Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination delivers a powerful, high-refresh-rate experience in Red Dead Redemption 2, but the data reveals a significant performance cliff at 4K Ultra settings. At 1080p and 1440p, this pairing provides excellent frame rates, with the RTX 4080 SUPER clearly being the dominant component. However, the jump to 4K resolution exposes the GPU's limitations at the highest preset, where the average frame rate drops below the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that even this high-end graphics card is the primary bottleneck in the most demanding scenarios. The benchmark results show a clear hierarchy: the combo ranks in the top 8.6% of all tested configurations, placing it in the 320th position out of 3714 total combinations.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate for this combo at 1440p with High settings?

A: The Intel Core i5-14600K and RTX 4080 SUPER combination achieves an average of 90 FPS at 2560x1440 resolution with High settings, which is a smooth and highly playable experience for this action-adventure title.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average frame rate drops to 43 FPS. This is the most demanding configuration tested, and the result indicates that the GPU is struggling to maintain fluid motion at this resolution and quality level.

Q: What is the best performance result recorded for this hardware pairing?

A: The highest average frame rate is achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings, where the combo produces an average of 193 FPS. This demonstrates the CPU-GPU pairing's ability to deliver extremely high frame rates when the graphical load is minimized.

Q: Is there a significant difference between Medium and High settings at 1080p?

A: Yes, the data shows a notable difference. At 1920x1080, the average frame rate is 144 FPS on Medium settings, while it drops to 121 FPS on High settings. This 23 FPS difference highlights the performance cost of increasing quality from Medium to High.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 SUPER compare to its closest rival in terms of average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 54209, which is only 0.1% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080's score of 54247. This makes the two cards nearly identical in raw compute performance according to the data.

Q: What is the ranking of this specific CPU and GPU combination among all tested combos?

A: This combo is ranked 320 out of 3714 total combinations, placing it in the 91st percentile of all tested systems for Red Dead Redemption 2 performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the clear performance driver in this configuration, particularly at higher resolutions. The GPU is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 10240 shading units, 80 RT cores, and 320 tensor cores. It operates at a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2550 MHz, which are the frequencies that dictate its processing throughput. The card is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a substantial memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. This large memory pool and high bandwidth are critical for handling the detailed textures and large draw distances common in Red Dead Redemption 2's open world.

The GPU's memory configuration proves adequate for the game's demands, as the frame rates at 4K Medium and High settings remain playable. The data shows that at 3840x2160, the average frame rate moves from 71 FPS on Medium to 59 FPS on High, showing that the GPU has enough VRAM headroom to handle these settings without a catastrophic drop. However, the Ultra setting at 4K tells a different story, with the average frame rate falling to 43 FPS. This suggests that the Ultra preset introduces effects or texture qualities that overwhelm the GPU's computational power, not its memory capacity, as the card has a 16 GB frame buffer which is substantial. The GPU's compute capability, measured at 52.22 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, is the limiting factor at this extreme setting.

The performance scaling of the RTX 4080 SUPER across settings indicates a GPU-bound scenario at 4K. The transition from Low to Medium at 4K results in a 24 FPS drop (from 95 to 71 FPS), and the jump from Medium to High causes another 12 FPS decline. The most severe drop occurs when moving from High to Ultra, where the frame rate plummets by 16 FPS to 43 FPS. This pattern reveals that the Ultra preset has a disproportionately high cost on the GPU, likely due to advanced rendering techniques that heavily tax the shader units and ray tracing cores. The data clearly shows that the RTX 4080 SUPER is the component that determines playability at 4K, as the CPU's role becomes secondary when the GPU is under maximum load.

Resolution Scaling

The benchmark results show a predictable yet stark scaling of performance as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo achieves an average of 121 FPS. Moving up to 2560x1440 at the same settings, the average frame rate drops to 90 FPS, representing a 25.6% decrease. The jump to 3840x2160 at High settings yields an average of 59 FPS, which is a 34.4% drop from the 1440p result. This scaling pattern indicates that the system is becoming increasingly GPU-limited as pixel count rises, which is expected given the RTX 4080 SUPER's role as the primary rendering component.

The data points to the CPU becoming less of a factor at higher resolutions. At 1080p Low settings, the combo produces an average of 193 FPS, which suggests the CPU and GPU are working in tandem to push frame rates to their limit. However, at 4K Low settings, the average drops to 95 FPS, a reduction of 50.8%. This significant drop at the same settings level indicates that the GPU's raw rendering throughput is the limiting factor at 4K, regardless of the quality preset. The CPU's performance is consistent, with its 14 cores and 20 threads providing ample processing power to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU cannot maintain the same frame rates when the resolution demands more pixel processing.

The scaling behavior is most revealing when comparing the frame rate ratios. At Low settings, the 1080p to 4K ratio is approximately 2.03x (193 FPS to 95 FPS), which is close to the theoretical pixel count difference of 4x, but the actual drop is less severe. This suggests that even at Low settings, the game is not purely pixel-bound, and other factors like draw calls and CPU overhead play a role. At High settings, the ratio is 2.05x (121 FPS to 59 FPS), showing a similar scaling pattern. The Medium settings show a ratio of 2.03x (144 FPS to 71 FPS), confirming that the system scales predictably with resolution. The Ultra settings show a ratio of 2.02x (87 FPS to 43 FPS), which is the most severe absolute drop but follows the same proportional trend, indicating that the GPU's processing power is the dominant constraint across all settings at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates provide a comprehensive view of the combo's capabilities across different resolutions and quality presets. At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates exceptional performance, starting with an average of 193 FPS at Low settings. The Medium preset at 1080p yields an average of 144 FPS, with a minimum of 123 FPS and a maximum of 166 FPS, showing a consistent frame delivery. The High preset produces 121 FPS average, and the Ultra preset drops to 87 FPS. These results indicate that the RTX 4080 SUPER, paired with the i5-14600K, can easily handle 1080p gaming at any quality level, with even the most demanding Ultra preset maintaining a high frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows clear scaling. At Low settings, the average is 144 FPS, which is a significant drop from the 1080p Low result but still excellent for competitive or high-refresh-rate gaming. The Medium preset at 1440p averages 108 FPS, with a minimum of 92 FPS and a maximum of 124 FPS, indicating smooth gameplay with minor frame time variance. The High preset yields 90 FPS average, which is ideal for a 90Hz display. The Ultra preset at 1440p produces 65 FPS average, which is playable but shows the first signs of the GPU being pushed to its limits at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results reveal the GPU's boundaries. The Low preset at 4K achieves an average of 95 FPS, which is still smooth and demonstrates the card's raw power. The Medium preset at 4K averages 71 FPS, with a minimum of 61 FPS and a maximum of 82 FPS, showing that the system can maintain playable frame rates at medium quality. The High preset at 4K drops to 59 FPS average, which is right at the edge of the 60 FPS target, and may result in occasional stutters on a standard 60Hz display. The Ultra preset at 4K is the most demanding scenario, with an average of only 43 FPS, which falls below the threshold for smooth gameplay and would require lower settings or resolution scaling for an optimal experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14600K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER achieves a rank of 320 out of 3714 tested combinations in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places the combo in the top 8.6% of all systems tested, indicating that it is a high-performance pairing that outperforms the vast majority of configurations. The ranking is a composite measure that reflects the system's ability to deliver high frame rates across all tested resolutions and settings, and the data suggests that this combo is well-balanced for the game, with neither the CPU nor GPU being a severe bottleneck in most scenarios.

The combo's strong ranking is supported by the individual component performance. The RTX 4080 SUPER has a percentile rank of 86 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54209. Its nearest rival, the RTX 4080, scores nearly identically at 54247, a delta of -0.1%, showing that the SUPER variant offers negligible performance improvement over its predecessor in synthetic benchmarks. The CPU, the i5-14600K, has a percentile rank of 90 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48618. Its closest rival, the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H, scores 48698, a delta of -0.2%, placing the i5-14600K in a very competitive position among desktop processors.

The high ranking of this combo reflects the synergy between the CPU and GPU. The i5-14600K's strong single-core and multi-core performance, evidenced by its Geekbench single-core score of 2491 and multi-core score of 16673, ensures that it can keep up with the RTX 4080 SUPER's high frame output. The CPU's 14 cores and 20 threads provide sufficient processing power for the game's physics and AI workloads, preventing CPU-bound scenarios at lower resolutions. The combo's rank of 320 indicates that while there are 319 faster systems, the majority of them likely feature more expensive or newer components, making this combo a strong contender for high-end gaming at 1080p and 1440p, with capable 4K performance at reduced settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K plays a crucial supporting role in this combination, providing the processing power necessary to feed the RTX 4080 SUPER with data. The CPU features 14 cores and 20 threads, a configuration that balances high single-thread performance with substantial multi-threading capability. Its base clock of 3.50 GHz can boost up to 5.30 GHz, which is essential for gaming workloads that often rely on a few fast cores. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 cache per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps reduce memory latency and improve data access speeds for game logic.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the limiting factor. At 1080p Low settings, the system achieves an average of 193 FPS, which is a frame rate that demands high CPU throughput to process game state updates and render commands. The i5-14600K's strong single-core performance, as indicated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2064, enables it to handle the game's main thread efficiently, preventing a CPU bottleneck at these high frame rates. The multi-core performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 24491, also ensures that background tasks and additional game threads are managed effectively.

As resolution increases to 4K, the CPU's importance diminishes relative to the GPU. At 4K Ultra, the average frame rate drops to 43 FPS, which is a scenario where the GPU is clearly the bottleneck. The CPU is not the limiting factor in this case, as its performance remains constant regardless of resolution. The data shows that the i5-14600K is more than capable of supporting the RTX 4080 SUPER at 1080p and 1440p, where frame rates are high enough to potentially expose CPU limitations. However, the benchmark results indicate that the CPU's performance is sufficient to avoid being a significant constraint, as the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 1440p is consistent with what would be expected from a GPU-bound system. The CPU's 125W TDP and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory provide a flexible platform, and its 90th percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms that it is a high-performing processor that complements the RTX 4080 SUPER well.