Red Dead Redemption 2

The pairing of the Intel Core i5-14600KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 in Red Dead Redemption 2 presents a clear case of GPU-limited performance at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s substantial headroom remains largely untapped. The measured frame rates across the three tested resolutions and four quality presets reveal a component hierarchy where the graphics card dictates the experience, with the processor’s strong synthetic scores doing little to overcome the GPU’s bandwidth and VRAM constraints. This analysis breaks down the scaling behavior, the GPU’s role, and where this specific combination lands among the thousands of tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K shows the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 84.6 FPS, which drops to 62.1 FPS at 1440p and further to 44.7 FPS at 4K. That represents a 47% reduction in performance from 1080p to 4K at the lowest preset, indicating that the RTX 2060 is the primary limiter even when the graphical load is light. The CPU, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32889 and a 93rd percentile ranking among all processors, is not the bottleneck here; the data shows the GPU’s fill rate and memory subsystem are what scale with resolution.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced as settings increase. Moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings drops average FPS from 50.6 to 28.6, a 43.5% reduction. At Ultra settings, the same resolution jump cuts performance from 38.9 FPS to 16.9 FPS, a 56.6% decline. This widening gap at higher presets suggests that the GPU’s 6 GB VRAM and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are overwhelmed by the combination of increased pixel count and more demanding texture and shading work. The 4K Ultra result of 16.9 FPS is effectively unplayable, while the 4K Low result of 44.7 FPS is marginal at best.

What the data also reveals is that resolution scaling is not linear. The jump from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings costs 16.3 FPS (from 61.2 to 44.9), while the jump from 1440p to 4K at the same preset costs only 15.8 FPS (from 44.9 to 29.1). This near-linear drop across the entire range reinforces that the RTX 2060 is running at its limits across all resolutions, with no point where the CPU takes over as the limiting factor. The 14-core, 20-thread processor’s capabilities are simply not exercised by this title at these settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060’s specifications directly explain the measured results. With a boost clock of 1680 MHz and 1920 shading units, the card delivers 6.451 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is modest by modern standards. The 6 GB GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, a figure that becomes a critical constraint in Red Dead Redemption 2’s open-world environments. The GPU’s 58th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 16074 place it in the mid-range, which aligns with the observed frame rates.

The VRAM capacity is particularly telling. At 4K Ultra, the combo produces 16.9 FPS, the lowest score in the entire dataset. This likely reflects the game exceeding the 6 GB frame buffer, forcing the GPU to rely on slower memory spillover. The difference between 4K Low at 44.7 FPS and 4K High at 28.6 FPS — a 16.1 FPS gap — shows how texture quality and draw distance directly pressure the memory subsystem. The card’s 14 Gbps effective memory speed and 192-bit bus width are simply insufficient for the highest presets at 4K.

The RTX 2060’s Turing architecture, built on a 12 nm process with 10,800 million transistors, provides ray tracing and tensor cores, but these do not appear to benefit this title’s rasterized workload. The passmark DirectX 11 score of 110 and DirectX 12 score of 53 suggest that the card handles older APIs more efficiently, which may explain why the performance delta between Low and Ultra presets is so wide. The GPU’s production status is end-of-life, and the data confirms that it is a limiting factor in this pairing, regardless of the CPU’s capabilities.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest playable frame rate this combo achieves in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The best result is 84.6 FPS at 1080p with Low settings. At 1440p, the maximum is 62.1 FPS on Low, and at 4K, the maximum is 44.7 FPS on Low, which is borderline for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core i5-14600KF has an average benchmark score of 49367. It is 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i5-14600K, 0.6% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and 1.4% ahead of the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H. It trails the AMD EPYC 4345P by 0.5%.

Q: Why does the 4K Ultra preset perform so poorly?

A: The 4K Ultra preset yields an average of 16.9 FPS. This is the lowest score in the dataset, and it is attributed to the RTX 2060’s 6 GB VRAM and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth being insufficient for the combined pixel count and maximum graphical fidelity.

Q: Is there a setting where the CPU becomes the bottleneck?

A: No. The data shows consistent GPU-limited behavior across all resolutions. Even at 1080p Low with 84.6 FPS, the CPU’s high synthetic scores (e.g., 32889 in Cinebench R23 multi-core) suggest it has ample headroom, but the GPU’s frame output caps the result.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, Low settings produce 62.1 FPS, while Ultra produces 30.8 FPS. That is a 50.4% reduction in average frame rate when moving to the highest preset.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 rank against its closest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 2060 has an average benchmark score of 16074. It is 0.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7600S, 1.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W5500, and 1.7% behind both the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M and the AMD Radeon Pro 5700.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers a wide spread of performance depending on the quality preset. Low settings produce 84.6 FPS, Medium drops to 61.2 FPS, High yields 50.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 38.9 FPS. The 45.7 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution shows the GPU’s sensitivity to settings, with the 6 GB frame buffer and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth being pushed harder as texture and shadow quality increase.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds but at lower absolute numbers. Low settings achieve 62.1 FPS, Medium produces 44.9 FPS, High delivers 38.5 FPS, and Ultra manages 30.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 31.3 FPS, indicating that the GPU is becoming more uniformly constrained by resolution rather than settings alone. The 1440p results are the most balanced for this combo, with Medium and High both falling within a playable range for most users.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal. Low settings produce 44.7 FPS, Medium drops to 29.1 FPS, High yields 28.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 16.9 FPS. The close proximity of Medium and High scores — just 0.5 FPS apart — suggests that the GPU is hitting a hard wall where additional settings changes have minimal impact because the resolution itself is the dominant constraint. The 4K results are only viable at Low settings, and even then, the frame rate is below the 60 FPS target for smooth play.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-14600KF with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 combination ranks 1407 out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places it in the bottom 16.6% of all configurations, which is a low position for a pairing that includes a top-tier CPU. The CPU’s 93rd percentile ranking and strong synthetic scores, such as a 49367 average benchmark score, do not translate into a high in-game ranking because the GPU’s 58th percentile position limits the overall result.

The ranking reflects the GPU bottleneck. The RTX 2060’s performance relative to other GPUs — it is within 0.5% of the RX 7600S and 1.7% of the Radeon Pro 5700 — indicates that this is a mid-range graphics card paired with a high-end processor. In a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, which is graphically demanding, the GPU’s 6 GB VRAM and 6.451 TFLOPS of compute are the limiting factors, dragging the combo’s rank below what the CPU alone would suggest.

This rank of 1407 out of 1687 is a clear signal that the i5-14600KF is overqualified for the RTX 2060 in this title. The data shows that the CPU has significant headroom — its Cinebench R20 multi-core score of 13813 and Passmark multithread score of 38697 are far above what this game requires at these settings. The bottleneck is entirely on the GPU side, and the benchmark results confirm that this combination is best suited for 1080p or light 1440p gaming, with the 4K experience being largely untenable.