Resident Evil Requiem will scare you no matter what you turn. But there is no doubt that you get the best experience of this horror game with the PC version with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, path tracing and ASUS GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards.
Can bad graphics spoil the horror experience in games? In principle, it can’t, because even games with the simplest graphics can honestly scare us. But that’s why the answer is completely different when we ask: Can good graphics enhance the horror experience in games?
The answer is – it definitely can!
And one of the best examples of that is this year’s Resident Evil Requiem in its PC version that supports path tracing. With DLSS 4.5 and a capable graphics card such as ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080Requiem with path tracing enabled is not only more beautiful, but also a significantly richer horror experience.
But to best convey the point of that thought, I must first go back in time, to a completely different Resident Evil game.
It’s spring 2007, and the iconic Resident Evil 4 has finally come to PC. I proudly show the game to a friend who played the console version and his reaction completely baffles me. He bursts into laughter and asks: “What kind of graphic is that for you, eh?” It’s not clear to me – so the maximum resolution, that’s how the game looks! We go to it to look at the PS2 version, when shock – it’s that game, only totally different.
The difference in the graphics of Resident Evil 4 for PC and consoles was – terrible!
It turns out that the 1.0 version of Resident Evil 4 for PC was devoid of shaders and other effects from the console version. It didn’t make it a worse game, but I was horrified by how much poorer the atmosphere of Resident Evil 4 on PC was precisely because of the lack of more advanced lighting.
The version I played looked washed out and lifeless, and I saw the iconic game in the worst possible light.
When I had to play the new Resident Evil Requiem, it was out of the question for me to play anything other than the most beautiful possible edition of that game. And over the years, the situation with Capcom games on PC has changed, so Requiem offers the best horror atmosphere right on the PC platform – when you play it with path tracing turned on and NVIDIA DLSS 4.5.
Even a ruined space looks beautiful with path tracing lighting
We have seen implementations of path tracing in games such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Doom: The Dark Ages, but it was in Requiem that the beauties of path tracing came to the fore. The play of light and shadow is a key element of horror in general, and Requiem is exactly the type of game where we have to go through dark or dimly lit spaces that we observe from a first-person perspective. It is an ideal background for what path tracing brings.
Path tracing in Resident Evil Requiem contributes to believability primarily through the realistic behavior of light and shadow. It can be noticed both in small details and in the overall environment. Without path tracing, small objects can look like they belong in a different scene with different lighting. The reason is that in traditional rasterization, each individual shadow has an impact on hardware resources, so in complex scenes, developers often omit shadows on certain things to avoid slowdowns.
Unlike classic rasterization, path tracing uses a completely different approach where every object, which is in range and touching the light source, has an associated shadow. This eliminates the subtle impression that the objects are separated from the environment in which they are located. In Resident Evil Requiem, this is best seen in the 3D models of documents, office equipment, and the like.
With path tracing and proper shading, these objects don’t look like they’re separated from the surface they’re placed on. Everything looks more concrete and convincing.
Little things make the difference: with RTX On, the ink doesn’t look like it’s floating over the surface it’s on
Character models also look more realistic with path tracing. In this way, a significant difference can be clearly noticed already in the fact that their hair casts a shadow on their face. It’s a small detail, but there are a lot of them in Requiem. You may not notice them immediately, you may not even be aware that they are part of path tracing. But in any case, they make the game much nicer than on other platforms.
Another graphic asset that is very noticeable in path tracing is more advanced reflections on reflective surfaces. Which in Resident Evil Requiem, again, there are plenty. The enhanced reflections also add to the believability of the horror and actually enrich the whole thing. It’s actually fascinating that when you play Requiem in first person, you can only see your character’s facial expression with path tracing during gameplay. You stand in front of a mirror or some glass surface and you actually see the state of your character in his facial expression.
With less advanced raytracing you also get reflective surfaces, but with path tracing the reflections are more detailed and of higher resolution, which makes a very significant difference.
Path tracing is an advanced technique and represents the future of computer graphics in games. However, with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 upscaling and frame generation technologies, such a thing is not reserved for the hardware of the future. Path tracing graphics with DLSS Multi Frame Generation can be experienced in a smooth performance even on current graphics cards from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series. On GeForce RTX 5080 cards with frame-gen X2 with path tracing enabled, you can expect up to 150 fps in 1080p resolution, up to 110 fps in 1440p and 60 fps in 4K performance.
Starting this year, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 cards have the possibility of using an even higher Multi Frame Generation multiplier, up to 6x. Dynamic Multi Frame Generation can also be used, which tries to keep the framerate in line with the screen’s refresh rate. By the way, with the use of DLSS Multi Frame Generation, NVIDIA Reflex technology is automatically started, which significantly reduces latency and helps to make the controls in games responsive.
You can get the best graphics in Resident Evil Requiem with the combination of ASUS + NVIDIA. When you’re aiming for a no-compromise experience, ASUS graphics cards feature a specially designed cooling system so you don’t have to worry about stability in demanding path tracing scenarios. And not only is every celsius monitored in demanding path tracing scenarios, but the well-solved cooling of ASUS GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards also opens up the potential for overclocking, which on the other hand increases the framerate, and thus the responsiveness of the game itself.
As for overclocking, you don’t even need to look for external tools – ASUS has prepared its GPU Tweak III software for this purpose.
In choosing an ASUS graphics card for path tracing tasks, you also have two options. Graphics cards from the ROG series represent a flagship experience with maximum performance and premium cooling, as well as additional benefits when combined with ROG motherboards. On the other hand, the offer includes graphics cards from the TUF series that bring an ideal price-performance ratio, with a focus on stability and long-term gaming under the requirements of path tracing in Resident Evil Requiem.
ASUS TUF and ROG GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards can be found on sale in the following offer: