Red Dead Redemption 2

FX-8350 / GTX 970 4gb checking in....

I actually just purchased the MSI GTX 970 used. I was using an EVGA GTX 960 2gb FTW, but the vram was forcing me in to "low" textures. You don't want to play this game with the low texture setting, at least I didn't. I'd almost say all the other settings are superfluous and will be fine on Medium or Low, but you need to at least have medium textures to really enjoy the experience.

My PC is sort of a miracle, I was gaming on a AMD 1090T until earlier this year - I'm locked in to the AM3+ socket on my mobo. Im staving off until I decide to get a completely new computer, probably after next summer and another round of RTX cards.

I grabbed the FX-8350 for $80 and it paved the way for... a G-Sync enabled ASUS ROG PG248q 1080p monitor. And in the months following those purchases my gaming experience was great even on the GTX 960.

The 970 I bought was $120, which in my budget is not a major expense and was justifiable. I thought about shoving a 1660Ti in there, but... bottlenecking. And Ray Tracing. The same guy also had a 1060 6g for sale for $180 but then...why wouldn't I just spend another $70 for the 1660Ti... and at that point why not suck it up and get a 2060 Super.... I wanted to spend as little as possible to clear the bar, essentially. I'm anticipating this hardware will finally say goodnight once Cyberpunk 2077 releases, but that's fine with me. Two gaming PC's are better than one anyway, right?

Anyway now I'm sitting pretty with High textures, a mix of high and medium settings, and an FPS average around 30-40, which is totally playable in this game. (Last benchmark I ran was - Min: 12fps Max: 60fps Avg:40fps) And the game is absolutely gorgeous if you take the time to find the right mix of graphics settings.

I'm using FXAA with a light amount of TAA. Yes it produces a sort of smudgy look but it's not pronounced enough to ruin my experience, and its better than seeing all those jaggies on the trees. My soft shadows are turned on, so medium shadows look pretty decent. Edit: Screenshots are pretty misleading for this title because there is LOTS of movement, literally almost everything is moving at all times: rabbits duck through the grass, trees sway, clouds move and so do the shadows and light with them. You will be really hard pressed to actually notice any kind of heavy anti-aliasing you apply.

Some might just have to accept that only the beefy-est rigs that are going to handle MSAA on this title. Such was the case when GTAV was released until the next round or two of GPUs came around.

As much as I'd love to experience a solid 60FPS experience, if even the newest hardware released this year is having trouble, then I'm totally happy with what I got for what I've spent (my PC is essentially seven years old, upgraded component by component).

If you aren't gaming on a screen syncing technology, now is the time to consider getting there. Like someone stated before, it really helps turn a choppy 30-60fps experience in to something smooth. I might dabble in the online mode, but I have no posse... I got this game for the narrative. Literally grinning ear to ear from the experience Rockstar has crafted.

And as an added bonus, now I'm probably going to see 144fps gameplay in the majority of the rest of my collection.

If you are having a hard time, start with basics, disable any secondary monitors, update drivers. Bring your settings down to low and go up from there. I feel like the benchmark is more about measuring the visual fidelity than the framerate. I feel like I haven't had any noticeable dips in to that minimum the benchmark states. I even had the average go down after lowering a setting. As is customary, for best results, restart you game after applying graphics settings. I turned off TAA once during my game and it slaughtered my fps.

The lesson here? If I had just spent the extra 120 dollars in the first place and gotten a 970 instead of the 960, I would have been set. smh, because the 4gb 960 came out maybe only a month after I got my 2gb one. And that is where I came to the conclusion to not try and spend more for the 1000 series generation, and instead save up for a new, high end computer that will actually be future-minded. In the end the math worked for me and if you are in a similar situation thinking you need a whole new computer, maybe this will indicate otherwise to you.


Kudo's for tweaking it and having it run good on that hardware... I was wondering if people were out there running it on pre Ryzen CPU's. You also may be able to squeeze some more performance out of that 970 by looking for an older 2600k/mobo combo, or 3770/4770. But at any rate, that's pretty awesome and goes to show you can get stuff running good on older hardware if you take the time to make the right adjustments while keeping the game looking good.
 
This is why controller and mouse is a thing ;).

Microsoft is enforcing a new standard in DX12 that requires the HDR setting in the Windows Display Settings to be enabled. It's the same way in Gears 5 and Modern Warfare. It actually has solved the issue I would sometimes get of a game just refusing to go into HDR. I've even had a Microsoft game (Horizon 4) simply toggle the global HDR setting instead of checking its state, resulting in the option I had enabled being disabled when the game started.

Thanks for the info Arm-So, does enabling HDR in windows provide a better visual experience and overall better picture? I always thought it made things look worse especially with text in Windows? Wonder if I should just keep it disabled and continue to use Vulkan as I have not encountered any issues with running it
 
Kudo's for tweaking it and having it run good on that hardware... I was wondering if people were out there running it on pre Ryzen CPU's. You also may be able to squeeze some more performance out of that 970 by looking for an older 2600k/mobo combo, or 3770/4770. But at any rate, that's pretty awesome and goes to show you can get stuff running good on older hardware if you take the time to make the right adjustments while keeping the game looking good.

Thanks Dave! It’s definitely about setting realistic expectations too. We all love firing up a game, maxing out the settings, and hitting play but that has never been the case for me in Rockstar games. All told I still have spent less than I probably would for a full new pc or console+TV+subscription(!?) (I sure love pc gaming). That said, if you’ve been sitting on that hardware since it came out, look for something new. I’ve been trying to stay with my rig for too long now, but I am truly impressed with how well it’s held up.
 
Thanks for the info Arm-So, does enabling HDR in windows provide a better visual experience and overall better picture? I always thought it made things look worse especially with text in Windows? Wonder if I should just keep it disabled and continue to use Vulkan as I have not encountered any issues with running it

It depends on how good your calibration is on your panel for SDR mode. In HDR mode the colors, for most people, will have less contrast because all the data is being passed to your panel without any 'enhancements' many like to have in SDR mode.
 
Thanks Dave! It’s definitely about setting realistic expectations too. We all love firing up a game, maxing out the settings, and hitting play but that has never been the case for me in Rockstar games. All told I still have spent less than I probably would for a full new pc or console+TV+subscription(!?) (I sure love pc gaming). That said, if you’ve been sitting on that hardware since it came out, look for something new. I’ve been trying to stay with my rig for too long now, but I am truly impressed with how well it’s held up.

most people’s rigs could probably last a lot longer if settings were tweaked, but most jump into the latest hardware, which granted is why this forum exists because we all love playing with the latest hardware.
 
Thanks for the info Arm-So, does enabling HDR in windows provide a better visual experience and overall better picture? I always thought it made things look worse especially with text in Windows? Wonder if I should just keep it disabled and continue to use Vulkan as I have not encountered any issues with running it
For content consumption outside of entertainment with HDR I turn it off. Almost everything in Windows still uses sRGB, so with HDR you just end up with oversaturation. In some SDR games the increased contrast with HDR is a boon, though. It really depends. For desktop application use and web browsing, though, it's always off.
 
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For content consumption outside of entertainment with HDR I turn it off. Almost everything in Windows still uses sRGB, so with HDR you just end up with oversaturation. In some SDR games the increased contrast with HDR is a boon, though. It really depends. For desktop application use and web browsing, though, it's always off.

This is not how I experience HDR in Windows 10 w/ my HDR display. Windows keeps SDR content (Basically everything) within the SDR colorspace, and that gets passed with the proper fixed brightness to your HDR display as the HDR signal.

If your display is setup right, HDR mode in windows should shouldn't look over-saturated at all. It should look normal, to the point that a lot of people won't like it because a properly setup HDR panel shouldn't be applying different calibration over the HDR source.
 
This is not how I experience HDR in Windows 10 w/ my HDR display. Windows keeps SDR content (Basically everything) within the SDR colorspace, and that gets passed with the proper fixed brightness to your HDR display as the HDR signal.

If your display is setup right, HDR mode in windows should shouldn't look over-saturated at all. It should look normal, to the point that a lot of people won't like it because a properly setup HDR panel shouldn't be applying different calibration over the HDR source.
Thats not the experience I got when I tried it.
It didnt look bad but it was no where near normal, way too strong colours on the desktop. Using a Samsung Q9FN TV and 1080ti with no driver image quality tweaks, completely default.

Thanks for the info Arm-So, does enabling HDR in windows provide a better visual experience and overall better picture? I always thought it made things look worse especially with text in Windows? Wonder if I should just keep it disabled and continue to use Vulkan as I have not encountered any issues with running it

As Armenius said, disable HDR when you are not playing a game or movie that uses it.
 
Thats not the experience I got when I tried it.
It didnt look bad but it was no where near normal, way too strong colours on the desktop. Using a Samsung Q9FN TV and 1080ti with no driver image quality tweaks, completely default.



As Armenius said, disable HDR when you are not playing a game or movie that uses it.

It may be because your TV is applying different things to the image. On my X27, when it receives a HDR signal, it's displaying only what it gets. You can't adjust contrast/etc.
 
It may be because your TV is applying different things to the image. On my X27, when it receives a HDR signal, it's displaying only what it gets. You can't adjust contrast/etc.
It uses the exact same settings as HDR games, they look bang on correct, really good HDR.
All the settings can be changed, nothing is greyed out. It has different settings for HDR modes, it doesnt use those of SDR.
 
I'm pretty sure the guy who voiced Arthur and whomever in the main cast had to do certain dialogues 2 or 3 times in different tones.

If you're on a horse chatting with someone on a horse next to you, Arthur's voice is low tone.

But as soon as you gain distance, he starts raising his voice to even yelling the same dialogue.

Pretty in depth I'd say.
 
Anybody know what causes all my equipped guns (except pistol) to sometimes disappear when I get off my horse?
I know you store some guns on your horse but 1 second I got em on my back and the next, I hop off and they're gone.
 
Anybody know what causes all my equipped guns (except pistol) to sometimes disappear when I get off my horse?
I know you store some guns on your horse but 1 second I got em on my back and the next, I hop off and they're gone.

I forget the precise specifics of how it works, but basically your character can and will auto-store the long gun back on the horse. You just gotta make sure you pull it out before you get off (even if you had it when you got back on.)
 
Ok, I finally got around to the BIOS update which fixed the launch issue. First benchmark run, I set everything to Ultra @1440P, as well I used 2x MSAA and disabled TAA. It ran "smooth" which is good, because I was expecting to get demolished. A few notes, this was using DX12, and I used the Ultra Preset, but turned off TAA and enabled 2x MSAA, and anything else that could go higher I did. Specs of my rig:

Ryzen 3700X (stock)
MSI Gaming Pro Carbon
Corsair H150i
32GB DDR4 3600 Corsair C18
1TB Corsair 4th Gen PCIe
Gigabyte RX 5700 XT 8GB (latest drivers)

There was one pause in the bench mark, when he's escaping on horse through town, the benchmark literally paused for at least 1 second, almost like a mid benchmark loading. Then it continued without issue, and I'm assuming this accounts for the 2fps minimum. The benchmark ran pretty good, as you can see my averages are in the higher 30's. I'm currently using the Asus PG279Q which is a G-Sync monitor, so I'm going to hook up a Freesync 2 monitor and see if that helps. I know the Freesync is good between 48-165 so I may have to adjust some settings to get in between those lines.

I've made some edits to this post, because the original benchmark run put out 58 average, but I knew that didn't seem right. Turns out the Ultra settings didn't stick, and after re-adjusting RDR2 crashed in the settings menu. I then went back in, made sure everything was set to ultra, and I mean everything... water reflections, and physics etc... and so this is the result at 1440P.

Can anyone who runs with MSAA on, tell me if you also use TAA because I noticed during the benchmark in Valentine, I could see jaggies... which I thought MSAA was going to take care of? So is 2x doing nothing, or do I need to add in TAA?

Oh, and I love the flat looking tree foliage... :rolleyes:

Overall I'm happy with the result, but obviously I won't run the game like this, I'd like to be in the steady 55-60 range. I'll have to do some searching online and see what the different settings do, I'm sure a few of the Ultra settings impact FPS quite a bit while not really giving a huge enhancements over high or maybe even medium. Like the water physics. Actually... I bet our FPS tanks because of the horse balls physics? :LOL:

rdr2_bench.png
 
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Ok, I finally got around to the BIOS update which fixed the launch issue. First benchmark run, I set everything to Ultra @1440P, as well I used 2x MSAA and disabled TAA. It ran "smooth" which is good, because I was expecting to get demolished. A few notes, this was using DX12, and I used the Ultra Preset, but turned off TAA and enabled 2x MSAA, and anything else that could go higher I did. Specs of my rig:

Ryzen 3700X (stock)
MSI Gaming Pro Carbon
Corsair H150i
32GB DDR4 3600 Corsair C18
1TB Corsair 4th Gen PCIe
Gigabyte RX 5700 XT 8GB (latest drivers)

There was one pause in the bench mark, when he's escaping on horse through town, the benchmark literally paused for at least 1 second, almost like a mid benchmark loading. Then it continued without issue, and I'm assuming this accounts for the 2fps minimum. The benchmark ran pretty good, as you can see my averages are in the higher 30's. I'm currently using the Asus PG279Q which is a G-Sync monitor, so I'm going to hook up a Freesync 2 monitor and see if that helps. I know the Freesync is good between 48-165 so I may have to adjust some settings to get in between those lines.

I've made some edits to this post, because the original benchmark run put out 58 average, but I knew that didn't seem right. Turns out the Ultra settings didn't stick, and after re-adjusting RDR2 crashed in the settings menu. I then went back in, made sure everything was set to ultra, and I mean everything... water reflections, and physics etc... and so this is the result at 1440P.

Can anyone who runs with MSAA on, tell me if you also use TAA because I noticed during the benchmark in Valentine, I could see jaggies... which I thought MSAA was going to take care of? So is 2x doing nothing, or do I need to add in TAA?

Oh, and I love the flat looking tree foliage... :rolleyes:

Overall I'm happy with the result, but obviously I won't run the game like this, I'd like to be in the steady 55-60 range. I'll have to do some searching online and see what the different settings do, I'm sure a few of the Ultra settings impact FPS quite a bit while not really giving a huge enhancements over high or maybe even medium. Like the water physics. Actually... I bet our FPS tanks because of the horse balls physics? :LOL:

View attachment 18294

I've been seeing so many articles stating they can't see a difference between high and ultra..
And high will probably net you another 20 frames..just a heads up.
 
Holy crap the Epic game launcher is terrible.

Played for about 30 min and requested a refund. Will wait for Steam and a newer gfx card.
 
You realize its the rockstar game launcher that is the issue? You still need to use it when you get it on steam.
I mean the Epic launcher looks and runs like ass. Don't want any part of it at this time.

The game itself ran fine stability wise after restarting my PC.
 
I mean the Epic launcher looks and runs like ass. Don't want any part of it at this time.

The game itself ran fine stability wise after restarting my PC.


You literally need or use the launcher for one thing... to press play. 0_o
If the game ran smooth, it did its part.

What on earth else do you need it to do?
 
I know this is blasphemy, but I'm gonna wait 2-ish weeks to let them iron out the initial "kinks".

I've waited wayyyyyy too long to play this and there's no way I'm tolerating any teething shenanigans.

I hate being right sometimes..
 
My god the controls in this game are abysmal. So clunky and laggy.

And full-screen mode isn't real working full screen, leading to stutters. Epic fail developers.
 
GTA 4 came out like 10 years ago and it's still trash on PC.
Play now or never. Or just wait a decade and brute force it with new hardware.

I guess with the steam version you can spend 2 hours benchmarking and get a refund if you don't like it.
 
My god the controls in this game are abysmal. So clunky and laggy.

And full-screen mode isn't real working full screen, leading to stutters. Epic fail developers.


This is what every one says in their first 10 minutes of gameplay.

And then a few hours kick in and it's not so bad...
 
My god the controls in this game are abysmal. So clunky and laggy.

And full-screen mode isn't real working full screen, leading to stutters. Epic fail developers.
Full screen is working on my setup, but the game has issues with many setups right now.
 
My god the controls in this game are abysmal. So clunky and laggy.

And full-screen mode isn't real working full screen, leading to stutters. Epic fail developers.
Was the same on PS4, too. You just need to get used to it.
 
FX-8350 / GTX 970 4gb checking in....

I actually just purchased the MSI GTX 970 used. I was using an EVGA GTX 960 2gb FTW, but the vram was forcing me in to "low" textures. You don't want to play this game with the low texture setting, at least I didn't. I'd almost say all the other settings are superfluous and will be fine on Medium or Low, but you need to at least have medium textures to really enjoy the experience.

My PC is sort of a miracle, I was gaming on a AMD 1090T until earlier this year - I'm locked in to the AM3+ socket on my mobo. Im staving off until I decide to get a completely new computer, probably after next summer and another round of RTX cards.

I grabbed the FX-8350 for $80 and it paved the way for... a G-Sync enabled ASUS ROG PG248q 1080p monitor. And in the months following those purchases my gaming experience was great even on the GTX 960.

The 970 I bought was $120, which in my budget is not a major expense and was justifiable. I thought about shoving a 1660Ti in there, but... bottlenecking. And Ray Tracing. The same guy also had a 1060 6g for sale for $180 but then...why wouldn't I just spend another $70 for the 1660Ti... and at that point why not suck it up and get a 2060 Super.... I wanted to spend as little as possible to clear the bar, essentially. I'm anticipating this hardware will finally say goodnight once Cyberpunk 2077 releases, but that's fine with me. Two gaming PC's are better than one anyway, right?

Anyway now I'm sitting pretty with High textures, a mix of high and medium settings, and an FPS average around 30-40, which is totally playable in this game. (Last benchmark I ran was - Min: 12fps Max: 60fps Avg:40fps) And the game is absolutely gorgeous if you take the time to find the right mix of graphics settings.

I'm using FXAA with a light amount of TAA. Yes it produces a sort of smudgy look but it's not pronounced enough to ruin my experience, and its better than seeing all those jaggies on the trees. My soft shadows are turned on, so medium shadows look pretty decent. Edit: Screenshots are pretty misleading for this title because there is LOTS of movement, literally almost everything is moving at all times: rabbits duck through the grass, trees sway, clouds move and so do the shadows and light with them. You will be really hard pressed to actually notice any kind of heavy anti-aliasing you apply.

Some might just have to accept that only the beefy-est rigs that are going to handle MSAA on this title. Such was the case when GTAV was released until the next round or two of GPUs came around.

As much as I'd love to experience a solid 60FPS experience, if even the newest hardware released this year is having trouble, then I'm totally happy with what I got for what I've spent (my PC is essentially seven years old, upgraded component by component).

If you aren't gaming on a screen syncing technology, now is the time to consider getting there. Like someone stated before, it really helps turn a choppy 30-60fps experience in to something smooth. I might dabble in the online mode, but I have no posse... I got this game for the narrative. Literally grinning ear to ear from the experience Rockstar has crafted.

And as an added bonus, now I'm probably going to see 144fps gameplay in the majority of the rest of my collection.

If you are having a hard time, start with basics, disable any secondary monitors, update drivers. Bring your settings down to low and go up from there. I feel like the benchmark is more about measuring the visual fidelity than the framerate. I feel like I haven't had any noticeable dips in to that minimum the benchmark states. I even had the average go down after lowering a setting. As is customary, for best results, restart you game after applying graphics settings. I turned off TAA once during my game and it slaughtered my fps.

The lesson here? If I had just spent the extra 120 dollars in the first place and gotten a 970 instead of the 960, I would have been set. smh, because the 4gb 960 came out maybe only a month after I got my 2gb one. And that is where I came to the conclusion to not try and spend more for the 1000 series generation, and instead save up for a new, high end computer that will actually be future-minded. In the end the math worked for me and if you are in a similar situation thinking you need a whole new computer, maybe this will indicate otherwise to you.

That's impressive. Makes me almost want to get my old 8320 and GTX 970 back out just to see how well I can get it running on that.
 
I've been seeing so many articles stating they can't see a difference between high and ultra..
And high will probably net you another 20 frames..just a heads up.
Seems like water physics is done on the CPU and is a major contributor to poor frames and stutter. Turning it down gives you a major improvement.
 
Ok maybe not 144 fps in my other title like I said earlier haha. But definitely 60+ fps.

I’m happy to report that the people saying so are correct, the 970 was/ still is a hefty card that responds very well to overclocking. I believe the one I got is not factory overclocked, which is a bummer... but at the end of my session last night I bumped the boost clock as far as 1499Mhz and the overclock seemed stable! Going higher caused instability and soon a CTD (one of my first or seconds ones in hours of gameplay). This is with no additional voltage. Temps stable at 62C under load. The MSI Twin Frozr cooler is MUCH quieter than the EVGA ACX cooler. Benchmark came back better, Min: 13 Max: 67 Avg: 43 but again the benchmark isn’t really a great tell, the best benchmark so far seems to be walking around Horseshoe Overlook or a town during night, dawn or dusk.

So, I’m very pleased to get my PC to it’s “final form” and be able to probably get another year or so out of it, when doing a platform upgrade will make most sense to me. There are some really great black friday deals out there but I am definitely convinced ray tracing will be here to stay, so I’ll wait until the tech is more developed and prices come down.
 
Also I checked in MSI Afterburner and it seems my CPU (FX-8350) isn’t even totally bottlenecked, it bumps around in the 75-90% range when it isnt being fully utilized. The GPU is maxed out though :woot:
 
Also I checked in MSI Afterburner and it seems my CPU (FX-8350) isn’t even totally bottlenecked, it bumps around in the 75-90% range when it isnt being fully utilized. The GPU is maxed out though :woot:
I ran the benchmark last night at 1024x768 w/ 50% res scale, and was GPU bottlenecked the entire time. ~150fps, which seems kind of low tbh.
 
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Wonder what the best film grain setting is for most players, in the Nvidia control panel. It's below the sharpen slider. Film grain at the far right on the slider at 1.0 reduces the grain the most but can cause loss of image quality even though more detail itself is visible. The loss of image quality is something like the visuals look less "alive" or less "rich". So I'm guessing .5 or .3 is better for most, not really sure.
 
The game is crashing for me 50% of the time when entering the town Valentine. Happening for anyone else?
 
Wonder what the best film grain setting is for most players, in the Nvidia control panel. It's below the sharpen slider. Film grain at the far right on the slider at 1.0 reduces the grain the most but can cause loss of image quality even though more detail itself is visible. The loss of image quality is something like the visuals look less "alive" or less "rich". So I'm guessing .5 or .3 is better for most, not really sure.
how 'bout 0. i hate film grain and all that other crap that darkens or blurs the edges of the screen.
 
how 'bout 0. i hate film grain and all that other crap that darkens or blurs the edges of the screen.
Vignetting does not bother me too bad especially on a really large screen. On a typical size computer monitor though it is more noticeable and can be distracting.
 
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