Red Dead Redemption 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 delivers a robust experience in Red Dead Redemption 2, with the measured data indicating that the High preset provides the optimal balance of visual fidelity and frame rate across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, the High preset achieves 138 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over the Ultra preset’s 101.9 FPS while maintaining a visually rich experience. Moving to 1440p, High yields 106.8 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while 4K High still manages 67.8 FPS. The Ultra preset, while visually superior, proves demanding, dropping to 47.2 FPS at 4K and 74.8 FPS at 1440p, which may not justify the fidelity gain for users prioritizing smoothness. Conversely, the Low preset offers the highest frame rates—221.8 FPS at 1080p and 164.1 FPS at 1440p—but sacrifices significant visual quality. The data clearly shows that High is the recommended preset for this combination, as it maintains high frame rates at all resolutions while preserving the game’s graphical integrity.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results for Red Dead Redemption 2 with the Ryzen 5 7600X and RTX 5090 reveal a clear hierarchy across presets, with the High setting emerging as the most balanced. At 1080p, High delivers 138 FPS, which is 36.1 FPS higher than Ultra’s 101.9 FPS, and only 83.8 FPS lower than the Low preset’s 221.8 FPS. This indicates that High captures most of the performance headroom without the visual degradation of Low. At 1440p, the trend continues, with High achieving 106.8 FPS compared to Ultra’s 74.8 FPS, a gap of 32 FPS that makes High significantly more fluid for high-refresh-rate monitors. The most critical scenario is 4K, where High produces 67.8 FPS, which is above the playable threshold, while Ultra drops to 47.2 FPS, a level that can introduce noticeable stutter in action-heavy scenes. Medium settings at 4K offer 79.7 FPS, which is 11.9 FPS higher than High, but the visual difference between Medium and High is often more pronounced than the frame rate gain suggests. Given these numbers, High is the optimal preset for this hardware, as it consistently delivers frame rates that are either near or above 60 FPS across all resolutions, making it the best choice for a smooth and visually appealing experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, with its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus width, provides a substantial foundation for Red Dead Redemption 2’s demanding visuals. The GPU’s memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s allows for high-texture detail at 4K without bottlenecking, as evidenced by the 4K High preset yielding 67.8 FPS. The RTX 5090’s boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz contribute to its raw compute power, which is reflected in its benchmark scores, such as a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14411 and a Passmark G3D score of 39650. These scores place the GPU in the 94th percentile of all GPUs, indicating it is among the top tier for gaming performance. The data suggests that the GPU is the primary driver of frame rates at higher resolutions; for instance, the difference between 1080p High (138 FPS) and 4K High (67.8 FPS) is a 70.2 FPS drop, which is attributable to the increased pixel output required at 4K. The RTX 5090’s 32 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for this game’s textures, ensuring that memory capacity is not a limiting factor in any preset, allowing the GPU to focus on shading and rasterization tasks.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable decline as resolution increases, but the magnitude of the drop reveals the balance between CPU and GPU load. From 1080p High (138 FPS) to 1440p High (106.8 FPS), the frame rate decreases by 31.2 FPS, a 22.6% reduction that reflects the increased pixel workload on the GPU. The jump from 1440p High to 4K High (67.8 FPS) is more severe, with a 39 FPS drop, representing a 36.5% reduction. This steeper decline at 4K indicates that the RTX 5090 is nearing its limits at this resolution, as the GPU must render four times the pixels of 1080p. In contrast, the CPU’s role becomes more prominent at lower resolutions; at 1080p Low, the frame rate reaches 221.8 FPS, which suggests that the Ryzen 5 7600X is capable of feeding frames at a very high rate, but the GPU is still the bottleneck even at this resolution, as the 4K Low preset (108.5 FPS) is less than half of the 1080p Low figure. The data implies that the system is GPU-limited across all tested settings, with the CPU’s influence diminishing as resolution rises, a common pattern in graphically intensive titles like Red Dead Redemption 2.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this hardware?

A: The High preset at 4K yields 67.8 FPS, which is the highest frame rate among the visually demanding presets at this resolution. Ultra drops to 47.2 FPS, making High the recommended choice for maintaining smooth gameplay at 4K.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its nearest rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 5090 has an average benchmark score of 84306, which is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D (84241, deltaPct 0.1) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile (84171, deltaPct 0.2). It leads the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 (83209) by 1.3% but trails the NVIDIA CMP 40HX (85637) by 1.6%.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 7600X bottleneck the RTX 5090 at 1080p?

A: The data shows 1080p Low achieves 221.8 FPS, which is the highest frame rate in the dataset. This suggests the CPU can drive very high frame rates, but the GPU still limits performance at higher settings, as seen with 1080p Ultra at 101.9 FPS.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and High at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, Medium delivers 122 FPS, while High achieves 106.8 FPS. This is a 15.2 FPS difference, indicating that High offers a better visual experience with a relatively modest performance cost.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-thread performance impact this game?

A: The Ryzen 5 7600X has a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3406 and a Passmark single-thread score of 4135. These scores indicate strong single-thread performance, which is beneficial for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that rely on a few primary threads for game logic.

Q: Is the 32 GB VRAM on the RTX 5090 necessary for this game?

A: The 32 GB VRAM provides ample headroom for Red Dead Redemption 2’s textures at 4K, as evidenced by the stable frame rates across presets. The memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s ensures that texture streaming does not cause stutters, even at Ultra settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, plays a supporting role in this configuration, as the benchmark data indicates that the RTX 5090 is the primary determinant of frame rates. The CPU’s base clock of 4.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz provide strong single-thread performance, which is crucial for games that are not fully multi-threaded. In 3DMark tests, the CPU scores 1060 in single-thread and 6845 in max-threads, reflecting a solid balance between single-core and multi-core capability. This is further supported by a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 24128 and a single-core score of 3406, placing the CPU in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. When compared to its nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 7600X has an average benchmark score of 26272, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U (26262, deltaPct 0) and the AMD Ryzen 7 7735U (26305, deltaPct -0.1). The data shows that at 1080p Low, the frame rate reaches 221.8 FPS, which is the highest in the dataset, indicating that the CPU can handle high instruction throughput without becoming a bottleneck. However, as resolution increases to 4K, the frame rate drops significantly, with 4K Low at 108.5 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU’s workload dominates. The CPU’s 32 MB of shared L3 cache and support for DDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s ensure that it can feed data to the GPU efficiently, but the measured FPS pattern confirms that this is a GPU-bound scenario, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom for the RTX 5090 to perform at its best.