Red Dead Redemption 2: PC graphics performance benchmark review - Graphics card performance 1080p

Graphics card performance

The game offers several quality settings and modes. At 1920x1080 even entry-level to mainstream graphics cards achieve very good frame-rates at the best possible settings. Visually there is little difference in-between the normal to the most complex mode settings. Let's start off with Full HD test the graphics cards based on the quality settings we've shown you. 

Please make note of the fact that the Nano and Fury cards had lower quality enabled due to a 4GB graphics memory cap.

D3D12: Ultra Quality settings

The results are not the internal benchmark which is painstakingly buggy once you switch a resolution (at day-1 of release) but also incredibly long to run, this is real gameplay at Chapter one, Colter. On a horse, in the snow and storm. Hi-Hoo Hilbert, yee-haw!

D3D12: Ultra Texture / High-Quality settings

As you have noticed with the 1920x1080 results above, performance with the game in Chapter one, Colter already takes up a huge toll on any GPU. Obviously that get's worse with even higher resolution. So going all in 'Ultra' quality with the game hardly is an option for many. Below you can see some tweaked changes:

Here's what we did, basically you shift that quality preset to level to the max. Then by dropping all Ultra selected quality settings towards high, you'll gain performance. We feel that forfeiting Ultra texture quality would be a darn loss, so we left that setting as is. The result is Ultra textures quality, the rest is set as shown above. By no means, this is 'the tweak' as that will vary per PC, but it'll help you get some extra playable performance out of the game. Again, the 4GB cards have medium texture quality due to graphics memory limitations. Have a peek. 

VULKAN: Ultra Texture / High-Quality settings

Of course, there is the main API for Red Dead Redemption II. As stated and promised, we will offer a full set of VULKAN results as well. As it turns out in the CPU bound resolutions and the fastest graphics cards, you will see a tiny bit of a performance increase. For the rest of the cards, it is more or less equal. Due to the 4GB limitation of Nano/Fury, we left them out this test run.