As we’ve already reported, Capcom had accidentally released a Denuvo-free version of Resident Evil 2 Remake to the public. And while we couldn’t really test this version, YouTube’s ‘NeonGaming’ got its hands on it and published a comparison between the “Denuvo-powered” and the “Denuvo-free” versions.

NeonGaming used an AMD FX 8350 that clocked at 4Ghz with an AMD Radeon RX570 GPU and 16GB of RAM. The settings that were also used were a mix of Medium and High (meaning that the game was at various points CPU limited).

According to NeonGaming’s findings, the Denuvo-free version of Resident Evil 2 Remake was faster by 4-12fps. Furthermore, and similarly to all games using the Denuvo anti-tamper tech, the Denuvo-free version had faster loading times.

Now while this isn’t a big difference, it is still a noticeable one (especially for those that can barely hit 60fps due to their weaker CPUs). Moreover, it shows that – in this particular case – Denuvo does impact the game’s overall performance. Interestingly enough, Devil May Cry 5 also performed slower when using the Denuvo anti-tamper tech (though in that game the framerates were really high so it didn’t really matter).

Before closing, I do have to note that in this comparison NeonGaming used different characters, something that could potentially affect the overall GPU usage (though it wouldn’t affect the CPU performance).

Below you can find some comparison screenshots between the Denuvo (left) and the Denuvo-free (right) versions of Resident Evil 2 Remake!