Dave The Diver

Dave The Diver presents an interesting scaling profile for the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination. The data shows this is a game where the GPU remains the primary driver of performance, but the CPU's capabilities become increasingly relevant as resolution drops and frame rates climb. The measured results across three resolutions and four quality presets reveal a system that delivers high frame rates throughout, yet the margins between settings narrow significantly at 1080p, indicating a shift in bottleneck behavior.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K produces a substantial performance drop, consistent with a GPU-bound workload at higher pixel counts. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate falls from 204.5 FPS at 1920x1080 to 152.9 FPS at 2560x1440, then further to 102.8 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 49.8% reduction from 1080p to 4K, a steep decline that points directly at the graphics card as the limiting factor. The RTX 3080's 10 GB of GDDR6X memory and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for 4K, but the sheer pixel throughput demand dominates.

The scaling pattern changes with lower settings. At Low preset, the drop from 1080p (305.5 FPS) to 1440p (230.8 FPS) is 24.5%, and then to 4K (153.9 FPS) another 33.3%. This steeper relative decline at higher resolutions suggests that even with reduced graphical complexity, the GPU's compute resources—its 8704 shading units and 29.77 TFLOPS FP32 throughput—are being saturated. Interestingly, the gap between 1440p and 4K remains consistent across all settings, roughly 33-35%, which implies the resolution scaling is largely independent of quality preset, a hallmark of a well-optimized engine that scales predictably with pixel count.

At 1080p, the data reveals a different story. The difference between Low (305.5 FPS) and Ultra (204.5 FPS) is 101 FPS, a 49.4% spread. This wide range at the lowest resolution indicates that the CPU is not yet a hard ceiling; the Ryzen 5 5500's six cores and twelve threads can feed the GPU enough to reach these high numbers. However, the 4K scaling from Low to Ultra is tighter: 153.9 to 102.8 FPS, a 49.7% difference, nearly identical in relative terms. This consistency suggests the game's rendering pipeline scales uniformly, with the GPU being the sole arbiter of performance at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The RTX 3080's specifications are central to interpreting these results. With a boost clock of 1710 MHz and 68 RT cores, the card is designed for high-throughput rendering, and the data confirms this. At 4K Ultra, the 102.8 FPS average is well above playable thresholds, and the card's 10 GB VRAM capacity does not appear to be a limiting factor in this title. The memory clock of 1188 MHz, translating to 19 Gbps effective, provides the bandwidth needed for high-resolution textures without stutter.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 80 versus all GPUs places it above the median, and its average benchmark score of 35787 puts it within 0.2% of the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (35860) and 0.9% of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (36101). This positioning is reflected in the frame rates: at 1440p High, the 173.6 FPS figure demonstrates headroom for high-refresh-rate monitors. The card's 320 W TDP and 700 W suggested PSU are irrelevant to the benchmark data, but the performance metrics show a GPU that remains robust even as it approaches end-of-life production status.

The correlation between GPU settings and frame rates is direct. At 4K, moving from Low (153.9 FPS) to Medium (126.9 FPS) costs 27 FPS, while High (117.9 FPS) to Ultra (102.8 FPS) costs 15.1 FPS. This diminishing return at higher presets indicates the card's texture and shading units are working harder but not proportionally, suggesting that Dave The Diver's visual effects at Ultra are more demanding than the raw pixel count alone would suggest. The 272 texture mapping units and 96 ROPs are clearly engaged, but the frame rate deltas show that the game's Ultra preset adds complexity that the GPU cannot fully offset.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 5500, with six cores and twelve threads based on Zen 3 architecture, plays a supporting role here. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz provide adequate single-thread performance, as evidenced by the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2319. The CPU's percentile ranking of 79 versus all CPUs is modest, but in this game, it does not become a bottleneck until frame rates approach the 300 FPS mark.

At 1080p Low, the 305.5 FPS average is close to the CPU's practical limit. The 3DMark single-thread score of 836 and the 3DMark 2-thread score of 1645 indicate that the CPU's per-core strength is sufficient for most gaming loads, but the 1080p Low result suggests the game's draw calls and physics calculations are beginning to stress the processor. The CPU's 16 MB L3 cache is ample for this title, and its memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s via dual-channel DDR4 is not a constraint, as evidenced by the consistent scaling across resolutions.

The CPU's nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-12500 with an average score of 20897 (delta -0.1%) and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE at 20900 (delta -0.1%). These near-identical scores imply that the Ryzen 5 5500's performance envelope is well understood, and in Dave The Diver, this translates to a CPU that can handle 1080p Ultra at 204.5 FPS without dropping below that threshold. The multicore scores, particularly Cinebench R23 multicore at 16429, show that the CPU's twelve threads are not fully utilized in this game, which is typical for an adventure title that favors single-thread performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides a comprehensive view of this combo's capabilities. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptional across all presets: Low delivers 305.5 FPS, Medium 253.4 FPS, High 229.7 FPS, and Ultra 204.5 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 52.1 FPS, while the drop from High to Ultra is 25.2 FPS, indicating that the Medium preset offers a significant visual upgrade for a moderate performance cost, while the Ultra preset provides diminishing returns.

At 2560x1440, the results are still high but more tempered: Low hits 230.8 FPS, Medium 192.9 FPS, High 173.6 FPS, and Ultra 152.9 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 77.9 FPS, slightly narrower than at 1080p, confirming the GPU's growing influence. The 1440p High figure of 173.6 FPS is particularly notable, as it exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, making this combo ideal for 1440p gaming.

At 3840x2160, the performance remains playable: Low 153.9 FPS, Medium 126.9 FPS, High 117.9 FPS, and Ultra 102.8 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K is consistent at roughly 33-35% for each setting, which is a predictable scaling pattern. The 4K Ultra result of 102.8 FPS is above the 100 FPS threshold, but the margin is slim, and users seeking higher frame rates at 4K would need to drop to High settings, which yields 117.9 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader context of all tested combinations, this pairing of the Ryzen 5 5500 and RTX 3080 ranks 482 out of 1626 combos in Dave The Diver. This places it in the top 29.6% of all tested systems, which is a strong showing given the CPU's mid-range positioning. The rank reflects the GPU's dominant role in this game; the RTX 3080's performance is the primary driver, while the CPU's contribution is secondary but not negligible.

The combo's rank is likely buoyed by the GPU's high benchmark scores, but it is also tempered by the CPU's moderate single-thread performance. The data shows that this system is well-suited for 1440p gaming at high refresh rates, and it can handle 4K at playable frame rates. However, it does not crack the top 400, which would require a more balanced or higher-end CPU pairing. The rank of 482 out of 1626 indicates that while this combo is above average, there are many systems with faster CPUs that achieve higher frame rates, particularly at 1080p where the CPU's limits become more apparent.

The delta between this combo's performance and the top-ranked systems is not directly quantified, but the rank suggests that users of this setup are getting solid, reliable performance without hitting extreme highs. The 1080p Low result of 305.5 FPS is a clear indicator that the CPU is nearing its ceiling, and any further frame rate gains would require a processor with higher single-thread performance. For a game like Dave The Diver, which is not heavily threaded, this combo delivers a smooth experience across all resolutions, with the 1440p High setting being the sweet spot for balancing visual quality and frame rate.