How to increase Performance/FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Red Dead Redemption 2 PC port released on November 5, 2019. The PC community was hyped enough to preload the game and start streaming the game unlock countdown. Huge streamers like Shroud, Lirik and many others streamed the game upon release. However, the hype turned into a nightmare when even the latest RTX series cards couldn't handle the game on max settings.

The recommended graphics card for Red Dead Redemption 2 is GTX 1060 6 GB variant. Which already shows how demanding Red Dead 2 is and how much of a monster pc you need to play it on 4K resolution. Since not everyone can afford an expensive gaming rig, we at Sportskeeda are here to help you all out with a settings guide which can bring out the maximum performance in your respected cards.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Graphic Settings Recommendation by Nvidia.

Before Jumping into the settings guide make sure to complete the things mentioned down below.

• Update your graphics driver to the latest version. Nvidia and AMD both have released new drivers for their cards optimized especially to run Red Dead Redemption 2. For further clarity, the drivers are versioned as Nvidia Game Ready Driver 441.12 and AMD Adrenalin 19.11.1.
• Open your graphics control panel and in 3D settings change to the performance mode from quality mode.
• Overclock your graphics card using MSI Afterburner or any other software of your preference.

Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Now that all of that is done let's move on to the graphics settings needed to boost your performance in the game.

(Note: This guide focuses on increasing performance on Nvidia's 10 and 20 series and the similar AMD equivalents. If you have a lower model then the best thing to get the best performance is to run the game on 720p and low settings).

Red Dead Redemption 2 has a lot of graphical settings which doesn't make a huge visual impact on the game but does in the performance. We are going to turn off such settings to get more fps.

• Far Shadow Quality: Low
• Long Shadows: off
• Shadow Quality: Medium or Low

Both of the above-mentioned settings generally focuses on shadows creating during sunrise and sunset which is not needed. Shadow quality in games is used to produce a more crisp and realistic shadow from 3D objects. You can turn it to low or medium as it hampers the performance of your game the most.

Red Dead Redemption 2 lighting and reflection settings like Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Reflection quality etc impacts the performance. However, they also impact how your game looks. So, if you want the game to look good don't turn them on low or off. For performance and quality sake medium is the best option.

Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Now it's time for the graphics settings which impacts the performance the most. MSAA is known as Multisample Anti-Aliasing impacts the gaming performance the most. It's a setting which can be found quite easily in Rockstar Games franchises. MSAA is a special case of supersampling which renders the game scene at a higher resolution. Use the below-mentioned settings to increase your performance by a huge amount.

• MSAA: off
• FXAA: 4x or 8x
• Unlocked Volumetric Raymarch Resolution: off.

Red Dead Redemption 2 offers two graphics API's namely Vulkan and DX12. People with Nvidia's graphics cards are supposed to run the game in DX12 while the one with AMD cards is supposed to run the game with Vulkan. However, in my RTX 2060 and RTX 2080 MAX Q cards I got more fps on Vulkan. So, I would prefer using Vulkan over DX12 to get a performance boost.

We will create a video tutorial to simplify the settings guide. Meanwhile, stick to SportsKeeda for more on Red Dead Redemption 2 and other games news and updates.