Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC: More frames, more volumetric beauty, no Steam

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  Let's get stoic again... this time on Windows PC. All images in this gallery were captured from live gameplay at near-max settings. [credit: Rockstar Games ]

After years of waiting, we finally have a Red Dead Redemption game on Windows PCs... and it's the newer one from October of last year. Tuesday morning marked the PC launch of Red Dead Redemption 2-now available for purchase exclusively through the Rockstar Games Launcher for $60 and up-so we grabbed a copy to see how this PC port turned out.

The meat of it all comes in the attached galleries, which all include near-max settings at native 1440p resolution and the game's temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) toggle turned to "high." I've only tested enough to get through the campaign's opening snowy portion, though the game's built-in benchmark mode (below) includes plenty of outdoor footage.

In good news, RDR2's PC port works as a pretty, settings-cranked-high alternative to last year's console release. Its most obvious upgrade comes in the form of an unlocked frame rate. In one morning of testing, I was already able to crank performance (after downgrading a bunch of settings) to an apparent 120fps-and-up threshold, although random performative spikes-usually triggered by sharp cuts in cinematic scenes-made me glad I had a variable refresh rate monitor.

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