Resident Evil 3 Remake PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

CPU Performance – Do you need a monster processor to run RE3?

Within Resident Evil 3, we can see some clear benefits for higher CPU cores/thread counts, with our six-core setup leaving lower core counts in the dust, at least under DirectX 11.

We can see below that DirectX 12 has been used to lower the CPU overhead of Resident Evil 3, allowing the game to run better under that API when the game is CPU-limited. That said, when the game becomes GPU-limited at six cores and twelve threads, DirectX 11 gains a small advantage. 

With Resident Evil 3, it is starting to become clear that future games will start to rely on six or more strong CPU cores. That said, an quad-core or better should be able to run RE3 with relative ease.  

  
Low framerate Animation Issue? 
  
An oddity within the PC version of Resident Evil 3 is the game’s use of low refresh rate animations on distant enemies, resulting in strange looking zombies in the far distance. This technique is typically used to reduce CPU utilisation in console games, but on PC today’s hardware can push past these limitations.

This limitation was also present within Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake, but Resident Evil 3’s wider use of outdoor spaces makes this issue a lot more noticeable. It is unfortunate that Capcom hasn’t given PC gamers the option ti disable this feature. 

Full refresh rate animations are used when zombies are close to the player, so we don’t see why the game can’t have a graphical option that enabled higher refresh rate animation LODs on PC. This is quite a nitpicky complaint, but it is something that modern PC hardware should be more than capable of handling.