Red Dead Redemption 2

Resolution Scaling

Red Dead Redemption 2 exhibits pronounced resolution scaling behavior with this Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination, with average frame rates dropping steeply as pixel count rises. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo delivers 75.8 FPS; moving to 2560x1440 at the same settings reduces that to 57.9 FPS, a decline of roughly 24%. The step to 3840x2160 at High produces 36.1 FPS, another 38% drop from the 1440p result. This pattern indicates that the GPU becomes the dominant limiting component as resolution increases, with the CPU's substantial thread count and high boost clocks providing headroom that the RTX 3070 cannot exploit at higher pixel densities.

The scaling curve across all settings is telling. At Low settings, the frame rate goes from 125.9 FPS at 1080p to 91.8 FPS at 1440p and finally to 60.9 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-4K reduction at Low is roughly 52%, while at Ultra settings the drop is from 57.9 FPS at 1080p to 26.8 FPS at 4K, a 54% decrease. This consistency suggests that the rendering workload scales almost linearly with pixel count, which is typical for a GPU-bound title. The CPU does not appear to bottleneck at any resolution, given that even at 1080p Low the frame rate reaches above 120 FPS, a level where weaker processors would often struggle.

The gap between settings narrows at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 68 FPS (125.9 vs 57.9), but at 4K that spread compresses to 34.1 FPS (60.9 vs 26.8). This compression is a classic sign of GPU saturation; when the graphics card is already near its limit, additional quality settings have diminishing marginal impact. The data indicates that players seeking 60 FPS at 4K will need to use Low settings, where the combo just barely achieves 60.9 FPS, while High and Ultra settings at that resolution are firmly below playable thresholds.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K brings 24 cores and 32 threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz. Its Raptor Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process, includes 36 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB of L2 cache per core. In synthetic benchmarks, the chip scores 49,872 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 7,040 in single-core, placing it in the 97th percentile among all CPUs. These numbers confirm that the processor has ample computational headroom for a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, which is primarily GPU-limited in most scenes.

The CPU's role in this game's results is primarily to avoid becoming a bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 125.9 FPS, which is high enough that a less capable processor might start to limit performance. The i9-14900K's multi-threaded capabilities, demonstrated by its PassMark multithread score of 58,674, ensure that even heavy simulation and physics workloads in the open-world environment do not drag down frame rates. The single-thread performance, with a Geekbench single-core score of 3,064 and PassMark single-thread score of 4,697, is equally important for the game's main game logic thread.

The data shows that the CPU's performance headroom is not fully utilized in this title. When the GPU is the limiting factor—which is the case at 1440p and 4K across all settings—the CPU's additional capacity has no effect on the measured FPS. However, the processor's 97th percentile ranking among all CPUs means that it will not be the cause of any frame rate dips, even in demanding scenes with many NPCs or complex physics interactions. For this game, the i9-14900K is effectively a performance ceiling raiser, allowing the RTX 3070 to reach its full potential rather than adding frames itself.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 772nd out of 1,687 tested combos in Red Dead Redemption 2, placing it in the upper-middle portion of the database. The rank reflects the balance between the i9-14900K's top-tier CPU performance and the RTX 3070's mid-range GPU capability. While the CPU sits in the 97th percentile among all CPUs, the GPU's percentile is 72nd among all GPUs, meaning the graphics card drags the combo's overall standing down relative to what the processor alone might suggest.

The combination's rank of 772 out of 1,687 means that roughly 54% of tested combos perform better in this game. This is consistent with the RTX 3070's position in the GPU hierarchy; its average benchmark score of 28,238 places it near the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (27,985) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27,956), both of which are older or lower-tier products. The GPU's nearest rival, AMD FirePro S7150, scores 28,409, just 0.6% higher, indicating that the RTX 3070 is very much in a competitive cluster rather than standing out.

In the context of this game specifically, the combo's rank suggests that while the CPU provides no limitation, the GPU's 8 GB of VRAM and 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are the constraining factors at higher settings. The rank is not a measure of absolute playability—many combinations ranked higher may have more powerful GPUs but weaker CPUs—but it does show that this pairing is not optimized for maximum frame rates in Red Dead Redemption 2. Users seeking better in-game performance would need a more powerful GPU, as the CPU is unlikely to be the limiting factor in any scenario.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 125.9 FPS on Low settings, 97.0 FPS on Medium, 75.8 FPS on High, and 57.9 FPS on Ultra. The 1080p Low result is the highest measured across all resolutions and settings, showing that the RTX 3070 can push well beyond 120 FPS when graphical load is minimal. The step from Low to Medium costs 28.9 FPS (23%), and from Medium to High another 21.2 FPS (22%). The jump from High to Ultra is the steepest, losing 17.9 FPS (24%), which suggests that Ultra settings introduce particularly expensive effects that disproportionately impact performance.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS figures are 91.8 for Low, 71.4 for Medium, 57.9 for High, and 44.2 for Ultra. The 1440p High result of 57.9 FPS is identical to the 1080p Ultra result, indicating that the rendering cost of increasing resolution from 1080p to 1440p is roughly equivalent to the cost of moving from High to Ultra at the same resolution. At 1440p, only Low settings achieve above 90 FPS, while Medium stays above 70 FPS, and Ultra dips below 45 FPS. This resolution is the practical sweet spot for the combo, offering a balance between visual quality and playable frame rates.

At 3840x2160, the results are 60.9 FPS for Low, 45.4 FPS for Medium, 36.1 FPS for High, and 26.8 FPS for Ultra. The 4K Low result is the only one above 60 FPS, and it barely clears that threshold. Medium drops below 50 FPS, High falls to the mid-30s, and Ultra is effectively unplayable at 26.8 FPS. The 4K results show a clear pattern: this combo is not designed for high-refresh-rate 4K gaming in this title. Even at Low settings, the frame rate is only marginally above the 60 FPS target, and any quality increase pushes it into sub-30 territory at Ultra.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip manufactured on an 8 nm process by Samsung. It contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, with 5,888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operations pipelines. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1500 MHz and a boost clock of 1725 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming but becomes a limiting factor at 4K with high-quality textures.

The GPU's role in this game is decisive. The measured FPS data shows that performance scales almost entirely with GPU load, and the CPU does not interfere with results. The RTX 3070's PassMark G3D score of 22,214 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3,162 place it in the 72nd percentile among all GPUs, meaning it performs better than 72% of graphics cards tested. However, its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, which scores 27,985 (0.9% lower), and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which scores 27,956 (1% lower). These close margins indicate that the RTX 3070 is not significantly ahead of its immediate competitors in raw compute terms.

The GPU's 8 GB VRAM capacity is a notable constraint in Red Dead Redemption 2, which is known for large texture sets. At 4K Ultra, the combination produces only 26.8 FPS, which is likely due to both memory bandwidth limitations and VRAM capacity being exceeded, causing texture streaming issues that impact frame rates. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K the demand on memory bandwidth increases substantially. The GPU's 20.31 TFLOPS FP32 compute capability is not the bottleneck; rather, the memory subsystem and rasterization throughput are the limiting factors at higher resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The data indicates 2560x1440 is the most balanced choice. At Medium settings, it delivers 71.4 FPS, and at High settings it achieves 57.9 FPS. The 1080p results are higher (up to 125.9 FPS at Low), but 1440p offers a better visual-to-performance tradeoff, while 4K only reaches playable levels at Low settings (60.9 FPS).

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K?

A: Only at Low settings, where the measured average FPS is 60.9. At Medium, the frame rate drops to 45.4 FPS, and at High it falls to 36.1 FPS. Ultra settings produce 26.8 FPS, which is well below the 60 FPS target.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 28,238, which is 0.6% lower than the AMD FirePro S7150 (28,409) and 0.9% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (27,985). It is 1% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27,956) and 1.1% below the AMD Radeon R9 M295X (28,541).

Q: Is the CPU a bottleneck in this game?

A: No. The Intel Core i9-14900K ranks in the 97th percentile among all CPUs, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 49,872. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K follows GPU load patterns, not CPU limitations, and even at 1080p Low the combo reaches 125.9 FPS, indicating the CPU has ample headroom.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra at each resolution?

A: At 1080p, the difference is 68.0 FPS (125.9 vs 57.9). At 1440p, the difference is 47.6 FPS (91.8 vs 44.2). At 4K, the difference is 34.1 FPS (60.9 vs 26.8). The shrinking gap at higher resolutions confirms the GPU becomes the limiting factor.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 772nd out of 1,687 tested combinations in Red Dead Redemption 2. This places it in the upper-middle range, reflecting the strong CPU (97th percentile) paired with a mid-range GPU (72nd percentile).