Red Dead Redemption PC tech review: the best way to play a stone-cold classic
Good, stutter-free performance, with graphics options that scale beyond consoles.
Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption has finally been released on PC after a port from British studio Double Eleven - but has it been worth the 14 year wait? We've tested the game extensively to find out, looking at how RDR improves on the original console release and even how it plays on retro PC hardware.
Given how much time has passed since the original release, a big aspect of this PC version is preservation. After all, PC is a forever platform where games can live on for eternity, but first impressions of this port aren't great. There are multiple layers of DRM here, requiring both a Steam login and a login on Rockstar's own launcher, a weird requirement when the port doesn't include the original multiplayer on any platform. I have confidence that Steam will persist well into the future, but the Rockstar launcher? I'm not so certain, and that complicates the legacy of the game.
Beyond this complaint, the game's technical execution is on point. There are a good range of graphical options and a very quick shader precompilation step - yup, this is a DirectX 12 release. I think DX12 is perhaps excessive for a game originally built for DX9, but there aren't shader compilation hiccups during gameplay and the game normally runs smoothly.
The mouse and keyboard controls here are also generally fine, though the game is set up to require rapid taps of the sprint button to speed up on foot or on horseback. That sprint button is shift by default, so your first time playing the game is likely to summon the ancient sticky keys popup - and I feel that rebinding the key or setting it to work when held instead of tapped would have made sense here. You're free to rebind the key yourself or disable the sticky keys feature in Windows, but it's still a weird decision. Mouse aiming is at least significantly better than the console equivalent, and I found it easy to aim and land shots that I would have struggled with on a controller.
The game's graphical options are the best aspect of this port, with support for arbitrary resolutions, different aspect ratios and frame-rates up to 144fps. (A mod is available to unlock the frame-rate completely, so I think this should be in the game by default - even if it comes with a warning that higher values are untested and may come with issues.) Playing the game in ultra-wide is brilliant, thought cutscenes play out in 16:9 - understandable given the significant animation retooling that wider aspect ratios would require. You can also play at 4:3, and the game's aesthetic jibes well with a CRT if you happen to have one on-hand. 8K is also possible, though given the limited texture and model resolution, this is largely only benefits anti-aliasing.
Beyond this, there is a dynamic resolution system, a choice of multiple upscaling options, frame generation, and scalability to reduce settings from ultra to improve performance on older systems. We'll get into performance later, but pretty much any modern CPU and GPU can run this game maxed out with few issues. That means a significantly better experience than the original console release, in terms of not only frame-rate and resolution, but also in terms of draw distance. There are relatively few LOD transitions and much less pop-in, which is a wise choice of the abundant CPU/GPU resources on most PCs. The only obvious place for further improvement is in local shadow LODs, with point or spotlights looking similar to the console release, but this is a minor quibble.
The porting team also did great work increasing shadow quality, with fewer artefacts, more temporal stability and better filtering - including contact hardening shadows for a softer and more realistic look if you prefer. There's also higher-quality post-processing effects, including motion blur.
In terms of performance, the game runs at 4K 60fps on a low-end RTX 4060, while an RTX 4090 PC can run the game at native 8K with DLAA at 80-110fps. The game is actually more CPU-limited with ultra settings, given the extremely high draw distances, so the modest Ryzen 5 3600 processor can sometimes dip below 60fps in towns where object density is at its highest. Frame-rates are around 100fps in more rural areas, and there's always the option to reduce LOD range below ultra or enable frame generation to keep frame-rates consistently high. High-end CPUs like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D or 7800X3D run at more than double the frame-rate of the Ryzen 5 3600, so an easy 120fps in cities and over 200 in open areas.
Given how well this game runs on modern hardware and how old it technically is, I thought it would be interesting to test it on PC hardware available around the same time as the original console release in 2010. I started with the DirectX 12 capable GTX 570, but this doesn't meet the game's (arbitrary) 2GB frame buffer limit. I tried the GTX 670 next, but the Core 2 Duo E6600 took six minutes to get to the menu and three minutes more to get into the game, with diastrous frame-rates. Upgrading to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 made for snappy menus, but the game still struggled to deliver any semblance of smoothness at 720p 30fps, with huge frame-time spikes.
The CPU is certainly underdelivering here compared to console hardware of the same period, but perhaps this could be attributed to too little system RAM (4GB), too slow PCIe speeds, or maybe the old GPU simply doesn't like a modern DX12 implementation. Either way, though Red Dead Redemption came out on Xbox 360 and PS3, the PC port just isn't happy on contemporaneous PC hardware.
There are a few issues you'll notice on more modern hardware too. The game's colour reproduction seems different to the console release, even when set to a console-style limited colour range, and I'm not sure why. Some sunlight and shadows are also missing in cutscenes on PC, which seems like an obvious bug. The HDR implementation is also reportedly quite poor - perhaps a similar SDR-in-HDR-container implementation as we saw with RDR2.
Given that it's been 14 years, it's also a little surprising to learn that the game costs $50. However, that relatively steep asking price feels about right, given that the remaster hits the mark in terms of performance and graphical additions. The game scales beyond the console release and offers some nice options for high-end and low-end PC hardware alike. The use of the Rockstar launcher feels like an unnecessary bit of friction though, and a complication for future preservation efforts. There are also a few bugs that I hope will be fixed by the team at Double Eleven. Overall though, this is the best version of the game available and well worth playing if you love the series and/or missed the original release back in the day.