The new port of Red Dead Redemption is locked at 30fps, even on a PlayStation 5. Switch enthusiasts who like to experiment with pushing the aging handheld hybrid tech to the max, however, can get it running at 60fps, at least in the early parts of the game.
Developer and YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer showed how in a recent video about doing just that with a hacked Switch and some help from the homebrew community. Using a series of fan-made tools including FPSLocker, ReverseNX-RT, and NX-FPS, he was able to uncap the frame rate for the open-world Western and get it running at a pretty consistent 60fps by overclocking the CPU/GPU and memory.
“As you can see it’s silky smooth and a lot of that kind of input lag we come to expect from a game like Red Dead Redemption is not eliminated but is definitely a lot better,” Modern Vintage Gamer said in the video. “And for me this is the ideal way to play Red Dead Redemption. 60fps or up to 60fps in handheld mode is a beautiful thing.”
He added that he didn’t experience any hitching, crashes, or other issues in his time testing the game’s overclocked performance. The one thing it does require is for the Switch to be plugged in, since the extra power is needed to push the performance. The tests were on an early version of the Nintendo hardware as well, so more recent iterations of the console that use the Mariko chipset might handle it even better.
The port as-is remains a bit of a letdown, especially with the $50 price tag. While it’s nice to have one of the best games of 2010 on a handheld, the lack of updated features, especially on PlayStation 5, is still a big disappointment. Even more egregious is that there’s still no PC version after all these years. The sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, runs great on the Steam Deck after all.
