Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 lands at rank 140 out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it comfortably within the top 9% of all configurations evaluated. This is a strong showing, driven almost entirely by the GPU’s immense raw performance, though the Comet Lake processor’s 6-core, 12-thread layout with a 4.30 GHz boost clock keeps it from climbing higher. The combo’s standing reflects a system where the graphics card does the heavy lifting, and the CPU provides just enough headroom to avoid becoming a severe bottleneck at most settings.

How This Combo Ranks

At rank 140 of 1687, this pairing sits in the upper echelon of tested combos for Red Dead Redemption 2, but it is not near the top. The RTX 5080 is a Blackwell 2.0 part with a 5 nm process, 10752 shading units, and 84 RT cores, all of which feed into a 45,600 million transistor die. The i5-10400F, by contrast, is a 14 nm Comet Lake chip with a passmark multithread score of 12115 and a single-thread score of 2541, which places it at the 73rd percentile among all CPUs. That processor’s relative weakness is the limiting factor here; in a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 that can scale across threads, the CPU’s 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate but not exceptional.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the Intel Arc A580 and AMD Radeon Pro W5500X, which score 2.5% and 2.6% lower on average, respectively. The RTX 5080’s passmark g3d score of 36565 puts it well ahead of those parts, and its 89th percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms it is a top-tier component. However, the combo rank of 140 shows that many other pairings—likely those with newer, faster CPUs—achieve higher frame rates in this title. The data suggests that while the RTX 5080 can push extremely high FPS, the i5-10400F’s 2.90 GHz base clock and older architecture prevent it from fully unlocking the GPU’s potential, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU overhead matters more.

GPU Role

The RTX 5080’s role in this combo is defined by its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a massive amount of memory throughput for a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, which is known for large, open-world textures. The GPU’s base clock of 2295 MHz and boost clock of 2617 MHz are high, and the memory runs at an effective 30 Gbps, which helps maintain consistent frame delivery even when the scene complexity spikes. With 112 ROPs and a pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s, the card is built for high-resolution rasterization, and its 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute ensures it can handle the game’s advanced lighting and shadow effects without breaking a sweat.

In the measured data, the GPU’s dominance is clear. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 151.3 FPS, and even at 4K Low it manages 100.6 FPS. These numbers indicate that the RTX 5080 alone could push far beyond what the CPU allows in some scenarios. The GPU’s 89th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59188, underscores its strength. However, the interplay with the i5-10400F is visible when comparing settings: the jump from 1080p Low to 1080p High only drops the average from 151.3 to 130.3 FPS, a relatively small 21 FPS penalty, suggesting the CPU is starting to limit gains at lower resolutions. At 4K, though, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, with Low delivering 100.6 FPS and Ultra dropping to 46.4 FPS—a much steeper decline that shows the card’s raw fill rate is being taxed.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset at 1440p offers the most balanced combination of visual fidelity and performance. At 2560x1440 Medium, the combo averages 113.2 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay and only 21.2 FPS below the Low setting’s 134.4 FPS at the same resolution. The jump from Medium to High at 1440p costs 15.3 FPS (from 113.2 to 97.9), which is still playable but starts to approach the point where frame pacing could become noticeable on high-refresh displays. For users with 4K panels, the High preset at 3840x2160 delivers 61.9 FPS, which is exactly at the console-like 60 FPS target, making it the highest visual quality that remains fluid at that resolution.

Ultra settings are not recommended for this combo. At 1080p Ultra, the average drops to 93.4 FPS, which is 36.9 FPS lower than Medium at the same resolution, and at 4K Ultra it falls to 46.4 FPS—a sub-60 FPS experience that most players would find unacceptable. The data shows a clear diminishing return: Low to Medium at 1080p costs just 16.8 FPS (from 151.3 to 134.5), but Medium to High costs only 4.2 FPS less than that, and Ultra imposes a 41.1 FPS penalty over Medium. The sweet spot is Medium at 1440p or High at 4K, depending on the display’s native resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Starting at 1920x1080, the combo delivers 151.3 FPS on Low, 134.5 FPS on Medium, 130.3 FPS on High, and 93.4 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra is 57.9 FPS, which is substantial but not as large as at higher resolutions, indicating that at 1080p the CPU is partially holding back the GPU. The i5-10400F’s 3dmark single-thread score of 688 and cinebench r23 single-core score of 1453 show it is not a weak processor, but it lacks the per-core punch of newer designs, so the frame rate ceiling at 1080p is capped around 151 FPS regardless of settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the measured averages are 134.4 FPS on Low, 113.2 FPS on Medium, 97.9 FPS on High, and 70.9 FPS on Ultra. The step from Low to Medium costs 21.2 FPS, and from Medium to High costs 15.3 FPS, while High to Ultra costs 27.0 FPS. This progressive decline is steeper than at 1080p, showing that the GPU is becoming more involved as the pixel count rises. The 1440p results are strong across the board, with even Ultra staying above 70 FPS, which is impressive for a game with this level of environmental detail.

At 3840x2160, the picture changes dramatically. Low delivers 100.6 FPS, Medium drops to 78.0 FPS, High falls to 61.9 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 46.4 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 54.2 FPS, and the scaling from High to Ultra is a harsh 15.5 FPS loss. This is where the RTX 5080’s 16 GB of GDDR7 and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth are stretched, but the card still manages to keep 4K High playable at just under 62 FPS. The 4K Low result of 100.6 FPS demonstrates that the GPU has headroom, but the CPU’s older architecture begins to show its age at this resolution when settings are lowered.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is most pronounced on the Low preset, where the average falls from 151.3 FPS to 100.6 FPS, a 33.5% reduction. On Medium, the drop is from 134.5 to 78.0 FPS, a 42.0% loss, and on High it goes from 130.3 to 61.9 FPS, a 52.5% decline. The Ultra preset sees the smallest relative drop, from 93.4 to 46.4 FPS, a 50.3% reduction, but it starts from a much lower baseline. These percentages reveal that the combo is GPU-limited at higher settings and resolutions, but CPU-limited at lower settings and resolutions.

Specifically, the scaling from 1080p to 1440p on Low is only 17.1 FPS (from 151.3 to 134.4), while the 1440p to 4K drop is 33.8 FPS (from 134.4 to 100.6). This suggests that at 1080p Low, the i5-10400F is the limiting component, as the GPU could likely push well beyond 151 FPS if given more CPU headroom. As resolution increases, the RTX 5080’s workload grows, and the frame rate becomes more dependent on the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth. The 4K Ultra result of 46.4 FPS is a clear indication that the GPU is fully saturated, as the CPU’s 12 threads are unlikely to be the bottleneck when the card is rendering 8.3 million pixels per frame. The data shows a system that is well-balanced for 1440p and 4K High, but slightly unbalanced for 1080p, where the CPU’s 2.90 GHz base clock and 12 MB L3 cache hold back the GPU’s potential.