Resident Evil V PC Video Card Benchmarks - PAGE 3

DirectX 9.0 versus DirectX 10

As much as we hate to break it to you, the biggest difference between running the game in DirectX 9 mode versus DirectX 10 mode is that in DX 9 mode, the game is going to run better.

Sad but true.

Like practically all PC games that you can play in either DirectX 9 or DirectX 10, there is virtually no noticeable visual difference between running the game in either mode. This has long since been the case with DirectX 10, and again, it is the case for Resident Evil 5. 

Compare these three screenshots to one another, from just about the same point in the benchmark.

The first column is DX9, the second DX10 -- not much difference is there?

Note: You can click on any of the images for a closer look.

Unfortunately the only difference you are going to notice -- unless things get radically changed for the full release of the game -- is that if you choose to run in DirectX 10 mode, you are going to lose frames. Testing with our trusty 8800 GT, in DirectX 9 mode (using 64-bit Vista as our OS) we averaged 62.7 FPS with one run-through. Running the benchmark in DirectX 10 mode, we average 51.0 FPS -- a fairly substantial loss.

High versus Medium versus Low, quality settings

We thought you might like to see some screen shots of the game looks on the different quality settings. They were taken used the 'Fixed Benchmark' option.

These first two pictures were from the game running at 1280x1024, with everything set to high, with AA set to x4: 

1280x1024, everything high, without the AA:

1280x1024, everything set to medium, no AA:

1280x1024, everything set to low, no AA:

Surprisingly, the game seemed to use a different dispersal of models for the infected folks, which makes direct comparisons more difficult. But it is certainly easy to notice the big differences in texture quality going from high to low. On a setting of 'low', even the most modest gaming video cards should be able to achieve playable framerates.

While we haven't yet had a chance to test CPU scaling, we can say that when it comes to video cards, Resident Evil 5 is fairly forgiving -- especially if compared to some recent PC-only titles, such as Arma II. With such forgiving GPU requirements, a wide group of gamers should have no problem lining up some infected to gun down in this great looking PC version of this blockbuster game.