Red Dead Redemption 2: Vulkan or DirectX 12?
The API choice changes stability, performance and which errors you see. Here is how to pick based on your GPU.
Red Dead Redemption 2 ships with two renderers and lets you switch between them, which is unusual — and it means the single highest-impact decision for stability is one most players never revisit after install day.
The general pattern
Community testing and Rockstar's own support guidance point to a split: Vulkan tends to perform better on AMD hardware, while DirectX 12 is often more stable on NVIDIA. It varies by system, so treat it as a starting point and test both rather than as a rule.
Why this matters beyond frame rate
The most reported RDR2 error, ERR_GFX_STATE, is tied to the Vulkan renderer specifically — players already running DirectX 12 generally do not see it. If you are hitting crashes when continuing into story mode, switching the API is the fix, not a workaround. You can also delete the files beginning with sga_ in DocumentsRockstar GamesRed Dead Redemption 2Settings, or add -ignorepipelinecache as a launch argument.
See where your GPU sits →Relative GPU performance with cited 2026 figures.Memory behaves differently too
"Out of Memory" errors in RDR2 usually come from VRAM oversubscription plus a page file that is too small. The game shows a VRAM usage bar in the graphics menu — keep it 500MB to 1GB below your card's maximum. Texture Quality to High and MSAA off are the two biggest savings, and increasing the page file to 1.5x initial and 2–3x maximum of installed RAM absorbs the overflow.
- AMD GPU: start on Vulkan, fall back to DX12 only if you see instability.
- NVIDIA GPU: start on DX12, try Vulkan for extra performance if it stays stable.
- Change one thing, then load the same save and ride the same route. RDR2 needs a relaunch for some graphics changes to apply fully.
Pick the API that matches your GPU vendor, verify it with the same save and route, and keep VRAM headroom. That combination resolves most of what players report as RDR2 "running badly".
How to switch when the menu will not open
If the game crashes before you can reach Settings, edit the configuration file directly. Open system.xml in DocumentsRockstar GamesRed Dead Redemption 2Settings and change kSettingAPI_Vulkan to kSettingAPI_DX12. That is the recovery path, and it is worth knowing before you actually need it. Keep a backup of the file first, since an invalid edit is harder to diagnose than the crash you were trying to fix.