RDR2 Best graphics settings and mods

NikhilSingh25

NikhilSingh25

Forerunner
Hello everyone, I will be playing RDR2 from this Sunday, either I will do Hindi dubbing as a series of the game or a recap in Hindi for YouTube and Instagram. Did the same with GTA V with NVE graphics mod.
RDR2 graphics looks preety good on it's own, but sometimes it looks very washed out, in the first chapter.
I tried lehzan's reshade but it takes away 30fps. I got most of the settings between high to ultra. And I will be playing in 1440p, got R5 7600 + 3080 10gb to handle that.
I want your suggestion for best graphic settings and graphics mod. I'm not going for full cinematic but I want it to look decent, since I can't do much color correction in post.
 
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RDR2 - i took optimized settings from HUB initially, but they are a bit conservative for 3080. I took that as base, then increased lightening back to high or ultra, all draw distances to max, near/far volumetric to high to get get better smoke and clouds ( else more pixelated ). Using DLSS at 4K performance and it looks pretty good to me and runs ~90fps with 225w power limit.

Only problem is that even at 4k, its a bit blurry ( even DLSS quality). Reshade > CAS works well for this. You might also consider DLDSR and see if it helps.
Also DLSS does give some shimmering and artifacts so need to find right version for it. 2.5.1 reducing shimmering in some spots but i have pixellation? in light sources ( moon for example). FSR doesnt. Will try latest one.

HDR with oled looks nice, ( cinematic mode is bad ). Now i am noticing how distant light bulbs pop in real life at night ...

NVE mod is superb. Not sure if there is any mod that makes that kind of jump for RDR2. Better Textures could help maybe, but there seems to be an issue with mods - so for now i am playing vanilla only. If you find something good, do update it here.
 
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Tracer_Bullet said:
RDR2 - i took optimized settings from HUB initially, but they are a bit conservative for 3080. I took that as base, then increased lightening back to high or ultra, all draw distances to max, near/far volumetric to high to get get better smoke and clouds ( else more pixelated ). Using DLSS at 4K performance and it looks pretty good to me and runs ~90fps with 225w power limit.

Only problem is that even at 4k, its a bit blurry ( even DLSS quality). Reshade > CAS works well for this. You might also consider DLDSR and see if it helps.
Also DLSS does give some shimmering and artifacts so need to find right version for it. 2.5.1 reducing shimmering in some spots but i have pixellation? in light sources ( moon for example). FSR doesnt. Will try latest one.

HDR with oled looks nice, ( cinematic mode is bad ). Now i am noticing how distant light bulbs pop in real life at night ...

NVE mod is superb. Not sure if there is any mod that makes that kind of jump for RDR2. Better Textures could help maybe, but there seems to be an issue with mods - so for now i am playing vanilla only. If you find something good, do update it here.
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Yeah modding RDR2 is a pain, spent 3 hour trying to make Lennys simple trainer work, and it didn't. Ended up using Rampage.
Will see if I can find some texture mod that won't tank the performance.
 
NikhilSingh25 said:
Yeah modding RDR2 is a pain, spent 3 hour trying to make Lennys simple trainer work, and it didn't. Ended up using Rampage.
Will see if I can find some texture mod that won't tank the performance.
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Read up the link i posted. I did not read all of it, but there seems to be a problem caused by (most ?) mods in that dynamic events stop happening after adding mods. Maybe they found a fix, dunno but will need check that any mod does not mess up game this way.
 
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Tracer_Bullet said:
Read up the link i posted. I did not read all of it, but there seems to be a problem caused by (most ?) mods in that dynamic events stop happening after adding mods. Maybe they found a fix, dunno but will need check that any mod does not mess up game this way.
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Checked out the link, seems like there is no fix for it. The modding community of RDR2 is just ignoring the problem. Only workaround is to have as less mods as possible. I will stick to texture, reshade and rampage for now. Don't want to break the game or spend days trying to make something work that won't.
 
NikhilSingh25 said:
Checked out the link, seems like there is no fix for it. The modding community of RDR2 is just ignoring the problem. Only workaround is to have as less mods as possible. I will stick to texture, reshade and rampage for now. Don't want to break the game or spend days trying to make something work that won't.
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If you find any mod(s) that makes it much better without breaking things, pls do post it here.
But how will you know that its working ? Doesn't seem like an easy thing to find out immediately, esp for new players. Even texture mods have this problem.
 
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Tracer_Bullet said:
If you find any mod(s) that makes it much better without breaking things, pls do post it here.
But how will you know that its working ? Doesn't seem like an easy thing to find out immediately, esp for new players. Even texture mods have this problem.
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Will play a few chapters first, since I need to get familiar with the story before I record and that would give me more information for narration.
Will try most of the graphics mods after 6-7 hours of story progress.
 
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If anyone can help me the game has a weird greyish tint and is a bit blurry despite being on ultra 1440p i have tried almost everything available on internet yet it looks greyish, i don't remember it looking like this when i played it on my laptop back in 2020
 
ikkhan said:
If anyone can help me the game has a weird greyish tint and is a bit blurry despite being on ultra 1440p i have tried almost everything available on internet yet it looks greyish, i don't remember it looking like this when i played it on my laptop back in 2020
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Download reshade me and try the different settings. I noticed that too the graphics were looking very washed out, probably was Technicolor filter that fixed it for me.
Psycho_McCrazy said:
Where would this narration be posted? YT?
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Yes, and probably on Instagram too
Yt - Code videv
Insta - code.videv
 
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ikkhan said:
bit blurry despite being on ultra 1440p
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1) Try a Sharpening filter. in general i like CAS and it works well. AMD has it in driver else we can get it via reshade which anyway is more customizable and we can instantly toggle it on and off to see the difference.
2) Try DLDSR or some other way to use higher than native resolution. i think game has a multiplier too in settings, i didn't see it - maybe it gets hidden when using dlss.
3) Google for it. Lots of people complain about it, and problem is esp more for lower resolutions.

Don't know about the tint, maybe i am not sensitive to it. People complain about 'vignette' which is some sort of darkening in border areas i think, maybe that's your problem ?
 
Tracer_Bullet said:
1) Try a Sharpening filter. in general i like CAS and it works well. AMD has it in driver else we can get it via reshade which anyway is more customizable and we can instantly toggle it on and off to see the difference.
2) Try DLDSR or some other way to use higher than native resolution. i think game has a multiplier too in settings, i didn't see it - maybe it gets hidden when using dlss.
3) Google for it. Lots of people complain about it, and problem is esp more for lower resolutions.

Don't know about the tint, maybe i am not sensitive to it. People complain about 'vignette' which is some sort of darkening in border areas i think, maybe that's your problem ?
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I will try you solutions and see if it helps,for me the game looks washed out especially the foliage, the colors don't stand out much.
 
ikkhan said:
I will try you solutions and see if it helps,for me the game looks washed out especially the foliage, the colors don't stand out much.
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That was for blurry graphics. I don't have any issue with colors but i am playing in hdr on an oled screen - it looks nice.
Just by chance if HDR is toggled on for you, then change from cinematic to other mode. cinematic is bad. Or try with it off.

I would otherwise normally consider looking at monitor settings, but since both of you have the same problem, it might be game settings issue.
Another thing to check - try fullscreen instead of borderless window. This game keeps switching to borderless window on alt tab and that messes up HDR for me.
 
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Tracer_Bullet said:
That was for blurry graphics. I don't have any issue with colors but i am playing in hdr on an oled screen - it looks nice.
Just by chance if HDR is toggled on for you, then change from cinematic to other mode. cinematic is bad. Or try with it off.

I would otherwise normally consider looking at monitor settings, but since both of you have the same problem, it might be game settings issue.
Another thing to check - try fullscreen instead of borderless window. This game keeps switching to borderless window on alt tab and that messes up HDR for me.
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Now I'm facing two issues , every time I launch the game , it feels the colors changed a bit i can't explain it , but sometimes is feels brighter or sometimes more saturated.
Second issue is the tress started looking really bad, almost pixelated.
Even turning off the reshade doesn't fix the second issue.
 
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NikhilSingh25 said:
Now I'm facing two issues , every time I launch the game , it feels the colors changed a bit i can't explain it , but sometimes is feels brighter or sometimes more saturated.
Second issue is the tress started looking really bad, almost pixelated.
Even turning off the reshade doesn't fix the second issue.
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The game often switches to window borderless from full screen check that, foliage looking shit is a problem i have been facing since almost 1 year with no solution
 
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ikkhan said:
The game often switches to window borderless from full screen check that, foliage looking shit is a problem i have been facing since almost 1 year with no solution
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yeah noticed that too, I'm really excited for the game but if it keeps annoying me like this I might just give up.
 
NikhilSingh25 said:
Now I'm facing two issues , every time I launch the game , it feels the colors changed a bit i can't explain it , but sometimes is feels brighter or sometimes more saturated.
Second issue is the tress started looking really bad, almost pixelated.
Even turning off the reshade doesn't fix the second issue.
Click to expand...
So does it work with full screen mode now ? I don't face any issue, only time i have seen washing out of colors is when we have HDR enabled but SDR content.
I am playing on win 10 + steam.
Win11 also has autohdr, maybe check if that is not interfering somehow ( just wild guess). Make sure to change HDR mode in game if HDR is enabled as i said before- have heard that the default mode is bad with washed out look.

No idea about trees, look fine for me at 4k DLSS performance - maybe experiment with DLDSR, DLSS , TAA, FSR. With TAA, i think you can also set Resolution Scale and people seem to recommend 1.25x.

Did you try DLDSR? that used to fix issues for me in 1440p in other games. Metro exodus for example was terrible in motion until i used a higher than native resolution via DLDSR.
I am currently using DLSS + no sharpening in game + CAS via reshade + vulkan. I also disabled motion blur.

Another thing to try - maximize draw distances so that you dont get low res textures + pop in. Tree Quality/Grass Level of Detail/Geometry Level of Detail
Else search reddit. ex -
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCRedDead/comments/ehmj20
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCRedDead/comments/192w1gw
 
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EHH said:
wont r* ban account on using mods ?
they were even banning story mode.
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Already using pirated copy so I don't think that matters.

altair21 said:
try using DLSSTweaks + DLAA for sharpness fix, that's how I played RDR2
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Spend some time tinkering with setting and after some playing some time turns out lehzan's reshade is shit, while going to loot the train in first chapter, everything turn blue it looked horrible. Couldn't even make out the terrain most of the time. Guess I'm gonna have to find some alternative.
 
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