Red Dead Redemption 2

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Red Dead Redemption 2 with the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 reveal a clear progression as resolution increases. At 1080p with High settings, the combination produces 92.6 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops this to 68.6 FPS, a reduction of approximately 24 frames. At 4K, the average falls to 44.6 FPS, representing a substantial 52% decline from the 1080p result. This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound workload at higher resolutions, where the rendering demands on the RTX 4070 escalate more rapidly than the CPU's ability to feed frames.

The Low settings data provides a sharper view of the bottleneck dynamics. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 153.4 FPS, which is a high ceiling that suggests the CPU can still push significant frame rates when the GPU load is minimal. At 1440p Low, the average drops to 114 FPS, and at 4K Low it reaches 76.5 FPS. The fact that 4K Low (76.5 FPS) is only about half the 1080p Low figure (153.4 FPS) indicates that even at the lowest graphical preset, the GPU is increasingly the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The gap between Low and High settings at 4K—76.5 FPS versus 44.6 FPS—shows that visual fidelity has a massive impact on throughput, confirming that the RTX 4070's compute and memory subsystems are being saturated.

Ultra settings further illustrate this trend. At 1080p Ultra, the combo manages 67.2 FPS, which is playable but noticeably lower than the High preset. At 1440p Ultra, the figure drops to 48.7 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it plunges to 33.5 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Ultra—a 50% performance hit—mirrors the High preset's behavior, reinforcing that the GPU is the dominant constraint across all quality levels. The data suggests that for 4K gaming, users would need to compromise on settings, as even Medium at 4K yields only 54.5 FPS, while High at 1440p provides a more comfortable 68.6 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. Its benchmark results show a strong single-thread performance, scoring 893 in 3dmark single-thread and 1681 in Cinebench R23 single-core. This is critical for Red Dead Redemption 2, which relies on a few primary threads for game logic and physics. The CPU's 12 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support (DDR4 and DDR5) provide adequate bandwidth for feeding the GPU, though the 4-core count limits multi-threaded scaling in more demanding scenes.

The 3dmark multi-thread scores reveal a plateau: 4051 for 16 threads, 4026 for 8 threads, and 4023 for max threads. This near-flat scaling indicates that the 4 physical cores with Hyper-Threading (8 threads total) do not gain additional performance beyond the 8-thread mark, which is expected for a processor with only 4 cores. In Cinebench R23, the multicore score of 11912 is roughly 7 times the single-core score of 1681, showing that while multi-threaded workloads are handled, the absolute throughput is modest compared to higher-core-count CPUs. The i3-12100F's percentile ranking of 72% against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13516, places it in the mid-range, closely matching the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (deltaPct -0.1%) and Intel Core i7-1250U (deltaPct 0.4%).

For Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 153.4 FPS result suggests that the i3-12100F can keep up with the RTX 4070 in less demanding scenes, but the 4-core design may cause stutters in crowded areas or during complex physics simulations. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz helps mitigate this, as single-thread performance is often the deciding factor for this game's frame pacing. Compared to the nearest rivals, the i3-12100F offers performance within 1.8% of the Intel Core i7-7700K, indicating that older high-end CPUs are still competitive, but the modern Alder Lake architecture provides efficiency gains.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1440p High settings?

A: The combination produces 68.6 FPS at 1440p with High settings, which is suitable for smooth gameplay on most monitors.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its single-thread performance?

A: In Cinebench R23, the multicore score is 11912 versus 1681 for single-core, showing a 7x scaling due to the 4 cores and 8 threads, though the 3dmark scores plateau above 8 threads.

Q: What is the highest frame rate recorded at 1080p?

A: At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 153.4 FPS, which is the maximum measured across all configurations.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the primary bottleneck at 4K?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as frame rates drop from 76.5 FPS at Low to 44.6 FPS at High, showing a strong dependence on graphical settings.

Q: How does the i3-12100F compare to the Intel Core i7-7700K in average benchmark scores?

A: The i3-12100F has an average score of 13516, while the i7-7700K scores 13280, making the i3-12100F 1.8% faster based on the deltaPct.

Q: What frame rate can be expected at 4K with Medium settings?

A: At 4K Medium, the average FPS is 54.5, which is above the 30 FPS threshold but may require adjustments for consistent smoothness.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Red Dead Redemption 2, this pairing of the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 485th out of 1687 combos. This places it in the upper 29th percentile of all tested systems, indicating that it delivers above-average performance for this title. The rank reflects a balance between the CPU's mid-range compute capability and the GPU's high-end rendering power, with the RTX 4070's 81st percentile ranking among all GPUs offsetting the i3-12100F's 72nd percentile among CPUs.

The ranking suggests that while the GPU is capable of higher frame rates in isolation, the CPU's 4-core limitation prevents the combo from reaching the top echelons. For comparison, the GPU's nearest rivals—such as the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (deltaPct -0.6%) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (deltaPct -2.2%)—do not significantly alter the GPU's performance class, but the CPU's position relative to the Intel Core i7-7700K (1.8% faster) shows that the i3-12100F is not a bottleneck in most scenarios. The 485th rank out of 1687 combos implies that there are 1202 tested configurations that perform worse, and 484 that perform better, making this a solid mid-to-high-tier setup for Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly at 1080p and 1440p.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, featuring 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die. It operates at a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus delivering 504.2 GB/s bandwidth. This memory configuration is crucial for Red Dead Redemption 2's high-resolution textures, as the game's open-world environments can consume significant VRAM. The GPU's 5888 shading units, 184 TMUs, and 64 ROPs provide ample fill rate, with a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s.

The GPU's benchmark scores show strong compute capability, with a Passmark G3D score of 26927 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 168006, placing it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. The 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is more than sufficient for Red Dead Redemption 2, which is not particularly demanding compared to newer titles. However, the measured FPS data reveals that the GPU's performance scales predictably with settings and resolution, indicating that the 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is adequate but not excessive for 4K Ultra, where the average FPS drops to 33.5.

The RTX 4070's role as the primary driver of frame rates is evident from the resolution scaling data. At 1080p, the GPU can push well over 100 FPS on Low settings, but the 12 GB VRAM and 192-bit bus become limiting at 4K Ultra, where the 33.5 FPS result suggests that the GPU is fully utilized. The GPU's 81st percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 37283 (with nearest rivals like the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 at -0.6% delta) confirm that it is a high-performance part, but the combination with the i3-12100F means that at lower resolutions, the CPU may occasionally limit performance, while at 4K, the GPU is the clear bottleneck. The data shows that for optimal frame rates in this game, users should target 1440p High (68.6 FPS) or 1080p Ultra (67.2 FPS), as these settings balance the GPU's capabilities with the CPU's limitations.