Launching the #CPUOverload Project: Testing Every x86 Desktop Processor since 2010
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 20, 2020 1:30 PM ESTGaming Tests: Red Dead Redemption 2
It’s great to have another Rockstar benchmark in the mix, and the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) on the PC gives us a chance to do that. Building on the success of the original RDR, the second incarnation came to Steam in December 2019 having been released on consoles first. The PC version takes the open-world cowboy genre into the start of the modern age, with a wide array of impressive graphics and features that are eerily close to reality.
For RDR2, Rockstar kept the same benchmark philosophy as with Grand Theft Auto V, with the benchmark consisting of several cut scenes with different weather and lighting effects, with a final scene focusing on an on-rails environment, only this time with mugging a shop leading to a shootout on horseback before riding over a bridge into the great unknown. Luckily most of the command line options from GTA V are present here, and the game also supports resolution scaling. We have the following tests:
- 384p Minimum
- 1440p Minimum
- 8K Minimum
- 1080p Max
For that 8K setting, I originally thought I had the settings file at 4K and 1.0x scaling, but it was actually set at 2.0x giving that 8K. For the sake of it, I decided to keep the 8K settings.
For automation, despite RDR2 taking a lot of inspiration from GTA V in its command line options and benchmark, the only feature it didn’t take was the actual flag that runs the benchmark. As a result, we have to use key presses on loading into the game in order to run the benchmark and get the data. It’s also worth noting that the benchmark results file is only dumped after the game has quit, which can cause issues in scripting when dealing with pauses (slow CPUs take a long time to load the test). The settings file accepts our pre-prepared versions along with the command line for ignoring new hardware, and the output files when you get them have all the frame times as required.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
110 Comments
View All Comments
29a - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Please remove Egomark from the benchmark list.Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link
Why?Mr Perfect - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Reading through the OS preparation section, I kind of wonder if setting up a domain would be helpful?Joining a test PC to a domain would allow all of those settings to be configured through GPO instead of running tons of batch files and scripts. You'd also gain the ability to point Windows Update at a WSUS server, where you control what updates are even shown to the PC (in your case, probably none). Throw in the ability to remotely run scripts with Domain Administrator accounts, and you could probably skip around those UAC prompts too.
It would be a lot of setup the first time around, but it does point to that automation-eventually-pays-off thing.
Icehawk - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Very cool!Would like to see your handbrake HEVC encoding done via software with no vendor encoder - it’s the only way you guys can be getting those crazy fps numbers. I don’t want to see how a vendor encoder runs, I want to see how the CPU runs - and those hardware ones are still worse than software so I do not use them even though it is a massive speed boost.
extide - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Using vector instructions like AVX is still "software" encoding. It's fully CPU, and not at all a lower quality hardware encoder.faizoff - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Until I upgraded from an HD 6870 to an RX 580 recently I had no idea GPUs had dedicated encoders. I've tried them and they are definitely faster than the CPU, the same file that I tried got well over 40 fps compared to the 5 fps when choosing the CPU encoder.The caveat was that the GPU encoded files were much larger in size with comparable quality.
lmcd - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
There's ways to push file size back down afaik.Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link
Not with hardware encoding.jaminvi - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Looks great from here. Good cross section of test. Looking forward to it.catavalon21 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
This is outstanding. Very much like the stuff on this site back in this site's early days, like comparing Pentium performance with and without MMX. Comparing the performance between VX and HX chipsets. Tip of the hat, old man.