Resident Evil 7: Biohazard PC Performance Review

Graphical Options and Settings

Moving Into 2017 we at OC3D want to be more transparent with our readers and be clearer when it comes to exactly what in-game settings we use when testing any new game, especially when the game has no pre-defined graphical options. 

We pride ourselves in testing games with a variety of different graphical settings, rather than just blindly setting a game to ultra and failing to give our readers the much-needed performance data that they crave. After all, not all of us have the money to build a PC that is capable of Ultra settings in every game and in many cases Ultra settings are simply designed not to run well on current generation hardware. 

Below is a table detailing exactly what in-game settings we use when referring to Very Low, Low, Medium, High and Very High graphical settings later in the review, as these are not pre-defined settings that are built into the game.  

• – Screen Resolution…self-explanatory here, but the game will list arbitrary resolutions supported by your monitor and Windows desktop environment. 
• – Refresh Rate…adjustable to frequencies supported by your monitor. Also supports 144Hz high refresh monitors including Nvidia G-Sync.
   
• – Display Mode…Full screen, Windowed, and Borderless Window modes are supported.
• – Field of View…FOV angle can be adjusted here (70-90)
• – Frame Rate…supports 30, 60, and Variable (uncapped)
   
• – V-Sync…ON/OFF 
• – Rendering Method…Two options available – Normal and Interlaced 
• – Resolution Scaling…controls the game’s internal rendering resolution. This is akin to upscaling and downsampling of the final video output. Selectable option ranges from 0.5X to 2.0X. 1.0X is 100% 1:1 native output. The higher the number, the better the image quality and more GPU ‘oomph’ required, while lowering it below 1.0 makes the image softer (but also reduces GPU overhead and increases frame rate).

• – Texture Quality…option ranges from Very Low to Very High. Higher quality requires additional local video memory.
• – Texture Filtering…option ranges from Very Low to Very High. This is essentially your Trilinear to Anisotropic filter that goes all the way up to 16X. 
• – Mesh Quality…option ranges between Low to Very High. This option also affects Level-of-Detail (LOD) quality. 
• – Anti-Aliasing…Selectable options include FXAA, TAA, FXAA+TAA, and SMAA. 
• – Motion Blur…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Effects Rendering…Selectable between Low, Medium and High. This controls the intensity and density of certain visual effects. 
• – Depth of Field…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Shadow Quality…option ranges from Very Low to Very High. 
• – Dynamic Shadows…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Shadow Cache…ON/OFF toggle. When set to ON, shadows for static objects will be cached in video memory. 
• – Ambient Occlusion…Selectable options include OFF, SSAO (Variable), SSAO, HDAO, and HBAO+. 
• – Bloom Effect…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Lens Flare…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Volumetric Lighting Quality…Selectable between OFF, Low, and High. This option controls intensity and quality of dynamic lighting including light shafts piercing through window panes and vents. 
• – Reflections…Selectable between ON, OFF, and Variable. Affects fidelity and quality of screen-space reflections. 
• – Subsurface Scattering…ON/OFF toggle
   
• – Chromatic Aberration…ON/OFF toggle 
• – Colour Space…Selectable between SRGB and BT.709