Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC comes with an absolutely monstrous set of PC gaming graphics settings. By our count we put it at 42 graphics settings along, and this doesn't even account for video settings on top of that. There are a phenomenal number of graphics settings to tweak to achieve your ideal performance. That could either fill you with glee or dread but at least we ultimately have control over how RDR2 looks and plays on PC.

Just about everything can be tweaked from the water quality and the physics down to some very granular volumetric lighting settings. Grass shadows can be handled individually; soft shadows, long shadows, SSAO. There's a ton to play around with basically, so plenty of room for finding the ideal balance between visuals and performance in Red Dead Redemption 2.

One particular thing we'd like to focus on for a moment as well. By default, RDR2 runs on the Vulkan graphics API, which is certainly not what we were expecting. There is a toggle for DirectX 12 but it is not the default. Grand Theft Auto V was a DirectX title through and through so we expected much the same here. Historically, Vulkan games have benefited AMD users so we'll certainly be keen to see whether that ends up being the case here.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Video Settings

  • Output Adapter
  • Output Monitor
  • Resolution
  • Refresh Rate
  • Screen Type - Fullscreen/Windowed/Windowed Borderless
  • Vsync - Off/On/Half
  • Triple Buffering - Off/On
  • Pause Game on Focus Loss - Off/On
  • Constrain Mouse Pointer - Off/On

Red Dead Redemption 2 Graphics Settings

  • Quality Preset Level - Favour performance/Balanced/Favour Quality
  • Texture Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Anisotropic Filtering - Off /2x/4x/8x/16x
  • Lighting Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Global Illumination Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Shadow Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Far Shadow Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - Off/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Reflection Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Mirror Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Water Quality - Low/Medium/High
  • Volumetrics Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Particle Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Tessellation Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • TAA - Off/Medium/High
  • FXAA - Off/On
  • MSAA - Off/2x/4x/8x

Red Dead Redemption 2 Advanced Graphics Settings

  • Advanced Settings - Locked/Unlocked
  • Graphics API - Vulkan/DirectX 12
  • Near Volumetric Resolution - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Far Volumetric Resolution - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Volumetric Lighting Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Unlock Volumetric Raymarch Resolution - Off/On
  • Particle Lighting Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Soft Shadows - Off/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Grass Shadows - Low/Medium/High
  • Long Shadows - Off/On
  • Full Resolution Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - Off/On
  • Water Refraction Quality - Low/Medium/High
  • Water Reflection Quality - Low/Medium/High
  • Water Physics Quality - Min>Max
  • Resolution Scale
  • TAA Sharpening - Min>Max
  • Motion Blur - Off/On
  • Reflection MSAA - Off/2x/4x/8x
  • Geometry Level of Detail - Min>Max
  • Grass Level of Detail - Min>Max
  • Tree Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Parallax Occlusion Mapping Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Decal Quality - Low/Medium/High/Ultra
  • Fur Quality - Medium/High

That's it for now but we'll be hopping into Red Dead Redemption 2 pronto to get some preliminary performance benchmarks ready for you folks. We know a number of you will probably be waiting for the Steam release but the good news is you should have a very firm idea of how RDR2 should run on your system by then.