Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 delivers a mixed bag in Red Dead Redemption 2, showing strong potential at lower settings but struggling to maintain smooth framerates at the highest visual presets. This combination ranks in the 974th position out of 1687 tested combos, placing it in the lower half of the database. The data reveals a system that is heavily influenced by graphics settings, with the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and the CPU's 4-core/8-thread configuration playing critical roles in determining playability across different resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 provides the most playable experience, with an average of 110.9 FPS at Low settings and 72 FPS at High settings. At 2560x1440, performance drops to 84.1 FPS at Low and 49.7 FPS at High, while 3840x2160 only achieves 55.6 FPS at Low and 34.2 FPS at High.

Q: How does the RTX 4060's VRAM affect performance?

A: The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth. This configuration appears to be a limiting factor at 3840x2160, where even Medium settings only yield 38.3 FPS, suggesting the memory capacity struggles with the game's high-resolution textures.

Q: Is the Core i3-12100F a bottleneck in this game?

A: The CPU has a 72nd percentile ranking against all CPUs and scores 11912 in Cinebench R23 multicore. The data indicates that at 1920x1080 Low, the system reaches 110.9 FPS, which suggests the 4-core processor can keep up with the GPU at lower settings, but the gap between Low and Ultra presets shows the GPU becomes the primary constraint at higher settings.

Q: What is the difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 110.9 FPS, while Ultra drops to 46.7 FPS. This represents a 64.2 FPS difference, showing that the Ultra preset demands significantly more from the RTX 4060, reducing performance by more than half.

Q: How does this combo compare to other GPUs in the database?

A: The RTX 4060 has a 66th percentile ranking among all GPUs and sits close to the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, which has an average score of 23321 versus the 4060's 23181. The Intel Arc B580 is also nearby with an average score of 23021.

Q: Is the game playable at 4K with this hardware?

A: At 3840x2160, the best result is 55.6 FPS at Low settings. High settings drop to 34.2 FPS, and Ultra produces only 26.6 FPS, making 4K viable only at the lowest visual quality for a playable experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using a 5 nm process at TSMC, featuring 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory operates at 2125 MHz with 17 Gbps effective speed, delivering 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth across a 128-bit bus. The GPU's boost clock reaches 2460 MHz, with a base clock of 1830 MHz, and it offers 3072 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU's performance varies dramatically with settings, indicating that its compute resources are sufficient for lower presets but become strained at Ultra. The pixel rate of 118.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 236.2 GTexel/s suggest the card can handle moderate workloads, yet the data shows a steep drop from 110.9 FPS at 1080p Low to 46.7 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This pattern points to the 8 GB VRAM being a bottleneck at higher settings, particularly at 4K where Ultra yields only 26.6 FPS.

The RTX 4060 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, which aligns with Red Dead Redemption 2's requirements. The card's 15.11 TFLOPS FP32 performance is respectable for its class, but the data suggests that memory bandwidth and capacity limit its effectiveness in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 ranks 974th out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the lower 42% of the database. The CPU's 72nd percentile ranking against all CPUs and the GPU's 66th percentile ranking show that neither component is top-tier, and their pairing produces mid-to-low-tier results in this game.

The Core i3-12100F's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX with a delta of -0.1%, the Intel Core i7-1250U at 0.4%, and the Intel Core i3-10105 at 0.6%. These close margins indicate that the 12100F performs similarly to a wide range of processors in general benchmarks, but its 4-core, 8-thread configuration may not be ideal for this game's demands.

For the GPU, the RTX 4060's nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 6600M at -0.6% delta, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti at -0.7%, and the Intel Arc B580 at 0.7%. The small deltas suggest the 4060 performs in a tightly packed group of graphics cards, but the measured FPS data shows it struggles with Red Dead Redemption 2's Ultra preset, indicating that synthetic benchmark scores do not fully capture its gaming performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 110.9 FPS at Low settings, 80.8 FPS at Medium, 72 FPS at High, and 46.7 FPS at Ultra. This shows a clear progression where each settings tier reduces performance, with the most significant drop occurring between High and Ultra, a 25.3 FPS decrease.

Moving to 2560x1440, the results are 84.1 FPS at Low, 58.9 FPS at Medium, 49.7 FPS at High, and 36.8 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p resolution reduces performance by roughly 24-27% across all settings compared to 1080p, with the Low preset remaining playable while Ultra falls below 40 FPS.

At 3840x2160, performance drops further to 55.6 FPS at Low, 38.3 FPS at Medium, 34.2 FPS at High, and 26.6 FPS at Ultra. The 4K resolution shows the most severe impact, with even Low settings barely exceeding 55 FPS, and Ultra producing an unplayable 26.6 FPS. The data indicates that Medium settings at 4K provide 38.3 FPS, which is below the standard 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important characteristics about this system's balance. At Low settings, performance drops from 110.9 FPS at 1080p to 84.1 FPS at 1440p, a 26.8 FPS reduction, and then to 55.6 FPS at 4K, a further 28.5 FPS drop. This pattern shows that the GPU's rendering load increases significantly with resolution, but the CPU maintains adequate performance at lower settings.

At High settings, the scaling is 72 FPS at 1080p, 49.7 FPS at 1440p, and 34.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are more pronounced at higher settings, with 1440p representing a 31% reduction from 1080p and 4K representing a 52.5% reduction from 1080p. This indicates that at higher settings, the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor, as the increased resolution demands more from the 8 GB VRAM and 272.0 GB/s bandwidth.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the system is somewhat CPU-limited at Low settings, as evidenced by the 110.9 FPS result, but at Ultra settings, the GPU's limitations become apparent with the sharp drop to 46.7 FPS. At 4K, the RTX 4060 is clearly the bottleneck, as even Low settings only produce 55.6 FPS, showing that the GPU cannot keep up with the pixel count regardless of quality settings. The Core i3-12100F's single-thread performance, scoring 893 in 3dmark single-thread and 1681 in Cinebench R23, appears sufficient for this game at lower resolutions, but the GPU's memory and compute constraints dominate at higher resolutions.