Red Dead Redemption 2

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for Red Dead Redemption 2 with the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER reveal a clear hierarchy across presets. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 70.6 FPS average, which is 11.4 FPS higher than High (59.2 FPS) and 28.2 FPS higher than Ultra (42.4 FPS). The jump from Medium to High costs 11.4 FPS, while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 16.8 FPS. This suggests Medium is the most sensible starting point for a smooth experience, as it retains substantial visual quality while staying comfortably above 60 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Medium produces 53.3 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold but still playable. High drops to 44 FPS, and Ultra falls to 33.9 FPS. The Low preset at 1440p reaches 71.9 FPS, indicating that users prioritizing frame rate over fidelity should consider Low at this resolution. At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS; the best option is Low at 45.7 FPS, followed by Medium at 35.5 FPS. High (26.5 FPS) and Ultra (21.4 FPS) are marginal for anything but slower-paced exploration.

The data implies that the optimal experience depends heavily on resolution target. For 1080p, Medium offers the best balance, delivering 70.6 FPS with only a modest visual compromise relative to High. For 1440p, Low at 71.9 FPS is the only preset that clears 60 FPS, though Medium at 53.3 FPS may be preferable for those who can tolerate slight stutter in demanding scenes. For 4K, Low at 45.7 FPS is the practical ceiling; anything higher sacrifices too much frame rate for diminishing visual returns.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060 SUPER carries 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock reaches 1650 MHz, with a base clock of 1470 MHz. The GPU's FP32 performance is 7.181 TFLOPS, and it has 2176 shading units, 136 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs. These specifications place the card in the 63rd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19774.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU is clearly the dominant factor at higher resolutions. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (21.4 FPS) versus 4K Low (45.7 FPS) shows a spread of 24.3 FPS, indicating that the GPU's rendering load scales dramatically with settings. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the game's texture demands at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K Ultra preset likely pushes memory pressure, contributing to the sub-30 FPS result. The GPU's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (avg score 19680, deltaPct 0.5%) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (avg score 19706, deltaPct 0.3%), meaning this card sits within 0.5% of the RTX 2070 in synthetic benchmarks — yet in-game, the RTX 2060 SUPER's 4K High score of 26.5 FPS suggests real-world performance may trail the raw benchmark delta.

The Turing architecture's 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores are present, but Red Dead Redemption 2 does not leverage ray tracing or DLSS in the measured rows, so those features play no role in the FPS figures. The GPU's texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s are relevant for this game's heavy use of volumetric lighting and detailed textures, which explains why FPS drops sharply as settings move from Medium to Ultra at every resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K under each preset reveals how the limiting component shifts. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 94.2, which drops to 71.9 at 1440p Low (a 23.7% reduction) and then to 45.7 at 4K Low (a 36.4% reduction from 1440p). This steepening decline indicates the GPU becomes progressively more constrained as pixel count rises. At 1080p High, the score is 59.2 FPS; at 1440p High, it falls to 44 FPS (a 25.7% drop), and at 4K High, it reaches 26.5 FPS (a 39.8% drop from 1440p). The pattern is consistent: each resolution step costs roughly 25-40% of the prior frame rate, depending on preset.

The Ultra preset shows the most severe scaling. From 1080p Ultra at 42.4 FPS to 1440p Ultra at 33.9 FPS is a 20.0% drop, and then to 4K Ultra at 21.4 FPS is a 36.9% drop. This non-linear behavior suggests that at 4K Ultra, the GPU is hitting a memory bandwidth wall — the 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is being saturated by the combination of high resolution and high detail settings. Conversely, the Low preset at 1080p (94.2 FPS) is likely CPU-bound in certain scenes, given the i5-9400's 6 cores and 6 threads with a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. The data implies that below 60 FPS at 1440p Medium (53.3 FPS), the GPU is the primary limiter, but at 1080p Low, the CPU's single-thread performance could be capping the frame rate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 2060 SUPER and i5-9400 produce the following averages: Low 94.2, Medium 70.6, High 59.2, and Ultra 42.4. The Medium-to-High gap of 11.4 FPS is notable because it is smaller than the High-to-Ultra gap of 16.8 FPS, indicating that Ultra introduces disproportionately heavy GPU workloads. At 2560x1440, the numbers are Low 71.9, Medium 53.3, High 44.0, and Ultra 33.9. The Low-to-Medium drop here is 18.6 FPS, which is the largest single-preset delta at this resolution, suggesting Medium's increased shadow and lighting quality heavily taxes the GPU. At 3840x2160, the results are Low 45.7, Medium 35.5, High 26.5, and Ultra 21.4. The Low-to-Medium drop of 10.2 FPS and the Medium-to-High drop of 9.0 FPS are nearly linear, but the High-to-Ultra drop of 5.1 FPS is smaller, implying that at 4K, Ultra's additional effects are somewhat less impactful than the jump from Medium to High.

Comparing across resolutions, the 1080p Medium score (70.6 FPS) is higher than the 1440p High score (44.0 FPS) by 26.6 FPS, and the 1080p High (59.2 FPS) is nearly identical to the 1440p Medium (53.3 FPS) with a 5.9 FPS gap. This suggests that users can trade resolution and settings in predictable ways: dropping from 1080p Medium to 1440p Low gains only 1.3 FPS (71.9 vs 70.6), indicating that the GPU is not the bottleneck in that transition. The 4K Low score of 45.7 FPS is close to the 1440p High score of 44.0 FPS, meaning the game is playable at 4K if settings are lowered sufficiently, but the visual quality trade-off is substantial.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable at 1080p with this combo?

A: The highest average FPS at 1920x1080 is 94.2, achieved with the Low preset. Medium delivers 70.6, High 59.2, and Ultra 42.4.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, which yields 45.7 FPS average. Medium drops to 35.5, High to 26.5, and Ultra to 21.4, all below the 30 FPS threshold for smooth play.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to the RTX 2070 in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 19774, while the RTX 2070 scores 19680. The deltaPct is 0.5%, meaning the 2060 SUPER is 0.5% ahead of the 2070 in these synthetic tests, despite being a lower-tier card.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck at 1440p Medium?

A: The 53.3 FPS at 1440p Medium, combined with the GPU's 63rd percentile ranking, suggests the GPU is the primary limiter. The CPU's 6 cores and 6 threads are sufficient for this workload, as evidenced by the 1080p Low score of 94.2 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's practical ceiling.

Q: What is the FPS penalty for switching from Medium to Ultra at 1080p?

A: The average FPS drops from 70.6 to 42.4, a penalty of 28.2 FPS. This 40% reduction indicates Ultra settings impose a severe GPU load that is not justified by the visual improvements in most cases.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations for this game?

A: The combo ranks 1147 out of 1687 tested combos, placing it in the bottom third of the database. This ranking reflects the i5-9400's 50th percentile CPU score and the RTX 2060 SUPER's 63rd percentile GPU score.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 provides 6 cores and 6 threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It has 9 MB of shared L3 cache, with 64 KB L1 and 256 KB L2 per core. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score is 7969, and its single-core score is 1125, placing it in the 50th percentile among all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 2305. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i3-10305 (deltaPct 0.2%) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (deltaPct 0.2%), indicating the i5-9400 is statistically tied with these lower-tier chips in synthetic tests.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p Low, where the average FPS of 94.2 is the highest measured across all resolutions and settings. This score suggests the CPU can feed the GPU sufficiently at lower resolutions, but the lack of hyper-threading (6 threads total) may limit performance in scenes with heavy NPC or physics simulation. The boost clock of 4.10 GHz is moderate, and the single-core Cinebench R15 score of 113 indicates the CPU's per-core performance is sufficient for this game's engine, which typically favors fewer, faster cores. However, the CPU's 50th percentile ranking implies that other tested combos with higher-ranked CPUs (e.g., those with 8 cores or higher clocks) would likely achieve higher FPS in CPU-bound scenarios, such as 1080p Low or 1440p Low.

The memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s from dual-channel DDR4 is adequate for this game, as the measured FPS does not show signs of memory starvation. The CPU's 14 nm process node and 65 W TDP are secondary considerations; the data shows that the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at all presets above Low, and the CPU only becomes relevant when settings are minimized to reduce GPU load.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER combination ranks 1147 out of 1687 tested combos for Red Dead Redemption 2. This places it in the 32nd percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly two-thirds of tested combos perform better in this game. The rank is driven by both components' middling positions: the CPU sits at the 50th percentile among all CPUs, and the GPU at the 63rd percentile among all GPUs. However, the combo's in-game performance does not directly mirror these percentiles — the 1080p Medium score of 70.6 FPS is respectable, but the 4K Ultra score of 21.4 FPS is below playable thresholds.

Compared to the GPU's nearest rivals, the RTX 2060 SUPER's 0.5% lead over the RTX 2070 in synthetic benchmarks does not translate to a meaningful advantage in this game, as both would likely hit similar FPS walls at 1440p and 4K. The CPU's nearest rivals (i3-10305 and i3-1125G4) are within 0.2% in synthetic scores, suggesting that swapping the i5-9400 for either would produce nearly identical FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2, unless the game specifically leverages the i5's 6 cores over the i3's 4 cores. The rank of 1147 indicates that this combo is firmly mid-pack, capable of smooth 1080p gaming at Medium settings, but not competitive for high-refresh-rate or 4K gaming without significant settings compromises. The data implies that users seeking better performance would need to upgrade both components, as the GPU limits high-resolution fidelity while the CPU caps low-resolution frame rates.