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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!

Introduction

The Resident Evil series of games has long been a staple of horror shooters. Though most games in the series have been released for Microsoft Windows, Resident Evil has remained primarily focused on gaming consoles. Resident Evil 5, which is actually the 9th game in the series, was released for the PC in North America on September 15th 2009, six months after the console versions landed. It is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 4 and takes place approximately ten years after the events of the first Resident Evil game, but features quite a few different designers, while retaining some of the original staff. For Resident Evil 5, Kenichi Ueda has taken over director duties from Shinji Mikami, the creator of the series.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is a third-person survival horror shooter featuring an over-the-shoulder camera and multiplayer capabilities for both online and offline cooperative play. The game is set in Kijuju, a fictional African region, beginning with Chris Redfield, now with the BSAA, being deployed to partner up with Sheva Alomar in order to stop the trade of a biological weapon. Things turn sour quickly as Chris and Sheva witness the conversion of a seemingly harmless individual into a "Majini" (meaning "Evil Sprit"), in a theme reminiscent of (and related to) Umbrella Corporation’s experimentation in other Resident Evil games.

Resident Evil 5 has become the best-selling game in the franchise, selling five million copies before the PC version was even released. It was received on generally favorable terms with praise for its graphical fidelity, and some criticism of its control-scheme.

Technology

Capcom used its own internally developed MT Framework game engine to build Resident Evil 5. It is a proprietary game engine, and Capcom does not currently license it to other developers. The "MT" in MT Framework stands for multi-thread, meta-tools, and multi-target. It is a PC-first development engine, meaning that games are designed using the tools on a PC environment, and then ported to the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. It is the game engine used on all "next-generation" Capcom games, including Street Fighter IV, Lost Planet, and Devil May Cry 4. An updated version, MT Framework 2.0, is being used for the upcoming Lost Planet 2. The MT Framework engine gets its physics processing from the Havok library.

Technologically speaking, there is not much information available for the MT Framework on the PC. We know from Resident Evil 5’s startup splash screen that it supports both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. We know that it supports the full range of Anti-Aliasing options from both NVIDIA and AMD, because we can see these options fully populated in the game’s configuration interface. Beyond that, Capcom doesn’t talk about it much. They aren’t trying to sell engine licenses to anyone, so they really don’t have reason to talk up the tech features of the engine.

The Video Cards

This evaluation will see 9 video cards from NVIDIA and AMD. From NVIDIA, we have the GeForce GTX 295, the GeForce GTX 285, the GeForce GTX 275, and the GeForce GTS 250. From AMD, we have the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 5770, and the Radeon HD 5750. The Radeon HD 4000 series has mostly been dropped from this evaluation because any gamers looking to upgrade to an ATI video card should be considering the new Radeon HD 5000 series products for their excellent performance and feature sets.