Red Dead Redemption 2

Settings Recommendations

Red Dead Redemption 2 presents a clear tiering of performance across its four presets, and the measured data suggests that Medium offers the most balanced experience for this specific CPU-GPU combination. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 161 FPS average with a minimum of 136 FPS, which is a substantial margin above the 96 FPS average seen at Ultra. The jump from Medium to High at 1080p costs 27 FPS on average (from 161 to 134), while the jump from Low to Medium costs 53 FPS (from 214 to 161). That means the step from Low to Medium is nearly twice as expensive as the step from Medium to High, yet Medium still holds a 65 FPS advantage over Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the pattern holds. Medium averages 120 FPS with a 102 FPS minimum, which is comfortably above the 72 FPS average of Ultra. High drops to 100 FPS average, still playable but with less headroom. The data indicates that Medium at 1440p is the sweet spot for high-refresh monitors, as it maintains triple-digit averages while keeping frame times consistent. At 3840x2160, Medium averages 79 FPS with a 67 FPS minimum, which is the only 4K preset that stays above the 60 FPS threshold for both average and minimum. High at 4K averages 66 FPS, but the minimum is not recorded in the data, leaving uncertainty about worst-case dips.

For players prioritizing visual fidelity, High at 1440p (100 FPS) or 4K (66 FPS) is viable, but the gap to Ultra is significant: Ultra at 1440p averages 72 FPS, a 28% drop from High, while at 4K Ultra averages 48 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay. The measured rows suggest that Ultra settings are disproportionately expensive in this game, likely due to shadow quality and reflection effects that scale non-linearly with resolution. Given the data, Medium is the recommended preset for 1080p and 1440p users, while 4K users should choose Medium to maintain consistency, as it is the only 4K preset with a recorded minimum above 60 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a 1440p monitor with this CPU and GPU?

A: Medium at 2560x1440 delivers 120 FPS average with a 102 FPS minimum, making it the only 1440p preset that stays above 100 FPS on average. High drops to 100 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 72 FPS.

Q: Can this combination handle 4K at 60 FPS consistently?

A: Yes, but only at Medium settings. The 3840x2160 Medium preset averages 79 FPS with a 67 FPS minimum. High at 4K averages 66 FPS but has no recorded minimum, while Ultra averages 48 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 161 at 1920x1080 to 79 at 3840x2160, a 51% reduction. The minimum FPS drops from 136 to 67, a 51% reduction as well, indicating a linear scaling pattern.

Q: What is the performance gap between Medium and Ultra at 1080p?

A: Medium averages 161 FPS while Ultra averages 96 FPS, meaning Ultra is 40% slower. The minimum FPS for Medium is 136, while Ultra's minimum is not recorded in the data.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p Low settings?

A: At 1920x1080 Low, the system averages 214 FPS, which is the highest recorded score across all configurations. This suggests the GPU is still capable of pushing beyond this, but the data does not show a CPU bottleneck at this level, as the average remains high.

Q: Does the RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM matter for this game?

A: The 24 GB GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is more than sufficient for Red Dead Redemption 2 at any resolution, as the game's Ultra preset at 4K still averages 48 FPS, indicating the bottleneck is compute-bound rather than memory-bound.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the primary driver of frame rates in Red Dead Redemption 2, and the measured data shows a strong correlation between GPU load and resolution scaling. The card's 24 GB GDDR6X memory operates at 1313 MHz with 21 Gbps effective speed, providing 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth across a 384-bit bus. The boost clock of 2520 MHz, combined with 16,384 shading units, yields 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is the raw compute that this game's rendering pipeline leverages.

At 1080p Low, the system reaches 214 FPS average, which is the ceiling of the measured data. This indicates that the GPU is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings, as the frame rate is likely constrained by the CPU or game engine. However, as resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes the dominant factor. The drop from 1080p Medium (161 FPS) to 1440p Medium (120 FPS) is a 25% reduction, while the drop from 1440p Medium to 4K Medium (79 FPS) is a 34% reduction. This progressive scaling is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where pixel throughput becomes the limiting resource.

The RTX 4090's memory subsystem is notably robust for this title. The 24 GB capacity is far above the requirements of Red Dead Redemption 2, which was released in 2018 and does not feature modern texture streaming demands. The 1.01 TB/s bandwidth ensures that high-resolution textures and shadow maps at Ultra settings do not cause stuttering, as evidenced by the consistent minimum FPS values at Medium presets. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are also relevant, as the game's draw distance and vegetation density at Ultra settings stress these units.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 88th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 60,347. Its nearest rival, the Intel Arc Pro A60, has a deltaPct of 0, meaning they are statistically tied in synthetic benchmarks, though the RTX 4090's gaming performance in this title is clearly superior based on the measured FPS. The passmark G3D score of 38,194 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9,223 indicate strong DirectX 12 performance, which aligns with Red Dead Redemption 2's use of that API.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 214 FPS, which is the highest recorded value in the entire dataset. Medium at 1080p averages 161 FPS with a minimum of 136 FPS and a maximum of 185 FPS. High at 1080p drops to 134 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 96 FPS. The transition from Low to Medium costs 53 FPS, from Medium to High costs 27 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 38 FPS, showing that Ultra is the most expensive step relative to its visual gains.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 160 FPS, a 25% reduction from 1080p Low. Medium at 1440p averages 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS. High at 1440p averages 100 FPS, while Ultra averages 72 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is 20 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is 28 FPS, indicating that Ultra becomes progressively more expensive as resolution increases. The minimum FPS at 1440p Medium (102 FPS) is notably higher than the 4K Medium minimum (67 FPS), showing that 1440p provides ample headroom for high-refresh displays.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 106 FPS, which is the only 4K preset above 100 FPS. Medium at 4K averages 79 FPS with a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 91 FPS. High at 4K averages 66 FPS, while Ultra averages 48 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the weakest in the dataset, falling below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The minimum FPS at 4K Medium (67 FPS) is just above 60, making it the recommended preset for 4K users. The data shows a consistent pattern: Low is always the fastest, Ultra is always the slowest, and Medium provides the best balance of frame rate and visual quality across all resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a predictable pattern that reveals the system's bottleneck characteristics. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 161 at 1920x1080 to 120 at 2560x1440, a 25% reduction, and then to 79 at 3840x2160, a 34% reduction from 1440p. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 51%, which is close to the theoretical pixel count increase (1080p has 2.07 million pixels, 1440p has 3.69 million, 4K has 8.29 million), indicating that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions.

At Low settings, the scaling is steeper: 214 FPS at 1080p drops to 160 FPS at 1440p (25% reduction) and then to 106 FPS at 4K (34% reduction from 1440p). The total drop is 50%, nearly identical to Medium. This suggests that even at Low settings, the GPU is still the primary constraint, as the frame rate scales proportionally with pixel count. At High settings, the drop is 25% from 1080p (134 FPS) to 1440p (100 FPS), and 34% from 1440p to 4K (66 FPS), with a total drop of 51%. Ultra settings follow the same pattern: 96 FPS at 1080p, 72 FPS at 1440p (25% reduction), and 48 FPS at 4K (33% reduction), with a total drop of 50%.

The consistency of these scaling percentages across all settings presets is notable. It indicates that the RTX 4090 is the limiting component at every resolution, and the CPU's role is minimal in this title. The minimum FPS values also scale proportionally: at Medium, the minimum drops from 136 at 1080p to 102 at 1440p (25% reduction) and then to 67 at 4K (34% reduction). This linear scaling suggests that the game's rendering pipeline is well-optimized for the GPU's architecture, with no unexpected bottlenecks at any resolution. The data supports the conclusion that players should choose their resolution based on their display's refresh rate, as the frame rate will scale predictably with pixel count.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. Its 36 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB of L2 cache per core provide substantial on-chip storage for game data. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51,731 and a single-core score of 7,303, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 84,003 is 0.2% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, its closest rival, and 1.1% ahead of the AMD EPYC 4584PX.

However, the measured FPS data in Red Dead Redemption 2 indicates that this CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution or settings preset. The frame rates scale almost perfectly with pixel count, which is a hallmark of GPU-bound performance. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 214 FPS, which is the highest score in the dataset, and this is likely near the CPU's maximum frame delivery capability for this game. Yet, the fact that the frame rate drops by exactly 25% when moving to 1440p Low (160 FPS) and by another 34% when moving to 4K Low (106 FPS) suggests that the GPU is still the bottleneck, even at the lowest settings.

The CPU's 24 cores and 24 threads are more than sufficient for Red Dead Redemption 2, which was released in 2018 and does not heavily utilize multi-threading beyond 8-16 threads. The Passmark multi-thread score of 60,860 and integer math score of 166,194 indicate strong computational throughput, but the game's engine does not appear to stress these resources. The single-thread performance, as measured by Passmark single-thread score of 4,823, is also robust, but the frame rates at 1080p Low (214 FPS) suggest that the game engine has a hard ceiling around this value, likely due to draw call processing or physics simulation.

The data shows that the CPU's role in this specific configuration is to ensure that the GPU is never starved of data. With a memory bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s on dual-channel DDR5, the CPU can feed the RTX 4090's 1.01 TB/s bandwidth without becoming a bottleneck. The 3 nm process node and 17,800 million transistors provide ample headroom for the game's logic, but the benchmark results indicate that the GPU is the decisive factor in determining frame rates. Players with a 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitor will find that the CPU can deliver enough frames at 1080p and 1440p, but the GPU's performance at 4K will be the limiting factor for high-refresh displays.