Red Dead Redemption 2

# FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance ranking of this Core i7-14700K + RTX 3070 combination in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: This combo ranks 754th out of 1,687 tested configurations, placing it in the 55th percentile overall for this title. The measured data indicates a system that handles the game competently but sits firmly in the mid-pack among all recorded hardware pairings.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 compare to its closest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 28,238 places it 0.6% behind the AMD FirePro S7150 (28,409), 0.9% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (27,985), and 1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27,956). It also trails the AMD Radeon R9 M295X (28,541) by 1.1%.

Q: What is the best frame rate achieved at 1080p with this hardware?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system reaches an average of 128.2 FPS. This is the highest recorded average across all tested resolutions and settings combinations.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to be the limiting factor at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average FPS drops to 29.0, which is less than half of the 1080p Ultra result of 57.6 FPS. This steep scaling curve points to the GPU as the primary constraint at higher resolutions and quality presets.

Q: How does the Core i7-14700K compare to its nearest CPU rivals in average benchmark scores?

A: The i7-14700K scores 70,074 on average, which is nearly identical to the Core i7-14700KF (70,104, 0% delta). It sits 0.3% above the AMD EPYC 9115 (69,887), 0.5% below the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70,420), and 1.4% below the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 (71,056).

Q: What is the FPS difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High settings yield 58.6 FPS, while Ultra drops to 41.4 FPS. This represents a 29.4% reduction in average frame rate when moving from High to Ultra at this resolution.

# GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 serves as the primary graphics processor, built on the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip fabricated on Samsung's 8nm process. The GPU houses 5,888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output pipelines, along with 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores. These resources translate to a peak FP32 throughput of 20.31 TFLOPS, with a texture fill rate of 317.4 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s.

Memory configuration consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 across a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, which equates to 14 Gbps effective. The GPU's base clock is 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1725 MHz. Power delivery requires a 220 W TDP with a single 12-pin power connector and a suggested 550 W power supply.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution and settings escalate. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 128.2 FPS, but this drops to 57.6 FPS at 1080p Ultra — a 55.1% reduction. The pattern intensifies at 4K, where Low settings produce 58.8 FPS but Ultra collapses to 29.0 FPS. The 8 GB frame buffer and memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s are sufficient for lower presets, but the data shows that Ultra settings at higher resolutions push the GPU beyond its comfort zone.

The RTX 3070's synthetic benchmark scores reinforce this interpretation. Its PassMark G3D score of 22,214 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3,162 indicate a mid-range-to-upper-mid-range GPU. The percentile ranking of 72 against all GPUs places it above most hardware, yet the measured FPS in this game demonstrates that demanding configurations still outpace its capabilities. The 0.9% edge over the RX 6600 XT and 1% lead over the GTX 980 Ti in average scores suggest the 3070 holds a modest but real advantage over these contemporaries, which aligns with its behavior in RDR2's higher presets.

# CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K belongs to the Raptor Lake Refresh generation, built on Intel's 10nm process with a die size of 257 mm². It contains 20 cores and 28 threads, with base and boost clocks of 3.40 GHz and 5.60 GHz respectively. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. This configuration supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory across a dual-channel bus, with ECC memory support enabled. The processor connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 CPU lanes and includes integrated UHD Graphics 770.

The CPU's synthetic benchmark results demonstrate substantial multi-threaded capability. Cinebench R23 multi-core scores reach 44,534, while single-core hits 6,287. Geekbench results show 18,896 multi-core and 2,932 single-core. PassMark multi-thread performance is 52,392, with a single-thread score of 4,472. These figures place the CPU in the 96th percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 70,074.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's contribution is most visible at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU is not fully taxed. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 128.2 FPS, and at 1080p Medium it achieves 96.9 FPS. These frame rates are high enough to suggest the 20-core, 28-thread processor provides ample headroom for the game's simulation and AI workloads. The high boost clock of 5.60 GHz also supports strong single-thread performance, which matters for game logic that is often serial in nature.

The i7-14700K's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks include the i7-14700KF (70,104, 0% delta), AMD EPYC 9115 (69,887, 0.3% ahead), AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70,420, 0.5% behind), and Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 (71,056, 1.4% behind). These narrow deltas indicate that the 14700K is competitively positioned within its performance class. For RDR2 specifically, the CPU appears to be a non-limiting factor across most tested configurations, as the FPS drops align more closely with GPU-bound workloads at higher settings.

# Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data covers three resolutions and four quality presets, producing twelve distinct average FPS figures. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 128.2 FPS on Low, 96.9 FPS on Medium, 81.1 FPS on High, and 57.6 FPS on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p represents a 55.1% performance loss, indicating that quality presets have a substantial impact even at the lowest resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 92.8 FPS on Low, 71.7 FPS on Medium, 58.6 FPS on High, and 41.4 FPS on Ultra. The delta between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 55.4%, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling. This consistency suggests that settings changes affect the GPU workload proportionally regardless of resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are 58.8 FPS on Low, 43.8 FPS on Medium, 37.6 FPS on High, and 29.0 FPS on Ultra. The Low-to-Ultra gap here is 50.7%, slightly narrower than at lower resolutions. This compression occurs because even Low settings at 4K place significant stress on the GPU, reducing the relative headroom that settings changes can exploit.

Comparing across resolutions, the 1080p Low result of 128.2 FPS is more than double the 4K Low result of 58.8 FPS. The 1080p Ultra figure of 57.6 FPS closely matches the 4K Low figure of 58.8 FPS, suggesting that the GPU's workload at 1080p Ultra is roughly equivalent to 4K Low. This is a useful reference point for understanding the scaling relationship between resolution and quality.

# Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a clear pattern of diminishing frame rates as resolution increases, with the magnitude of the drop varying by settings preset. From 1080p to 1440p, the FPS reductions are 27.6% on Low (128.2 to 92.8), 26.0% on Medium (96.9 to 71.7), 27.7% on High (81.1 to 58.6), and 28.1% on Ultra (57.6 to 41.4). These reductions are tightly clustered around 27%, indicating that the resolution transition imposes a consistent additional workload on the GPU across all quality levels.

The transition from 1440p to 4K produces larger drops: 36.6% on Low (92.8 to 58.8), 38.9% on Medium (71.7 to 43.8), 35.8% on High (58.6 to 37.6), and 30.0% on Ultra (41.4 to 29.0). The percentage loss increases at lower settings, which suggests that at Low and Medium presets, the GPU has more headroom to be taxed by the additional pixels, whereas at Ultra, the GPU is already saturated and the incremental resolution cost is comparatively smaller.

The overall 1080p-to-4K scaling shows reductions of 54.1% on Low, 54.8% on Medium, 53.6% on High, and 49.7% on Ultra. These figures indicate that the RTX 3070 loses roughly half its frame rate when moving from 1080p to 4K, regardless of quality preset. The slightly smaller drop at Ultra (49.7%) versus Low (54.1%) points to the GPU being the limiting component across all configurations, with the bottleneck becoming more uniform at higher presets.

The data strongly suggests that the GPU is the primary constraint in this pairing for Red Dead Redemption 2. The CPU's benchmark scores, especially the Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 44,534 and the 96th percentile ranking, indicate it has ample compute headroom. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS drops from 1080p to 4K would be minimal, since the CPU workload does not scale with resolution. Instead, the substantial scaling losses demonstrate that the RTX 3070's rendering throughput and 8 GB memory capacity are what determine the playable settings envelope, particularly at 4K where even Low settings struggle to maintain 60 FPS.