Red Dead Redemption 2: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

Release Date : 11/05/2019
Genre : Action / Adventure
Developer : Rockstar Studios
Publisher : Rockstar Games

From the creators of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2 is an epic story of life and survival in the heart of America's wild. An incredibly spacious and carefully designed game world will also be the basis for a brand new online mode.

NEW PRODUCTS FROM MSI FOR TESTING

 

The MSI GEFORCE RTX 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24 GB is now participating in our test .This video card is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, operates at a frequency of 2750 MHz, has 16384 stream processors and 24 gigabytes of video memory.

 

In our test this time, the top-end video card from MSI GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti GAMING TRIO 12 GB is participating .  The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is based on the AD104 GPU and features 7680 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR6X memory.

 

In our review, we bring you the MSI MPG X670E Carbon WIFI motherboard . MSI MPG X670E Carbon WIFI is equipped with a highly reliable power supply system, 16 power modules of which are designed to work with powerful multi-threaded AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors. You can directly check the testing of this motherboard on our website. 

NEW PRODUCTS FROM ASUS FOR TESTING

   

In our test, this time, the top-end video card from ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX is participating . . This video card is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, operates at a frequency of 2750 MHz, has 9728 stream processors and 16 gigabytes of video memory. You can directly familiarize yourself with the testing of this video card on our website.

In our test this time, the new ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC video card is participating .  This video card is based on the RDNA 3 architecture, operates at a frequency of 3000 MHz and has 24 gigabytes of video memory.

In our review, we bring you the ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi Motherboard . ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi includes 4 DIMM DDR5 modules with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB and a frequency of up to 6400 MHz. For the file subsystem, the motherboard supports 3x M.2 PCIe 5.0/4.0 x4 slots and 4x SATA 6Gb/s ports. You can get acquainted directly with the testing of this motherboard on our website.

NEW PROVIDED FOR TESTING BY GIGABYTE

In our review, we bring you the GIGABYTE Z690 AERO G and Z690 AORUS MASTER motherboards . These motherboards are used by us as stands for testing new generations of Intel processors .

NEW PRODUCTS PROVIDED FOR TESTS BY KINGSTON

 
  

In our review, we used RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 Kingston FURY Renegade , 32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 Kingston FURY Renegade , 32 GB DDR5 6000 Kingston FURY Renegade . And for game tests, we use an external Kingston XS2000 Portable SSD 1 TB .

THE GRAFICAL PART

In this subsection of our review, the main graphical aspects of this game are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphics settings and the quality of the development of the main visual aspects.

SUPPORTED OC AND GRAPHICS API

Red Dead Redemption 2 is supported on Windows 7/8 10/11.

 

The priority and primary graphics API for Red Dead Redemption 2 is DX 12 and Vulkan .

GAME ENGINE

Red Dead Redemption 2 uses the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine at its core. "Rockstar Advanced Game Engine" is a full-featured game engine that contains a graphics engine, physics engine, sound engine, animation engine, game artificial intelligence, networking, scripting language and other components. The sound engine and network code was developed by Rockstar North, while all other components were developed by Rockstar San Diego.

In the first half of the 2000s, Rockstar Games used Criterion Games' RenderWare game engine for the vast majority of its games. However, in July 2004, American publisher Electronic Arts acquired Criterion Games along with its engine. This worsened RenderWare's licensing policy, so Rockstar Games decided to develop their own engine for their projects. Information about the intention of Rockstar Games to develop their own engine appeared in September 2005. "RAGE" is based on the AGE engine, which was originally developed by Angel Studios for the Midnight Club series and other games produced by Rockstar San Diego for the sixth generation of video game consoles. RAGE was developed by a group of employees from Rockstar San Diego and Rockstar North called the RAGE Technology Group.

In early May 2006, MTV News published an article confirming the existence of the RAGE engine and its use in Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis and Grand Theft Auto IV. Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis was released in June and this information has been confirmed and clarified. In February 2007, British company NaturalMotion and Rockstar Games announced that "euphoria", a procedural animation tool, would be used in future Rockstar games and by extension the "RAGE" engine. The press release that was included with the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV ultimately confirmed that Grand Theft Auto IV would be Rockstar's first game to use "euphoria".

On April 23, 2008, 1UP.com published an interview with Rockstar North CTOs Adam Fowler and Sandy Roger that focused entirely on "RAGE". On April 29, Grand Theft Auto IV, the second game to use RAGE, was released. After Grand Theft Auto IV, RAGE was used in the racing game Midnight Club: Los Angeles, which was released on October 21, 2008. Further, the engine was used by both Grand Theft Auto IV add-ons - Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. Later, the game "Red Dead Redemption" was released on the engine (May 18, 2010) and the game "Max Payne 3" was announced, which also uses the "RAGE" engine. On November 3, 2012, Rockstar Games announced Grand Theft Auto V, the game uses the "RAGE" engine. The game was released on September 17, 2013 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

Since the engine was geared towards use in games that have an "open seamless world", the main advantage of the engine is its ability to handle large game spaces efficiently. So, when the character moves through the level, the engine constantly and dynamically adds some and removes other objects. The developers reported that for this it was necessary to develop a reliable engine memory manager that could constantly allocate and remove objects from RAM without fragmenting it. RAGE uses an external physics engine called Bullet Physics Library, which is free software.

 

The developers paid a lot of time and attention to the physics of cars, which they tried to make as close to reality as possible. This system takes into account the weight of the machine, the traction of the tires on the surface and other characteristics. The behavior of the car depends on the surface on which it travels, as well as on weather conditions. To animate humanoid characters, "euphoria" is used - a software component that independently automatically creates character animations on the fly. euphoria was developed by NaturalMotion and has been used as a permanent component in RAGE since Grand Theft Auto IV.

Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC has the following improvements:

-Increased object draw distance
-Higher quality effects related to global illumination and ambient occlusion (shading model)
-Improved snow footprints
-Improved reflections and higher resolution shadows
-Improved tree textures with tessellation
-Improved grass and fur textures
-Support HDR
- Unlocked screen resolution (4K and above)
- Unlocked frame rate
- Support for ultra-wide resolutions and multiple monitors.

GRAPHICS SETTINGS

Red Dead Redemption 2 has a fairly wide range of graphics settings.

 

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum and maximum graphics quality settings.

DLSS/FSR

Well, in terms of quality, the native is the best of all ...

GENERAL VISUAL DESIGN AND GAME PHYSICS

The graphics in Red Dead Redemption 2 still look incredible:

Well, then we will go directly to the gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.

TEST PART

Test configuration
test stands	ROG Strix X570-E Gaming Z490 AORUS PRO AX        GIGABYTE Z590 VISION    GIGABYTE Z690 AERO G   Z690 AORUS MASTER       MSI MPG X670E Carbon WIFI   ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi
Sponsored Video Cards	MSI GEFORCE RTX 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24 GB   MSI GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti GAMING TRIO 12 GB MSI GEFORCE RTX 3080 SUPRIM X 12 GB    MSI GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti GAMING TRIO 8 GB  ASUS Radeon RX 7900 XTX ASUS TUF Gaming GEFORCE RTX 4080OC
multimedia equipment	Monitor Philips 326M6VJRMB/00 Power Supply Seasonic PRIME TX-1000 Kingston XS2000 Portable SSD 1TB 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 Kingston FURY Renegade              32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 Kingston FURY Renegade              32 GB DDR5 5600 CL40 KingstonFURY Beast                       32 GB DDR5 6000@6400 CL30 KingstonFURY Renegade Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD            Case MPG CORELIQUID K240
Software configuration
operating system	Windows 10 21H2/ Windows 11(Alder Lake)
Graphics driver	Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 528.02 WHQL AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 23.11.2/22.12.1
Monitoring programs	MSI Afterburner

 Our video cards were tested at resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at  maximum graphics quality settings with MSAA 4X anti-aliasing quality . The test was conducted in the  Vulkan API, as well as with DLSS and FSR

Our last test of Red Dead Redemption 2

GPU TEST

 

In the test of video cards, the default resolution is 1920x1080, other resolutions are added and removed manually. You can also remove and add any positions of video cards. You can also select any of our test processors from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the given video card tests (by default, the most productive solution is selected). The test is carried out on the most productive CPU in this game and is scaled to other processors, taking into account their testing on NVIDIA and AMD video cards.

At a resolution of 1920x1080 , an average FPS of 25 frames was shown by video cards of the Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 2060 level . A minimum FPS of at least 25 frames can be provided by video cards of the level Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 2070 . A comfortable average FPS of 60 frames can be provided by Radeon RX 7900 XTX or GeForce RTX 3080 solutions .

At a resolution  of 2560x1440, an average FPS of 25 frames was shown by video cards of the Radeon RX 6750 XT or GeForce RTX 3060 level . A minimum FPS of at least 25 frames can be provided by video cards of the Radeon RX 6800 or GeForce RTX 2080 level . A comfortable average FPS of 60 frames can be provided by Radeon RX 7900 XTX or GeForce RTX 3080 solutions . 

At a resolution  of 3840x2160,  an average FPS of 25 frames was shown by video cards of the level Radeon RX 6600 XT FSR or GeForce RTX 3060 DLSS . A minimum FPS of at least 25 frames can be provided by video cards of the level Radeon RX 6700 XT FSR or GeForce RTX 3060 DLSS . A comfortable average FPS of 60 frames can be provided by Radeon RX 6950 XT FSR or GeForce RTX 3080 Ti DLSS solutions .

VIDEO MEMORY CONSUMPTION

Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the  MSI Afterburner program. The results on video cards from AMD and NVIDIA at resolutions of  1920x1080, 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 with various anti-aliasing settings were taken as the indicator. By default, the graph displays the most up-to-date solutions. Other graphics cards are added and removed from the chart at the reader's request.

At a resolution of  1920x1080  , the consumption of video memory for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 6 gigabytes , with 12 gigabytes 7 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 7 gigabytes with 24 gigabytes 7 gigabytes .

At a resolution of 2560x1440 , video memory consumption for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 6 gigabytes, with 12 gigabytes 8 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 8 gigabytes with 24 gigabytes 8 gigabytes .

At a resolution of 3840x2160 , the consumption of video memory for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 8 gigabytes, with 12 gigabytes 9 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 9 gigabytes with 24 gigabytes 9 gigabytes .

CPU TEST

 

Testing was carried out at a resolution of 1920x1080. In the processor test, you can remove and add any positions of the processors. You can also select any tested video card from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the results of processor tests  (by default, the most productive solution from NVIDIA is selected). Testing takes place on the most productive NVIDIA and AMD video cards and scales up to lower models.

When using NVIDIA video cards , Ryzen 3 3100 or Core i 3 10100 processors showed an acceptable rate of at least 25 frames per second  , and Ryzen 3 3300 or Core i 3 10100 solutions can provide an FPS rate of at least 60 frames per second . 

When using AM D video cards, Ryzen 3 3100 or Core i 3 10100 processors showed an acceptable rate of at least 25 frames per second  , and Ryzen 3 3100 or Core i 3 10100 solutions can provide an  FPS rate of at least 60 frames per second  . 

The game can download up to 24 threads. The game uses 8 threads as efficiently as possible.

RAM TEST

The test was conducted on the base configuration Core i 9 13900K with 32 GB DDR5 6400 MHz pre-installed memory. All used RAM was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various video cards without running extraneous applications (browsers, etc.). In the graphics, you can add and remove any resolutions and video cards as desired.

At a resolution of  1920x1080 ,  the consumption of RAM for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 10 gigabytes , with 12 gigabytes 11 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 11 gigabytes, with 24 gigabytes 11 gigabytes .

At a resolution of  2560x1440  , the consumption of RAM for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 10 gigabytes , with 12 gigabytes 11 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 11 gigabytes with 24 gigabytes 11 gigabytes .

At a resolution of  3840x2160  , the consumption of RAM for video cards with 8 gigabytes is 11 gigabytes , with 12 gigabytes 11 gigabytes , with 16 gigabytes 11 gigabytes with 24 gigabytes 11 gigabytes .