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Following on from the Chainsaw Demo, there’s been certain concerns surrounding the performance of ray tracing in the Resident Evil 4 Remake. One of the main issues was found with ray tracing – so let’s figure out if you should use it when the main game launches.
According to Eurogamer: “Ray tracing is also, sadly, of middling quality on the new premium consoles.” This is largely down to the nature of reflections in-game, especially PS5 players who are experiencing a lack of reflections compared to other platforms.
Is ray tracing worth it on RE4 Remake on PS5?
Naturally, we took to the PS5 to assess what’s really going on here. We loaded up the game and turned on ray-tracing to make comparisons between the two graphical states, and honestly, we were quite underwhelmed with the ‘issue’ at hand.
It seems as though there isn’t really much difference between the two, and that the issue with ray tracing that Eurogamer may have faced may have been an isolated issue. Regardless, we continued researching and testing.
One of the main concerns raised with ray tracing is that it actually reduces the visual fidelity of the game. Apparently, this is an issue mainly with the PS5 version of the game, which is also suffering from the flickering lights.
The above tweet links to a YouTube video which details why you might want to avoid using ray tracing on PS5. The comparison between it being turned on and off highlight how reflections are malfunctioning with RT turned on.
In light of that – we turned to our PC to check out how it performs with ray tracing on and off.
Resident Evil 4 ray tracing performance on PC
The rig we tested this out on has a Ryzen 7 3700X, an RX 6600 8GB, and 64GB DDR4 RAM. We experienced a similar issue with reflections not rendering correctly, likely due to ray tracing.
We then tested it out with ray tracing turned off – and the results were quite alarming.
Alongside the reflections being slightly more detailed and clear on the second image (with RT off), the lights are also reflecting as intended.
This brings us back to testing out the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo, after which turning on ray tracing crashed our game, even with an RTX 3070 powering the rig. Alongside that, we’ve seen several online reports also supporting the possibility that ray tracing isn’t working as intended on PC.
Should you use ray tracing in Resident Evil 4 Remake?
In light of the aforementioned issues – the difference in gameplay is not noticeable. Nor are the visual artefacts actually an issue. Ray tracing seems to be working to varying degrees across both platforms, though the overall issues are not that game-changing.
Similarly, ray tracing doesn’t seem to be affecting performance too much, so it’s really up to the preference of the gamer to make a decision.
If you’re struggling with the performance of the game, you should have a look at either the best graphics settings for PC and also for PS5 which will guide you through maximising performance or fidelity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Resident Evil 4 Remake have ray tracing?
Resident Evil 4 Remake has ray tracing on PS5, Xbox Series X, and on PC.
Does Resident Evil 4 Remake have DLSS?
Unfortunately, it seems as though the RE4 Remake doesn’t have DLSS.
