Date:
Tuesday , November 03, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Resident Evil 5 Gameplay Performance and IQ

Greedy multinational biotech corporations have infected hordes of African citizens with an apocalyptic mind-controlling parasite, and it's up to you and your sexy sidekick to save the world! But before you get started, you better make sure your video card is up to the task. Check it out with us as we test the best video cards out today including all of the new Radeon HD 5000 series video cards!

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Configuring Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 has a total of ten graphics options. We must remember that the Resident Evil series of games are console games first, with PC versions coming way later. That is how the franchise has always been operated. Number 5, then, is no exception. After the usual common options that we see in most games, there are actually only four unique options for this game.

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Screen Resolution

The screen resolution option obviously lets the gamer choose the resolution in which to run the game. If you are on an LCD monitor, this should ideally be matched to the native resolution of your display.

Refresh Rate

The refresh rate option allows you to choose the vertical refresh rate of your display device. Once again, this should be mated to your display’s actual refresh rate.

Vertical Sync

The vertical sync option allows gamers to force the game to wait for the monitor’s vertical refresh pulse before updating the displayed image. Enabling this option will limit your framerate to the vertical refresh rate of your display, but can eliminate some kinds of graphical errors such as tearing. It can also introduce a degree of input lag. As it is a performance-limiting option, we left it disabled. It is a toggled option, so the available settings are On and Off.

Framerate

The framerate option allows gamers to cap performance at 30 fps or 60 fps, or to leave the framerate unlocked. Again, as this is a performance-limiting option, we left it disabled.

Anti-Aliasing

This option allows gamers to select the multi-sampling sample rate for Anti-Aliasing operations. It supports the full range of AA options from NVIDIA (2X, 4X, 8X, 8xQ, 16X, 16xQ) and ATI (2X, 4X, 8X). This option does not enable Transparency or Adaptive AA, nor will it enable AMD’s Custom AA Filters.

Motion Blur

This option toggles the cinematic motion blur effect. Motion blur is a cinematic effect that some people like and some people do not. If you are of the camp that does not care for it, disable it. It doesn’t have a huge performance impact, but it can affect the fluid feel of the controls in combat. It is a toggled option, so the available settings are On and Off.

Shadow Detail

The shadow detail option allows the user to select from three levels of shadow detail. Note that not all shadows are affected by this setting. Only dynamic shadows are affected. Pre-calculated landscape shadows will not be affected by changing this setting. Available options are High, Medium, and Low.

Texture Detail

The texture detail option allows gamers to select higher or lower resolution textures to accommodate the amount of video memory. High texture detail will use more video memory, while medium and low texture detail will use less. Available options are High, Medium, and Low.

Overall Quality

The overall quality setting affects lighting, shadows, and shader quality. Available options are High, Medium, and Low.

DirectX 9 and 10

The very first thing you see when you start Resident Evil 5 is a prompt asking if you want to run the DirectX 9 or DirectX 10 version of the game.

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We found that there were some subtle differences, and we will show you those differences later in this evaluation. For now, please be advised that we used the DirectX 10 version for all of our Highest Playable Settings testing. DirectX 10 was the better option to use, in our gameplay testing.

Cinematic Sequences

Perhaps one of the more unique features of this game is the use of in-engine cinematic sequences. What that means is that, when the player triggers a cinematic part of the game and control is taken away, the game does not switch to a pre-rendered video for dumb playback. All of the cinematic sequences in Resident Evil 5 are rendered in real-time by the graphics engine. The color saturation and brightness/contrast is different, due to the use of different filters, but the cinematics are still rendered in real-time.

The exception to this is the very first introductory cinematic sequence.

Testing Resident Evil 5

Performance in Resident Evil 5 is all over the place. Generally speaking, finding a satisfactory configuration for maximum image quality and maximum eye candy was more about reducing input lag than managing framerates. In general, framerates were high; even if the game was less than playable due to some really serious input lag when moving the mouse or firing the weapons. We could be looking at framerates in the 40s and 50s, but still find the game to be unplayable because the character took too long to respond to our commands, resulting in a sluggish and frustrating experience.

For our testing scenario, we selected Chapter 2-3, entitled "Savanna." It is a "turret" level, meaning you spend the entire level attached to a machine gun turret on the back of a HMMWV, while your partner Sheva occupies a mini-gun turret on the same truck. The entire scenario takes almost exactly 10 minutes to complete from beginning to end. It includes a boss fight, three cinematic sequences (all rendered in-engine, of course) and lots of gunplay. There is one very short loading screen in the middle of this scenario, so you will see a two or three second spike to 120 FPS in every graph.

NOTE: There are more graphically intense portions of the game, but they are too short to be suitable for our purposes. We did make sure to test the more intense areas with our highest playable settings to make sure they remained playable.