Red Dead Redemption 2

# Red Dead Redemption 2: Intel Core i7-12700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

Red Dead Redemption 2 scales aggressively with both resolution and preset quality, and this CPU/GPU pairing lands at the top of the leaderboard for this title. The combination ranks #1 out of 2,902 tested combos, which is expected given the RTX 5090 D's 92nd-percentile standing among all GPUs and the i7-12700K's 84th-percentile CPU ranking. The measured data reveals a system that remains fluid even at 4K Ultra, though the gap between presets and resolutions tells a clear story about where the bottleneck shifts.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep but consistent across all four preset levels. At Low settings, average FPS falls from 234 at 1920x1080 to 115 at 3840x2160 — a 51% reduction. At Medium, the drop is from 175 to 86, a 51% reduction as well. High settings show 146 at 1080p falling to 72 at 4K, a 51% decline. Ultra is slightly less punishing in percentage terms: 105 at 1080p down to 52 at 4K, a 50% reduction.

These near-identical percentage drops across presets indicate that resolution scaling is primarily GPU-bound, which makes sense given the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth. The 4K results are still playable at every preset — even Ultra holds at 52 FPS average — but the pattern shows that the GPU is the limiting factor when moving up in resolution. At 1080p, the i7-12700K's 12 cores and 20 threads have more headroom relative to the GPU's output, which is why the jump from 1080p to 1440p (e.g., 234 to 175 at Low, a 25% drop) is smaller than the jump from 1440p to 4K (175 to 115, a 34% drop).

The intermediate resolution of 2560x1440 shows the same scaling pattern with average FPS of 175 (Low), 131 (Medium), 109 (High), and 79 (Ultra). Notably, the 1440p Medium result of 131 FPS with a minimum of 111 and maximum of 150 shows tighter frame pacing than 4K Medium (86 average, 74 minimum, 99 maximum), suggesting that the higher resolution introduces more variance relative to the average. For a 60 Hz display, 4K Ultra at 52 FPS is borderline, but 4K High at 72 FPS offers a comfortable margin.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows reveal a clear hierarchy: Ultra is the most demanding preset, consuming roughly 45% of the performance headroom compared to High at the same resolution. At 4K, moving from High (72 FPS) to Ultra (52 FPS) costs 20 FPS, while moving from High to Medium (86 FPS) gains 14 FPS. Low (115 FPS) adds another 29 FPS over Medium, but the visual trade-off in a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 is substantial.

For 4K displays, the data suggests High is the sweet spot. It delivers 72 FPS average, which clears 60 FPS with room to spare, and it is only 14 FPS below Medium — a smaller gap than the 20 FPS jump from High to Ultra. At 1440p, High (109 FPS) is also the balanced choice, but Medium (131 FPS) becomes attractive if you want higher refresh rates; the 22 FPS difference between them is meaningful for 144 Hz panels. At 1080p, High (146 FPS) and Medium (175 FPS) both exceed 144 Hz, so the choice comes down to visual fidelity versus refresh headroom.

Ultra is only advisable if you prioritize image quality over frame rate. At 1080p, Ultra (105 FPS) still clears 100 FPS, and at 1440p it hits 79 FPS, which is acceptable for 75 Hz monitors. At 4K, Ultra (52 FPS) dips below 60 FPS, making it a hard sell for smooth gameplay. The measured minimums for Medium presets (149 FPS at 1080p, 111 FPS at 1440p, 74 FPS at 4K) show that even the worst-case frame times stay within playable territory, but the Ultra preset has no recorded minimums, which is a data gap rather than a performance indicator.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, with a 92nd-percentile ranking among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 77,712. Its nearest rivals in the database are the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76,904, 1.1% slower), AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940, 1.6% faster), and two NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants (79,396 and 79,605, 2.1% and 2.4% faster respectively). The GPU's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for Red Dead Redemption 2's open-world streaming at 4K.

Clock speeds are modest relative to the GPU's compute potential: 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost. The chip itself is large — 750 mm² die size with 92,200 million transistors on a 5 nm TSMC process — and the 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is what drives the high FPS at 1080p and 1440p. The GPU's pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s explain why the game scales so linearly with resolution: at 4K, the pixel fill requirement quadruples, and the measured FPS drops roughly in half from 1080p to 4K at each preset.

The RTX 5090 D's 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores are not directly relevant to the measured FPS rows, which are standard rasterization benchmarks. However, the GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 compatibility mean Red Dead Redemption 2's API paths are fully covered. The 575 W TDP and 950 W suggested PSU indicate a power-hungry card, but the measured FPS shows that power is converted into frame rate effectively — at 1080p Low, the card produces 234 FPS, which is near the practical limit for most displays.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4K 60 FPS?

A: Yes, but only at High settings. The measured 4K High average is 72 FPS, which clears 60 FPS. At 4K Medium it reaches 86 FPS, while 4K Ultra drops to 52 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the best preset for 1440p gaming with this hardware?

A: High settings at 2560x1440 deliver 109 FPS average, which is ideal for 100+ Hz monitors. If you prefer higher refresh rates, Medium hits 131 FPS, while Ultra drops to 79 FPS and Low reaches 175 FPS.

Q: How much performance do I lose going from 1080p to 4K?

A: The FPS roughly halves at every preset. At Low, the drop is from 234 to 115 FPS (51% reduction); at Medium, from 175 to 86 (51%); at High, from 146 to 72 (51%); and at Ultra, from 105 to 52 (50%).

Q: Is the RTX 5090 D the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: At 1080p Low, the system produces 234 FPS, which suggests the CPU is not holding back the GPU. The i7-12700K's 3DMark max threads score of 9,979 and single-thread score of 1,043 indicate strong CPU throughput, but at lower resolutions the GPU's output is so high that the CPU's per-core performance becomes the practical ceiling.

Q: How does the i7-12700K compare to its closest CPU rivals?

A: The i7-12700K's average benchmark score is 35,287, which is essentially tied with the Intel Core i5-13600T (35,305, 0.1% slower), Intel Core i7-12700KF (35,365, 0.2% slower), Intel Core i7-13700T (35,403, 0.3% slower), and Intel Core 5 213PE (35,428, 0.4% slower). The differences are negligible in real-world gaming.

Q: Does the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB VRAM matter for this game?

A: Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 title, so 32 GB is far more than needed for its textures. The memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s and 512-bit bus are more relevant — they enable the high FPS at 4K, where the game's open-world streaming demands consistent memory throughput.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K brings 12 cores (8 performance, 4 efficiency) and 20 threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost of 5.00 GHz. Its 25 MB shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache are substantial for gaming, and the 10 nm Alder Lake architecture delivers strong single-threaded performance — the Cinebench R23 single-core score is 1,850.5 and Geekbench single-core is 2,308. These figures matter for Red Dead Redemption 2, which is known to rely on a few heavily threaded tasks rather than scaling perfectly across all cores.

The CPU's 3DMark results show a clear thread-scaling pattern: 2 threads score 2,065, 4 threads score 4,011, 8 threads score 7,202, 16 threads score 9,276, and max threads score 9,979. The scaling from 8 to 16 threads (7,202 to 9,276, a 29% improvement) indicates the game can use more than 8 threads, but the small jump from 16 to max threads (9,276 to 9,979, 7.6%) shows diminishing returns beyond 16 threads. This aligns with the measured FPS data: at 1080p Low, the GPU is capable of 234 FPS, and the CPU needs to feed it — the i7-12700K's PassMark single-thread score of 4,013 and multithread score of 34,404 suggest it is up to the task.

Comparatively, the i7-12700K sits in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35,287. Its nearest rivals are all within 0.4% of that score, meaning the CPU is not a differentiating factor in this build — the RTX 5090 D is. At 4K Ultra, the CPU's role is reduced further because the GPU is the bottleneck at 52 FPS, but at 1080p Low (234 FPS) the CPU's 5.00 GHz boost clock and 20 threads are what keep the frame rate from collapsing. The Cinebench R20 multicore score of 12,229 and single-core of 1,726 reinforce that this CPU has both the multi-threaded throughput and single-core speed needed for modern game engines.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 234 FPS average
• Medium: 175 FPS average, 149 minimum, 202 maximum
• High: 146 FPS average
• Ultra: 105 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 175 FPS average
• Medium: 131 FPS average, 111 minimum, 150 maximum
• High: 109 FPS average
• Ultra: 79 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 115 FPS average
• Medium: 86 FPS average, 74 minimum, 99 maximum
• High: 72 FPS average
• Ultra: 52 FPS average

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values across all three resolutions, providing a useful window into frame pacing. At 1080p Medium, the minimum of 149 FPS is 85% of the average, indicating consistent frame delivery. At 1440p Medium, the minimum of 111 FPS is 85% of the 131 average. At 4K Medium, the minimum of 74 FPS is 86% of the 86 average. This consistency suggests the system does not experience severe frame hitches, even at higher resolutions.

The delta between Low and Medium at each resolution is notable: at 1080p, the drop is 59 FPS (234 to 175); at 1440p, it is 44 FPS (175 to 131); at 4K, it is 29 FPS (115 to 86). This shrinking delta as resolution increases confirms that the GPU becomes the limiting factor — at 4K, the difference between Low and Medium is smaller in absolute terms because the GPU is already saturated by the pixel count. Conversely, the jump from High to Ultra at 4K (72 to 52, a 20 FPS drop) is proportionally larger than at 1080p (146 to 105, a 41 FPS drop), which suggests Ultra settings impose a heavier per-pixel cost that scales with resolution.

For builders targeting specific display refresh rates: 60 Hz users can run 4K High comfortably, 144 Hz users should stay at 1440p High or Medium, and 240 Hz users will need 1080p Low or Medium to approach the panel's limit. The RTX 5090 D's 32 GB VRAM is never a constraint at any of these settings, and the i7-12700K's 20 threads provide enough parallel throughput to avoid CPU-limited frame drops in the game's busiest scenes, as evidenced by the #1 combo rank out of 2,902 tested configurations.