Gaming 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 our results, we run through each resolution and setting configuration for a minimum of 10 minutes, before averaging and parsing the frame time data.

AnandTech Low Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Low Quality
High Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Max Quality
Average FPS
95th Percentile

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Gaming Tests: GTA 5 Gaming Tests: Strange Brigade
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  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Worse.

    Bulldozer came from a money-starved little company, a company that couldn’t capitalize on having the superior design because of Intel’s monopolization.

    This chip is from the big rich company that stomped on AMD with dirty tricks.

    So, no. As stupid as Bulldozer was, this CPU seems to be quite a bit more unjustified.
  • ThereSheGoes - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Well, the results in this article are clearly not just wrong, but very wrong. https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hard...
  • Bagheera - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    did you even read the article you linked? it's taking 5800X in most benchmarks just like the Anandtech review.

    if you mean the gaming benches in the other review - 3 games is a terrible sample size and it still loses to 5800x in 2 out of 3.
  • Beaver M. - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Look at the results with the new BIOS.
    This review here is obsolete.
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link

    LOL. Fanboy delusion.

    First off, let's take a quick looksie at the Cinebench R20 results:
    https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hard...
    When switching from BIOS version 0402 to 0603, the 11700K's single-threaded performance actually DROPS from a score of 609 to 600. And its multicore performance is still less than the 10900K and the 5800X.
    Switching gears, the games are no less unflattering:
    https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hard...
    The 11700K there, regardless of which of the two BIOS releases it uses, often loses to the 10900K and Ryzen 5000 series. It loses to the Ryzen 5000 series and 10900K in THREE out of the four games: The Division 2, Metro Exodus, The Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

    In short: dude, what are you smoking?
  • Beaver M. - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    As expected new reviews with newer BIOS versions improve performance significantly and puts the numbers to expected levels as well.
    This was a quick shot of a review and I fear it has tainted Cutress reputation a lot, especially because he defended it that much, even on video.
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    With what power consumption?

    Raising performance by pushing power even higher may improve things like FPS in gaming tests but it obscures the big picture.

    Want to talk about reputation? Remember the giant fridge-sized chiller Intel surreptitiously used to give a benchmark demo? Or, remember the ‘GenuineIntel’ fiasco? Or, remember the cute trick of putting a black box CPU inside the one people pay for, so that only special customers get the option of avoiding that particular spyware?

    Somehow I think the writers here are going to be very hard pressed to challenge Intel in the cheatiness department, even without mentioning Intel’s history of abusing its monopoly power via OEM deals and the like.
  • Qasar - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Oxford Guy you forgot about how intel kept saying that 10 nm is " on track " the last 3-4 years :-)
  • Qasar - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Beaver M
    " new reviews with newer BIOS versions improve performance significantly " from what i can tell from the graphs, for the most part, while performance may have improved over previous gen, it looks like it still looses to zen 3, but definitely not significantly, and still using more power then zen 3 overall, not that much of an improvement. a little upset that intel didnt get any performance crowns back, maybe, and that rocket lake still looks to be a dud ?
  • Bagheera - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link

    I fail to see the performance improvements in this other review. the games chosen were different (only 3 games? really?), and still lost to 5800X in 2/3.

    is it just "better" relative to last gen performance? the other review only tested a single resolution (and again, 3 whole games!)

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