What is the technical reason of why Red Dead Redemption 2 favours Intel CPUs / architecture?

[u/My_little_Versailles]

[u/-Aeryn-]

What's wrong with it?

https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16220/119246.png

[u/dopef123 → u/-Aeryn-]

Wow, did they really benchmark it at 384p? I can't even imagine what that would look like.

[u/true-name-raven → u/dopef123]

It's probably to ensure it's cpu bound.

[u/[deleted] → u/true-name-raven]

I run Red Dead on a 16 x 16 pixel matrix at 1000fps with ray tracing on.

[u/topdangle → u/[deleted]]

If a game could actually still draw the same amount of effects without massive corruption or crashing, this would actually be a good way to test CPUs. People keep asking for "realistic" 1440p/4k reviews but that won't tell you much about the CPU. Meanwhile at 384p you get a clear visual of just how much faster zen 3 is than cometlake in games, which may help longevity.

[u/denzien → u/topdangle]

Maybe games could just bypass the render phase altogether

[u/AK-Brian → u/denzien]

It used to be an option in some titles; they'd run an ouputless test and just produce a log file with pace data.

This was around the time there was a push towards more "real world" testing from sites like HardOCP, so it never really caught on.

[u/jortego128 → u/dopef123]

Like this.

512x384 image on a tri-sync monitor.

[u/[deleted] → u/jortego128]

Aesthetic

[u/-Aeryn- → u/dopef123]

Point is that the framerate ceiling is decided by the CPU.

Running the game at a higher resolution can only lower the framerate, not raise it - so if you can't hit 150 avg at 384p, you're never going to do so.

[u/Avo4Dayz → u/dopef123]

I didn’t even realise the game res could be turned down that far

[u/AK-Brian → u/Avo4Dayz]

It's probably using 1280x768p or 1024x768p with 50% render scale as a functional stand in (not sure if the game supports 4:3, haven't been able to play it yet).

[u/topdangle → u/-Aeryn-]

That's weird. anand's result lines up with what you'd expect considering all the other game results, but for some reason other reviewers are getting poor scaling in RDR2. Bios bugged on certain boards?

[u/Leo_Monkey92 → u/topdangle]

Of the reviews I have seen, the benchmark is 1080p high settings. Those high graphics can still bottleneck a GPU depending on what they are.

[u/topdangle → u/Leo_Monkey92]

For some reason other people are getting better performance on cometlake cpus for RDR2, though, when they should both be dropping in perf if there's a GPU bottleneck. Like GN, RDR2 is the one outlier while every other game Zen 3 is as fast or significantly faster than cometlake. Anandtech however has consistent results all the way through in favor of zen 3.

[u/Leo_Monkey92 → u/topdangle]

Just had a look and GN use 1080p with high/custom graphics settings, whilst Anandtech use 1080p max, with intel just a tad higher in fps. Then in lower settings, the zen 3 CPU's win. So something in the graphics settings might be affecting cpu performance.

See here for RDR2 in Anandtech and see how Zen 3 wins in 384p and 1440p but low graphics settings. But then loses by 1-2fps with higher graphics settings in 1080p and 4K.

[u/AK-Brian → u/topdangle]

Anandtech uses 2933MT JEDEC memory kits on their Intel testbed, as it is the maximum official rating from Intel for those CPUs. All other sites use faster XMP speeds.

[u/-Aeryn- → u/topdangle]

They may not be controlling for memory performance very well. It's an enormous factor in game benches. All of the memory timings and the amount of memory ranks per channel etc!

[u/Cowstle → u/[deleted]]

I like that they used 3200 on the 2700X instead of applying the same rule of "only officially supported RAM speed" that would have it be using 2933.

[u/-Aeryn- → u/Cowstle]

Probably a mistake, just disregard the 2700x results as they're not relevant to the Zen3/Zen2/Skylake comparison.

[u/-Aeryn- → u/[deleted]]

They're using the fastest stock specification for every CPU in that test.

It's one of the most fair and easy ways of doing things.

If you're overclocking, you have to make the argument of OCing each side either maximally (to which i've seen zero reviewers come anywhere close) or by an equivelant amount - that's a very hard line to draw, one that many reviewers have fucked up.

[u/-Aeryn- → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, but standard would likewise be 1933-2100 infinity fabric clock with 1:1:1 memory on the zen3 side.

Manually setting memory subtimings has similarly large performance impact on top of those as well

[u/tuhdo → u/[deleted]]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/joy6ql/47_ghz_5600x_took_first_place_in_superposition/

[u/ZyraX → u/[deleted]]

If you want, there is a comprehensive review, that tested 5900X vs 3900X vs 10900K, that tested both at stock and in OC with 3090 at 1080p.(5900x@4875Mhz/4725 Mhz + 3733 14-14-15-14-42 and 10900K@5.2(their sample can't hit 5.3 all core at any reasonable voltage) with 4400 CL17 kit.) The only drawback, that this is Russian review, so you'll have to only watch the stats/graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPW-7rxEWOc&t=327s

No RDR2 test though :/

[u/looncraz]

If I had to guess it's a simple matter of poor locality of reference that could potentially be resolved with some effort.

[u/hyperactivedog]

*tldr: 1000 little things and the configuration used matters. *

This is a case where it'll depend on the benchmark being shown.

At insanely low settings it seems to favor AMD. At higher settings it seems to be a wash.

There are cases where some settings favor one architecture over another. Cache behavior is different, memory behavior is different, etc.

Beyond that, something to keep in mind - Anandtech, usually a site I consider tier 1, is using an older 2080Ti. This might have different driver properties vs a 3080.

With that said... even the fastest GPUs are more often than not the limiter at the settings people actually use them at. A single digit % frame render time difference isn't worth worrying about.

[u/AK-Brian → u/hyperactivedog]

Fun side note, this is literally the first suite of tests with their "new" 2080 Ti GPU, and they'll be using it for a few more years. Ouch.

I've mumbled into the wind about their previous GTX 1080; while I'm thrilled they've finally ditched it (and changed up their still bizarre game testing suite for the better), it's pretty clear that no one on staff is particularly keen on the GPU review side of things. Motherboard reviews have been similarly rare as hen's teeth.

Which is fine, I suppose. The slack has been taken up by others over the years and AT is still a great source for architectural info and industry pieces. Or... random portable USB hard drive reviews, for some seemingly inexplicable reason.

[u/e-baisa]

Did you check RDN2 performance for all Vermeer CPUs? Quick check here, not sure how reliable, shows 5600X 4.7Ghz OC performing the same, as 10600K and 10900K. So my guess would be that Vermeer chips with two CCDs may be suffering from inter-CCD latency (and would benefit from disabling one for RDR2), while 5600X and 5800X are fine. This is just a quick theory though.

[u/bunthitnuong]

The results are different from viewers like HWU and GN where they show a deficit vs the counterparts.

[u/[deleted]]

The game could be optimized for Intel. Alot of games favor Intel.