Red Dead Redemption 2

# Red Dead Redemption 2 with Intel Core i5-12400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

This combination of Intel's 12th-generation six-core processor and NVIDIA's flagship Blackwell GPU produces a system that ranks 38th out of 2,902 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the top 1.3% of all configurations measured. The benchmark data reveals a pairing where the RTX 5090 D's raw graphics horsepower is consistently the dominant factor, with the i5-12400 providing sufficient throughput to avoid becoming a bottleneck at most settings, though the CPU's 6-core/12-thread configuration shows its limits at lower resolutions where frame rates climb past 200 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a clear hierarchy across the four available quality presets at every resolution. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers an average of 207 FPS, while Medium drops to 175 FPS, High to 146 FPS, and Ultra to 105 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 32 FPS, while the jump from Medium to High costs another 29 FPS, and High to Ultra costs 41 FPS. At 1440p, the same pattern emerges: Low runs at 175 FPS, Medium at 131 FPS, High at 109 FPS, and Ultra at 79 FPS. At 4K, the averages are 115 FPS for Low, 86 FPS for Medium, 72 FPS for High, and 52 FPS for Ultra.

For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset at 1440p represents the optimal balance. This setting delivers a 131 FPS average with a minimum of 111 FPS and a maximum of 150 FPS, keeping frame times smooth and well above the 60 FPS threshold for competitive play. The 111 FPS minimum is particularly notable because it shows that even during demanding scenes, the system maintains a comfortable margin over display refresh rates up to 100 Hz. At 4K, the High preset at 72 FPS is the sensible choice for players with high-resolution displays, as it retains visual fidelity while staying above the 60 FPS baseline that most monitors target. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 52 FPS, which falls below the ideal threshold for smooth gameplay, making it a poor trade-off for the marginal visual gains over High.

The data strongly suggests avoiding Ultra settings on this configuration, especially at 4K where the 52 FPS average represents a 28% drop from the High preset's 72 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K (86 FPS) provides a better experience than Ultra, and the jump from Medium to High at 4K only costs 14 FPS while likely delivering meaningful visual improvements. Players targeting maximum frame rates should use Low at 1080p, where the 207 FPS average exceeds the refresh rate of even the fastest gaming monitors available.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 brings six physical cores and twelve threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. This Alder Lake-S architecture processor, built on Intel's 10 nm process, has a 65 W TDP and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory through a dual-channel memory bus. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache, which provides moderate capacity for game data that benefits from fast access.

Benchmark results for this processor show a single-thread score of 910 in 3DMark and 2,257 in Cinebench R23 single-core, indicating strong per-core performance that is essential for games that rely on a few primary threads. Multi-threaded results are respectable for a six-core part: Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 15,989, Geekbench multicore scores 8,564, and 3DMark max threads hits 5,890. The processor sits at the 72nd percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 18,683, placing it just 0.1% behind the AMD EPYC 7643 and 0.9% ahead of the Intel Core i3-14100F.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role becomes visible when examining the scaling across resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 207 FPS, which is a substantial workload for the CPU to feed to the GPU. The fact that the i5-12400 can sustain this frame rate suggests its six Performance cores are adequate for the game's physics and AI simulation at this level. However, the 12-thread configuration means that if the game were to utilize more than six cores heavily, this processor could become a limiting factor. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 5,873 compared to the max-thread score of 5,890 shows that the processor gains almost nothing beyond 16 threads, which is expected given its 12-thread limit.

The CPU's 72nd percentile ranking relative to all CPUs indicates it is a mid-to-upper tier processor, but not a top-tier part. When paired with the RTX 5090 D, which sits at the 92nd percentile among GPUs, the CPU is clearly the weaker component in this pairing. This becomes most apparent at 1080p Low, where the 207 FPS average suggests the CPU is working near its maximum capability to drive such high frame rates. At higher resolutions, the GPU takes on more work, and the CPU's influence diminishes, as evidenced by the relatively smaller FPS drops from 1080p to 1440p compared to the drops from 1440p to 4K.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is a flagship Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU built on TSMC's 5 nm process. The GB202 chip contains 92,200 million transistors across a 750 mm² die, with 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output units. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2017 MHz and boosts to 2407 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz for 28 Gbps effective throughput. The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory runs across a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for high-resolution textures and large open-world game data.

Compute capabilities are substantial: the GPU delivers 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and an identical 104.8 TFLOPS of FP16 performance, with a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for modern rendering techniques. The card carries a 575 W TDP and requires a 950 W power supply, with dual-slot cooling and a 16-pin power connector.

Benchmark results show the RTX 5090 D scoring 44,065 in Passmark G3D and 14,326 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, with Geekbench Vulkan reaching 376,915 and OpenCL at 310,674. The GPU's average benchmark score is 77,712, placing it at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (1.1% higher score), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.6% lower), and NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants (2.1% to 2.4% lower), which are all dramatically different products, underscoring the RTX 5090 D's unique position in the benchmark database.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU's role is dominant across all measured settings. The 32 GB VRAM capacity far exceeds the requirements of a 2018 title, ensuring that texture memory is never a constraint even at 4K Ultra. The 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth allows the GPU to stream world geometry and textures at high rates, which is evident in the smooth frame time behavior seen in the Medium preset data (minimum 149 FPS at 1080p, 111 FPS at 1440p, and 74 FPS at 4K). These minimum FPS values are close to the averages, indicating that the GPU maintains consistent performance without major stutters.

The GPU's 92nd percentile ranking means it outperforms roughly 92% of all GPUs tested, but the nearest rival data shows that the benchmark scores of the 6650M XT and 6850M XT are within 1.6% of the RTX 5090 D's average, which is surprising given the massive differences in specifications. This suggests that the Passmark GPU tests may not fully capture the RTX 5090 D's capabilities in gaming workloads, where its 32 GB VRAM and 512-bit bus provide advantages that synthetic benchmarks might not reflect.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves a rank of 38 out of 2,902 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places the configuration in the top 1.31% of all systems tested, which is an exceptional result given that the CPU is not a top-tier part. The ranking indicates that for this specific game, the GPU carries the combination to near-elite status, with only 37 other combos performing better.

The discrepancy between the CPU's 72nd percentile ranking and the combo's top-1.3% ranking highlights how game performance is heavily weighted toward the GPU in Red Dead Redemption 2. The i5-12400, while not a flagship processor, provides enough performance to allow the RTX 5090 D to operate at near-full capacity, especially at higher resolutions where the GPU is the primary bottleneck. The combo rank of 38 suggests that there are very few systems that can outperform this pairing in this game, and those that do likely feature more powerful CPUs that provide marginal gains at lower resolutions.

The data indicates that this combination is well-balanced for 1440p and 4K gaming, where the GPU's massive compute and memory resources are fully utilized. At 1080p, the CPU may hold back the GPU slightly, which explains why the combo does not rank even higher given the RTX 5090 D's raw power. The 38th rank out of 2,902 is a strong endorsement of this pairing for Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly for players who prioritize high-resolution gaming with high frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K reveal the balance between CPU and GPU limitations. At Low settings, the system produces 207 FPS at 1080p, 175 FPS at 1440p, and 115 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 32 FPS (15.5%), while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 60 FPS (34.3%). This pattern indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is likely the limiting factor, as the GPU has headroom to render more frames but is constrained by the CPU's ability to issue draw calls and process game logic.

At Medium settings, the averages are 175 FPS at 1080p, 131 FPS at 1440p, and 86 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 44 FPS (25.1%), and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 45 FPS (34.4%). The relatively consistent percentage drops suggest that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as settings increase, but the CPU still plays a role at 1080p.

High settings show 146 FPS at 1080p, 109 FPS at 1440p, and 72 FPS at 4K. The drops are 37 FPS (25.3%) from 1080p to 1440p and 37 FPS (33.9%) from 1440p to 4K. Ultra settings produce 105 FPS at 1080p, 79 FPS at 1440p, and 52 FPS at 4K, with drops of 26 FPS (24.8%) and 27 FPS (34.2%) respectively.

The consistent ~34% drop from 1440p to 4K across all settings indicates that at 4K, the GPU is the definitive bottleneck, as pixel count quadruples and the GPU's rendering workload scales accordingly. The smaller percentage drops from 1080p to 1440p (ranging from 15.5% to 25.1%) suggest that the CPU is partially limiting performance at 1080p, preventing the GPU from achieving even higher frame rates. This is typical for a high-end GPU paired with a mid-range CPU: at lower resolutions, the CPU cannot feed frames fast enough, but at 4K, the GPU's workload dominates and the CPU's role diminishes.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this system in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The Medium preset at 1440p provides the best balance, delivering 131 FPS average with a 111 FPS minimum and 150 FPS maximum. For 4K displays, the High preset at 72 FPS is recommended, as Ultra drops to 52 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: This combination ranks 38th out of 2,902 tested combos, placing it in the top 1.3% of all systems measured. The RTX 5090 D's 92nd percentile GPU ranking is the primary driver of this high position, while the i5-12400's 72nd percentile CPU ranking is secondary.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting component, as FPS drops approximately 34% from 1440p to 4K across all settings. At 1080p, the CPU becomes more restrictive, especially at Low settings where the 207 FPS average suggests the i5-12400 is nearing its maximum frame rate capability.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution?

A: At 1080p, Low achieves 207 FPS while Ultra achieves 105 FPS, a difference of 102 FPS. At 1440p, the difference is 96 FPS (175 vs 79). At 4K, the difference is 63 FPS (115 vs 52). The diminishing absolute differences at higher resolutions confirm the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

Q: Does the 32 GB of VRAM in the RTX 5090 D provide any advantage in this game?

A: The 32 GB GDDR7 memory with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is far more than Red Dead Redemption 2 requires, ensuring no texture memory limitations even at 4K Ultra. The minimum FPS values at Medium settings (74 FPS at 4K) indicate consistent performance without memory-related stutters.

Q: How does the i5-12400's performance compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-12400 has an average benchmark score of 18,683, which is 0.1% lower than the AMD EPYC 7643, 0.3% lower than the Intel Core i7-1355U, 0.7% lower than the AMD Ryzen AI 5 330, and 0.9% higher than the Intel Core i3-14100F. All four processors are within 1% of each other, indicating similar synthetic performance levels.