![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , November 03, 2009
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
Resident Evil 5 Gameplay Performance and IQ
Greedy multinational biotech corporations have infected hordes of African citizens with an apocalyptic mind-controlling parasite, and it's up to you and your sexy sidekick to save the world! But before you get started, you better make sure your video card is up to the task. Check it out with us as we test the best video cards out today including all of the new Radeon HD 5000 series video cards!
Image Quality
While the available graphics options in Resident Evil 5 are not exactly abundant, the settings that do exist do change the look of the game in meaningful ways. Except for Texture Quality, all of the other settings can be changed without restarting or reloading the game, and the changes are applied on the fly. The Texture Quality setting, however, can be changed but will not be applied either until after the next loading interval, or until the player quits the game to the main menu (or the desktop) and reloads or restarts the game.
Below are some screenshot comparisons to illustrate what Resident Evil 5’s graphics options settings do.
Motion Blur
In the first image above, motion blur was enabled on the left side and disabled on the right. You can clearly see that the outline of the motorcyclist on the left is blurred and washed out, while the motorcyclist on the right is sharp and clear.
In the second above, motion blur is enabled on the top half and disabled on the bottom half. The top half is very blurry due to the high degree of action and movement on the screen. The bottom half remains crisp and sharp without motion blur enabled, even though the same amount of activity is happening. In motion, it looks very good.
Shadow Detail
The three image sets below represent the three settings of the Shadow Detail setting: High, Medium, and Low.
With Shadow Detail at High, Sheva’s shadow is bold, yet has a realistic soft edge. At Medium, her shadow is not quite as dark, but still has a soft edge. At Low, her shadow has disappeared completely.
On High, Chris’ shadow above is dark, has soft edges, and has recognizable details, such as the shotgun butt stock. On Medium, the shadow is not as dark, has softer edges, and some of the details are lost. On low, his shadow is gone completely.
Texture Detail
The three image sets below represent the three settings of the Texture Detail setting: High, Medium, and Low.
In the first image above, with the Texture setting at High the ground texture is well-detailed and looks like a sandy dirt path with some sticks and litter. On Medium, the details are not as clear, but it still looks like what it is supposed to be. On Low, the details are almost completely gone, and the character of the surface is lost.
With textures on High in the first image, Sheva’s shirt has sharp and visible details, and the concrete textures on the walls behind her also show a lot of clear details. On Medium, the details are still there, but are softened considerably. On Low, some of the details are gone, and the details that remain are so blurry as to be almost lost.
Overall Quality
The three image sets below represent the three settings of the Overall Quality setting: High, Medium, and Low.
In the first image, set to High, the shading and reflections on Chris and Sheva’s arms are hard and realistic. In the second image, the shading are still there, but is softened and the bright reflections are gone. In the last image, the shading is very soft and the reflections are gone.
On High, we can see a reflection in the steel diamond-plate floor and some reflections on the back of Chris’ arm and shotgun and on Sheva’s shirt. On Medium, the reflections on the floor and on Chris are gone, as well as those on Sheva’s shirt. On Low, the reflections are gone and the scene is extremely dark, and it looks as though the lighting model has changed to vertex lighting.
DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10
This next set of screenshots is intended to demonstrate the difference between DX9 and DX10 mode.
In the screenshot above, we are looking at the overall brightness and warmth of the image. The DX10 portion of the image on the top half shows a broader range of contrast and an overall better tone than the DX9 portion of the image, on the bottom half.
In the screenshot above, notice the difference brightness and contrast between DX10 and DX9. DX9 mode appears to be a good deal darker, while DX10 has better contrast and color fidelity.
Again, DX10 mode mostly appears to make the rendered scene appear to have better contrast and color tone compared to DX9.
HDR Bloom bug on the Radeon HD 5000 series
There is currently a known issue with HDR Bloom being too bright when using AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5000 series. An example is shown below.
The first image above shows how this particular scene is supposed to look. The sun is setting, so the scene is relatively dark. The second image shows how it currently looks on AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870. As you can see, the scene is way too bright and many of the details (including some bad guys) are almost completely washed out.
AMD is aware of the issue, has reproduced it, and is working on a fix which should be included in future Catalyst driver updates.
Random Screenshots of Interest
The following screenshots were taken in various places throughout the game. We took the screenshots on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 at 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA, 16X AF, and maximum in-game settings. The screenshots are JPEG compressed and resized to 1920x1200 to save file size and bandwidth.
