While the original Red Dead Redemption never made its way over to PC, Rockstar's lengthy prequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, has made the jump today. The game already had very impressive visuals on console hardware but now on PC, we have the opportunity to push things even further, or fine tune settings for better performance. In-fact, adjustability is huge in this game, with over 20 different graphics presets and even more individual options.
After sitting through the lengthy pre-load decryption process and the additional 3GB day-one patch, we were finally able to launch Red Dead Redemption 2 this afternoon. The game defaults to using the Vulkan API but in the advanced settings menu, you can switch over to DirectX 12 based on preference. If you don't fancy tinkering with all of the individual graphics options yourself, there is a preset slider with 20 different options, so you can slide down for higher performance or up for higher image quality.
Check out the gallery below to see the full graphics options menu:
One of the big upgrades many of us are looking forward to in the PC version is higher frame rate. Red Dead Redemption 2 felt sluggish at times on console but on PC, you have the option to push out as many frames per second as your hardware is capable of. It can be a tough game to run with everything cranked up to the max, in one of our quick initial benchmarks, we managed a 93fps average on an RTX 2080Ti at 1080p using Vulkan and an 88fps average using DirectX 12. This is just an initial performance test though, we will have a wider range of benchmark results soon.
Just like GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2 does include a built-in benchmark tool so you can get a good feel for performance before loading into the main game. If you are planning on picking the game up this week, then be sure to upgrade your GPU drivers, as both Nvidia and AMD have rolled out day-one updates for this game.
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KitGuru Says: Are any of you diving into Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC this afternoon? How is the game running for you so far?