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

• 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.