Red Dead Redemption 2

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a versatile performance profile in Red Dead Redemption 2, with measured results spanning from highly playable at 4K to exceptionally fluid at 1080p. The data indicates a system that scales predictably with resolution and settings, though the relationship between the CPU’s substantial core count and the GPU’s modern architecture reveals distinct bottlenecks depending on the configuration chosen.

Settings Recommendations

Across all three tested resolutions, the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience, delivering average frame rates that comfortably exceed 60 FPS while maintaining visual fidelity. At 1920x1080, Medium achieves a 121 FPS average, which is 20 FPS higher than High and 48 FPS higher than Ultra, yet only 41 FPS below the Low preset’s 162 FPS ceiling. The Medium preset’s measured minimum of 103 FPS at 1080p ensures consistent playback without significant dips, making it the optimal choice for high-refresh-rate monitors. At 2560x1440, Medium delivers a 90 FPS average with a minimum of 77 FPS, which keeps gameplay smooth while allowing the RTX 5070 to render more detail than the Low preset’s 121 FPS would suggest is necessary. The 4K Medium result of 60 FPS, with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS, hits the target for standard 60 Hz displays, though users prioritizing absolute smoothness might consider High at 50 FPS as a viable alternative if they can tolerate a 10 FPS reduction.

The High preset serves as a middle ground, offering 101 FPS at 1080p, 75 FPS at 1440p, and 50 FPS at 4K. These numbers indicate that High is playable at 1440p for most users, but at 4K it falls below the 60 FPS threshold, making Medium the recommended setting for that resolution. The Ultra preset, while visually impressive, produces average frame rates of 73 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p, and 36 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is notably below playable standards, and even at 1080p, the 73 FPS average does not fully utilize high-refresh displays. For the best overall experience, the data strongly favors Medium across all resolutions, as it provides the highest minimum frame rates relative to its average, indicating better frame pacing and reduced stutter risk.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, brings 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s. This memory configuration proves sufficient for Red Dead Redemption 2’s demands, as the measured frame rates do not indicate any VRAM-related performance cliffs even at 4K Ultra, where the 36 FPS average suggests a compute limitation rather than a memory capacity issue. The GPU’s boost clock of 2512 MHz, combined with 6144 shading units and 192 texture mapping units, provides the raw throughput necessary for the game’s detailed environments. The 80 raster operation units deliver a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s, which is particularly relevant for a game that relies heavily on traditional rasterization techniques.

The RTX 5070’s performance in Red Dead Redemption 2 shows a clear scaling pattern with settings: moving from Low to Medium at 1080p reduces the average from 162 FPS to 121 FPS, a 25% drop, while moving from Medium to High reduces it further to 101 FPS, a 16.5% drop. The transition from High to Ultra yields the smallest relative decline at 1080p, from 101 FPS to 73 FPS, a 27.7% reduction. This pattern suggests that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher settings, as the CPU’s 16 cores and 32 threads are unlikely to bottleneck a game of this era. The GPU’s 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, while not directly translatable to game FPS, provides context for its ability to handle the game’s complex shader work at 4K, where even the Medium preset only achieves 60 FPS average.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, with its 16 cores and 32 threads based on the Zen 3 Vermeer architecture, presents an interesting case for Red Dead Redemption 2. The CPU’s base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 4.90 GHz, combined with 64 MB of L3 cache, provides ample single-thread performance for a game that typically utilizes fewer cores. The benchmark data shows a single-thread score of 944 in 3dmark and 1614 in Cinebench R23, indicating strong per-core capability. However, the game’s performance scaling across resolutions suggests that the CPU is rarely the bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the 162 FPS average approaches the practical limit for many displays, and the fact that this is only 34% higher than the 4K Low result of 80 FPS indicates that the GPU becomes increasingly dominant as resolution increases.

The CPU’s multi-threaded prowess, evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 26017 and a Passmark multi-thread score of 45424, is largely unutilized by this game, which is typical for titles optimized for fewer threads. The data shows that the 5950X’s performance relative to its nearest rivals is marginal: it sits 0.2% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX and 0.3% behind the AMD EPYC 8124P in average benchmark scores, while being 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i9-13900F and 0.7% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700. These minute differences, all within 1%, confirm that the CPU is not a differentiating factor in this game’s performance. The CPU’s 105 W TDP and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for the game’s data streaming requirements, but the measured FPS deltas across settings are more attributable to the GPU’s workload than CPU capabilities.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of 3714 tested combinations, this pairing of the Ryzen 9 5950X and RTX 5070 achieves a rank of 791, placing it in the top 21.3% of all tested combos. This ranking is noteworthy given that the GPU’s benchmark percentile versus all GPUs is only 82, while the CPU’s percentile versus all CPUs is 91. The discrepancy between the component-level percentiles and the combo rank suggests that the game is more sensitive to GPU performance than CPU performance, which aligns with the observed resolution scaling. The combo’s rank indicates that while this system is capable, there are many combinations that deliver higher frame rates, likely those pairing the RTX 5070 with faster CPUs or those using higher-tier GPUs.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in benchmark scores are all older or lower-tier products: the AMD Radeon Pro 580 is 0.1% ahead, the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 is 0.8% ahead, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 is 1.2% behind and the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile is 2% behind. These comparisons highlight that the RTX 5070’s synthetic benchmark scores are closely matched to professional-grade GPUs that are not designed for gaming, yet in Red Dead Redemption 2, the RTX 5070’s gaming-specific features likely contribute to its competitive positioning. The combo rank of 791 out of 3714, combined with the 82nd percentile GPU score, suggests that the system is well-balanced for this title, with neither component severely limiting the other at most settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the expected GPU-bound behavior, but the magnitude varies significantly by settings preset. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 162 at 1080p to 121 at 1440p (a 25.3% decrease) and then to 80 at 4K (a 33.9% decrease from 1440p). This represents a total reduction of 50.6% from 1080p to 4K, which is less severe than at higher settings. At Medium settings, the scaling is steeper: 121 FPS at 1080p drops to 90 FPS at 1440p (25.6% decrease) and then to 60 FPS at 4K (33.3% decrease), totaling a 50.4% reduction. The High preset shows similar proportional drops: 101 to 75 FPS (25.7% decrease) from 1080p to 1440p, and 75 to 50 FPS (33.3% decrease) to 4K, for a total of 50.5%. The Ultra preset exhibits the most aggressive scaling: 73 to 54 FPS (26% decrease) and then 54 to 36 FPS (33.3% decrease), totaling a 50.7% reduction.

These consistent scaling percentages, all hovering around 50% total reduction from 1080p to 4K, indicate that the system is uniformly GPU-limited across settings. If the CPU were a significant factor, we would expect to see smaller FPS deltas at lower resolutions where the CPU might bottleneck, but the data shows the 1080p to 1440p drop is consistent with the 1440p to 4K drop in relative terms. The pixel count quadrupling from 1080p to 4K, while the FPS roughly halves, points to the RTX 5070’s rendering throughput as the primary constraint. The GPU’s 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 performance are the likely limits at 4K, where the game’s draw calls and texture filtering demand more resources than at lower resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 36 FPS, which is exactly half of the 1080p Ultra result of 73 FPS, further confirms the linear scaling expected from a purely GPU-bound scenario.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for a smooth 60 FPS experience?

A: The 4K Medium preset delivers exactly 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS, while 1440p High achieves 75 FPS, and 1080p High reaches 101 FPS. For a locked 60 FPS at 4K, Medium is the only preset that meets this target, as High drops to 50 FPS and Ultra falls to 36 FPS.

Q: Does the Ryzen 9 5950X’s 16-core configuration benefit this game?

A: Benchmark results indicate that the CPU’s multi-thread performance, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 26017, is not fully utilized by Red Dead Redemption 2, as the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is consistent with GPU limitations rather than CPU bottlenecks, even at Low settings where the 1080p average reaches 162 FPS.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: This pairing ranks 791st out of 3714 tested combinations, placing it in the top 21.3% of all systems. The individual components rank higher on their own, with the CPU at the 91st percentile and the GPU at the 82nd percentile, suggesting the game’s performance is more dependent on GPU capability.

Q: Is the 12 GB VRAM sufficient for 4K Ultra settings?

A: The measured 4K Ultra average of 36 FPS indicates that performance is limited by compute throughput rather than memory capacity, as the frame rate is consistent with the expected scaling from lower settings, and there are no anomalies suggesting VRAM overflow or texture thrashing.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves a 121 FPS average, while the Ultra preset achieves a 54 FPS average, representing a 55.4% reduction in performance. The Medium preset sits at 90 FPS and High at 75 FPS, showing a clear linear progression with each settings step.

Q: Should users prioritize higher resolution or higher settings with this hardware?

A: The data suggests that at 1440p, using Medium settings (90 FPS) provides a better experience than 4K Low (80 FPS), while at 1080p, High settings (101 FPS) offer a good balance. For maximum visual quality, 1440p Ultra at 54 FPS is playable, but 4K Medium at 60 FPS provides a superior combination of resolution and smoothness.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 162 FPS average
• Medium: 121 FPS average, with a minimum of 103 FPS and maximum of 139 FPS
• High: 101 FPS average
• Ultra: 73 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 121 FPS average
• Medium: 90 FPS average, with a minimum of 77 FPS and maximum of 104 FPS
• High: 75 FPS average
• Ultra: 54 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 80 FPS average
• Medium: 60 FPS average, with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS
• High: 50 FPS average
• Ultra: 36 FPS average

The complete dataset shows that the Medium preset is the only configuration that provides both an average FPS above 60 at 4K and a minimum FPS above 50 at 1440p. The Low preset, while achieving high frame rates, sacrifices visual quality, and the Ultra preset, while visually appealing, fails to maintain playable frame rates at 4K. The RTX 5070’s performance in this title is characterized by smooth scaling, with the 5950X providing a stable foundation that never appears to limit the GPU’s output. The measured data, collected across all 12 resolution-settings combinations, offers a comprehensive view of this system’s capabilities in Red Dead Redemption 2.