Red Dead Redemption II PC performance thread

Dan L · Nov 9, 2019

packy17 said:
Mine actually shows up as 9.4gb, which is a little odd for sure.

Alderaan said:
Just kidding, or maybe it changed on me but just booted it up again and it is showing 9303 MB for me. Well just add to the list of funky things going on with the game. Glad to know its not just me.

Also the benchmark in DX12 always freezes on the 4th scene (first one of the town) where it is night time and the lantern turns while screen is panning. It freezes when the camera starts panning and I have to force quite.

No issue with Vulcan. Using an Intel CPU.

This is by design, A lot of games won't show the total memory, they show the total free after the reserved portion the engine itself uses before counting in the graphics options changes. Gears 5 is another game that displays max free memory as less than the total.

My 2080ti also shows as around 9.4GB

Rbk_3 · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
What hardware do you have? I might be able to help you out with the settings!

What GPU do you have?

2080 Super

Deleted member 49319 · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
What hardware do you have? I might be able to help you out with the settings!

An RX 580 Thunderbolt eGPU so it usually takes a 30% performance hit with other games.

Dan L · Nov 9, 2019

It really is a great game, playing at mostly ultra and high settings 4k (80% render) and a locked 60. I am so happy it's working great for me.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, DX12
3840 x 2160, 60hz, Windowed: No, Vsync: Yes, Triple: On

Textures: Ultra
Anisotropic: 16x
Lighting: Ultra
Global Illumination: Ultra
Shadows: High
Far Shadows: Ultra
SSAO: High
Reflection: High
Mirror: Ultra
Water: Custom
Volumetrics: Custom
Particles: Ultra
Tessellation: Ultra
FXAA: Off, TAA: Medium, MSAA: 0

Near Volumetrics Quality: Ultra
Far Volumetric Quality: Ultra
Volumetric Lighting Quality: Ultra
Unlocked Volumetric Raymarch Resolution: Off
Particle Lighting Quality: High
Soft Shadows: High
Grass Shadows: Medium
Long Shadows: On
Full resolution SSAO: Off
Water Refraction Quality: Medium
Water Reflection Quality: Medium
Water Physics Quality: 50%
Resolution scale: Mode4o5
TAA Sharpen Intensity: 100%
Motion Blur: On
Reflection MSAA: Off
Geometry Level of Detail: 100%
Grass Level of Detail: 83%
Tree Quality: High
Parallax Occlusion Mapping Quality: High
Decal Quality: High
Fur Quality: High

Generated with Forceflow's RDR2 settings parser

Also it's so nice to be able to take screenshots in a game with HDR on and have it tonemap the images.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

Rbk_3 said:
2080 Super

Cool! I have a GTX 1080 Ti, it seems that the RTX 2080 Super is 20% faster than my GPU in this game. So, you want a native 4K resolution? Or do you not mind having maybe 80-90% of it?

Aestivalis said:
An RX 580 Thunderbolt eGPU so it usually takes a 30% performance hit with other games.

Oh okay, what CPU do you have, and what resolution do you plan to target?

Rbk_3 · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
Cool! I have a GTX 1080 Ti, it seems that the RTX 2080 Super is 20% faster than my GPU in this game. So, you want a native 4K resolution? Or do you not mind having maybe 80-90% of it?

Oh okay, what CPU do you have?

What ever I have to do to get close to a solid 60. My TV is Gsync compatible so I don't need to maintain above 60 at all times. I really just want to know if the 9600k will suffice for my needs before I buy.

Deleted member 49319 · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
Oh okay, what CPU do you have, and what resolution do you plan to target?

Xeon E5-1620 V2, a quad core @3.7GHz. Old but I don't think it would bottleneck.
1440P@30fps maybe, better IQ than PS4 Pro is acceptable.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

Rbk_3 said:
What ever I have to do to get close to a solid 60. My TV is Gsync compatible so I don't need to maintain above 60 at all times. I really just want to know if the 9600k will suffice for my needs before I buy.

What's more important for you, resolution or frame rate?

medyej · Nov 9, 2019

SleepSmasher said:
Latest Rockstar Games Launcher update basically fixed the crashes to desktop for me. Played for 3 hours or so and everything just miraculously worked.

By the way, for those who never saw G-Sync working or its "real life" benefits, here's an off-screen video shot at 4K/60 FPS. The game was running here at 3440x1440, mix of high and ultra settings, Vulkan, on a 1080 TI. I unfortunately turned off the RTSS HUD moments before and forgot to enable it while shooting the video, but rest assured, this whole segment was running at 45-50 FPS (max). You can see how smoothly G-Sync handles the sub-60 frame rate, basically looks like 60 FPS at all times. I'm happy now.

G-Sync really is such an amazing technology. I run Ultrawide too and my settings keep me anywhere from 50-70fps and with G-Sync I just don't care about the drops or variations at all. Everything is smooth as butter.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

Aestivalis said:
Xeon E5-1620 V2, a quad core @3.7GHz. Old but I don't think it would bottleneck.
1440P@30fps maybe, better IQ than PS4 Pro is acceptable.

Oh, Ivy Bridge? I've tested an i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge) at 3.2GHz (Underclocked due to high temps on an Intel stock cooler with questionable thermal paste) and a RX 570 8 GB at 1440p with Ultra textures and Medium settings. I haven't tested it in gameplay yet, but it was able to achieve an average of 40 fps in the benchmark.
I haven't even found the most optimal settings yet for this GPU, however from my testing on my GTX 1080 Ti, I would make adjustments to the Water Physics Simulation which is at 50% in this video, and the Geometry Level of Detail which I think is somewhere around 40%

If I can get my hands on an RX 570 again I would like to make a new video and showcase the gameplay performance.

RedSwirl · Nov 9, 2019

Is anyone perchance running this on an older i5? Like 4th gen and earlier?

the_id · Nov 9, 2019

Anybody know of a fix to the game not launching from the Rockstar Game Launcher? Bought the game on Epic Game Store and managed to play for about an hour, tweaking the settings and thought I'd change it to DirectX 12.

Since then, I haven't been able to launch the game. I've deleted it, deleted the Rockstar Game Launcher and reinstalled things.

I've got the latest drivers for Windows 10 and graphics card.

Running on RTX 2080Ti with intel i9900K processor.

This is what makes me hate about PC gaming. Maybe should've waited before double dipping on this game.

Deleted member 49319 · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
Oh, Ivy Bridge? I've tested an i7-2600K at 3.2GHz (Underclocked due to high temps on an Intel stock cooler with questionable thermal paste) and a RX 570 8 GB at 1440p with Ultra textures and Medium settings. I haven't tested it in gameplay yet, but it was able to achieve an average of 40 fps in the benchmark.
I haven't even found the most optimal settings yet for this GPU, however from my testing on my GTX 1080 Ti, I would make adjustments to the Water Physics Simulation which is at 50% in this video, and the Geometry Level of Detail which I think is somewhere around 40%

If I can get my hands on an RX 570 again I would like to make a new video and showcase the gameplay performance.

Hopefully that is the performance I can expect from my computer. I will post later when download is finished.
Thank you for all the information.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

Aestivalis said:
Hopefully that is the performance I can expect from my computer. I will post later when download is finished.
Thank you for all the information.

You're welcome!

MythicReclaimer · Nov 9, 2019

Played for 2 hours straight with no crashes after disabling OneDrive, so if you're experiencing random crashes you may want to give it a go if you can live without the Microsoft OneDrive program.

the_id said:
Anybody know of a fix to the game not launching from the Rockstar Game Launcher? Bought the game on Epic Game Store and managed to play for about an hour, tweaking the settings and thought I'd change it to DirectX 12.

Since then, I haven't been able to launch the game. I've deleted it, deleted the Rockstar Game Launcher and reinstalled things.

I've got the latest drivers for Windows 10 and graphics card.

Running on RTX 2080Ti with intel i9900K processor.

This is what makes me hate about PC gaming. Maybe should've waited before double dipping on this game.

MythicReclaimer said:
Concerning the DX12 switch and not being able to launch the game, deleting everything in the settings folder (Documents/Rockstar Games/Red Dead Redemption 2/Settings...delete everything in here ...it will regenerate when you start the game again but at default settings) will/should allow you to start the game again at the default settings.

Try the above as it will give you all the default settings back. This settings file is not deleted when you uninstall and re-install RDR2 thus the game is still trying to run in DX12, once you delete the contents of the settings folder you'll be back on the Vulkan API.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

I've uploaded a new test of the game using the 1440p Ultra-Medium V2 settings I found, but this time with the game running at 1080p. I think these settings could be beneficial for those that want to target a higher frame rate at 1080p, and take advantage of high refresh rate displays.

I think there is some room for improvement as I just used my 1440p settings and didn't further experiment with them for 1080p.

I used MSI Afterburner to benchmark the performance. During the video it ran with an average frame rate of around 90-100 fps with these settings, and a minimum frame rate of 84 fps, with 1% lows of 75 fps, and 0.1% lows of 62 fps by the end of the video.
I had a hard time observing these dips throughout the benchmark, and there are some occurrences of 1% lows in the 70s, and 0.1% lows in the 30s, I think they were caused by stutters in the game.

ss_lemonade · Nov 9, 2019

Firefly said:
That looks so good... but there was a lack of fast motion so I couldn't see the gsync benefits. Could you do an example of fast horse riding or running on foot in a busier location?

Here's my attempt. Gsync does help a lot with this game

You can tell when gsync is active by looking at the upper left counter. That's my monitor's refresh rate. I apologize for my awful video editing skills though. In the split videos, VRR is the right side.

Dictator · Nov 9, 2019

Isee said:
I've switched back to Vulkan, searched for the most unimpressive, sorry, dry little stream of water and retested Water Physics:

100% (rest is maxed out, no msaa) = 47 fps
50% (rest is maxed out, no msaa) = 65 fps

Dictator
Could you guys please recheck the performance impact of Water Physics Settings, maybe this time at a river"ish" stream of water?
Sorry, but it's driving me insane.

Oh that is all apart of my video. Every. Single. Setting. Tested.

gabdeg · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
Oh that is all apart of my video. Every. Single. Setting. Tested.

Movie length vid confirmed

SleepSmasher · Nov 9, 2019

georaldc said:
Here's my attempt. Gsync does help a lot with this game

You can tell when gsync is active by looking at the upper left counter. That's my monitor's refresh rate. I apologize for my awful video editing skills though. In the split videos, VRR is the right side.

Nice job with the comparison!

Bradford · Nov 9, 2019

Frox said:
You're quite in luck since I had my CRT still hooked up.

I haven't tested 4:3 but 5:4 on 1280x1024 works fine. No dumb strechng either, it's properly supported.

Yay! Thanks!

SurrenderDorothy · Nov 9, 2019

The stuttering and me have become friends, folks. It only happens once or twice in a long session.
Still...it shouldn't happen regardless.

'good port'

Hierophant · Nov 9, 2019

This fucking game
I was running it fine on Vulkan last night, booting it up multiple times and I boot it up today and it's suddenly CTD everytime I try to start the game
What a fucking mess

Vintage · Nov 9, 2019

Installer: "Do you want desktop shortcut?"

Me: "Yes" *clicks on created shortcut*

Game: "Please run Red Dead Redemption 2 from the Rockstar Games Launcher"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Samaritan · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
Every. Single. Setting. Tested.

Premium Ghoul · Nov 9, 2019

georaldc said:
Here's my attempt. Gsync does help a lot with this game

You can tell when gsync is active by looking at the upper left counter. That's my monitor's refresh rate. I apologize for my awful video editing skills though. In the split videos, VRR is the right side.

G-sync/VRR is the fuckin best.

Also, same monitor! RDR2 looks extremely nice in ultrawide.

Cassius Bright · Nov 9, 2019

SleepSmasher said:
Latest Rockstar Games Launcher update basically fixed the crashes to desktop for me. Played for 3 hours or so and everything just miraculously worked.

By the way, for those who never saw G-Sync working or its "real life" benefits, here's an off-screen video shot at 4K/60 FPS. The game was running here at 3440x1440, mix of high and ultra settings, Vulkan, on a 1080 TI. I unfortunately turned off the RTSS HUD moments before and forgot to enable it while shooting the video, but rest assured, this whole segment was running at 45-50 FPS (max). You can see how smoothly G-Sync handles the sub-60 frame rate, basically looks like 60 FPS at all times. I'm happy now.

Are you using any special settings for G-Sync?

My tv recently added G-Sync support but I don't get anything like while it's enabled. As soon as the frame rate drops into the 50's, it becomes a stuttery mess, not the excellent smoothness shown in your vid.

Mecha Meister · Nov 9, 2019

Hierophant said:
This fucking game
I was running it fine on Vulkan last night, booting it up multiple times and I boot it up today and it's suddenly CTD everytime I try to start the game
What a fucking mess

Every time you start the game or load a save? I found that having the Particle Quality setting set to Ultra would lead to crashes when loading the game. I'm not sure if this has been patched yet.

PHOENIXZERO · Nov 9, 2019

Finally actually started playing, hard to go back to Vulkan because DX12 would just get stuck on the inital loading screen until it was black with just the revolver cylinder spinning, not going to go into settings and shit but I capped my framerate at 30FPS for the sake of my poor old OC'd to 4.5GHz 2500K and will probably just increase the graphic settings here and there, maybe see if my 1070 at 2.113GHz can handle a 1.5 resolution scale with my current settings.

Rbk_3 · Nov 9, 2019

DozyHoneyBadger said:
Are you using any special settings for G-Sync?

My tv recently added G-Sync support but I don't get anything like while it's enabled. As soon as the frame rate drops into the 50's, it becomes a stuttery mess, not the excellent smoothness shown in your vid.

If it's the C9, you definitely don't have something set up correctly.

Read through this guide

https://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings/

ss_lemonade · Nov 9, 2019

DozyHoneyBadger said:
Are you using any special settings for G-Sync?

My tv recently added G-Sync support but I don't get anything like while it's enabled. As soon as the frame rate drops into the 50's, it becomes a stuttery mess, not the excellent smoothness shown in your vid.

Are you using vulkan or dx12? For some reason, when using vulkan, not having vsync enabled stops gsync from working.

Detail · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
Oh that is all apart of my video. Every. Single. Setting. Tested.

Do you know if the Geometry Level of Detail is broken? There was a post earlier in the thread showing more details in the distance at lower settings despite the higher settings having a larger fps hit?

Cassius Bright · Nov 9, 2019

Rbk_3 said:
If it's the C9, you definitely don't have something set up correctly.

Read through this guide

https://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings/

It is the C9, will take a look at that guide!

georaldc said:
Are you using vulkan or dx12? For some reason, when using vulkan, not having vsync enabled stops gsync from working.

DX12 for now!

Thanks guys!

SleepSmasher · Nov 9, 2019

DozyHoneyBadger said:
It is the C9, will take a look at that guide!

DX12 for now!

Thanks guys!

Also, bear in mind that while that guide says to enable VSYNC globally and disable it in-game, RDR2 needs it enabled for some reason.

Dictator · Nov 9, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
Do you know if the Geometry Level of Detail is broken? There was a post earlier in the thread showing more details in the distance at lower settings despite the higher settings having a larger fps hit?

I did not find that at all in my tests - perhaps it could be for some scenes though. I used it to check out LOD fade distance.

SleepSmasher · Nov 9, 2019

By the way, scrap what I said earlier, fucking game is still CTDng randomly. Sometimes I can play for quite some time, sometimes it'll crash in 10 minutes.

Deleted member 17289 · Nov 9, 2019

I haven't had any crashes so far after playing for about 7 hours in total, however in the bottom part of my screen sometimes two black squares appear and other times a straight rainbow line, but they go away after 30 seconds or so, anyone else having these glitches?

Deleted member 17289 · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I did not find that at all in my tests - perhaps it could be for some scenes though. I used it to check out LOD fade distance.

Will your video be up this weekend?

Hierophant · Nov 9, 2019

Mecha Meister said:
Every time you start the game or load a save? I found that having the Particle Quality setting set to Ultra would lead to crashes when loading the game. I'm not sure if this has been patched yet.

Loading a save, swapped back to DX12 and getting normal (I guess) performance but on Vulkan last night I was getting at least 50fps in most areas and now it just won't work lol

Btw this reddit post has helped me a ton in regards to tweaking and I very much encourage everyone to crank up the settings they reccomend, it seemingly runs even better than when they were down

https://www.reddit.com/r/RDR2/comments/dsfy3g/settings_that_do_and_dont_affect_fps_performance/

Detail · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I did not find that at all in my tests - perhaps it could be for some scenes though. I used it to check out LOD fade distance.

I wasn't able to replicate it either but there were pictures earlier in the thread showing definite lack of detail around the train track at higher geometry settings which increased when lowering the slider.

Not sure what could be causing that for this particular user, post is below.

ThreepQuest64 said:
Also Geometry Level of Detail is broken. Highest setting actually removes objects from distance (maybe for accuracy?). Looks worse while performance worse.

Highest setting:

lowest setting:

Second lowest setting:

The higher the setting the more detail is lost in the distance. Look at the grass and bushes in the far, on the left, next to the rail tracks.

lorsel · Nov 9, 2019

DozyHoneyBadger said:
It is the C9, will take a look at that guide!

DX12 for now!

Thanks guys!

I would recommend to try vulkan while checking this out: https://www.resetera.com/threads/red-dead-redemption-ii-pc-performance-thread.151303/post-26248184
For Vulkan and VRR turn on VSYNC ingame and in the Nvidia control panel.

Vulkan seem to run more stable, and with DX12 on my C9+VRR i sometimes had strange framerate drops, which i dont have with vulkan.

Dictator · Nov 9, 2019

dEvAnGeL said:
Will your video be up this weekend?

I am hoping for today - it is a lot though. I hope people in the end can appreciate the amount of hours (and frustration, honestly) that can go into such a thing.

Deleted member 17289 · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I am hoping for today - it is a lot though. I hope people in the end can appreciate the amount of hours (and frustration, honestly) that can go into such a thing.

We do, we are frustrated and we're not testing everything so the effort you put in is definitely appreciated.

Samaritan · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I am hoping for today - it is a lot though. I hope people in the end can appreciate the amount of hours (and frustration, honestly) that can go into such a thing.

I can't even begin to imagine. The fact alone that I couldn't run more than two or three benchmarks in a row without restarting drove me up the wall. You're doing incredible, invaluable work and I appreciate all of the time and effort you're putting into making this video!

Cassius Bright · Nov 9, 2019

lorsel said:
I would recommend to try vulkan while checking this out: https://www.resetera.com/threads/red-dead-redemption-ii-pc-performance-thread.151303/post-26248184
For Vulkan and VRR turn on VSYNC ingame and in the Nvidia control panel.

Vulkan seem to run more stable, and with DX12 on my C9+VRR i sometimes had strange framerate drops, which i dont have with vulkan.

I'm on a 2080ti, would that fix improve things? I thought the async compute setting was for AMD GPU's?

SleepSmasher · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I am hoping for today - it is a lot though. I hope people in the end can appreciate the amount of hours (and frustration, honestly) that can go into such a thing.

Probably the hardest video you guys ever made if I had to guess? Can't imagine the amount of work put into it.

SurrenderDorothy · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
I am hoping for today - it is a lot though. I hope people in the end can appreciate the amount of hours (and frustration, honestly) that can go into such a thing.

I know I do. Results may be varied everywhere but it's not like I'm testing as many rigs as you are lol. I always appreciate the work DF does.

All I hope for are some patches soon to iron out some issues.

lorsel · Nov 9, 2019

DozyHoneyBadger said:
I'm on a 2080ti, would that fix improve things? I thought the async compute setting was for AMD GPU's?

Hmm, i'm on a 2080ti too, but with an I7-6700K. Didn't know that it is for AMD GPU's. Whatever, it runs perfectly for me with VRR now.

Isee · Nov 9, 2019

Dictator said:
Oh that is all apart of my video. Every. Single. Setting. Tested.

👍

Zojirushi · Nov 9, 2019

So how are 980Tis holding up @1080p and reasonable settings?

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