Resident Evil 2 Remake was released almost two months ago and was one of the most optimized games we’ve tested in 2019. Powered by the RE Engine, this remake showcased what Capcom’s in-house engine was capable of. Fast forward two months and here we are today with another game that uses that engine, Devil May Cry 5. As such, it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 16GB of DDR3 RAM at 2133Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, GTX980Ti and GTX690, Windows 10 64-bit, GeForce driver 419.35 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.3.1. Unfortunately, and like most PC releases these days, NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this game, meaning that our GTX690 behaved similarly to a single GTX680. There is a workaround by forcing the game to run in DX11 and using custom SLI bits, however we experienced various graphical issues and stability issues (SLI scaling wasn’t also ideal) which is why we decided not to use it.

Before continuing, it’s worth sharing these two screenshots that showcase the CPU scaling on our Intel i7 4930K with and without Hyper Threading. As you can see, almost all of our CPU cores were maxed out when Hyper Threading was disabled. When we enabled Hyper Threading, the game scaled on eight CPU threads (though it was heavily relying on one thread). Therefore, we strongly suggest enabling Hyper Threading in this particular title.

Capcom has implemented a wide range of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Texture Filtering, Anti-Aliasing, Motion Blur, Effects, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, Volumetric Lighting, Screen Space Reflections and Subsurface Scattering. There are also options to enable or disable Chromatic Aberration, Shadow Cache, Bloom and Lens Flares.

As we’ve already stated, Devil May Cry 5 does not require a high-end CPU in order to be enjoyed. While there is a performance hit introduced by the Denuvo anti-tamper tech, most gamers will not be affected by it. In order to find out how the game performs on a variety of CPUs, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core CPU and we are happy to report that even our simulated dual-core system was able to run the game with 60fps at 1080p on Ultra settings.

We’ve heard a lot of reports about stuttering issues in Devil May Cry 5 so we went ahead and investigated this. Unfortunately, our simulated quad-core and six-core systems did not suffer from any stutters. On the other hand, our simulated dual-core with Hyper Threading disabled had major stuttering issues and there were minor stutters when we enabled Hyper Threading on it. Again, we strongly suggest enabling Hyper Threading in this game as the extra CPU threads may mitigate the stuttering issues that some players have reported.

Devil May Cry 5 also does not require a high-end GPU. With the exception of the GTX690 (that lacks a proper SLI profile), all of our tested graphics cards were able to run the game with more than 60fps at 1080p on Ultra settings.

At 2560×1440, our GTX980Ti, AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and NVIDIA RTX2080Ti were able to offer a smooth 60fps experience (though there were some drops below 60fps on the GTX980Ti during some cut-scenes). At 4K, our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 came close to a 60fps experience and our NVIDIA RTX2080Ti had no trouble at all running the game with more than 60fps.

Graphics wise, Devil May Cry 5 is incredible. The cut-scenes appear to be more demanding and look absolutely phenomenal, with some of the best in-game character models we’ve seen. While playing the game you won’t notice some of their finer details, but everything looks stunning. Capcom has used an advanced lighting system, all of the enemy characters are nicely detailed, the environments feature numerous destructible objects (though you can’t smash big objects like cars or buildings) and the overall art style is exceptional. Our only gripe with Devil May Cry 5 is some shadow bugs we’ve experienced. Below you can find a screenshot showing this shadow bug (notice the pixelated shadows on the left. This appears to be a bug with the shadow cascade so hopefully Capcom will be able to fix it).

All in all, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the most optimized PC games of 2019. Capcom’s latest action game looks beautiful and runs extremely well on a variety of PC configurations. Mouse controls are also great and there aren’t any mouse acceleration or smoothing issues. Unfortunately some of the default keys are not mapped correctly/ideally (I mean, who can press simultaneously Shift and CTRL while playing the game? Seriously Capcom?) however we could easily pull off most of the combos and get an “SSS” ranking so yeah; Devil May Cry 5 is really enjoyable with a K&M.

Enjoy!