Red Dead Redemption 2

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates for Red Dead Redemption 2 with the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER show a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and playability. The data indicates that the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience across all resolutions, delivering playable frame rates without sacrificing the core visual enhancements that make the game world immersive. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 71 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while High drops to 59 FPS and Ultra falls to 42.2 FPS.

At 2560x1440, Medium remains the best choice with an average of 50.8 FPS, while High manages 45.6 FPS and Ultra drops to 29.6 FPS. The Low preset at this resolution reaches 67.1 FPS, but the visual downgrade in a game known for its detailed environments is substantial. For 3840x2160, no preset achieves a truly smooth experience: Medium runs at 36 FPS, High at 27.8 FPS, and Low at 49.2 FPS. Given these numbers, the Medium preset at 1080p or 1440p offers the most sensible compromise, whereas Ultra should be avoided entirely due to sub-30 FPS results at both 1440p and 4K.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using a 12 nm process with a 445 mm² die containing 10,800 million transistors. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical factor for Red Dead Redemption 2's large, open-world textures. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1470 MHz with a boost clock of 1650 MHz, and its memory runs at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). With 2176 shading units, 136 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation units, the card delivers 7.181 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

The benchmark data shows that this GPU quickly becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 94.7 FPS, but this drops to 67.1 FPS at 1440p and 49.2 FPS at 4K. The scaling pattern suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER's memory bandwidth and compute capacity are stressed by the game's demands. The card's 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores are present, but Red Dead Redemption 2 does not heavily utilize ray tracing, so these features have limited impact on the measured results. The GPU's percentile ranking of 63 among all GPUs indicates it sits in the mid-range tier, which aligns with the observed performance levels in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1189 out of 1687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places the setup in the lower third of all combinations measured, which is expected given that the GPU is the primary bottleneck. The CPU itself is a high-end part with a percentile ranking of 96 among all processors, but pairing it with a mid-range GPU from the previous generation limits the overall system performance.

The data indicates that many other tested combos achieve higher frame rates, likely due to more powerful GPUs. However, this ranking does not tell the full story. The combination still delivers playable performance at 1080p with Medium or High settings, and the CPU's headroom means that upgrading the GPU later would yield significant gains. The rank of 1189 out of 1687 suggests that while this combo is not competitive at the top tier, it remains functional for 1080p gaming in this specific title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates are as follows: Low achieves 94.7 FPS, Medium reaches 71 FPS, High produces 59 FPS, and Ultra drops to 42.2 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 23.7 FPS, while the step from Medium to High costs 12 FPS, and High to Ultra costs 16.8 FPS. This pattern shows diminishing returns at higher presets, where the visual improvements become less noticeable relative to the performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low at 67.1 FPS, Medium at 50.8 FPS, High at 45.6 FPS, and Ultra at 29.6 FPS. The gap between Medium and High narrows to just 5.2 FPS, while Ultra falls well below playable thresholds. At 3840x2160, the numbers are: Low at 49.2 FPS, Medium at 36 FPS, High at 27.8 FPS, and Ultra at 19.6 FPS. The 4K results consistently fall below 60 FPS, making this resolution unsuitable for smooth gameplay with this hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how heavily the GPU is loaded. At Low settings, the system goes from 94.7 FPS at 1080p to 67.1 FPS at 1440p (a 29.1% drop) and then to 49.2 FPS at 4K (a further 26.7% drop from 1440p). At Medium settings, the progression is 71 FPS at 1080p, 50.8 FPS at 1440p, and 36 FPS at 4K, representing drops of 28.5% and 29.1% respectively. High settings show 59 FPS at 1080p, 45.6 FPS at 1440p, and 27.8 FPS at 4K, with the largest relative drop of 39% occurring between 1440p and 4K.

These scaling patterns indicate that the RTX 2060 SUPER is the limiting component. The consistent 25-30% performance reduction when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and again from 1440p to 4K, aligns with the pixel count increases. The CPU, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is not the bottleneck here, as the frame rate drops are directly proportional to the rendering resolution. This is further confirmed by the fact that the same CPU is paired with higher-tier GPUs in other combos that achieve much higher frame rates in this game.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor from the Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The cache configuration includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. This processor supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it ranks in the 96th percentile among all CPUs based on its average benchmark score of 70104.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU. The game is not heavily multithreaded in a way that would stress this processor's 28 threads. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 44557 and single-core score of 6290 demonstrate that the CPU has ample headroom for this title. The measured frame rates scale almost entirely with the GPU's workload, as shown by the consistent resolution-based performance drops. The CPU's high single-thread performance ensures that it does not introduce frame pacing issues or bottleneck the GPU at any resolution tested. However, the overall combo ranking of 1189 out of 1687 indicates that the CPU's potential is not fully utilized due to the GPU's limitations.