Red Dead Redemption 2: GPU requirements and performance
Still one of the most demanding pure-rasterisation workloads available, with no ray tracing to muddy the comparison. That makes it a clean way to judge raw graphics-card throughput, particularly at 4K.
What actually limits performance here
The part that generic system requirements never tell you.
- There is no ray tracing, so results reflect rasterisation performance alone.
- The Ultra preset is disproportionately expensive; several settings cost a lot of frame rate for very little visible difference.
- DLSS and FSR are both available and are the practical route to 4K on mid-range hardware.
- The Vulkan and DirectX 12 back-ends can behave differently on the same hardware.
Published system requirements
The publisher's own figures. They describe a baseline, not the hardware needed for high settings at a high frame rate.
| Tier | Graphics card | Processor | Memory | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB | Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300 | 8 GB | Not stated |
| Recommended | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB | Intel Core i7-4770K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X | 12 GB | Not stated |
Technologies supported
Which vendor features this title implements, which decides how much your graphics card's feature set is worth here.
Ray tracing
Not supportedNo ray tracing mode, so results reflect rasterisation only.
DLSS
SupportedNVIDIA cards can render at a lower internal resolution and reconstruct the image.
FSR
SupportedAMD's upscaler is available, and works on other vendors' hardware in its earlier versions.
XeSS
Not supportedNot implemented.
Frame generation
Not supportedNot implemented, so a card's frame generation support is irrelevant here.
Reserved advertising space. No advertising network is connected yet, so nothing is served here.
Estimated
Which graphics card do you need for Red Dead Redemption 2?
The least expensive in-production cards whose estimated frame rate in this title is centred at or above 60 FPS, at High settings with no upscaling. The range shown for each card is the model's uncertainty band, so the lower bound can fall under 60.
Modelled from the estimated performance index and this title’s demand classification. Not a measured benchmark. How the model works.
1080p
Around 60 FPS, High settings, no upscaling
1440p
Around 60 FPS, High settings, no upscaling
- Arc B580
$249 MSRP · estimated 50-70 FPS
- RX 9060 XT 8GB
$299 MSRP · estimated 55-80 FPS
- RTX 5060
$299 MSRP · estimated 50-75 FPS
4K
Around 60 FPS, High settings, no upscaling
- RX 9070
$549 MSRP · estimated 50-70 FPS
- RX 9070 XT
$599 MSRP · estimated 60-85 FPS
- RTX 5070 Ti
$749 MSRP · estimated 60-90 FPS
Measured
Verified benchmark data
Frame-rate figures transcribed from named third-party measurements.
No verified benchmark data for this game yet
CompareYourGPU only publishes frame-rate figures it can attribute to a named, linkable measurement. None have been transcribed for Red Dead Redemption 2 yet, so nothing is shown here rather than numbers that would look authoritative without being verifiable.
Red Dead Redemption 2: common questions
What are the recommended system requirements for Red Dead Redemption 2?
Does Red Dead Redemption 2 support ray tracing?
Does Red Dead Redemption 2 support DLSS, FSR or XeSS?
How demanding is Red Dead Redemption 2?
Sources
- Steam store pagePublisher-stated system requirements for Red Dead Redemption 2
Last reviewed . Demand classifications are CompareYourGPU’s editorial judgement, not measurements.