Red Dead Redemption 2 Ampere performance

Hello everyone!

I recently (finally) bought RDR2, and there is something strange. Although I get completely normal (and higher than average) benchmark scores on every single game, RDR2 with Vulcan does drops for me. I tested with every single setting (except water physics and tree tessellation) on the absolute max.

With Vulkan, on the benchmark scene in the small town at night, I drop to ~30-40fps, with DX12 it's on the 50s and 60s.

During actual gameplay, I get framedrops with Vulcan, but not with DX12. I haven't managed to find any recent information on the game or it's current state.

Is anybody else who plays it using Vulcan? Am I doing something wrong? DX12 performance seems fine, but I found some old Reddit threads where people were saying that they were using Vulcan and it was faster, I wonder if my Vulcan installation is borked somehow.

 

Actually its same as you for me, i thought if it was due to me running insiders build and and drivers but i am shocked to know you are facing something similar as you, so i currently use DX12 too.

 

I was reading everywhere that the 3090 was supposed to be flying with this game, and I literally have the fastest consumer CPU around, with fast dual rank RAM, so it made no sense. Did you notice a cut off point with a specific driver? I didn't read anywhere to switch to DX12, I just thought about it. I cannot see any visual degradation compared to Vulcan either. It just seems that I get much better GPU utilization with DX12.

 

Not on ampere, but I played and finished the game (and most side quests) with my RTX 2070 Super using vulkan because it provided both better framerate and better frame times than DX12.

I recommend looking under the Documents folder --> Rockstar Games --> Red Dead Redemption 2 --> Settings --> system.xml

There are a few tweaks that can be done there to gain some performance and stability. And some settings which are not available in the game menu unless they updated it since I last played and added them into the game menu.

 

Its a current issue on Zen processors that have 4G Decoding / ReBar turned on.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/geforce-hotfix-driver-version-461-33.436335/page-5#post-5880163

 

I know I'm running AMD but here are my game settings. I have two presets that I switch between. This game is still extremely taxing on GPU's. Maybe try these settings out, or tweak them to your liking.

For great IQ solid 60+fps 1440p

With the above settings I have never seen below 60fps, I am currently in black water city. Gives excellent IQ and doesn't look much different compared to everything maxed out.

For decent IQ high refresh 100+fps 1440p

Could always test these out and edit/tweak them too your liking but they are excellent starting points depending on if you prefer IQ or Performance.

 

Ampere runs better with dx12... simple as that. So just use that /thread.

 

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Nvidia literally ported Quake II RTX on Vulcan.

thanks for the reply! It makes zero difference with the exact same settings. I found it weird.

From there I just saw that it was a single person with a Zen 2 having this issue with Above 4G decoding. I will disable it, test again and report back here.

 

It makes perfect sense. Vulkan is primarily based on amd development.

The original Quake 2 is an opengl title, and vulkan is the evolution of opengl, so it will surely have been easier to port the game to vulkan than dx12.

 

Every single thing said in this post is wrong

@Astyanax , you were right. In the linked post it's only referred as an issue with Zen 2, but I can confirm it for my system too, with AGESA 1.2 and a 5950x. I also don't have any other PCIe cards at use.

With Above 4G Decoding enabled I get a crazy performance regression with Vulcan in RDR 2. That's with the latest Windows 10 version, latest AMD chipset driver and the latest official Nvidia driver, cleanly installed.

 

I love those "WRONG!!!!111" replies, without a single thing to back it up.

 

same thing actually happens with FO76 on my 3080/3700x system with above 4g decoding enabled I get really horrible performance regression - disabling above 4g decoding fixes it completely. And that is a dx11 title. took me a while to figure out why my performance went to trash.

 

You're somewhat right according to Wikipedia. Vulkan was first announced by the non-profit Khronos Group at GDC 2015. The Vulkan API was initially referred to as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", or "OpenGL next" by Khronos, but use of those names was discontinued when Vulkan was announced. Vulkan is derived from and built upon components of AMD's Mantle API, which was donated by AMD to Khronos with the intent of giving Khronos a foundation on which to begin developing a low-level API that they could standardize across the industry. Nvidia gave nothing here.

 

Vulcan code is not close to OpenGL, as it's a low level API. You would start from scratch anyway, especially with a port they not only uses a new API, but also a new rendering paradigm.
Translating a 25 year old engine from anything to anything else out today, would be challenging anyway, the original API is irrelevant.

My original comment had to do with how supposedly Nvidia abandoned Vulcan performance with Ampere, and I mentioned Quake RTX as an example of them actually leading Vulcan development.

Which they obviously do.

I solved the issue, as @Dan Longman mentioned, it's a problem with Above 4G Decoding in Zen platforms and the Nvidia driver, it seems.

 

I am sorry but Nvidia's Vulkan support is extremely lacking compared to that of AMD. It's like how AMD's openGL support is lacking. Nvidia take ages to implement new extensions in their official drivers updates forcing people to use separate branches specifically for Vulkan these branches are always based off older driver versions.

Like others have said here Vulkun was created with the help of AMD donating their Mantle API code to Kronos group, without AMD's help it would of taken a lot longer to get the API to where it is today. I am also sure AMD did the same for Microsoft with DX12, also giving their Mantle code to them to help with its low level access development. Hence why a lot of older AMD GPU hardware still performs well in newer DX12 or Vulkan titles. The fabled "AMD Fine Wine". Due to AMD GPU hardware (namely GCN) having a strong hardware based scheduler on die, where Nvidia relied upon software based schedulers. Also hence why GCN was such a compute monster, the hardware based scheduler can be tapped by a low level API to better fill up the rendering pipeline with workloads.

The Wii U emulator CEMU, which not too long ago added Vulkan support, for months recommended Nvidia users stick to OpenGL and for AMD users to switch to Vulkan. For a time much lower end AMD GPU's were out performing Nvidia GPU's in this emulator by HUGE margins with INSANELY less stuttering due to Vulkan having much much faster shader compiling using async compute. It has only been recently that the devs have recommended everyone switch over to Vulkan thanks to Nvidia finally officially supporting the required extensions.

Quake RTX is obviously going to be an Nvidia title, it has their branding all over it and was more than likely funded by them as well. One game is not an example of them leading in Vulkan development. It's more of them leading in RT development.

I have a 5900X, 6800XT with 4G decoding and Resize Bar enabled and I do not experience the issues you are having, so it seems it could be the Nvidia driver or the game it self. I actually get a performance increase in RDR2, its minimal at about 3-4% but its consistent.

 

AMD does have better Vulcan support, but Nvidia is also publishing a lot of Vulcan extensions, don't even compare it to AMD OpenGL, it's not even close.

As a historical note, Mantle was close to the PS4 API, is anything. It's also obvious that AMD worked extremely closely with Microsoft for DX12. Some documentation language between them was literally copy paste. I'm glad AMD did all this.

It seems there's a general issue with Zen platforms, above 4g decoding enabled, and GPUs that should have resizable bar support.

Seems like the combo of new drivers and the Ampere firmware will solve it. Other people also report it in the Nvidia driver thread.

I disabled it and the game flies with Vulcan now, it's actually faster than DX12 on my 3090.

 

Nvidia is ahead of AMD for full spec implementation.

you're complaining that they do 6 months of QA on new extensions rather than break everything though, thats a laugh

 

RDR2 runs a lot better on Vulkan compared to DX12 on my RTX 3090.

 

I'm glad you have it fixed dude. And that is true, its not really comparable to AMD's OpenGL support. Which I doubt will ever get fixed as that API seems pretty much dead now. Those 4g decoding issues should be fixed in future bios, driver, and windows updates. Not to mention that games can be coded to make better use of it. So it will improve.

The only game I play that I see worse performance with 4g decoding enabled is Path Of Exile, but I am slowly leaving that game so its not a major issue for me. But it's the only game I've seen performance regression in.

 

What are your exact specs?