Resident Evil 3 Video Card Performance Review

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Conclusion

Resident Evil 3, the remake, will be released on April 3rd which is right around the corner.  This remake does was the Resident Evil 2 remake did, it takes a great game and gives it a modern game engine, with modern graphics and effects, modern assets and models with modern gameplay and packages it all up with a nice bow. 

Honestly, we’d love to see this done to other older games.  It shows that when you have good gameplay already, and combine it with modern graphics it’s like a whole new experience.  It makes the gameplay shine that much brighter. 

Thanks to AMD and Capcom we had the opportunity to evaluate the full game and run performance tests in it.  In our Resident Evil 3 performance review today, we compared eleven different video cards against each other.  We looked at DirectX performance, as well as the game’s featured feature, AMD FidelityFX CAS + Upscaling graphics option.  We found out just what you’ll need to enjoy the game.

VRAM Performance

Overall, this game performs very well, despite it being very VRAM heavy.  Thankfully you can run this game above the minimum game’s VRAM requirements.  Not all games allow you to do this.  You’ll need to anyway, because as we found the highest in-game settings will always exceed 12GB so that even a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti wouldn’t have enough VRAM technically. 

Though problems can arise according to the error message when you apply those settings, we did not experience any.  There is always the chance you can encounter some stuttering if the VRAM usage is exceeded, so take caution with that.  It can happen.  For our gameplay experience though we found that with 8GB video cards the stuttering wasn’t bad.  It also wasn’t bad on the 6GB video cards at 1080p.  However, the 4GB video cards did suffer at the highest game settings at 1080p.  If you do encounter stuttering, which would be the number one issue running above the VRAM capacity, just reduce your settings a bit starting with settings that affect VRAM capacity like texture capacity.

It is clear that for 1440p gaming we’d recommend an 8GB video card so that you can run at the highest settings smoothly.  At 1080p though, you can get away with a 6GB video card.  4GB video cards are not recommended, you’ll have to lower settings a lot.  If you do, make sure to run in DX12 for the least amount of stuttering.

Performance

At 4K the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti naturally allows the highest in-game settings and performance is very smooth and fast.  In fact, the game performed so well that even the GeForce RTX 2080 FE was able to provide playable performance at 1440p with the highest in-game settings.  That means the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER will also provide this.  This is really good news if you purchased an RTX 2080 long ago.  The Radeon RX 5700 XT struggles at 4K, you will have to lower settings to smooth out performance and reduce stuttering and raise framerate. 

The Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 are best suited for 1440p in this game.  Both video cards provide very high framerates 100FPS average with the highest in-game settings and smooth performance.  Though the GeForce RTX 2080 FE is faster than the Radeon RX 5700 XT, and the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is faster than the Radeon RX 5700 you don’t really need those to enjoy the game.  Even the slowest video card here, the Radeon RX 5700 provides very high performance and smooth performance at the highest settings.  Alternatively, the GeForce RTX 2070 (non-SUPER) will as well. 

At 1080p you have many options because the game performs so well.  We would suggest a 6GB video card like the Radeon RX 5600 XT or GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.  The two video cards will perform similarly, except in DX12 the Radeon RX 5600 XT is faster.  This will give you over 100FPS at 1080p. 

If you want to go with cheaper options you can get by just fine with a Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB or GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER.  The higher VRAM on the Radeon RX 5500 XT provides a smooth experience, but both provide plenty of performance.  The slowest cards for this game are the 4GB GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER and 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT.  You can achieve playable performance on them, but you will need to run in DX12 on the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB and you might need to lower some settings on the GTX 1650 SUPER.

DX12 versus DX11

This was rather interesting, even though this game is remade on a modern RE Engine game engine we found DX12 to actually perform slower on every video card.  This does follow the same pattern as the Resident Evil 2 remake, it also performed slower in DX12. 

The differences aren’t far apart, and in fact, the AMD GPUs have less of a difference than the NVIDIA GPUs between DX12 and DX11.  Given the modern nature of this game, and AMD pushing its features like FidelityFX CAS we would have thought DX12 would have the advantage.  However, it is clear that it does not for whatever reason. 

The only real advantage with DX12 was with the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT video card. That video card received a large performance boost using DX12 versus DX11.  This is because in DX11 it has massive stuttering and lower framerates.  It seems the memory management of DX12 for the lower VRAM capacity on that video card was advantageous to smoothing out stuttering.    

AMD FidelityFX CAS + Upscaling

This game supports AMD’s FidelityFX CAS + Upscaling feature.  We tested performance with and without this feature on AMD and NVIDIA GPUs at the low-end and high-end.  Our results revealed that performance was very close, within the margin of error, with this option enabled or disabled.  We saw at most a 1 FPS difference.  Therefore, AMD’s claims that this is a performance free option to enable seem to be true.  You can enable this with no fear that it is hurting your performance.

In terms of image quality improvements, they are very subtle in this game.  No doubt the level of sharpening can be adjusted by the developer.  In this implementation of the technology, it is not extreme.  It adds a subtle sharpening to the game textures and objects.  In fast motion, you probably will not even notice it.  Only upon long-standing still scenarios may it be noticed, if you are looking for it, even then it will be hard. 

There might be some scenarios where it could be more aggressive in our opinion.  Some ground textures with reflections, water, and TAA could be more aggressive in our opinion.  With the subtle nature of it, and the fact it has no performance loss you might as well turn it on and leave it on.

Final Points

Now that we have evaluated performance we can make some conclusions as you grab the game and play it.

  • Just go ahead and run the game in DX12.  The performance difference isn’t enough to affect gameplay or change the experience.  In DX12 you will be assured of getting the highest image quality from all graphical effects, and potential reduction in stuttering with better memory management.
  • Leave FidelityFX CAS + Upscaling turned on.  It costs nothing in performance and gives that extra little bit of sharpening for better image quality.
  • Use FXAA+TAA for the best reduction in Anti-Aliasing.  With CAS enabled the blurring is minimized.
  • Try running the game at the highest game settings first, at 100% Image Quality and your desired resolution.  It should mostly run just fine at the highest settings, and you’ll get better image quality.  If you have the performance to spare, increase the Image Quality percentage, this increases resolution scaling and will improve image quality further.  That’s the best way (other than the resolution option) to gain better image quality in the game if it looks blurry to you.
  • For 1440p gaming a Radeon RX 5700, or GeForce RTX 2070 is the recommended video cards from us.  For 1080p gaming, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is our recommended video card.  If you want to go with a cheaper route though, then the 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT will do well at 1080p.  At 4K the best is GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, but you can get by just fine with a factory overclocked GeForce RTX 2080/SUPER if you have that.

Otherwise, we hope you enjoy the game and let us know in the forums how your video card performs. 

Discussion

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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