Red Dead Redemption 2

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Red Dead Redemption 2 with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and Intel Arc B390 paints a clear picture: this combination is severely GPU-limited, and the only playable experience comes from the Low preset at 1080p. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces an average of 51 FPS, which is the only measured configuration that reaches the generally accepted threshold for smooth playability. The Medium preset at 1080p drops to 39 FPS, which is borderline but workable for slower-paced exploration; however, the frame-time data shows a minimum of 33 FPS, indicating noticeable stutter during demanding scenes. High at 1080p falls to 32 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 23 FPS — both are below what most players would consider acceptable for an action-adventure title.

At 2560x1440, the situation worsens considerably. Low settings yield 38 FPS, Medium produces 29 FPS (min 24, max 33), High drops to 24 FPS, and Ultra falls to 17 FPS. None of these are smooth, though Low at 1440p could be tolerable for players who prioritize resolution over fluidity. At 3840x2160, the results are effectively unplayable across all settings: Low achieves 25 FPS, Medium 19 FPS (min 16, max 22), High 16 FPS, and Ultra just 11 FPS.

The data indicates that the best experience per the measured rows is 1080p Low, delivering 51 FPS average. This is the only preset that provides a consistently playable frame rate. If visual fidelity is a priority, 1080p Medium at 39 FPS is the highest quality setting that remains marginally playable, but the 33 FPS minimum suggests it will struggle in busy scenes. There is no scenario in the measured data where this combo achieves 60 FPS, so players should set expectations accordingly.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 51, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration in the data that breaks the 50 FPS mark.

Q: Can this system run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4K?

A: Technically yes, but not playably. At 3840x2160, the best result is 25 FPS on Low settings. Medium yields 19 FPS, High 16 FPS, and Ultra 11 FPS — all well below smooth gameplay thresholds.

Q: How much performance does the Ultra preset cost compared to Low?

A: At 1080p, Ultra averages 23 FPS versus 51 FPS on Low — a drop of 28 FPS, meaning Ultra delivers less than half the frame rate. The gap widens at higher resolutions: at 1440p, Ultra is 17 FPS versus 38 FPS on Low, and at 4K, Ultra is 11 FPS versus 25 FPS.

Q: Is the Intel Arc B390 the bottleneck in this configuration?

A: The data strongly suggests yes. The GPU's benchmark percentile sits at 9, meaning it performs worse than roughly 91% of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1.3% ahead), GeForce 800M (1.5% ahead), and GT 625 OEM (2.5% ahead). The CPU, by contrast, ranks at the 85th percentile among all CPUs.

Q: What settings should I use for a balance of quality and performance?

A: If you can tolerate occasional dips, 1080p Medium offers 39 FPS average with a 33 FPS minimum, which is the highest quality preset that stays above 30 FPS. For consistent smoothness, 1080p Low at 51 FPS is the recommended choice.

Q: How does the combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 3306 out of 3714 tested combinations in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the bottom 11% of all tested systems.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer), manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.00 GHz and a boost clock of 4.00 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and a shared 32 MB L3 cache. Its memory support is DDR4 with dual-channel configuration and a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s.

In the context of Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role is largely secondary — the data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor across all measured configurations. The CPU's PassMark multi-thread score is 19,236, with a single-thread score of 2,872. It ranks at the 85th percentile among all CPUs, placing it well above the GPU's 9th percentile ranking. The nearest CPU rivals in terms of average benchmark score are the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (0% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (-0.2%), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (-0.4%), and Intel Core i9-12900T (-0.5%) — all essentially tied in aggregate performance.

Given the GPU's extreme performance deficit, the CPU's 12 threads and 32 MB L3 cache are more than sufficient for this game's demands. The frame rates are constrained by the GPU's rendering throughput, not by CPU processing power. Even at 1080p Low, where CPU overhead is typically highest, the 51 FPS result is far below what this CPU could deliver with a more capable graphics card. The data indicates that upgrading the GPU would yield substantial FPS gains, while upgrading the CPU would have negligible impact on this game's performance.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F + Intel Arc B390 combination ranks 3306 out of 3714 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the 11th percentile of all tested systems. This is a bottom-tier ranking, driven almost entirely by the GPU's performance level. The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics solution (IGP) based on the Panther Lake chip with Xe3-LPG architecture, built on a 3 nm process. It has 1,536 shading units, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, and 12 ray tracing cores, with a boost clock of 2500 MHz. Its FP32 throughput is 7.680 TFLOPS.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 1,482, and it ranks at the 9th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are all entry-level NVIDIA parts from over a decade ago: the GeForce GT 520MX (1.3% faster), GeForce 800M (1.5% faster), GT 625 OEM (2.5% faster), and GT 710 (2.7% faster). This places the Arc B390 in the company of legacy integrated and low-end discrete graphics solutions.

The CPU, by contrast, is a strong mid-range part. The Ryzen 5 5600F's average benchmark score is 36,945, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (36,938, 0% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (37,018, -0.2%), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37,093, -0.4%), and Intel Core i9-12900T (37,112, -0.5%). This is a tightly clustered group, indicating the 5600F is competitive with modern mid-range and even some high-end processors.

The massive disparity between the CPU's 85th percentile ranking and the GPU's 9th percentile ranking explains the combo's poor overall position. In Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a GPU-intensive title, the Arc B390 drags the entire system down. The 3306th rank out of 3714 combos means that only about 408 tested configurations perform worse — these would be systems with even older or weaker GPUs paired with less capable CPUs.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a predictable but severe scaling pattern as resolution increases. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by approximately 25-33% across all settings. From 1440p to 4K, the drop is even steeper, another 33-35%. The Low preset provides the clearest illustration: 51 FPS at 1080p, 38 FPS at 1440p (a 13 FPS drop), and 25 FPS at 4K (another 13 FPS drop). This pattern — roughly halving performance from 1080p to 4K — is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario.

The Medium preset shows the same trend: 39 FPS at 1080p, 29 FPS at 1440p, and 19 FPS at 4K. The High preset goes from 32 FPS at 1080p to 24 FPS at 1440p, then 16 FPS at 4K. Ultra starts at 23 FPS at 1080p, falls to 17 FPS at 1440p, and bottoms out at 11 FPS at 4K.

The fact that FPS scales almost linearly with pixel count — 1080p has roughly 2.1 million pixels, 1440p has 3.7 million, and 4K has 8.3 million — confirms that the GPU is the limiting component. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller FPS differences between resolutions, particularly at lower settings where the CPU has more work to do relative to the GPU. Instead, the data shows consistent degradation across all presets as resolution increases, which is the signature of a system constrained by pixel throughput and fill rate.

The Arc B390's pixel rate is 60.00 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 120.0 GTexel/s. These figures, combined with only 24 ROPs, explain why the GPU struggles so dramatically as resolution climbs. At 4K, the GPU is attempting to fill over 8 million pixels per frame with a pixel throughput that is simply inadequate for modern game rendering demands. The data suggests that even dropping to Low settings at 4K (25 FPS) cannot overcome the GPU's fundamental resolution limitations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings shows a clear hierarchy. Low settings deliver an average of 51 FPS, which is the only measured configuration to exceed 50 FPS. Medium settings average 39 FPS, with a minimum of 33 and maximum of 44 FPS. High settings average 32 FPS, and Ultra settings average 23 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 28 FPS drop, or approximately 55% performance loss.

At 2560x1440, all settings shift downward. Low settings average 38 FPS, Medium averages 29 FPS (min 24, max 33), High averages 24 FPS, and Ultra averages 17 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows slightly in absolute terms — 21 FPS — but the percentage drop remains similar. Notably, the Medium preset at 1440p (29 FPS) performs nearly identically to High at 1080p (32 FPS), suggesting that resolution scaling costs roughly one settings tier.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor. Low settings average 25 FPS, Medium averages 19 FPS (min 16, max 22), High averages 16 FPS, and Ultra averages 11 FPS. The Medium preset's frame time data shows a 6 FPS range between minimum and maximum, indicating significant frame pacing inconsistency at this resolution. Even the best 4K result (25 FPS on Low) is below the 30 FPS threshold often considered the minimum for playable action games.

The frame time data available for Medium settings across all three resolutions — 33-44 FPS at 1080p, 24-33 FPS at 1440p, and 16-22 FPS at 4K — shows that the variance grows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the range is 11 FPS; at 1440p, it's 9 FPS; at 4K, it's 6 FPS. This narrowing range at higher resolutions suggests the GPU is consistently saturated, leaving less headroom for frame rate spikes but also indicating sustained low performance rather than intermittent stuttering.

The overall picture is unambiguous: this combo is only viable at 1080p with Low or Medium settings. The 51 FPS Low result is the single bright spot in an otherwise constrained dataset. Every other configuration falls below 40 FPS, and the 4K results are all below 26 FPS. The data does not include any configuration that achieves 60 FPS, meaning players seeking high refresh rate play would need to significantly reduce resolution or settings beyond what was measured.