Resident Evil 7: Biohazard PC Performance Review

Conclusion

Resident Evil 7 is a very interesting release for multiple reasons, especially on PC. For starters, the game moves back to its survival horror roots, with a chilling atmosphere and enough scares to send non-horror fans running screaming into the hilltops, though personally, I find some of the new PC features even more enticing.    

On PC, this game is one of the first titles to come with Day-1 support HDR (High Dynamic Range), though sadly we do not have any HDR-ready displays on hand to conduct proper HDR testing. This means that we cannot comment on this game’s HDR support, though it is something that we will look into once HDR monitors come to market. 

The PC version of Resident Evil 7 also gives players the choice between BT.709 and sRGB colour Gamuts, which can have a huge visual impact on the final images that are delivered to your display. BT.709 provides darker shadows, which is well suited to any horror game, though sRGB can allow gamers to easily spot some extra details in darker scenes. Which is superior comes down mostly to user preference, though each setting will certainly require very different brightness or gamma settings in-game. 

One other unique graphical option in Resident Evil 7 is the game’s Interlaced rendering option, which is an interesting addition to the game’s PC release. This option will increase your game’s framerate but result in a blurry final image, this will allow the game to be played on much lower end hardware, though at the cost of a notable degradation in visual quality. We certainly wouldn’t recommend using this option with higher end hardware, though it is definitely an interesting addition to the game, one that will be essential for those with some older GPU hardware.   

To put things simply Resident Evil 7 runs very well on PC, especially at lower resolutions, easily being playable on our R9 380 and GTX 960 GPUs at 1080p with average framerates of over 60FPS at high settings, with the game reaching a colossal 200FPS average framerate on Nvidia’s GTX 1080 at the same settings.   

This game’s performance scales linearly with resolution/pixel count, which means that resolutions of 4K can take even today’s flagship GPUs to their knees. Even so, the game can offer fantastic performance at 1080p and 1440p with suitable GPUs, though 4K players will need to lower their resolution scale or use lower graphical setting to play with a steady framerate of 60FPS or higher.

Resident Evil 7 can be a massive VRAM hog, easily consuming 8GB of VRAM at 4K Very High settings, though it is clear that the game consumes a lot more VRAM than it needs to, presenting no major performance issues when used with 4GB GPUs with High or lower settings and even 2GB cards with a gaming resolution of 1080p at high settings.   

Those that are having performance issues with this game should make sure that they update their GPU drivers and avoid Very High graphical settings and HBAO+, which both can be major performance and/or VRAM hogs. Downgrading to high settings will have minimal visual impact in-game while offering much more stable (higher) framerates, which is the most important thing when gaming.

To conclude Resident Evil 7 is very easy to run on PC, with a wide range of graphical options that will even allow those with fairly old GPU hardware to run this game with an acceptable framerate at medium to high settings.  Sadly this game does run into trouble when played at 4K at high graphical settings, though the game runs very well at lower, more commonly used resolutions like 1080p and 1440p.   

Gameplay wise Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a far cry from recent games in the series, though it is certainly a survival horror game that fans of Amnesia and Alien Isolation will love. The game’s visuals and design aesthetic do a great job of immersing gamers into the experience, providing some of the best facial animations that I have seen in any game to date.

Resident Evil 7 is an easy recommendation to fans of Horror games, especially given how rare AAA horror games are these days. The PC version should easily run for anyone with suitable graphical settings, even for those with lower end hardware.  

 

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