Red Dead Redemption 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 delivers a playable but constrained experience in Red Dead Redemption 2, with benchmark results showing that the graphics card is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. The measured data across three resolutions and four settings presets reveals a system that excels at 1080p with adjusted settings but struggles to maintain smooth frame rates beyond that point. The RTX 2060, with its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit bus, shows clear signs of strain as pixel counts increase, while the six-core Zen 3 processor provides sufficient headroom to avoid becoming the bottleneck in most scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for Red Dead Redemption 2 shows a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 85 FPS, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. This represents a substantial 34% improvement over the High preset's 53 FPS at the same resolution, indicating that the Low preset is the only configuration that fully saturates the display's refresh rate potential for high-refresh monitors. The Medium preset delivers 63 FPS at 1080p, which is still within the range of playability for most users, but the jump from Medium to High costs 10 FPS, and the jump from High to Ultra costs another 15 FPS, bringing the Ultra preset down to just 38 FPS.

For 2560x1440, the situation becomes more restrictive. The Low preset produces 63 FPS, which is identical to the 1080p Medium result and represents the only 1440p configuration that clears the 60 FPS threshold. The Medium preset drops to 47 FPS, High falls to 39 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 28 FPS. At 3840x2160, no preset achieves even 45 FPS, with Low at 42 FPS, Medium at 31 FPS, High at 26 FPS, and Ultra at a barely interactive 19 FPS. The data suggests that for the best balance of visual quality and frame rate, users should select the Medium preset at 1080p, which offers a 63 FPS average with a minimum of 54 FPS and maximum of 73 FPS, providing consistent performance without the visual degradation of the Low preset. For those prioritizing maximum frame rates, the Low preset at 1080p is the only configuration that breaks the 80 FPS barrier, but the 22 FPS gain over Medium comes at a significant visual cost. At 1440p, the Low preset is the only viable option for smooth gameplay, while 4K should be avoided entirely unless the user accepts sub-30 FPS averages.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achievable with this combination?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 85 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset. This is the only configuration in the dataset that exceeds 80 FPS, with the next closest being 63 FPS at both 1080p Medium and 1440p Low.

Q: How does the RTX 2060's performance compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 2060 has an average benchmark score of 15290, which places it in the 58th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 with a score of 15283, showing a delta of 0%. The AMD Radeon 680M scores 15270 (0.1% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM scores 15199 (0.6% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 scores 15171 (0.8% higher), indicating that the RTX 2060 sits at the center of a very tight performance cluster.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5600F competitive with other CPUs in its class?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600F has an average benchmark score of 36945, placing it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 5 225, scores 36938 for a delta of 0%. The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D scores 37018 (-0.2% delta), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 scores 37093 (-0.4% delta), and the Intel Core i9-12900T scores 37112 (-0.5% delta), showing that the 5600F is within 0.5% of four competing processors.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between the Low and Ultra presets at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 85 FPS while the Ultra preset averages 38 FPS, representing a 47 FPS difference. The Ultra preset delivers less than half the frame rate of Low, with the step from High (53 FPS) to Ultra (38 FPS) being particularly steep at 15 FPS.

Q: Does the 6 GB VRAM capacity of the RTX 2060 appear to impact performance?

A: The benchmark data shows a dramatic drop-off as resolution increases, with the High preset falling from 53 FPS at 1080p to 39 FPS at 1440p and 26 FPS at 4K. While this pattern is consistent with VRAM capacity pressure, the exact contribution of the 6 GB GDDR6 memory versus the 336.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot be isolated from these measurements alone. The 192-bit memory bus and 6 GB capacity are notable specifications that likely constrain performance at higher resolutions.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations for Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The combination ranks 2290 out of 2902 tested combos, placing it in the lower third of all configurations. This ranking reflects the RTX 2060's mid-range position in the GPU hierarchy, as the CPU's 85th percentile standing is significantly stronger than the GPU's 58th percentile.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a predictable but steep decline as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, with the pattern indicating that the GPU becomes the dominant limiting factor at higher pixel counts. At the Low preset, the average frame rate drops from 85 FPS at 1080p to 63 FPS at 1440p, a 26% reduction, and then to 42 FPS at 4K, a further 33% reduction from 1440p. This scaling shows that the RTX 2060 loses roughly half its performance when moving from 1080p to 4K, which is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario where the 6 GB VRAM and 192-bit memory interface struggle to feed the increased pixel throughput.

The Medium preset follows a similar trajectory: 63 FPS at 1080p, 47 FPS at 1440p, and 31 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops here are 25% and 34% respectively, showing a slightly steeper decline at the 4K step. The High preset exhibits even more pronounced scaling, going from 53 FPS at 1080p to 39 FPS at 1440p (26% drop) and 26 FPS at 4K (33% drop). The Ultra preset, which starts at just 38 FPS at 1080p, falls to 28 FPS at 1440p and 19 FPS at 4K, with percentage drops of 26% and 32% respectively. The consistency of these percentage drops across all presets—roughly 25-26% for the 1080p to 1440p transition and 32-34% for the 1440p to 4K transition—strongly suggests that the RTX 2060's memory subsystem is the primary bottleneck, as the scaling pattern remains uniform regardless of the graphical load.

The CPU's role in this scaling is minimal, as the Ryzen 5 5600F's six cores and 12 threads provide ample processing power for the game's logic at all resolutions. The fact that the frame rate drops so consistently with resolution increases confirms that the GPU is saturated well before the CPU becomes a constraint. This is further supported by the CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 2872 and multithread score of 19236, which indicate strong per-core performance that would not limit a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 until much higher frame rates than those measured here.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the benchmark results show a complete picture of the RTX 2060's capabilities. The Low preset achieves an average of 85 FPS, the highest of any configuration. The Medium preset delivers 63 FPS average with a minimum of 54 FPS and maximum of 73 FPS, providing the most consistent frame pacing in the dataset. The High preset drops to 53 FPS average, and the Ultra preset falls to 38 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 47 FPS, indicating that the visual quality settings have a dramatic impact on performance even at the lowest resolution tested.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset still manages 63 FPS, matching the 1080p Medium result and demonstrating that the GPU can maintain playable frame rates at 1440p with reduced settings. The Medium preset produces 47 FPS average with a minimum of 40 FPS and maximum of 54 FPS, which is borderline for smooth gameplay but technically playable. The High preset drops to 39 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 28 FPS, making both configurations unsuitable for most users seeking a responsive experience. The 1440p results show a 35 FPS spread between Low and Ultra, slightly narrower than at 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 2060 struggles across all settings. The Low preset achieves 42 FPS, which is the only 4K configuration above 40 FPS. The Medium preset falls to 31 FPS with a minimum of 27 FPS and maximum of 36 FPS, showing that even the minimum frame rate is below the 30 FPS threshold often considered the floor for playability. The High preset drops to 26 FPS, and the Ultra preset bottoms out at 19 FPS. The 4K spread between Low and Ultra is 23 FPS, the narrowest of any resolution, suggesting that the GPU is so heavily constrained at this resolution that even reducing settings provides limited relief.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 combination ranks 2290 out of 2902 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the bottom 21% of all configurations. This ranking is notably lower than what the individual component benchmarks might suggest, as the CPU sits in the 85th percentile of all processors while the GPU ranks in the 58th percentile of all graphics cards. The disparity between these percentile positions explains the combo's overall ranking: the RTX 2060 is the weaker link, and its mid-range standing drags the entire system down relative to other tested combinations.

The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—the GTX 580, Radeon 680M, RTX 3050 OEM, and RX 7600—all score within 0.8% of the RTX 2060, indicating that this GPU sits in a highly competitive performance band. However, in actual game measurements, the RTX 2060's 6 GB VRAM and 192-bit memory bus likely disadvantage it against more modern cards with larger memory pools, even if their raw compute scores are similar. The combo ranking of 2290 out of 2902 suggests that many other CPU-GPU pairings deliver better frame rates in this specific game, which is consistent with Red Dead Redemption 2's reputation for being demanding on GPU memory.

The CPU's position in the 85th percentile, with a multithread score of 19236 and single-thread score of 2872, is far stronger than the GPU's standing. This imbalance means that the system has significant untapped CPU potential in this game, as the RTX 2060 becomes the limiting factor well before the Ryzen 5 5600F reaches its performance ceiling. For users considering upgrades, the data suggests that replacing the GPU would yield far greater performance gains than upgrading the CPU, though the specific ranking of 2290 out of 2902 indicates that this combo is still capable of delivering playable frame rates at lower resolutions and settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F is a six-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process node. It has a base clock of 3.00 GHz and a boost clock of 4.00 GHz, with a 65 W TDP that makes it a power-efficient choice for gaming systems. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache, which provides ample capacity for game data that needs to be accessed frequently by multiple cores. The 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die size reflect the density of the Zen 3 architecture, and the dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth ensures that the CPU can feed data to the GPU without becoming a bottleneck.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's performance characteristics are more than sufficient for the measured frame rates. The PassMark multithread score of 19236 and single-thread score of 2872 place the 5600F in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36945. Its nearest rivals in the synthetic benchmark—the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (36938), AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (37018), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37093), and Intel Core i9-12900T (37112)—all fall within 0.5% of the 5600F's score, demonstrating that this processor is competitively positioned within its performance class. The fact that the CPU ranks so much higher than the GPU in percentile terms suggests that the processor is not the limiting component in this system when running Red Dead Redemption 2.

The game's measured frame rates, which top out at 85 FPS at 1080p Low, are far below the threshold where a six-core Zen 3 processor would struggle. Even at the highest frame rates, the CPU's 12 threads provide enough parallel processing capacity for the game's simulation and AI workloads. The data shows that the bottleneck lies elsewhere, as the frame rates decline consistently with resolution increases across all presets, a pattern that would not occur if the CPU were the limiting factor.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the Turing architecture with the TU106 chip, manufactured on TSMC's 12 nm process node. It features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 336.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a critical specification for a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 that is known for large, detailed open worlds. The GPU's base clock is 1365 MHz with a boost clock of 1680 MHz, and it contains 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 raster operation units. The RTX 2060 also includes 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, though these are unlikely to be heavily utilized in Red Dead Redemption 2, which does not feature extensive ray tracing effects.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark performance shows an average score of 15290, placing it in the 58th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals—the GTX 580 (15283), Radeon 680M (15270), RTX 3050 OEM (15199), and RX 7600 (15171)—are all within 0.8% of the RTX 2060's score, indicating that this GPU sits at the boundary of several performance tiers. The PassMark G3D score of 14111 and DirectX 12 score of 53 provide additional context for the GPU's capabilities, though these synthetic numbers do not directly translate to game performance.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the RTX 2060's 6 GB VRAM capacity is likely a significant constraint at higher resolutions. The measured frame rates show a steep decline from 1080p to 4K, with the High preset dropping from 53 FPS to 26 FPS, a 51% reduction. This pattern, combined with the GPU's 58th percentile standing and the combo's 2290 out of 2902 ranking, strongly indicates that the graphics card is the primary limiting component in this system. The 192-bit memory bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth provide adequate throughput for 1080p gaming but become insufficient as pixel counts increase, particularly when combined with the game's high-resolution textures. The data shows that the RTX 2060 can deliver smooth frame rates at 1080p with Medium settings, but users seeking higher resolutions or Ultra presets will need to consider a more powerful GPU with greater VRAM capacity.