The Xbox One X Reaches New Heights In 'Red Dead Redemption II' Console Comparison
Red Dead Redemption II caps frame rate at 30 fps. To hit that target, a new image has to be drawn on the screen every 33.3 milliseconds. The One X renders at full 4K all the time which means it has to push twice as many pixels to the screen every 33.3 milliseconds as it’s nearest competitor, the Pro. Given that processing load, you’d expect frame rate drops to occur more frequently on the One X as the hardware struggles to keep up. You’d be wrong.
Overall, the One X performs better than all the other consoles even though it is drawing anywhere from twice to 6 times as many pixels on the screen. There’s one exception which I’ll get to shortly. Frame rate rarely drops below 30 fps on the One X, and when it does it’s usually a very brief drop of one or two frames. A virtual lock on 30 fps combined with full 4K throughout the game in RDR2‘s richly detailed open world is an extraordinary achievement on current-generation consoles.
All of the consoles hit the 30 fps target almost all the time when you’re out in the wild. With the exception of the One X, performance generally drops in towns which put more stress on the system. The drop is only a couple of frames on the Pro. The One S can fall to somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 26 fps in high-stress areas in towns. The base PS4 is a surprise in that it’s comparable or perhaps marginally worse than the One S in these same areas.
The exception mentioned above is a cut scene that occurs after a street brawl in the town of Valentine early in the game. Frame rate drops on all the consoles during this scene and it drops lower on the One X than any of the others. Digital Foundry didn’t find any other instances where performance on the One X wasn’t as good or better than the other consoles and they have no explanation of what’s going on in this cut scene. It’s bizarre.
‘Red Dead Redemption II’CREDIT: ROCKSTAR GAMES
Conclusion
The hype and anticipation preceding the release of
Red Dead Redemption II was extreme. When expectations are raised that high, the games that follow frequently disappoint. That didn’t happen with
RDR2. I think part of the reason is that people raved about how good the PS4 Pro footage looked in the pre-release trailers only to find
RDR2 looks even better on the One X. Rockstar wowed the world without showing us the best-looking version of its game.
In an earlier article on the first
Red Dead Redemption II gameplay trailer I wrote
The only console capable of a full 4K render is the Xbox One X. If Rockstar’s engineers can pull it off without falling back on dynamic resolution scaling while keeping the exceptional visual quality seen in the footage running on the Pro, the One X enhanced version of
Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to be a show stopper.
I didn’t think it would happen, but Rockstar did it and it’s a definitely a showstopper.
Red Dead Redemption II on the One X is so far beyond the other consoles that
the world is waking up to something players who care about performance and visual quality have recognized and enjoyed since Microsoft’s flagship console debuted a year ago. Almost without exception, cross-platform games look and play better on the One X.
