Red Dead Redemption 2 PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

CPU Performance – Does Red Dead Redemption 2 require a high core count system? 

We will start by noting that our Intel i7-6850K processor is not fast by today’s standards. However, we feel it is a great processor for this kind of testing. Not every PC gamer has an i9-9900K or a Ryzen 9 3900X. Many of us are using older processors, and when testing games we should see how well they run on older CPUs. 

In our testing, we found that Red Dead Redemption 2 benefits from higher CPU cores/thread counts. When moving to four cores with SMT/Hyperthreading disabled, Red Dead Redemption 2 started to stutter, resulting in terrible 99% frametimes and sub-60FPS 95% frametimes. Red Dead Redemption 2 is best played on a processor with four cores and eight threads or better, that said, lower graphical settings will help reduce CPU loads, making quad-core CPUs a lot more usable.