Resident Evil Requiem PC Performance Review

Resident Evil Requiem — dropping on February 27th on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC — is the ninth mainline entry in Capcom’s legendary survival horror series. For me, it’s also a sobering reminder of why I usually stick to watching walkthroughs on YouTube for this franchise. Requiem has all the hallmarks of a classic RE title with the eerie atmosphere, haunted hotels, weird-looking creatures, and, of course, the perfectly timed jump scares

We get dual protagonists in Grace and Leon, but Capcom has done something pretty interesting with the camera here. When you’re playing as the former, the game is locked in a tight first-person view, but it switches back to the classic third-person perspective when you’re controlling the latter.

And on the tech side for the PC version, while Resident Evil Requiem supports Ray Tracing, DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation (4x), Ray Reconstruction, Reflex, and AMD FSR 3.1.5, it also supports Path Tracing. And that’s exactly what I’ve tested here along with the rest of the presets.

Testing Rig

For testing, I paired the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which sits on the MSI Z890 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi motherboard (Review), and 48GB of Kingston Fury Renegade non-binary DDR5 RAM clocked at 6000MT/s (using XMP Profile 3). Storage was handled by a WD Black SN850X (2TB).

Requiem were tested on an MSI G274F monitor with a 180Hz refresh rate. The GPU driver version used was 591.86, which was rolled out on January 27.

Resident Evil Requiem Graphics Settings and Features

Under Graphics Quality, Requiem offers five different presets ranging from Lowest, Low, Normal, High, and Max. It’s a pretty standard setup, but what I really appreciate is the VRAM and processing load indicator on the right side of the screen, which is becoming quite common in recent games. As you’re toggling through the options to find that sweet spot for your rig, it gives you a live look at exactly how much of your GPU’s memory you’re about to gobble up.

Then we get to the lighting, which is where things get interesting. You can manually tweak the Ray Tracing between Normal and High, or just kill it entirely if you need the extra frames. But honestly, the real reason to play Requiem on PC is the Path Tracing support. Unlike standard Ray Tracing, which only handles specific effects like reflections, Path Tracing calculates how light bounces off every single surface in a scene to create a practical setup. But the tradeoff here is performance, because it’s a massive resource hog, and it'll push even high-end builds to the limit.

Interestingly, enabling Path Tracing automatically greys out other upscaling options and locks you into DLSS. You can still cycle the Upscaling Mode between Balanced, Performance, Ultra Performance, Quality, or DLAA, and it gives you the choice to disable Frame Generation or toggle it between 2x, 3x, and 4x (the latter two being Multi Frame Generation). You’ve also got toggles for Nvidia Reflex and DLSS Ray Reconstruction. However, the latter requires no manual input and is automatically enabled when you switch to Path Tracing.

However, I do have one annoying, albeit relatively small, gripe here. Capcom still hasn't figured out how to let us tweak the important stuff mid-game. If you head into the settings from the pause menu while you're actually playing, most of the heavy graphics and Ray Tracing options are greyed out. You’ll get a little pop-up basically telling you to go back to the main menu if you want to change anything significant. It’s a minor hurdle, but in an era where most modern games allow for real-time adjustments, being forced out of the story just to see if a setting helps your frame rate feels a bit archaic.

Outside of all the heavy lighting and upscaling trickery, Capcom has tucked in plenty of other details for those who want to fine-tune their experience. You can switch between different Hair Strand styles if you’re the type who needs every inch of detail to look perfect, and you can keep fiddling with things like Particle Lighting, Shadow Quality, and Ambient Occlusion until the performance feels right for your system.

If all these are too overwhelming, Requiem also has a setting that automatically configures graphics settings based on your rig. Overall, there’s a ton here to get your hands dirty with and squeeze every bit of performance out of your hardware.

Resident Evil Requiem Performance on the RTX 5070

I tested the game across different settings and two graphics presets, High and Low. Both the outside and inside world of Requiem, including the eerie creatures, look visually stunning with the graphics quality set to High.

Starting with the native performance, on the Low preset, I was averaging around 91fps, which feels smooth, but those 0.2% lows at 56fps mean you’ll still see the occasional hiccup. The 1% and 0.2% lows represent the average frame rate of the slowest 1% and 0.2% of frames during a session, which essentially highlights brief stutters and hitches that can make a game feel slightly choppy even if your average framerate looks high.

Things get a lot heavier when you switch to High, where the average drops down to 72fps. One thing that caught my eye was the VRAM usage; it jumps from 7.77GB on Low to over 10.20GB on High. And this is something I noticed when trying to switch the presets to Max graphics and Max lighting, where it threw a warning that read “may cause stutters,” which clearly indicates that Requiem loves itself some VRAM, even at 1080p.

With DLSS enabled, the Low preset average frame rate climbed up to 112fps, while the High preset sat at 93fps. It’s interesting to see that even with DLSS helping out, the VRAM usage stayed pretty high, hovering around 10.13GB on High. While the averages look great on a chart, the 0.2% lows stay at 64fps on Low and 55fps on High.

When you start mixing DLSS and Frame Generation into the Ray Tracing presets, the numbers on the RTX 5070 start to look a bit wild. On the High preset with 2x Frame Gen, the average frame rate hits 19fps, and if you push it to 4x, it rockets all the way up to 349fps. On paper, it looks like the card is absolutely tearing through the game, but the averages really don't tell the whole story here.

The RTX 5070 draws about 199.7W of power on the High 2x setting and jumps up to 214.6W when you move to 4x. VRAM usage is another thing to keep an eye on, as it stays consistently high at 10.41GB on the High preset regardless of whether you're using 2x or 4x Frame Generation. It’s a lot of power and memory to throw at the game, but it shows just how much the GPU needs to lean on its resources to maintain that level of performance with all trickery and RT enabled.

Now for the real stress test, Path Tracing. Here, the game looks more realistic because of the lighting effects, and this applies in indoor environments as well. At the High preset, the average frame rate sits at 59fps, but those 1% lows dipping to 43fps mean you're definitely going to feel some stuttering as you move through those rain-slicked streets.

If you're looking for a smoother experience, toggling on 2x Frame Generation brings that average up to 116fps, though the 1% lows hovering around 47fps show that even AI frames can't completely smooth out the heaviest lighting effects. In fact, there was a particular moment at the Health Care Centre when I noticed continuous screen tearing while moving quickly in this setting (this happened while playing as Grace in FPP).

That pattern of the 1% lows lagging behind is becoming a real theme in Requiem. To be honest, it’s not something you’re constantly noticing while you're in the thick of it, mostly because you’re too busy slashing at the undead to count frames, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Conclusion

Resident Evil Requiem is a bit of a technical beast that shows exactly what the RE Engine can do in 2026. The games got all the bells and whistles as long as your rig can handle it.

The RTX 5070 handles the game well, especially at 1080p, but it's clear that the more advanced lighting features like Path Tracing are still massive resource hogs.

Here are the main takeaways from my time with the game:

• Visuals and VRAM: The game looks stunning on High settings, but it's incredibly hungry for memory, pulling over 10GB of VRAM even at 1080p.
• Ray Tracing vs Path Tracing: Standard Ray Tracing offers a great balance, but Path Tracing offers more realism, but at the cost of performance.
• Real-World Stutter: The lower 1% averages indicate that the game has some rough edges that you'll notice if you have a sharp eye, even if they don't get in the way of slashing through the undead.

Ultimately, if you’re running an RTX 5070, you’ve got a card that can definitely handle everything Resident Evil Requiem throws at it, provided you’re willing to use upscaling to smooth out those heavy Path Tracing hits. But, if you have anything below the 5070, I’d highly suggest tinkering around with RT and the rest of the settings to get a better performance.

At its core, Resident Evil Requiem is a fun game. If you’re already deep into this franchise, it delivers exactly the kind of atmosphere and tension you'd expect, and you’re going to have a lot of fun seeing where the story goes next, especially with the dual protagonists at play.