Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 delivers a playable experience in Red Dead Redemption 2, but the data shows that settings selection is critical for maintaining smooth frame rates. Across all resolutions, the Low preset provides the highest average FPS, while the Ultra preset consistently produces the lowest. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves 111.9 FPS, which is nearly double the 47.5 FPS seen at Ultra. For the best balance of visual quality and performance, the Medium preset stands out as the most efficient choice, offering 81.5 FPS at 1080p and 63.2 FPS at 1440p. The High preset is also viable, yielding 71.4 FPS at 1080p and 49.1 FPS at 1440p, though it drops below the 60 FPS threshold at 2560x2160. At 4K, only the Low preset remains playable with 53.9 FPS, while Medium falls to 39.4 FPS and High to 31.5 FPS. The benchmark results indicate that Medium is the recommended preset for most users, as it maintains fluid motion at 1080p and 1440p without the steep performance penalty of Ultra settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using the AD107 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process by TSMC. The GPU features 3072 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units, along with 24 ray tracing cores and 96 tensor cores. Its memory subsystem consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The core clocks are listed with a base of 1830 MHz and a boost of 2460 MHz, while the memory operates at 2125 MHz with 17 Gbps effective speed. The GPU’s FP32 performance is rated at 15.11 TFLOPS, and its pixel rate is 118.1 GPixel/s with a texture rate of 236.2 GTexel/s. The power draw is 115 W TDP with a suggested 300 W PSU, connected via a single 12-pin connector.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the RTX 4060’s performance is heavily influenced by its 8 GB VRAM capacity and memory bandwidth. The benchmark results show a clear pattern: as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K, the average FPS drops significantly across all settings. At Medium settings, the frame rate falls from 81.5 FPS at 1080p to 63.2 FPS at 1440p and further to 39.4 FPS at 4K. This scaling suggests that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, particularly at 4K where even Low settings only reach 53.9 FPS. The 128-bit memory bus and 272.0 GB/s bandwidth appear insufficient for the demanding texture loads of Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4K, causing the steep performance degradation. The GPU’s percentile rank of 66 against all GPUs indicates it sits in the mid-range tier, which aligns with its measured performance in this title.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a consistent drop as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 across all four settings presets. At High settings, the average FPS declines from 71.4 at 1080p to 49.1 at 1440p and finally to 31.5 at 4K, representing a 56% reduction from 1080p to 4K. The Low preset shows a similar proportional decline, starting at 111.9 FPS at 1080p, dropping to 81.2 at 1440p, and reaching 53.9 at 4K. The Medium preset follows the same trajectory: 81.5 FPS at 1080p, 63.2 at 1440p, and 39.4 at 4K. Ultra settings produce the lowest absolute numbers, with 47.5 FPS at 1080p, 38.5 at 1440p, and 26.4 at 4K.

This scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 4060 becomes the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The frame rate drops are not linear; the gap between 1080p and 1440p is smaller than the gap between 1440p and 4K for most presets. For instance, at High settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 22.3 FPS, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 17.6 FPS. This suggests that while the GPU struggles at 4K, it still maintains reasonable performance at 1440p for Medium and Low settings. The data shows that the limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU as resolution increases, with the 4K results clearly constrained by the RTX 4060’s memory bandwidth and compute throughput.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 ranks 971 out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. This rank reflects the overall performance across all settings and resolutions, and it is notably lower than what either component achieves in isolation. The CPU has a percentile rank of 89 against all CPUs, while the GPU has a percentile rank of 66 against all GPUs, yet the combined result lands in the 57th percentile of combos. This discrepancy suggests that the pairing is not fully optimized for this game, likely due to the GPU’s limitations at higher resolutions as seen in the measured FPS.

Looking at the nearest rivals for the CPU, the i7-12700KF is nearly identical to the Intel Core i5-14400, with a deltaPct of 0.1% (avgScore 35355 vs 35336). It also sits close to the Intel Core i7-13800H (deltaPct -0.2%), the Intel Core i9-12900HX (deltaPct 0.2%), and the Intel Core i5-13600T (deltaPct 0.3%). These rival CPUs all have similar average benchmark scores, indicating that the i7-12700KF’s processing power is not a differentiator in this game. For the GPU, the RTX 4060’s nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (deltaPct -0.6%), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti (deltaPct -0.7%), Intel Arc B580 (deltaPct 0.7%), and AMD Radeon 760M (deltaPct 0.8%). The small deltaPct values show that the RTX 4060’s raw GPU score is comparable to these alternatives, yet the combo rank of 971 suggests that other factors, such as VRAM capacity or driver optimization, may be affecting actual gameplay performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel’s 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it connects via PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes. Its benchmark scores are strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091, alongside a Geekbench multicore score of 13596 and single-core score of 2526. The CPU’s average benchmark score is 35355, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU’s role appears secondary to the GPU, based on the resolution scaling data. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 111.9 FPS, suggesting that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at lower resolutions. However, at 4K, the frame rates drop dramatically across all settings, indicating that the GPU becomes the limiting factor. The CPU’s high multi-threaded performance (3dmark_max_threads score of 9983) is likely sufficient for the game’s CPU demands, but the benchmark results do not show a scenario where the CPU is the bottleneck. The nearest rival comparison shows that the i7-12700KF performs nearly identically to the i5-14400 (deltaPct 0.1%) and i9-12900HX (deltaPct 0.2%), meaning that swapping to these CPUs would not materially change the FPS in this game. The data indicates that the i7-12700KF provides ample processing headroom, and the limiting factor for this combo is the RTX 4060’s GPU capabilities, especially at 1440p and 4K resolutions.