Red Dead Redemption 2

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i7-14700K compare to its closest rivals in overall CPU benchmarks?

A: The Core i7-14700K scores an average of 70,074 across all benchmark tests, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. It is essentially tied with the Core i7-14700KF (70,104, 0% delta) and the AMD EPYC 9115 (69,887, 0.3% behind), while trailing the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X by 0.5% and the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 by 1.4%.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to its nearest competitors?

A: The RTX 4070 posts an average benchmark score of 37,283, putting it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. It sits within a narrow band of rivals: the Radeon RX Vega 56 is 0.6% faster, the GeForce MX570 A is 1.9% faster, and the RTX 4080 Mobile is 2.2% faster, while the Radeon RX 5300M trails by 2.5%.

Q: Which resolution and settings combination delivers the highest frame rate in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 155.1 FPS average, the highest measured result. The same resolution at Medium yields 116.9 FPS, while High drops to 95.4 FPS and Ultra to 70.6 FPS.

Q: How does the frame rate scale when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS falls from 95.4 at 1920x1080 to 68.8 at 2560x1440 (a 27.9% reduction) and then to 45.0 at 3840x2160 (a 34.6% further drop). The total decline from 1080p to 4K is 52.8%.

Q: What is the best performance setting at 1440p for smooth gameplay?

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 110.6 FPS and Medium produces 86.3 FPS, both comfortably above 60 FPS. High settings yield 68.8 FPS, while Ultra drops to 53.6 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Where does this CPU-GPU combination rank among all tested combos in this game?

A: The Core i7-14700K plus RTX 4070 ranks 394th out of 1,687 tested combinations for Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the top 23.4% of all systems tested.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, with a die size of 294 mm² and 35,800 million transistors. Its memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR6X across a 192-bit bus, delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1920 MHz and boosts to 2475 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective).

For Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU's memory capacity and bandwidth play a critical role. The game's open-world environments and high-resolution textures place significant demands on VRAM, and the 12 GB allocation provides sufficient headroom even at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. The benchmark data shows that at 4K, the Ultra preset produces only 36.0 FPS, indicating that the GPU's compute throughput—29.15 TFLOPS FP32—becomes the limiting factor rather than memory capacity.

The RTX 4070's shading units (5,888), texture mapping units (184), and render output units (64) determine how efficiently it processes the game's lighting and shadow effects. The 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are present but unused in this benchmark configuration, as the measured results reflect standard rasterization performance. The GPU's pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s set the theoretical ceiling for fill-rate-bound scenes.

At lower resolutions, the GPU's role shifts. The 1080p results show the CPU can feed the GPU effectively at all settings, with Low hitting 155.1 FPS. However, the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals that the GPU becomes progressively more dominant as the pixel count rises. The 45.0 FPS at 4K High versus 95.4 FPS at 1080p High indicates a 52.8% performance penalty, which aligns with the 4x pixel count increase from 1080p to 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data across three resolutions and four quality presets provides a clear picture of how this combination scales. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 155.1 FPS on Low, 116.9 FPS on Medium, 95.4 FPS on High, and 70.6 FPS on Ultra. This range suggests the CPU (20 cores, 28 threads, boost clock 5.60 GHz) has ample headroom at 1080p, as even the heaviest preset stays above 70 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates drop to 110.6 FPS (Low), 86.3 FPS (Medium), 68.8 FPS (High), and 53.6 FPS (Ultra). The percentage reductions from 1080p are 28.7% for Low, 26.2% for Medium, 27.9% for High, and 24.1% for Ultra. The relatively uniform scaling across presets indicates that the GPU is becoming the primary bottleneck, but the CPU still contributes meaningfully at lower settings where frame rates remain high.

At 3840x2160, the results show 74.8 FPS (Low), 55.5 FPS (Medium), 45.0 FPS (High), and 36.0 FPS (Ultra). The drop from 1440p is 32.4% for Low, 35.7% for Medium, 34.6% for High, and 32.8% for Ultra. The consistent 32-36% reduction across all presets at 4K strongly suggests the GPU is the sole limiting component at this resolution—the CPU's performance is effectively masked by the GPU's rendering load.

The scaling pattern also reveals that the gap between Low and Ultra narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, Ultra is 54.5% slower than Low (155.1 vs 70.6 FPS). At 1440p, the gap shrinks to 51.5% (110.6 vs 53.6). At 4K, the gap is 51.9% (74.8 vs 36.0). This compression indicates that at 4K, even Low settings saturate the GPU's capabilities, making quality settings less impactful on performance than at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 60 FPS as a playable threshold, the data shows that 1920x1080 with Ultra settings (70.6 FPS) is viable, as is 2560x1440 with High settings (68.8 FPS). However, at 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS—the best result is Low at 74.8 FPS, which is above 60 but requires sacrificing all visual quality.

The optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance appears at 2560x1440 with High settings. This configuration delivers 68.8 FPS, which is only 2.1% below the 1080p High result (95.4 FPS) in relative terms but with significantly higher pixel density. The Medium preset at 1440p (86.3 FPS) offers a 25.4% performance margin over High, which could be useful for maintaining higher frame rates on displays with refresh rates above 60 Hz.

At 1080p, the High preset (95.4 FPS) provides the best experience for most users, as it sits well above 60 FPS while retaining substantial visual quality. The Ultra preset (70.6 FPS) is also acceptable, but the 26% performance penalty versus High may not justify the visual gains. The Low preset at 1080p (155.1 FPS) is only relevant for competitive play or very high refresh rate displays, as it sacrifices most graphical features.

For 4K users, the data shows that the RTX 4070 cannot maintain 60 FPS at any setting. The Medium preset (55.5 FPS) is the closest to 60 FPS, while High (45.0 FPS) and Ultra (36.0 FPS) fall further behind. Given that Low (74.8 FPS) exceeds 60 FPS, players with 4K displays may prefer to run at Low and rely on resolution scaling or upscaling techniques not measured in this dataset.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 394th out of 1,687 tested combinations for Red Dead Redemption 2. This places the system in the top 23.4% of all tested configurations, which is a strong result given the game's demanding nature. The ranking reflects the balance between the CPU's 96th percentile standing and the GPU's 81st percentile standing.

The CPU's capabilities are well-documented: the i7-14700K achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 44,534 and a single-core score of 6,287, with a Geekbench multicore score of 18,896. The PassMark multithread score of 52,392 further confirms strong multi-threaded performance. However, in Red Dead Redemption 2, the GPU becomes the primary determinant of the final ranking, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling patterns discussed earlier.

The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 26,927 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3,854 provide context for its gaming performance. At 1080p, the combo's results (70.6-155.1 FPS depending on settings) demonstrate that the CPU is not holding back the GPU. At 1440p, the results (53.6-110.6 FPS) still show good scaling, but the 4K results (36.0-74.8 FPS) reveal the GPU's limitations.

The rank of 394 out of 1,687 places this system ahead of roughly 76.6% of tested combinations. This is notable because the RTX 4070 is not a top-tier GPU—it sits in the 81st percentile—yet the combination performs well due to the i7-14700K's strength. The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads, combined with a 5.60 GHz boost clock, ensure that the system is never CPU-bound at any resolution or setting in this game. The data shows that the measured FPS at 1080p Low (155.1) approaches the practical limit for many displays, indicating the CPU can push frame rates well beyond what the GPU can render at higher resolutions.