberrations, and even color space.

Naturally, we wanted to gauge the picture quality difference with these settings turned off and on. The table below shows the three combinations of quality options we're using. All tests were then run at Full HD with the options cranked up as high as they go.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
SettingLowMediumHigh
Texture Quality, Texture Filtering, Mesh QualityVery LowMediumVery High
Anti-AliasingFXAA + TAAFXAA + TAAFXAA + TAA
Effects RenderingLowMediumHigh
Shadow QualityVery LowMediumVery High
Dynamic ShadowsOffOnOn
Ambient OcclusionHBAO+HBAO+HBAO+
Volumetric Lighting QualityNoneLowHigh
Motion Blur, Bloom, Lens Flare, Reflections, Subsurface Scattering, Chromatic AberrationOffOnOn

Unsurprisingly, there's not much difference between our Medium and High modes. The middle configuration yields good texture quality at 1920x1080. At 1440p and 4K, you're better off using the Very High preset, even if that setting is quite a bit more demanding. You'll want a graphics card with plenty of on-board memory.

By reducing all of the options to their minimums, the quality drops noticeably.

To better understand the picture quality with Resident Evil 7's detail settings dialed all of the way down, check out the image below and its artifacts on the walls, ground, ceiling, and objects around the room.

If you need to, we recommend dipping down to our Medium quality level for higher frame rates. Below that, expect the game experience to suffer quite a bit. Really, there are enough modifiable settings to dial in playable performance on almost any modern graphics card.


MORE: Best Graphics Cards


MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

.
  • Verrin
    Great analysis! I hope you guys do more game-specific benchmarks, I can't remember seeing them too often on here anymore. :)
    Reply
  • shadowmaster625
    love those new frame time graphs!
    Reply
  • stairmand
    Now they just need to fix bigger FOVs, extra wide monitors and multiscreen setups.
    Reply
  • waltsmith
    Not being a fanboy for this comment, this certainly sounds like another example of Nvidia strong arming a game developer to only put the green team card on the recommended specs. This kind of stuff leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
    Reply
  • stairmand
    Now if only that would fix multi-screen, extra wide monitors and bigger FOVs. (anyone hoping that they already said they wont)
    Reply
  • anzweidrej69
    @STAIRMAND

    Capcom response about FOV cap

    http://www.pcgamer.com/capcom-explains-why-resident-evil-7s-fov-is-capped-at-90/
    Reply
  • esco_sid
    Hmm wish had some analysis at 4k with gtx 1080
    Reply
  • kiniku
    "Benchmarked" on only two middle-grade GPUs?
    Reply
  • photonboy
    CPU and MEMORY USAGE:
    You talk about more memory usage on the RX-480 8GB vs GTX1060 6GB but don't state if that's a positive or negative. Was there a POINT to that?

    Tying in with that is CPU usage:
    "The difference in CPU utilization is noticeable, to AMD's advantage. This isn't particularly surprising for a console port."

    Since the GTX1060 6GB is using all 6GB's of it's memory it's quite possible that the higher CPU usage is due to memory swapping between system memory and video memory so I'd be careful about making specific points if you aren't certain of the reasons (or pointing out memory usage with no point made at all.. ).
    Reply
  • MarkTech
    Worst RE of all, clearly a rip-off of Outlast, if you wnt truly survival horror packed with action, there is RE:2 and RE:3, still the best two games of the franchise
    Reply