Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i5-13400F and Intel Arc B580 pairing delivers a playable, though demanding, experience in Red Dead Redemption 2. The data indicates that users should prioritize the Medium preset, which offers the most balanced performance across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, the Medium preset averages 67 FPS, which is a significant jump from the 40 FPS seen at Ultra. While Low provides the highest frame rates, the visual compromise is substantial. The Medium preset is the optimal choice for maintaining a smooth experience without sacrificing the game's detailed world. At 1440p, the Medium preset again proves to be the sweet spot, delivering 50 FPS and providing a stable baseline that is more consistently playable than High or Ultra. For 4K, the data reveals a challenging environment; even the Medium preset only reaches 33 FPS, suggesting that users should stick to 1080p or 1440p for this title with this specific hardware combination.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for Red Dead Redemption 2 with this combo clearly identifies the Medium preset as the recommended configuration for the best balance between visual fidelity and frame rate. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers a 67 FPS average, which is 11 FPS higher than High and 27 FPS higher than Ultra. While the Low preset achieves 90 FPS, the jump from Medium to Low is not as critical as the jump from High to Ultra, making Medium the most efficient choice. The average frame rate at Medium is 67 FPS, but the minimum recorded is 57 FPS, ensuring that the experience remains fluid even during intense scenes. Moving up to High drops the average to 56 FPS, which is still playable but begins to approach the threshold where dips might become noticeable. Ultra is not recommended at this resolution, as it only manages a 40 FPS average, which compromises the action-adventure experience.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset continues to be the best option, averaging 50 FPS. This is a 16% drop from the 1080p result, but it remains within a playable range. The High preset at 1440p yields a 42 FPS average, which is less ideal, and the Ultra preset falls to 30 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. The data suggests that for a consistent experience, users should prefer 1080p Medium or 1440p Medium, depending on their display's native resolution. The 4K results are largely impractical for this game and hardware combo. The Medium preset at 3840x2160 averages only 33 FPS, with minimums dropping to 28 FPS. The High preset is slightly worse at 28 FPS, and Ultra is unplayable at 20 FPS. For 4K, the Low preset is the only configuration that approaches playability, with a 44 FPS average, but the visual degradation is severe. The data indicates that the Medium preset is the definitive recommendation, offering the best playable experience without requiring the drastic visual cutbacks of Low.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580 is the primary driver of performance in Red Dead Redemption 2, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling across resolutions. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 456.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is a critical factor, as the game’s open-world environments and detailed textures are demanding on VRAM. The base and boost clock are both set at 2670 MHz, which is a high operating frequency for this architecture. The GPU’s 2560 shading units and 20 RT cores are responsible for the rendering pipeline, and the data shows that these resources are heavily taxed at higher settings. The B580’s performance profile, as indicated by its 68th percentile ranking among all GPUs, places it as a mid-range performer, which aligns with the measured frame rates.

The frame rates at 1080p reveal the GPU's raw capability. At Low settings, the B580 achieves 90 FPS, showing that it has ample headroom when the render load is reduced. However, the transition to Medium (67 FPS), High (56 FPS), and Ultra (40 FPS) demonstrates the significant performance cost of the game's advanced rendering features, such as volumetric lighting and high-resolution shadows. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 13.67 TFLOPS is sufficient for the game's compute shaders, but the data shows that the fill rate and pixel rate are the limiting factors at higher presets. The pixel rate of 213.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 427.2 GTexel/s are substantial, yet the game's complexity at Ultra settings overwhelms these capabilities. The VRAM capacity of 12 GB is likely a non-issue at 1080p, but the 33 FPS average at 4K Medium suggests that memory bandwidth and raw compute are the bottlenecks at higher resolutions, not capacity. The GPU's performance is consistent with its position near the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 3080 in the benchmark database, though it trails the RTX 3080 by 0.7%.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep performance decline as resolution increases, which is typical for a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p Medium, the average frame rate is 67 FPS. Moving to 1440p Medium, the average drops to 50 FPS, a 25% reduction in performance. This is a substantial hit, indicating that the B580 is being pushed harder by the increased pixel count. The scaling from 1440p to 4K Medium is even more severe, with the average falling to 33 FPS, another 34% reduction. This non-linear drop suggests that the GPU is running out of compute and memory bandwidth resources, not just pixel throughput. The 4K results are consistently low across all settings, with the highest average being 44 FPS at Low. The data indicates that the limiting component at 4K is the GPU, as the CPU's performance does not scale with resolution in the same way.

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a 17 FPS drop at Medium settings, which is a significant loss for a single step up in resolution. This is a clear sign that the Arc B580 is the primary bottleneck, as a CPU limitation would not result in such a dramatic difference. The 4K results are particularly telling, as even the Low preset cannot maintain a solid 60 FPS, averaging only 44 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the worst performer, with a 20 FPS average, which is unplayable. This pattern confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor, and the data suggests that users should not attempt to run this game at 4K with this hardware unless they are willing to use the Low preset and accept the visual compromises. The frame rate drops are consistent with the GPU's 68th percentile ranking, which places it below the top-tier cards needed for high-refresh 4K gaming.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark results provide a detailed look at performance across three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 90 FPS, which is the highest score of the entire test suite. The Medium preset averages 67 FPS, with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS, showing a stable frame time distribution. The High preset drops to a 56 FPS average, while the Ultra preset falls to 40 FPS. These numbers illustrate a clear hierarchy, with each step up in quality costing approximately 10-15 FPS. For 1080p, the data shows that Medium is the most balanced, while Low is the only preset that guarantees a high-refresh experience.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset again leads with a 67 FPS average, which exactly matches the 1080p Medium result. The Medium preset at 1440p averages 50 FPS, with a minimum of 43 FPS and a maximum of 58 FPS. The High preset yields 42 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 30 FPS. The 1440p results show a similar pattern to 1080p, but with a more compressed range, as the GPU struggles to maintain higher frame rates. The 3840x2160 results are the most demanding, with the Low preset averaging 44 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K averages 33 FPS, with a minimum of 28 and a maximum of 38 FPS. The High preset averages 28 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 20 FPS. The data confirms that 4K is not a viable option for this combo beyond the Low preset, and even that is marginal. The complete dataset shows a consistent performance degradation, with the GPU being the clear limiting factor at every resolution step.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F plays a supporting role in Red Dead Redemption 2, providing enough processing power to avoid becoming a bottleneck at lower resolutions. The CPU features 10 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. The benchmark data shows that the multi-threaded performance is robust, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22604 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 11068. This level of performance is sufficient to feed the Arc B580, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling. At 1080p Low, the 90 FPS average is likely near the CPU's limit for this game, but the fact that the GPU is still the primary constraint is shown by the 67 FPS at 1440p Medium, which is a GPU-bound result.

The CPU's single-thread performance is also critical for game logic and draw calls. The 3DMark single-thread score of 960 and the Passmark single-thread score of 3634 indicate solid single-core capability, which is necessary for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that have significant CPU overhead. The L3 cache of 20 MB shared and the 10nm Raptor Lake architecture contribute to its efficiency. The CPU's percentile ranking of 77 places it above the average processor, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D and Intel Core 5 120. The data suggests that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this game, as the frame rates drop proportionally with resolution increases, which is a hallmark of GPU-bound performance. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7314 confirms that the CPU can handle the multi-threaded workloads of the game, but the GPU's capabilities are what ultimately determine the playable settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and the Intel Arc B580 achieves a rank of 2812 out of 3714 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places the combo in the 76th percentile of all tested systems, indicating that it performs better than the majority of configurations in the database. This ranking is a direct result of the GPU's performance, as the B580's benchmark scores show it to be a competent mid-range card. The combo's position in the rankings is consistent with the measured FPS, which show playable performance at 1080p and 1440p, but not at 4K.

The ranking is influenced by the CPU's strong performance, which prevents it from dragging down the overall score. The i5-13400F's average benchmark score of 25292 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS with a score of 25284 and a delta of 0%, and the Intel Core 5 120 with a score of 25362 and a delta of -0.3%. This indicates that the CPU is performing exactly as expected for its class. The GPU's average benchmark score of 23021 is also in line with its rivals, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 scoring 22895 (a 0.6% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP scoring 23061 (a -0.2% delta). The combo's rank of 2812 out of 3714 suggests that while it is not a top-tier system, it is a solid mid-range performer that can handle the game well at 1080p and 1440p, making it a viable option for gamers who prioritize frame rate over maximum visual fidelity.