Resident Evil 3 Remake PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Resident Evil 3 Remake PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Introduction – Another masterful remake from Capcom?

Resident Evil 3 dates back to 1999, a factor that makes the game ill-suited to the straight-up remake treatment. While remakes like the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy and the Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy rely on classic gameplay that can stands the test of time, the same can’t be said for the older games in the Resident Evil series. 

Capcom believed that Resident Evil fans deserved something more than Resident Evil recreation with the graphics cranked up to 11. Gamers needed something better, a reimagining of their classics, not glorified remasters. Not many gamers these days call for fixed camera angles and constant camera cuts. 

Like Resident Evil 2 (Performance Review Here) before it, Resident Evil 3 promised modernised gameplay, a player-controlled camera, up-to-date graphics and subtle story changes that will make the game feel both new and familiar to existing fans of the series. These changes made Resident Evil 2 (2019) a huge success, attracting both series veterans and newcomers to the title. 

On the software-side Capcom has built Resident Evil 2 on their new RE Engine, which is also known as the “Reach to the Moon” engine, utilising modern rendering techniques to deliver excellent graphics while maintaining solid performance on both console and PC hardware. This engine was first used in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Performance Review Here) and has since been used for Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Devil May Cry 5 (Performance Review Here). 

On PC, Resident Evil 3 gives us a lot to talk about, from the game’s improved utilisation of DirectX 12 to the title’s implementation of new AMD features such as FidelityFX and FreeSync Premium Pro support. We will also have a chat about which settings players should enable to disable to achieve the best performance on your PC hardware.

In this piece, we will analyse how CPU core counts, API selections and individual graphical settings influence Resident Evil 3’s performance on PC. After reading this article, you should know how to optimise Resident Evil 3 to get the best performance out of your hardware, and how a lot of today’s modern GPUs stack up against one another.  
  

Resident Evil 3 Remake PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide  

Contents


– PC System Requirements & Graphics Options – The Tech that underpins RE3
– CPU Performance – Do you need a monster processor to run RE3?
– DirectX 12 VS DirectX 11 – Which API runs the fastest
– Performance Scaling – Performance Priority to Maximum settings
– Interlacing – Does it work?
– 1080p Performance
– 1440p Performance
– 4K Performance
– Optimising Resident Evil 3 – Which Settings Should you lower first? 
– Conclusion

GPU drivers

When testing Resident Evil 3’s PC version, we opted to use the newest drivers from both the Radeon and Geforce camps. These drivers are AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 20.3.1 driver as well as Nvidia’s Geforce 445.78 driver.

Testing Methodology

OC3D is a website that is dedicated to PC hardware, so you better believe that we test every game on a wide range of hardware configurations. This commitment to variety means that we will be using both Intel and AMD based testbeds as well as a range of GPU offerings from both Nvidia and Radeon. 

Our primary test system uses Intel’s X99 platform, containing an Intel Core i7 6850K at a fixed clock speed of 4GHz. This testbed will use 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory and will be powered and cooled by an HX1200i PSU and an H110i AIO liquid cooler respectively, with everything sitting inside a Corsair 460X chassis. In this system, we are using an ASUS Strix X99 motherboard.

The system below will be used to conduct the majority of our game testing. This system will be used in this review unless otherwise stated.

 


Game Test Rig

Intel i7 6850K @4.0 GHz
ASUS X99 Strix
Corsair Vengeance LP 4x8GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 “May 2019” Update

 

GPU Selection

No gaming test suite would be complete without a large selection of GPUs. At OC3D out current test suite covers Nvidia’s RTX 20-series and GTX 10-series alongside AMD’s RX Vega and RX 500 series graphics cards.

Starting with Metro Exodus, we began testing new PC games with Nvidia’s latest RTX series of graphics cards. In our testing, we currently use the mid-range RTX 2060 and uber high-end RTX 2080 Ti entering our graphics card lineup. In time we hope to have a Radeon RX 5700 graphics card for RTX 2060 VS RX 5700 comparisons. 

With this performance analysis, OC3D’s main review staff has been able to work together from across the UK to deliver wider levels of performance testing than is common for our gaming content. This has enabled us to add a wider range of GPUs to our test suite for this review. 


Radeon RX 5700 Series – Navi (RDNA)

– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil 
– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 Red Devil

PowerColor Red Devil RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT LE Cooler

Geforce RTX 20-Series & GTX 16-Series


– Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
– Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition
– Palit GTX 1660 Super StormX

nVidia RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti ReviewnVidia RTX 2060 Review


Geforce GTX 10-series

– Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition
– Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition
– ASUS GTX 1060 Strix Gaming OC

 

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AMD RX Vega Series

– AMD RX Vega 56

AMD RX 500 Series

– AMD RX 580 Strix OC Â