Red Dead Redemption 2 DLSS Settings 1440p benchmarks, comparisons, first impressions

Red Dead Redemption 2 has finally launched its DLSS update! I've been very excited to explore DLSS image quality and framerate comparisons in RDR2. This video is my first look at RDR2 DLSS settings, image quality comparisons, and performance benchmarks. I'm actually a bit curious whether DLSS quality might look better than native in some ways due to the blurriness of the native TAA antialiasing solution.

This test was performed on my RTX 2070, i5 9600k, 16GB RAM system, but please note that framerates would be higher without the overhead from recording on OBS.

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[TheTakenKing]

As someone who plays at 1080p all I want is for this to be better than the native TAA blur

[SayaaNara]

For 1080p players, I'd recommend dsr to 4k then dlss performance/max performance mode. Performance wise I'd say it's a better looking 1.5x resolution scale

[jonny-b]

Tree Tessellation, Near Volumetric and Water Physics are the options to turn off or down a notch. Water Physics really only thing you can notice a difference but it's easily tolerable at mid or 3/4. Full on is kind of next gen in my opinion water physics. And yes, the camp is like the most demanding part of the game with all systems and characters. Next to the city at night at least.

[pianocaliber.]

60Fps on quality in your case, would be like a 50% performamce increase from your 40Fps. There is no game where you can gain so much performance on the quality setting. Even on Performance preset this would be really unusual. You got like 5Fps more on qulaity, thats already about a 10% performance uplift and an even better looking image.

[lance]

This seems like a good start to DLSS implementation, and good news for people that can't stand low frame rates. Maybe they'll be able to tweak it a bit in a future patch as it does some funky things, for sure. Thanks!

[savageg]

Long press ESC to go back from the settings menu. Don’t need multiple ESCs

[Battleneter]

After testing on my 3080, I can say this the worst DLSS2.0 implementation I have seen, very mediocre imho.

[AlcatrazV]

I'm like you and hate the TAA implementation, even on 1440p. Doing 4k DSR + DLSS ended up making the picture look a lot better..

[streettrout]

Noticed the jacket and hat textures sharpen immediately

[grandmister]

4K stuff is all thats being posted, thankyou for this. I was worried that it would be like FFXV where you only had the option for DLSS at 4K, so comparitively using (SSR?) to run the game at 4K with DLSS, made almost no difference to image quality and performance @ 1440p without DLSS

[Youngie]

Yes, I was averaging between 60-64 just sitting around in camp. (Mostly Ultra settings) Set to quality DLSS it went up to 72-75. Noticed some small grids in some shadows depending on angle but very minimal. The distance looked sharper, I always felt it looked a bit muddy with the AA.

[jlb]

Turn off ANY sharpening in Nvidia control panel if you use DLSS. Even the slightest bit creates a disgustingly over sharpened picture. I’ve opted for the balanced setting on 1440p the clarity difference is extremely small next to Quality mode but the extra frames on Balanced are more than worth it. Now get around 80fps instead of 60 pre patch 👌🏻 Sadly the DLSS is the only decent part of this update.

[VoId_x_ediTz]

bro i am not having dlss option in my game

[neilstack]

Haven't downloaded the DLSS as I live in Ireland so it's midnight hence I'll get it tomorrow. That said the game looks good with quality setting. It looked a little crisper on image quality so cant wait to see it implemented!! Well covered Dan

[waititstuesdaygod]

I think fsr would be a great fit for this game as it works with the TAA to sharpen the image and may provide some pretty good results that'll let more people to play the game with higher frame rates and visual quality

[kamipls]

Hello Mister Owen. I get around 55 fps avg at 4k with my 2070 Super in quality mode using the optimized game settings from Hardware Unboxed released 1 year ago helped a lot (part 2 at the end all settings are listed).
The fps went from 36 avg native 4k to the said 55 fps in quality mode.
The ultra settings might get u too much overhead in general to really benefit from DLSS.
Greetings, give it a try.

[lateralusguy]

It looks amazing! With HDR this game is still as good as it gets

[Hybred]

Did you check if its using DLSS 2.2? If not you can drop the R6S DLSS DLL inside it

Edit: DLSS 2.2 virtually removes artifacting in motion so its a great improvement

[divedrive]

I am getting flickering, most prominently around trees and bright areas. Can't seem to figure out the solution.

[WellKnownAlias]

The reason your framerate isn't much better is two fold, a.) You have Full-screen Borderless enabled, which will basically always lower performance on its own, and b.) Recording in OBS lowers performance as you mention, but it's worse if you're using NVIDIA Broadcast, which will use the tensor cores on your GPU, which are also what handle DLSS/RTX features on 20/30 series cards.