Resident Evil 7 Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Crackling tension. It is once again time for heart attacks: The latest title from the Resident Evil series focuses on the strengths from the first games and convinces with a thrilling single-player mode. PC gamers will be mainly shocked by the VRAM requirements.

Florian Glaser, Klaus Hinum, ✓ Tanja Hinum (translated by Andreas Osthoff), Published 02/16/2017 🇩🇪

For the original German article, see here.

Graphics

We were thrilled by Resident Evil 7's gameplay right from the start. Developer and publisher Capcom decided not to follow the current action trend (high speed, unrealistic high number of enemies, …) and presents a rather leisure, but very intense horror story, which can also produce ice-cold shivers on mature gamers. Yes, the controls were primarily developed for gamepads and the mouse feels pretty spongy in the menus, but the overall handling of Resident Evil 7 is decent.

That Capcom does not ignore PC gamers is evident when you see the comprehensive video menu. It requires some scrolling, but you can perfectly adjust the settings to your system in return. All changes are applied without a restart, so the tuning does not take too much time. However, some settings can only be changed in the main menu and there are no presets.

Scrolling through the options reveals some surprises. Resident Evil 7 supports upscaling and downsampling (we use the base value 1) as well as HDR on corresponding monitors by default. Players can also adjust the maximum frame rate; you can just use "variable" when you do not want a limitation to 30 or 60 frames per second. V-Sync can be disabled as well. We would definitely recommend the rendering method "normal", because the picture will otherwise be much blurrier.

Speaking of sharpness: The title offers several post-processing modes for anti-aliasing. Besides FXAA and TAA (optionally combined), which applies some sort of soft focus, the game also supports SMAA. However, none of the modes is fully convincing. The anti-aliasing cannot be fully deactivated, either, which is unfortunate for users of less powerful systems.

However, entry-level and mainstream notebooks handle Resident Evil 7 pretty well when you reduce the settings and the resolution. The performance is much better with low settings. Higher details and resolutions will depend on the amount of video memory. Less than 4 GB result in heavy stutters that affect the gameplay of Resident Evil 7 quite significantly. High-end GPUs with 6-8 GB on the other hand never have performance issues.

One problem right now is the option Shadow Cache, which seems to be buggy or poorly optimized. Contrary to other articles (like PC Games Hardware, for example), however, we saw better results with activated Shadow Cache compared. You should therefore try it yourself and just select the faster option.

The RE engine otherwise leaves a mature impression. We never had problems with crashes or bigger graphics issues (except for some flickering textures and some clipping issues) when we played the game and ran the benchmarks. The graphics bugs might also be related to the brand-new graphics driver from Nvidia and AMD, which were just released for the launch.

The survival horror does not need too much space on the hard drive. Around 23 GB (20 GB download) are okay compared to other titles. Many triple-A games from 2016 required up to 70 GB (like Call of Duty Infinite Warfare). The loading times are also okay.

The visuals of Resident Evil 7 leave mixed results. We like the well-animated characters, the detailed indoor environments and the atmospheric illumination. We have to criticize the rather ugly outdoor environments and the mediocre texture quality. Surfaces often look blurry from a short distance – even at the highest graphics settings. Still, you can easily overlook these shortcomings thanks to the terrific atmosphere and the perfect art design.

One problem is the Denuvo protection of the game, which only allows a limited number of new systems/activations per day and therefore makes it hard to perform the benchmarks. Steam does at least mention it in the shop.

Benchmark

We use the first building you enter right after the intro for our benchmarks. We run down the stairs from the save point on the first floor and then enter kitchen on the left. We then circle around the table to get back to the hallway and then enter the second door on the right into the living room. Our recording with the tool Fraps stops right in front of the window (compare video).

Our ~30-second sequence is representative for the average performance, so it is a good indicator. Resident Evil 7 plays in the first-person perspective, so you should target more than 35-40 FPS for conveniently smooth gameplay.

Results

We start with the high settings for our performance evaluation. If you want to play on an UHD/4K display with nice visuals, you need a high-end GPU like a GeForce GTX 1070. Resident Evil 7 is much less demanding in 1920 x 1080 pixels, but you should still have a GeForce GTX 970M for maximum details, and a GeForce GTX 960M for high details.

All-round GPUs like the Geforce GTX 950M can handle normal settings. Low-end chips like the Intel HD Graphics 4600 are usually limited to low details and resolutions up to 1366 x 768 pixels. The CPU impact is limited based on our experiences.

Resident Evil 7
3840x2160 High / On AA:FXAA+T 1920x1080 Very High / On AA:FXAA+T 1920x1080 High / On AA:FXAA+T 1920x1080 Medium / Off AA:FX 1366x768 Medium / Off AA:FX 1280x720 Very Low / Off AA:FX
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	59.8 (50^min) fps ∼47% 176 (155^min) fps ∼45% 212 (180^min) fps ∼50% 313 (274^min) fps ∼52% 477 (400^min) fps ∼86% 519 (451^min) fps ∼89%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Desktop), 6700K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070	48.7 (40^min) fps ∼39% 141 (124^min) fps ∼36% 171 (144^min) fps ∼40% 281 (244^min) fps ∼47% 442 (393^min) fps ∼80% 517 (455^min) fps ∼88%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK Asus G752VS	43.4 (36^min) fps ∼34% 131 (113^min) fps ∼33% 156 (131^min) fps ∼37% 230 (199^min) fps ∼38% 374 (331^min) fps ∼68% 431 (387^min) fps ∼74%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 4790K Asus Strix GTX 980 Ti Desktop PC	46.7 (38^min) fps ∼37%
AMD Radeon R9 Fury, 4790K XFX Radeon R9 Fury Pro	38.9 (29^min) fps ∼31% 53.6 (28^min) fps ∼14% 132 (57^min) fps ∼31%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 6700K Desktop PC	34.4 (28^min) fps ∼27% 104 (89^min) fps ∼27% 126 (102^min) fps ∼30% 201 (173^min) fps ∼34% 321 (281^min) fps ∼58% 395 (364^min) fps ∼68%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	31.5 (26^min) fps ∼25% 94.1 (81^min) fps ∼24% 115 (96^min) fps ∼27% 171 (150^min) fps ∼29% 280 (248^min) fps ∼51% 326 (304^min) fps ∼56%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK MSI GT62VR	28.4 (24^min) fps ∼23% 85.8 (73^min) fps ∼22% 105 (87^min) fps ∼25% 158 (135^min) fps ∼26% 264 (230^min) fps ∼48% 305 (270^min) fps ∼52%
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Desktop), 4790K AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Reference	35.1 (28^min) fps ∼28% 112 (90^min) fps ∼29% 129 (101^min) fps ∼30%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, 4790K MSI Gaming Z GeForce GTX 970 Desktop PC	30.7 (25^min) fps ∼24% 88 (75^min) fps ∼22%
AMD Radeon RX 470 (Desktop), 4790K MSI RX 470 Gaming X 4GB	30.8 (25^min) fps ∼24% 37.6 (25^min) fps ∼10% 114 (90^min) fps ∼27%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	24.3 (20^min) fps ∼19% 72 (60^min) fps ∼18% 81 (66^min) fps ∼19% 108 (82^min) fps ∼18% 170 (131^min) fps ∼31% 197 (159^min) fps ∼34%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	18.6 (15^min) fps ∼15% 55.8 (48^min) fps ∼14% 66.9 (55^min) fps ∼16% 91.4 (74^min) fps ∼15% 137 (104^min) fps ∼25% 152 (122^min) fps ∼26%
AMD Radeon RX 460 (Desktop), 4790K XFX RX-460P4DFG5 Double Dissipation 4 GB	14.6 (11^min) fps ∼12% 25.9 (18^min) fps ∼7% 56.5 (44^min) fps ∼13% 92 (74^min) fps ∼15% 222 (205^min) fps ∼38%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M, 6700HQ MSI GE72 965M Ti	22.2 (12^min) fps ∼6% 54.7 (45^min) fps ∼13% 91.4 (76^min) fps ∼15%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 4720HQ Schenker XMG A505	9.9 (7^min) fps ∼8% 18.8 (12^min) fps ∼5% 38.8 (31^min) fps ∼9% 59.3 (51^min) fps ∼10% 105 (90^min) fps ∼19% 124 (114^min) fps ∼21%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, 6700HQ MSI PE60 2QD	16.1 (9^min) fps ∼4% 32.2 (25^min) fps ∼8% 53.4 (45^min) fps ∼9% 119 (107^min) fps ∼20%
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, 6700HQ MSI CX72 6QD	15.2 (13^min) fps ∼4% 27.9 (23^min) fps ∼5% 48.2 (42^min) fps ∼9% 61.8 (55^min) fps ∼11%
NVIDIA GeForce 940M, 5700HQ MSI GP62 2QD	15.4 (13^min) fps ∼4% 26.9 (22^min) fps ∼4% 47 (41^min) fps ∼8% 59.6 (53^min) fps ∼10%
AMD Radeon R9 M280X, FX-7600P Asus N551ZU-CN007H	22.6 (12^min) fps ∼6% 35 (26^min) fps ∼8% 54.8 (36^min) fps ∼9%
NVIDIA GeForce 920M, 2970M MSI CX61 2QC 2970M MS-16GD	32.1 (27^min) fps ∼6% 38.7 (35^min) fps ∼7%
NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M, 4200M MSI CX61-i572M	13.5 fps ∼2% 28.6 fps ∼5%
Intel HD Graphics 4600, 4700MQ Schenker W504	14 (9^min) fps ∼2% 24.3 (18^min) fps ∼4% 32.6 (28^min) fps ∼6%

Overview

Test Systems

Desktop-PCs	Platform I	Platform II
Mainboard	Asus Z170-A	Asus Z97-Deluxe
Processor	Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-4790K (Haswell)
GPU	MSI GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) MSI GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 (4 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB GDDR5) XFX Radeon R9 Fury (4 GB HBM) Sapphire Radeon R9 290X (4 GB GDDR5) Sapphire Radeon R9 280X (3 GB GDDR5) MSI Radeon R7 370 (2 GB GDDR5)
RAM	2 x 8 GB DDR4-2133	2 x 4 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Crucial MX100 SSD (256 GB) Crucial M500 SSD (480 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB) OCZ Trion 150 SSD (960 GB)	Intel SSD 530 (240 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit	Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Schenker Notebooks	Schenker W504	Schenker XMG A505	Schenker S413
Mainboard	Intel HM87	Intel HM87	Intel HM87
Processor	Intel Core i7-4700MQ (Haswell)	Intel Core i7-4720HQ (Haswell)	Intel Core i7-4750HQ (Haswell)
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M (8 GB GDDR5) GTX 970M (6 GB GDDR5) GTX 880M (8 GB GDDR5) GTX 870M (6 GB GDDR5) GTX 860M Kepler (4 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
RAM	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600	2x 8 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Samsung SSD 840 EVO (250 GB)	Micron M600 SSD (128 GB) HGST Travelstar 7K1000 HDD (1000 GB)	Intel SSD
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit	Windows 10 Home 64-bit	Windows 10 Home 64-bit

MSI Notebooks	MSI GT62VR	MSI GE72	MSI PE60	MSI GP62	MSI CX61	MSI CX61
Mainboard	Intel HM170	Intel HM170	Intel HM170	Intel HM86	Intel HM86	Intel HM86
Processor	Intel Core i7-6820HK (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-5700HQ (Broadwell)	Intel Celeron 2970M (Haswell)	Intel Core i5-4200M (Haswell)
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M 2016 (2 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M (2 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce 940M (2 GB DDR3)	Nvidia GeForce 920M (2 GB DDR3)	Nvidia GeForce GT 720M (2 GB DDR3)
RAM	4 x 8 GB DDR4-2133	1 x 8 GB DDR4-2133	2 x 4 GB DDR4-2133	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Samsung NVMe MZVPV128 SSD (128 GB)	Toshiba THNSNJ128G8NU SSD (128 GB) WDC WD10JPVX HDD (1000 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB)			Toshiba MQ01ABF050 HDD (500 GB)	WDC Scorpio Blue HDD (1000 GB)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit	Windows 10 Home 64-bit	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Asus Notebooks	Asus G752VS	Asus N551ZU
Mainboard	Intel CM236	AMD K15.1
Processor	Intel Core i7-6820HK (Skylake)	AMD FX-7600P (Kaveri)
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5)	AMD Radeon R9 M280X (4 GB GDDR5)
RAM	4 x 16 GB DDR4-2400	2 x 4 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Toshiba NVMe THNSN5512GPU7 SSD (512 GB)	Samsung SSD 830 (256 GB)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit	Windows 10 64-bit

4K Monitor	Nvidia driver	AMD driver	Intel driver
2 x Asus PB287Q	ForceWare 378.49	Crimson 17.1.1	15.40.28.4501

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Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser - Managing Editor Gaming Laptops - 615 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

Translator: Andreas Osthoff - Managing Editor Business Laptops - 1614 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2013

I grew up with modern consumer electronics and my first computer was a Commodore C64, which encouraged my interest in building my own systems. I started working as a review editor for Notebookcheck during my dual studies at Siemens. Currently, I am mainly responsible for dealing with business laptops and mobile workstations. It’s a great experience to be able to review the latest devices and technologies and then compare them with each other.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Resident Evil 7 Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Florian Glaser, Klaus Hinum, 2017-02-16 (Update: 2017-02-23)

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.