On the night of Thursday to Friday, practically immediately after the end of the Capcom Spotlight event, a demo version for the expected remake of Resident Evil 4 was released, which is called “Chainsaw Demo”, and in it you can see the very beginning of the entire game, Leon’s arrival in the village. I tried the demo on all three main platforms (PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X), so I bring at least through text and screenshots a comparison between the individual versions, both in terms of graphics and frame rates.
On both consoles you can expect two basic modes – Resolution and Frame Rate, I think the names speak for themselves. At the same time, you can turn ray tracing on or off for each mode, bringing the total number of modes to 4.
Frame Rate + RT
Since I really strongly favor smooth framerate over resolution, I decided to try the aptly named mode first. While the game looks very nice on the Xbox, I was struck by the so-called shimmering on the PlayStation, which was a problem for a long time, for example in Horizon Forbidden West (it doesn’t show up well on the screenshots, the shimmering is visible mainly in motion). Considering the subsequent comparison with the PC version and playing with the FSR settings, I concluded that this is most likely caused by this upscaling technology, which in short still does not reach such qualities as DLSS from Nvidia. It’s definitely survivable, but it’s not ideal and it’s distracting. At the same time, you can notice that the Xbox version has better shadows and a slightly higher resolution, this applies in practically all modes.
In terms of performance, the game holds a practically stable 60 FPS indoors, but it’s worse outside, so I chose the big fight with the villagers at the end of the demo as the test location, which is by far the most demanding part on the hardware. In the PS5 version, you can expect a framerate between 50 and 60 frames per second, very rarely a bit less. Variable refresh rate will definitely help a lot here if you have a display device with an HDMI 2.1 port.
The same applies to the Xbox version, but FreeSync support is enough for you there. VRR is also very useful here, the performance is basically similar to that on the PlayStation, although the PS5 version can be a bit more stable.
Frame Rate
Subsequently, I tried the performance mode without ray tracing. Thanks to RT, the game has better lighting and reflections, but it can definitely be done without it and it still looks very nice. That is, except for the shimmering that is in the PS5 version.
On the other hand, the framerate is pretty solid on the PlayStation and is the smoothest of all modes across the new consoles. But unfortunately, even this mode is not fully stable and the frame rate can drop.
It’s even worse on Xbox. While the PS5 version tries to stick to a stable 60 FPS at least most of the time, the Xbox version fluctuates practically constantly, even though the framerate is in the high fifties.
Resolution + RT
Now it’s the turn of the lowest quality mode, which offers high resolution and ray tracing. You can see a visual comparison below. I would like to point out, however, that the shimmering on the PS5 persists even here, although it is no longer as pronounced as in Frame Rate mode.
As you might expect, the performance isn’t very good. The framerate on the PS5 in more demanding passages is at most slightly above 50 FPS, but often below this limit, while also falling into the lower 40s.
It’s even worse on Xbox. The frame rate stays around 45 FPS in the best moments, and drops below 40 in the worst.
Resolution
The last mod is high definition without RT, which could be a solid choice, but again it ruins shimmering on PS5 and performance on Xbox.
On the PlayStation 5, you can expect a framerate of around 50 FPS, in the best cases slightly above, in the worst a little below.
The Xbox has a slightly worse frame rate here too, practically not much different from the ray tracing mode, which is rather strange. The framerate mostly stayed around 45 FPS.
PlayStation 4 (backwards compatible)
Resident Evil 4 is a bit of an odd game in that while it isn’t coming out on Xbox One, it is coming out on PlayStation 4. I don’t have a PS4 console, but I at least tried the “worse” version via backwards compatibility on the PS5 to see how noticeable the visual difference is. And it must be said that it is. The game here again offers two modes (without the RT option): Resolution and Frame Rate. The first one still looks quite normal, but even there there are lower details and some shadows are completely missing. The resolution of the second mode is so low that the image is really very blurry and the game doesn’t look very nice overall.
I tried the PS4 version mainly because I wanted to see if it could achieve a stable 60 FPS on the PS5. And the answer is only partially. Resolution mode is definitely more stable than all the native modes on PS5, but the framerate still drops occasionally.
So I thought that the game must run smoothly in the ugly Frame Rate mode, but even here I encountered occasional drops in FPS. This made me think that the game is, at least in some moments, limited by the processor and not by the graphics chip. This is quite a problem, because neither reducing the graphics nor using FSR will help here. I wonder if the developers can fix these issues before the release.
PC
Finally, here we have the PC version, which definitely looks the best of all at maximum settings. In addition, the options are really rich and you can set any little thing, which is not a standard and Capcom deserves praise for this. But even the PC version was not without problems, on my setup with an Intel Core i5-13600K processor, an RTX 3070 graphics card and 32 GB DDR5 RAM, I had practically constant crashes after I changed something in the settings, which was very frustrating, and I’m not far from the only one who encountered such problems.
Another shortcoming is the old familiar stuttering that accompanies practically every PC game today. I noticed the crashes mainly at the beginning, but they were quite big, one extreme lasted for several seconds. Since there was significantly less stuttering on the second pass, this could mean that it’s shader compilation stutter again, which Capcom could solve by compiling the shaders at game launch, rather than directly during gameplay.
Otherwise, even on my RTX 3070, I was able to play in 4K when I turned on FSR 2 Quality. The frame rate, at least initially, hovered between 50 and 60 FPS. The problem started in the second part of the demo, where it was as if I suddenly started a completely different game, the framerate dropped to about 30fps and didn’t pick up.
Realistic hair
At the very end, I kept an item that you can find in the settings not only on PC, but also on the new consoles. Visually, it is perhaps by far the most interesting, because it is about “Hair Strands”, literally strands of hair. The hair doesn’t look very nice in games using the RE Engine, but when you turn on this new feature, it’s completely different and looks really realistic in my opinion. Anyway, judge for yourself, you can find the comparison below, while the screenshots are from the PC version.
Some players have reported that this setting significantly degrades performance, but I’ve personally tested it on both PC and consoles and noticed virtually no difference in performance. So if, like me, you don’t have performance issues, definitely turn on Hair Strands, as it’s a huge visual leap forward, even though it’s “just” hair.
What do you think about the demo, did you like it in terms of content and technical aspects?
Resident Evil 4 Remake releases March 24th on PCPlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 a Xbox Series X|S.
