Rust

The pairing of an Intel Core i5-9400 with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is one of the most lopsided combinations in the database: an end-of-life six-core Coffee Lake processor sitting alongside the flagship Blackwell 2.0 GPU. Rust, a survival title released in February 2018, is the game in question, and the measured data shows the pairing clears the 60 FPS threshold at every tested resolution and preset, including Ultra at 4K. The rank of 901 out of 3723 tested combos for this game, however, tells a more nuanced story about where the bottleneck lies.

FAQ

Q: Can the i5-9400 + RTX 5090 D run Rust at 60 FPS?

A: Yes, at every tested resolution and preset. Even the most demanding case, 3840x2160 Ultra, averages 61 FPS. At 2560x1440 Ultra the combo averages 92 FPS, and at 1920x1080 Ultra it averages 104 FPS.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo in Rust?

A: 142 FPS, at 1920x1080 on the Low preset. The next highest is 125 FPS at 2560x1440 Low.

Q: Is the CPU a limiting factor here?

A: The scaling pattern strongly suggests yes. Moving from 1440p Ultra (92 FPS) to 1080p Ultra (104 FPS) yields only a modest gain despite halving the pixel count, and Low settings at 1080p top out at 142 FPS, a ceiling consistent with processor limits in a game like Rust. The i5-9400 sits at the 47th percentile of all CPUs in the database, and the game cannot leverage the GPU fully at lower resolutions.

Q: How powerful is the RTX 5090 D relative to other GPUs?

A: It sits at the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory, 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, and 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

Q: Does the combo have frame-time data recorded?

A: Partially. Min and max figures exist only for the Medium preset at each resolution: at 4K, 77 min and 104 max; at 1440p, 92 min and 124 max; at 1080p, 104 min and 140 max. The other presets have average-only data.

Q: Where does this combo rank against other tested pairings in Rust?

A: Rank 901 out of 3723 combos, meaning roughly three quarters of tested configurations finish above it, which is unusual for a GPU of this class and points squarely at the processor.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the i5-9400's average benchmark score of 2254 places it in a tight cluster of rivals. The Intel Core i3-10305 averages 2264, a 0.4 percent gap; the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 averages 2259, 0.2 percent behind; the Intel Core i7-10710U averages 2248, 0.3 percent off; and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 averages 2246, 0.4 percent behind. Anyone running one of these processors with a comparable GPU should expect nearly identical Rust behavior from the processor side, since the deltas are under half a percent across the board.

On the GPU side, the RTX 5090 D's average score of 77712 puts it within striking distance of the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76904, 1.1 percent ahead of that card's score), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940, 1.6 percent behind it), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79396, 2.1 percent behind), and the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605, 2.4 percent behind). These aggregate scores mix compute and graphics workloads, so a gaming comparison to the Tesla parts should be treated with caution, but the data positions these as the statistically nearest alternatives.

CPU and GPU Roles

The resolution scaling tells the story. From 4K Ultra to 1440p Ultra, the average rises from 61 to 92 FPS, a substantial jump that shows the GPU was doing meaningful work at 4K. From 1440p Ultra to 1080p Ultra, the gain shrinks to 12 FPS (92 to 104), and at Low settings the climb from 125 to 142 FPS between 1440p and 1080p represents only a 13.6 percent improvement, far below what a GPU with headroom would deliver when pixels are halved.

Interpreted plainly: at 3840x2160 the RTX 5090 D is the primary determinant of performance, and it still delivers Ultra above the 60 FPS line. At 2560x1440 the roles are balanced, with the GPU still contributing but the processor beginning to cap the ceiling. At 1920x1080 the i5-9400 is clearly the dominant factor, with a six-core, six-thread configuration running at a 4.10 GHz boost that holds averages near 104 FPS regardless of how much rendering load is removed.

That matters for Rust specifically. Survival games with large player counts, building systems, and physics-heavy interactions tend to lean on the processor, and the recorded data is consistent with that pattern: no tested configuration at 1080p exceeded 142 FPS.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC runs Rust comfortably, with no exceptions. According to the verdict data, every preset at every resolution is playable above the 60 FPS threshold:

• 3840x2160: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra all clear 60 FPS, with Ultra as the best settings at 61 FPS average.
• 2560x1440: all four presets playable, Ultra best at 92 FPS average.
• 1920x1080: all four presets playable, Ultra best at 104 FPS average.

The 4K Ultra result at 61 FPS is the one tight margin, sitting just one frame above the threshold. Players wanting headroom at 4K should drop to Medium, which averages 90 FPS with a recorded minimum of 77, or High at 80 FPS. At the two lower resolutions there is no scenario in the data where the game dips below 60 FPS on average.

How This Combo Ranks

Rank 901 out of 3723 tested combinations in Rust places this pairing below roughly three quarters of the field. That is a striking result for a system containing a 92nd-percentile GPU, and it quantifies the cost of the processor mismatch. The RTX 5090 D, with 21760 shading units, 170 RT cores, and 1.79 TB/s of memory bandwidth, is being fed by a CPU at the 47th percentile, a six-core Coffee Lake part on a 14 nm process with a 9 MB shared L3 cache and PCIe Gen 3 with 16 CPU lanes.

The GPU itself uses a PCIe 5.0 x16 bus interface, so the platform link is running two full generations behind the card's capability. In a game like Rust, where the data indicates a processor ceiling in the low-to-mid 100s at 1080p, a stronger CPU would convert the same GPU into a materially higher rank. As measured, this configuration is functional everywhere but optimized nowhere.

Best Settings per Resolution

• 3840x2160: Ultra is the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS, averaging 61 FPS. It clears the bar, but only barely; Medium at 90 FPS or High at 80 FPS are the safer choices for consistent play.
• 2560x1440: Ultra, averaging 92 FPS. This is the sweet spot in the dataset: full visual detail with a comfortable margin above the threshold.
• 1920x1080: Ultra, averaging 104 FPS. At this resolution the CPU limits gains, so there is no reason to run anything below Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured averages from the database; minimum and maximum values are recorded only for Medium presets.

1920x1080:

• Low: 142 FPS average
• Medium: 122 FPS average, 104 minimum, 140 maximum
• High: 115 FPS average
• Ultra: 104 FPS average

The spread from Ultra to Low is 38 FPS, the smallest gap of any resolution, confirming that the processor is the limiting factor once the pixel count drops this far.

2560x1440:

• Low: 125 FPS average
• Medium: 108 FPS average, 92 minimum, 124 maximum
• High: 101 FPS average
• Ultra: 92 FPS average

Here the Ultra-to-Low spread widens to 33 FPS despite identical settings, showing the GPU absorbing more of the load as resolution climbs. The Medium minimum of 92 sits right at the Ultra average, illustrating how consistent the experience is at this resolution.

3840x2160:

• Low: 105 FPS average
• Medium: 90 FPS average, 77 minimum, 104 maximum
• High: 80 FPS average
• Ultra: 61 FPS average

The 4K data shows the largest preset sensitivity, a 44 FPS spread between Low and Ultra. Notably, 4K Low (105 FPS) roughly equals 1080p Ultra (104 FPS), a clean illustration of the crossover point where GPU load at high resolution equals CPU load at high settings. The Medium frame range of 77 to 104 at 4K indicates dips stay comfortably above the 60 FPS line, whereas the Ultra average of 61 leaves essentially no cushion, and its unrecorded minimum would plausibly fall below the threshold during demanding scenes.

Taken together, the dataset describes a configuration that is universally playable in Rust but shaped by an unusual imbalance: a top-tier GPU delivering 4K Ultra capability, held to a mid-field ranking by a processor that tops out near 142 FPS no matter how light the graphics load becomes.