Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a highly playable Red Dead Redemption 2 experience across most settings, with the data showing that the High preset at 1440p offers the sweet spot between visual fidelity and frame rate. The measured results indicate that this combination ranks in the 72nd percentile of all tested combos, placing it firmly in the upper tier of systems for this title.

Settings Recommendations

Benchmark results show that the High preset provides the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, High delivers 92.7 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while still offering substantial visual quality. The jump to Medium at 1080p yields 114.6 FPS, but the 23.6% increase in performance comes at a visible cost to graphical fidelity that many players would notice in this visually demanding title.

The data suggests that Ultra settings are the most punishing option, with 1080p Ultra dropping to 70.4 FPS and 4K Ultra falling to 34.1 FPS. The performance gap between High and Ultra at 1440p is particularly stark: High manages 72.1 FPS while Ultra drops to 49 FPS, a 32% reduction. This indicates that the Ultra preset pushes the GPU into territory where frame pacing becomes less consistent, making High the recommended choice for those seeking a stable experience.

For players targeting 60 FPS as a baseline, the High preset at 1440p is the clear recommendation, as it maintains 72.1 FPS while providing the detailed lighting and shadow work that defines Red Dead Redemption 2's visual identity. At 4K, High becomes borderline at 46.3 FPS, but the Low preset at 4K achieves 75.9 FPS, suggesting that players with 4K displays should either accept reduced settings or consider the Medium preset at 56.1 FPS if they prefer some visual enhancements.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for this game's large open-world textures. The benchmark data shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, particularly when moving from 1440p to 4K. The card's boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1920 MHz allow it to maintain strong throughput, but the 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is taxed heavily by the game's demanding shader work at Ultra settings.

The memory configuration is noteworthy because Red Dead Redemption 2 is known for its expansive environments and detailed texture streaming. The 12 GB capacity ensures that the GPU does not run into memory limitations at 1440p High, where the 72.1 FPS result indicates headroom remains. However, at 4K Ultra, the 34.1 FPS figure suggests that both memory bandwidth and compute capacity are being stressed simultaneously, as the 504.2 GB/s bandwidth must feed the higher pixel count while the shading units process more complex scenes.

The card's Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, includes 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s, which the measured FPS data confirms is adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming but insufficient for maintaining high frame rates at 4K with maximum settings.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 459th out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the top 27% of all systems. This ranking reflects the balanced nature of the pairing: the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads provide adequate processing power, while the GPU handles the bulk of the rendering workload. The CPU's benchmark scores support this interpretation, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10297 and single-core score of 1453 indicating it is not a bottleneck in most scenarios.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 81 versus all GPUs is notably higher than the CPU's percentile ranking of 73 versus all CPUs, suggesting the graphics card contributes more to this game's performance. This is consistent with the measured FPS data, which shows significant scaling with resolution changes that would primarily affect GPU workload. The combo's overall ranking in the 72nd percentile demonstrates that this system outperforms the majority of tested configurations while not reaching the extreme high end where top-tier CPUs and GPUs are paired together.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear progression across settings. Low settings achieve 149.6 FPS, which represents the maximum headroom for high-refresh-rate displays. Medium settings deliver 114.6 FPS, High settings produce 92.7 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 70.4 FPS. The 1080p results indicate that even at Ultra, this combo maintains playable frame rates, though the 52.9% reduction from Low to Ultra demonstrates how dramatically the game's settings affect GPU load.

Moving to 2560x1440, the data shows proportionally lower performance. Low settings achieve 110.6 FPS, Medium produces 86.5 FPS, High delivers 72.1 FPS, and Ultra drops to 49 FPS. The 1440p High result is particularly significant because it maintains the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider essential for smooth gameplay. The transition from 1080p to 1440p at High settings results in a 22.2% frame rate reduction, which is less severe than the 37.5% reduction seen when moving from 1440p to 4K at the same settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens considerably. Low settings achieve 75.9 FPS, which remains playable, but Medium drops to 56.1 FPS, High falls to 46.3 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 34.1 FPS. The 4K results clearly show that this combo is not intended for maximum settings at this resolution, as the GPU cannot maintain 60 FPS even at Medium settings. The 55.1% reduction from Low to Ultra at 4K is even more pronounced than at lower resolutions, indicating that the GPU's compute resources are being exhausted by the combination of high resolution and demanding settings.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important characteristics about this system's balance. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 149.6 FPS at 1080p to 75.9 FPS at 4K, a 49.3% reduction. At High settings, the drop is from 92.7 FPS to 46.3 FPS, a 50.1% reduction. This consistent reduction across settings suggests that resolution scaling affects the GPU uniformly, with the 4K pixel count requiring roughly double the rendering work of 1080p.

The data indicates the CPU is not a significant limiting factor in most scenarios. At 1080p Low, the 149.6 FPS result demonstrates that the CPU can feed frames quickly enough to keep the GPU busy, as this frame rate is well above what would indicate a CPU bottleneck. The Core i5-10400F's 12 MB of L3 cache and 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth provide sufficient data throughput for the game's streaming world, and the CPU's 3DMark multi-threaded score of 4748 shows it can handle the game's physics and AI workloads.

However, the scaling pattern does reveal that the GPU becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. The 4K Ultra result of 34.1 FPS is only 48.4% of the 1080p Ultra result of 70.4 FPS, which is a larger proportional drop than would be expected if the CPU were sharing the load evenly. This indicates that at 4K, the RTX 4070's 200 W TDP and 29.15 TFLOPS are fully utilized, and the game's rendering demands outpace the GPU's capabilities at maximum settings. The 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth also becomes a limiting factor at 4K, as the higher pixel count requires more texture fetches and memory transactions per frame.