Red Dead Redemption 2

Resolution Scaling

Red Dead Redemption 2 shows a dramatic scaling curve with this Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER pairing, revealing where the performance ceiling shifts across resolutions. At 1080p, the system delivers exceptionally high frame rates that suggest the CPU is doing the heavy lifting, while at 4K the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor.

Looking at the Ultra preset specifically, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 56 frames per second (from 153 to 97 FPS), a 36.6% reduction. Moving from 1440p to 4K Ultra brings another 47 FPS loss (from 97 to 50 FPS), a 48.5% decline. This accelerating degradation is classic GPU-bound behavior at higher pixel counts, with the 4K Ultra result of 50 FPS being the lowest measured value across the entire test matrix.

The Medium preset tells a similar story but with higher absolute numbers. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 308 FPS average with a minimum of 262 FPS and maximum of 355 FPS. Dropping to 1440p Medium yields 195 FPS (165 min, 224 max), and 4K Medium lands at 102 FPS (86 min, 117 max). The frame time consistency at Medium is notable — even at 4K, the minimum stays above 86 FPS, which is well within smooth gameplay territory.

Low settings produce the most extreme scaling. The 1080p Low result of 389 FPS is the single highest average in the entire dataset, while 1440p Low reaches 246 FPS and 4K Low hits 128 FPS. The gap between 1080p and 4K at Low is 261 FPS, a 67.1% reduction that emphasizes how resolution dominates performance when graphical complexity is minimized.

High settings sit between Medium and Ultra, with 245 FPS at 1080p, 154 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at High (91 FPS drop) is steeper than the Medium preset's equivalent step (113 FPS drop), suggesting that High's additional effects tax the GPU more proportionally as pixel count rises.

The data indicates that at 1080p, even Ultra settings remain highly playable at 153 FPS, meaning the i5-13400F provides enough headroom for the RTX 2060 SUPER to operate near its potential. At 1440p, Ultra drops below 100 FPS but remains viable, while 4K Ultra at 50 FPS is the only configuration that approaches marginal playability. This is a system that scales predictably, with each resolution step costing roughly 35-50% performance depending on the preset.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F brings 10 cores and 16 threads to this pairing, with a configuration that includes performance and efficiency cores typical of Raptor Lake architecture. Its base clock of 2.50 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz provide the single-threaded responsiveness that Red Dead Redemption 2's game logic and physics systems require.

Benchmark data for this CPU shows strong multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 22,604, while single-core reaches 3,191. The 3DMark results reveal scaling behavior — 2-thread tests score 1,880, 4-thread scores 3,459, 8-thread scores 5,591, and max-thread hits 7,307. This progression shows near-linear scaling up to 8 threads, with diminishing returns beyond that point, aligning with how modern games typically utilize cores.

In the measured FPS data, the CPU's influence becomes most apparent at 1080p Low, where the system reaches 389 FPS. Such high frame rates could not be achieved without sufficient CPU throughput to feed the GPU with draw calls and game state updates. The i5-13400F's 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache help maintain data locality for the game's open-world streaming systems.

The CPU's performance percentile of 77 among all tested CPUs places it in the upper quartile, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (matching at 0% delta), Intel Core 5 120 (-0.3%), and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (-0.3%). This clustering suggests the i5-13400F delivers competitive processing power for this title, though the game's demands at higher resolutions shift bottlenecking to the GPU.

At 4K Ultra, where the GPU is clearly maxed out at 50 FPS, the CPU still maintains enough headroom to avoid becoming a secondary bottleneck. The fact that 4K Low reaches 128 FPS — more than double the Ultra result — confirms that the CPU is not holding back performance even at lower graphical settings where frame rates climb substantially. The 10-core, 16-thread configuration provides sufficient parallelism for Red Dead Redemption 2's background simulation tasks, while the high boost clock ensures responsive single-thread performance for player actions and NPC AI.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data across all twelve configurations provides clear guidance for optimizing the experience with this hardware combination. The Medium preset emerges as the balanced choice, particularly at 1440p where it delivers 195 FPS average with a 165 FPS minimum. This represents a 101% improvement over Ultra at the same resolution while maintaining visual quality that most players would find acceptable.

At 1080p, Medium's 308 FPS average (262 min, 355 max) is so far beyond display refresh rate capabilities that it becomes overkill for most monitors, yet it demonstrates the headroom available. For players with high-refresh displays at 1080p, High settings at 245 FPS still provide ample margin above 144Hz or 165Hz panels.

The 4K resolution presents a different calculus. Ultra at 50 FPS is the only sub-60 result in the entire dataset, making it marginal for smooth gameplay. Medium at 4K, however, delivers 102 FPS average with 86 FPS minimum, which is comfortably playable on standard 60Hz displays and even usable on 120Hz panels. This makes Medium the recommended preset for 4K gaming with this combo.

Low settings, while producing the highest frame rates at every resolution, sacrifice too much visual fidelity for the gains they provide. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 81 FPS (from 389 to 308) but yields substantial graphical improvements in lighting, shadows, and texture detail that define Red Dead Redemption 2's visual identity. Similarly, at 1440p, Medium's 195 FPS versus Low's 246 FPS represents a reasonable trade-off.

For players prioritizing competitive responsiveness, High at 1080p offers 245 FPS with better visuals than Medium, but the gap narrows at higher resolutions. The data suggests a tiered approach: 1080p users should run High or Ultra, 1440p users should select Medium or High depending on refresh rate, and 4K users should stick with Medium as the sweet spot. Ultra at any resolution below 4K remains viable, but the performance cost over High is substantial — 92 FPS at 1080p and 57 FPS at 1440p — making High the better choice for most scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 3rd out of 3,714 tested combos for Red Dead Redemption 2. This top-0.1% placement is remarkable given the component choices, placing this pairing among the elite configurations for this title.

The rank reflects the synergy between the CPU's strong multi-threaded performance and the GPU's capable 1080p and 1440p throughput. While the RTX 2060 SUPER is not the most powerful GPU available, its 62nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, combined with the CPU's 77th percentile standing, creates a balanced system that performs above the sum of its parts in this specific game.

The GPU's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (at -0.4% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 5700 (-0.5%), AMD Radeon RX 460 (-1.5%), and Intel Arc A770M (-1.6%). These small deltas indicate the RTX 2060 SUPER sits in a tightly contested performance tier, yet the overall combo ranking of 3rd demonstrates that game-specific optimization and CPU pairing matter more than raw GPU scores alone.

The CPU's nearest rivals — AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (0% delta), Intel Core 5 120 (-0.3%), and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (-0.3%) — all perform within a fraction of a percent, yet the i5-13400F's combination of high boost clock and 10-core design appears well-suited to Red Dead Redemption 2's workload. The combo's top-3 ranking suggests that this pairing extracts more performance from the game than comparable hardware configurations.

Notably, the combo rank considers all 3,714 tested combinations, meaning this pairing outperforms systems with more expensive components in this specific title. The game's optimization patterns favor the i5-13400F's architecture, and the RTX 2060 SUPER provides sufficient bandwidth and compute to avoid creating a significant bottleneck at the resolutions where the CPU excels.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using the TU106 chip, manufactured on TSMC's 12nm process with 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves adequate for Red Dead Redemption 2's texture streaming requirements at 1080p and 1440p.

Clock speeds see the GPU running at 1470 MHz base and 1650 MHz boost, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These specifications place the card in the mid-range tier, yet the measured FPS results show it handling this game exceptionally well. The 2176 shading units, 136 TMUs, and 64 ROPs provide the compute throughput needed for the game's lighting and post-processing effects.

The GPU's benchmark scores show a Passmark G3D result of 16,462 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,011. Its 62nd percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms mid-pack positioning, but the game-specific results tell a more nuanced story. At 1080p Ultra, the card produces 153 FPS, which is well above the threshold where most players would perceive smoothness issues. At 1440p Ultra, 97 FPS remains highly playable.

The GPU's role becomes more pronounced at 4K, where the pixel count overwhelms its capabilities. The 4K Ultra result of 50 FPS represents a 67.3% reduction from 1080p Ultra, and even 4K Medium at 102 FPS shows the card struggling to maintain the frame rates achieved at lower resolutions. The 8 GB VRAM capacity, while sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, may face pressure at 4K Ultra with high-resolution textures.

The RTX 2060 SUPER's 175W TDP and dual-slot design indicate it operates within standard power envelopes, and its PCIe 3.0 x16 interface provides adequate bandwidth for this workload. The card's predecessor relationship — succeeding the GeForce 10 series and preceding the GeForce 30 series — places it in the transitional Turing generation that introduced hardware ray tracing, though Red Dead Redemption 2's performance is primarily rasterization-bound.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for this combination reveals consistent patterns across all twelve configurations. At 1080p, the results are: Low 389 FPS, Medium 308 FPS (262 min, 355 max), High 245 FPS, and Ultra 153 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 236 FPS drop, with each step from Low to Medium costing 81 FPS, Medium to High costing 63 FPS, and High to Ultra costing 92 FPS. The High to Ultra step is the steepest, indicating that Ultra settings introduce disproportionately heavy effects.

At 1440p, the measured values are: Low 246 FPS, Medium 195 FPS (165 min, 224 max), High 154 FPS, and Ultra 97 FPS. The total spread from Low to Ultra is 149 FPS. The step from Medium to High is 41 FPS, while High to Ultra costs 57 FPS. Interestingly, the minimum FPS at Medium (165) exceeds the average FPS at Ultra (97), demonstrating that Medium provides more consistent performance than Ultra's higher peak demands.

The 4K results show: Low 128 FPS, Medium 102 FPS (86 min, 117 max), High 81 FPS, and Ultra 50 FPS. The spread here is 78 FPS, smaller in absolute terms than lower resolutions but proportionally similar. The Medium preset's 86 FPS minimum is the only sub-100 minimum recorded at 4K, while Ultra's 50 FPS average represents the only sub-60 result anywhere in the dataset.

Comparing across resolutions at each preset: Low settings lose 143 FPS from 1080p to 1440p and another 118 FPS from 1440p to 4K. Medium loses 113 FPS then 93 FPS across the same transitions. High loses 91 FPS then 73 FPS. Ultra loses 56 FPS then 47 FPS. This pattern shows that lower presets suffer larger absolute losses when resolution increases, because the CPU-bound frame rates at 1080p drop dramatically as GPU load increases, while Ultra presets are already GPU-limited at 1080p.

The Medium preset's min/max data provides the only frame time variance information in the dataset. At 1080p, the 262-355 FPS range represents a 93 FPS spread (35.5% variance). At 1440p, the 165-224 FPS range shows a 59 FPS spread (35.8% variance). At 4K, the 86-117 FPS range has a 31 FPS spread (36% variance). This consistent proportional variance suggests the game's frame pacing remains stable relative to average performance, regardless of resolution.

The 4K Ultra result of 50 FPS is the standout data point — it is the only configuration where the combination fails to maintain 60 FPS, and it represents a 67.3% drop from the 1080p Ultra score. This configuration should be avoided for smooth gameplay, while every other measured setting and resolution combination delivers playable or excellent frame rates.