What just happened? A free update released this week added ray tracing and 3D audio to three recent Resident Evil games on consoles and PC. However, the patch had some drawbacks for some PC users, so Capcom now lets them pick between two versions of each game.
The Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 remakes, and Resident Evil 7 received upgrades for PC, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series consoles on Monday. They introduced 3D audio and ray tracing, and console users got higher frame rates – all free for those who already own the games. PC users didn’t like some of the strings attached, however.
A free digital upgrade for PS4 owners and Smart Delivery for Xbox One owners will also be available, and a PC patch will also drop later today.
— Resident Evil (@RE_Games) June 13, 2022
The patch dropped support for DirectX 11 and Windows 7. Alone that probably isn’t a big deal — May’s Steam Hardware survey shows that 91 percent of players can use DirectX 12 while 95 percent are on Windows 10 or 11. However, the upgrade also raises the minimum GPU requirement from an Nvidia GTX 760 or AMD RX 260x to a GTX 960 or RX 460. Even with ray tracing deactivated, the new versions might perform worse on certain PCs. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that the update also broke all mods.
Following significant consumer demand, Capcom provided the option to reinstall the DirectX 11 versions which may run better for some. In the Steam library, right-click the name of each game, select Properties> Betas> dx11_non-rt, and wait for the title to update. Select “None” under “Betas” to install the ray-traced DirectX 12 versions. Effectively, this choice is similar to how console players can still pick between the current-gen and last-gen versions.
