Best Resident Evil Village settings for PC and Steam Deck

What are the best Resident Evil Village settings for PC and Steam Deck? Taking quite the detour from the disturbing events that took place in the Baker residence, Resident Evil Village brings new horrors to the series, but isn't a nightmare to run on PC or Steam Deck thanks to detailed settings options.

Resident Evil Village doesn't demand the best graphics card, asking for an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 560 at minimum tier. The Resident Evil Village system requirements are generally quite low, but that doesn't mean there isn't potential to push Village to look stunning when running on high-end gaming PCs.

• Vertical synchronisation: Off
• Rendering mode: Normal
• Image quality: 1.5
• FidelityFX CAS: On
• Anti-aliasing: FXAA+TAA
• Variable rate shading: Off
• Texture quality: High (2GB)
• Texture filter quality: ANISO x4
• Mesh quality: Mid
• Ray tracing: High
• GI and reflection: High
• Light reflection: High
• Ambient occlusion: Off
• Screen space reflections: On
• Volumetric lighting quality: High
• Subsurface scattering: Off
• Shadow quality: High
• Contact shadows: On
• Shadow cache: On

Using the above settings on our RTX 4070 testing rig (full specs under How We Test), we average 136fps, with 1% lows of 115fps. This is a remarkably stable performance, especially with ray tracing enabled.

Less powerful machines can start with ray tracing as the first setting to lower or turn off, before then turning to the general lighting and texture quality settings if needed. We'll detail the graphical preset options in Resident Evil Village a little later, but they're a fine alternative if you're not keen on the idea of tinkering with individual settings.

The only noticeable performance comments we have are that when running the game off a mechanical drive, there was fairly consistent stuttering regardless of which graphical preset we used. Due to this, while it may not be listed in the system requirements, we advise running the game off an SSD if possible to avoid these issues.

Best Resident Evil Village settings for Steam Deck

• Graphics Preset: Balanced
• Refresh Rate: 90Hz
• Frame Rate: Variable
• VSync: On
• FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0: Ultra Quality

We've noted the basics needed to get Resident Evil Village running at a stable 40fps on the Steam Deck, as the balanced graphics preset is ideal for the handheld.

You can still make minor adjustments to the texture quality if your frame rate isn't consistent, or to increase the battery life when playing. It's possible to get the game running at 60fps in some areas if you leave the frame rate uncapped in the Steam quick access menu, but this tends to drop during combat.

Resident Evil Village presets

Instead of the usual low to high presets, Resident Evil Village gives you six to choose from. They all pretty much do what they say on the tin and come with descriptions to help you select the right one for your rig. You'll have to pick one from the main menu, however, as the game doesn't let you change presets while in the thick of it.

• Recommended - sets all options automatically based on the available video memory in your graphics card. It takes up 5.78GB but doesn't necessarily select the best settings.
• Prioritise performance - switches ray tracing off and reduces demand without sacrificing image quality. This is for those of you experiencing frame rate issues or running a GPU that has 4GB of VRAM or under.
• Balanced - middle-of-the-run, balances graphics and performance, recommending 4-8GB of video memory. Sets VRAM to 4.82GB.
• Prioritise graphics - image quality is top dog, minus ray tracing. It uses 5.78GB.
• Ray tracing - this is demanding and only for those with a compatible graphics card. It fills 5.71 GB and has a dramatic impact on frame rate.
• Max - cranks all the options as high as they'll go. It doesn't recommend a specific amount of video memory, but pushes 12.212GB, which is higher than most graphics cards on the market.

These presets are well optimized and work well for most modern gaming PCs and handhelds. A built-in VRAM indicator is a great way to determine whether the settings changes you make are having a positive or negative impact on your GPU memory, if you want to tinker with individual settings.

That being said, don't put too much stock in Village's built-in indicator. It's nice to have as a guide, but its calculations might not explicitly translate to performance increases or decreases. For example, scaling the textures setting sees the VRAM jump significantly, but it has a nominal cost on your actual frame rate.

Resident Evil Village PC issues

While Resident Evil Village runs like a dream on most system configurations with a little elbow grease, it has several bugbears. Just like Resident Evil 7, there's no FOV slider in the options and no way to change it in the config file, meaning you're lumped with a narrow field of view throughout the game - unless you want to download an FOV mod, of course, which the community has very quickly put together.

At least two of us at PCGamesN experienced frame rate drops during cutscenes, causing a slow-motion effect that desynced the visuals with the audio. Pausing the game and resuming gets things back on track, but it's enough to take you out of the moment and doesn't seem to have a clear fix, as it can occur on a range of hardware and settings.

There's also a strange bug that prevents you from using media keys or a volume wheel on the best gaming keyboard when Village is front and centre. Instead, you're forced to tab out to make adjustments, which isn't always easy when you've got feral growls blasting through the best gaming headset. Tabbing out isn't a breeze, either, as the performance of your PC can slow to a crawl with the game running in the background.

These issues are pretty easy to overlook, given that the game is so system-friendly, standing out as one of the better PC versions of a multiplatform title in recent memory. Its settings menu can be a little clunky to navigate, and the sheer amount of settings might seem overwhelming for how little of a difference they sometimes make, but we'd argue it's better to have options and not need them than need options and not have them.

How we tested Resident Evil Village

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Resident Evil Village includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Resident Evil Village need an SSD?

Resident Evil Village does not require an SSD, regardless of whether you're aiming for the minimum or recommended system requirements. Upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options, however, will really help keep game loading times in check and help you get the 50GB game file downloaded much quicker.

As we mentioned in the PC settings section, playing on an SSD also appeared to result in less frame stuttering in both cutscenes and during gameplay.

How to monitor performance in Resident Evil Village

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Resident Evil Village, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.