A recent surge of reports from PC gamers highlighted a peculiar issue: a significant drop in performance while playing Resident Evil Requiem, particularly when using NVIDIA's GeForce Game Ready Driver 591.86. This prompted a thorough investigation, employing multiple NVIDIA GPUs and various driver versions to ascertain the veracity and reproducibility of these claims. However, despite these efforts, the substantial performance degradation described by some users could not be consistently replicated in controlled testing environments.
The issue gained traction after numerous discussions on online forums, where players detailed experiencing reduced frame rates and lower GPU power consumption in Resident Evil Requiem following a specific driver update. One notable account cited an RTX 40-series GPU experiencing a drop to 74 frames per second (fps) and a GPU power draw of only 304 watts with path tracing enabled. The suggested remedy circulating among the community was to revert to an older driver version, a solution many claimed led to a significant improvement in both frame rates and power efficiency. This widespread discussion necessitated a hands-on approach to evaluate the performance implications.
In a controlled test setup, a high-end PC equipped with a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard, an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, and 64 GB of DDR5 RAM was utilized. To ensure accurate and unbiased results, Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) was used to completely remove previous drivers before each new installation. The game settings were meticulously matched to those reported by affected users: 1920 x 1080 resolution, maxed-out graphics, lighting, and shadow quality, 'Performance' upscaling, and '2x' NVIDIA Frame Generation, all with path tracing activated. The testing process involved looping a particularly intense section of the game in Wrenwood, featuring numerous zombies and fleeing civilians, to maximize the load on the system and highlight any potential performance bottlenecks.
Initial tests with an RTX 4080 Super and the latest 595.71 driver showed an average of 164 fps. Rolling back to the older 576.88 driver resulted in a minor increase to 167 fps. This marginal difference, falling within the typical range of testing variance, did not align with the dramatic improvements reported by some gamers. Further examination with an RTX 5090 revealed similar patterns: 186 fps with the 595.71 driver, and 180 fps with the 576.88 driver, along with an average GPU power draw of 240 watts. These fluctuations were not significant enough to suggest a major driver-related performance issue on the test system. This indicates that while driver issues might exist for some, they are not universally reproducible across all high-end PC configurations.
The findings suggest that the reported driver performance issues in Resident Evil Requiem might not be as widespread or easily replicable as anecdotal evidence suggests. It is plausible that specific hardware configurations, game areas, or other software factors contribute to the performance discrepancies experienced by some players. Developers face the ongoing challenge of optimizing graphically intensive features like path tracing for a diverse range of PC setups, especially given the current memory supply constraints affecting hardware costs. Ensuring a smooth experience across various systems will be crucial for the broader adoption of advanced rendering technologies.