Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 presents a demanding workload that scales heavily with both resolution and graphical presets. The measured data for the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 shows a wide performance envelope, from a very playable 65 FPS at 4K High to a fluid 203.7 FPS at 1080p Low. This combination ranks in the 78th percentile out of 1687 tested configurations, indicating it is a strong performer, though not the absolute top-tier for this specific title.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial and reveals a clear shift in bottleneck. At 1080p with Low settings, the system delivers an average of 203.7 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low reduces performance to 151.7 FPS, a 25.5% decrease. The jump to 4K Low further drops the average to 100.5 FPS, which is a 33.7% reduction from 1440p and a 50.7% reduction from 1080p. This steep decline indicates that at lower resolutions and settings, the CPU is capable of feeding frames at a very high rate, but the GPU becomes the limiting factor as pixel count increases.

The trend is consistent across all settings presets. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 130.3 FPS at 1080p to 93.5 FPS at 1440p (a 28.2% decrease) and then to 65 FPS at 4K (a 30.5% decrease from 1440p). The scaling pattern suggests that the RTX 5080’s 16 GB of GDDR7 memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient even at 4K, but the raw pixel throughput demands of 3840x2160 are significantly higher than at 2560x1440. The data indicates that 1440p is a sweet spot for high refresh rate gaming on this hardware, while 4K is viable for a more cinematic, 60+ FPS experience.

Settings Recommendations

The performance cost of moving from Medium to High is more pronounced than from Low to Medium. At 4K, the average frame rate drops from 100.5 FPS at Low to 78.9 FPS at Medium, a 21.5% decrease. Moving from Medium to High reduces the average from 78.9 FPS to 65 FPS, a 17.6% decrease. However, the largest single setting penalty is from High to Ultra, where the 4K average plummets from 65 FPS to 45.5 FPS, a 30% drop. This makes the Ultra preset difficult to justify for smooth gameplay at 4K.

At 1440p, the Ultra preset achieves an average of 70.3 FPS, which is playable but not optimal for high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset at 1440p delivers 93.5 FPS, offering a better balance for competitive or fast-paced action. For the best experience based on the measured rows, the High preset at 1440p provides a strong combination of visual fidelity and performance, yielding 93.5 FPS. If aiming for 4K, the High preset at 65 FPS is the highest quality option that maintains a playable frame rate. The Low preset at any resolution provides the highest frame rates, but the data suggests that Medium at 4K (78.9 FPS) is a better choice than Low at 4K (100.5 FPS) for those prioritizing visual quality without sacrificing responsiveness.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge. Its high core count and 128 MB of shared L3 cache are relevant for a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, which can utilize multiple threads for simulation and AI tasks. The CPU’s benchmark scores are impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 59712 and a single-core score of 8430. The PassMark multithread score of 70255 and single-thread score of 4737 further illustrate its capability.

The data suggests that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 203.7 FPS, which is a very high frame rate that requires strong single-thread performance. The 9950X3D’s boost clock of 5.70 GHz likely contributes to this. However, the frame rate differences between 1080p and 1440p at the same settings show that the GPU takes over as the limiting factor when the resolution increases. This CPU’s average benchmark score of 71660 places it in the 96th percentile, with nearest rivals like the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (1.8% lower) and Intel Core i7-14700KF (2.2% lower) being closely matched. The performance data indicates that the CPU provides ample headroom for the RTX 5080 to operate at its full potential in this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this CPU and GPU combination?

A: The highest measured average is 203.7 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: Is the Ultra preset playable at 4K resolution with this hardware?

A: The data shows an average of 45.5 FPS at 3840x2160 on Ultra. While technically playable, this is below the 60 FPS threshold that many consider smooth for action-adventure games.

Q: How much faster is the High preset at 1080p compared to 4K?

A: At High settings, the average frame rate at 1080p is 130.3 FPS, while at 4K it is 65 FPS. This means the 1080p result is exactly double the 4K result.

Q: Does the GPU bottleneck appear at 1440p?

A: Yes, the evidence suggests a GPU bottleneck at 1440p. For example, at High settings, the average drops from 130.3 FPS at 1080p to 93.5 FPS at 1440p, a 28.2% decrease, indicating the GPU cannot maintain the same frame rate as the resolution increases.

Q: What is the performance difference between the Low and Medium presets at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset produces an average of 151.7 FPS, while the Medium preset produces 113 FPS. The Medium preset is 25.5% slower than Low.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-thread performance compare to its multicore performance in synthetic tests?

A: The CPU scores 8430 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 59712 in multicore. The multicore score is roughly 7.1 times higher, reflecting the benefit of its 16 cores and 32 threads.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is a Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU built on a 5 nm process. It features 10752 shading units, 336 tensor cores, and 84 RT cores. Its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The GPU’s boost clock is 2617 MHz, and its FP32 performance is rated at 56.28 TFLOPS. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 8637 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 and 36565 in PassMark G3D, placing it in the 89th percentile of all GPUs.

The measured frame rates clearly demonstrate the GPU’s role as the primary performance limiter at higher resolutions. The significant frame rate drops from 1080p to 4K, particularly at lower settings, indicate that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are being fully utilized. The 16 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the game’s textures at 4K, as there are no measurement anomalies suggesting memory overflow. The RTX 5080’s performance at 4K High (65 FPS) shows it is a capable 4K card, but the 30% performance hit from High to Ultra at 4K suggests that the Ultra preset includes effects that heavily tax the GPU’s compute resources. The GPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Arc A580 (2.5% higher score) and AMD Radeon Pro W5500X (2.6% higher score), have similar average benchmark scores, but the RTX 5080’s architecture is clearly optimized for modern game workloads.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system achieves its highest frame rates across all presets. The Low preset leads with an average of 203.7 FPS, followed by Medium at 155.3 FPS, High at 130.3 FPS, and Ultra at 95 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 53.4% reduction in performance.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 151.7 FPS for Low, 113 FPS for Medium, 93.5 FPS for High, and 70.3 FPS for Ultra. The transition from 1080p to 1440p results in a 25.5% decrease at Low settings and a 28.2% decrease at High settings.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 100.5 FPS for Low, 78.9 FPS for Medium, 65 FPS for High, and 45.5 FPS for Ultra. The drop from 1440p to 4K is most severe, with a 33.7% decrease at Low settings and a 30.5% decrease at High settings. The overall range from the fastest configuration (1080p Low at 203.7 FPS) to the slowest (4K Ultra at 45.5 FPS) is a 77.7% performance difference, highlighting the game’s extreme sensitivity to both resolution and graphical fidelity on this hardware.