Dave The Diver

# Dave The Diver — Intel Core i5-12400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

This combination delivers exceptional performance in Dave The Diver, ranking in the top 16% of all 1,626 tested combos with a combo rank of 257. The pairing of Intel's 6-core/12-thread Core i5-12400 with NVIDIA's 12 GB RTX 4070 SUPER produces frame rates that remain above 118 FPS even at 4K Ultra, making this a setup that obliterates the demands of this adventure title. The data shows a system that is GPU-bound at higher resolutions but capable of exploiting the CPU's strong single-thread performance at 1080p, where frame rates exceed 350 FPS on low settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern: as resolution increases, frame rates drop proportionally, indicating that the RTX 4070 SUPER becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 1080p High settings, the combo delivers 265.5 FPS; moving to 1440p High drops performance by 24% to 201.7 FPS; and at 4K High, the frame rate falls another 35% to 131.3 FPS. This scaling behavior is consistent across all settings presets, confirming that the GPU's rendering workload scales predictably with pixel count.

The most telling indicator of GPU limitation comes from the Low settings comparison. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 358.1 FPS, but at 4K Low, it drops to 180.9 FPS — a 49.5% reduction. This substantial drop at the lowest settings suggests that even when the render workload is minimal, the GPU's 192-bit memory bus and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth become constraining at 4K. The CPU, with its 2.50 GHz base and 4.40 GHz boost clocks, has enough headroom at 1080p Low where the 358.1 FPS result approaches what the 12-thread processor can feed.

Notably, the gap between 1080p and 1440p is smaller than the gap between 1440p and 4K. At High settings, 1080p to 1440p costs 63.8 FPS, while 1440p to 4K costs 70.4 FPS. This nonlinear scaling points to the GPU's 12 GB GDDR6X memory and 35.48 TFLOPS FP32 compute being sufficient for 1440p but increasingly stressed at 4K, where the 198.0 GPixel/s pixel rate becomes a bottleneck.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 257 out of 1,626 tested combinations, this pairing sits comfortably in the upper tier of systems tested for Dave The Diver. This placement means that roughly 84% of all tested combos deliver lower performance in this game, putting the i5-12400 + RTX 4070 SUPER in the top sextile of the database.

The CPU contributes meaningfully to this ranking. The Core i5-12400 achieves an average benchmark score of 19,850, placing it in the 77th percentile among all CPUs tested. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i7-9700 (19,831, essentially identical at 0.1% delta), the Intel Core i7-8700 (19,894, -0.2% delta), and the Intel Core i5-11600K (19,771, +0.4% delta). This places the i5-12400 in a tight performance cluster where no rival deviates by more than 0.4%, indicating that CPU choice within this class has minimal impact on the overall combo ranking.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4070 SUPER posts an average benchmark score of 42,576, ranking in the 84th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (42,653, -0.2% delta), AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE (42,723, -0.3% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 580X (41,991, +1.4% delta), and NVIDIA Tesla M40 (41,897, +1.6% delta). The GPU's strong percentile ranking drives the combo's high placement, as the 4070 SUPER outperforms the CPU's relative standing within their respective pools.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data supports Ultra settings at 1080p and 1440p as the optimal experience, with the 1440p Ultra result of 177.7 FPS being particularly compelling. This frame rate is well above the threshold where visual quality differences matter most, and the 12 GB VRAM buffer ensures no memory-related stutters at this resolution. At 4K, Ultra drops to 118.1 FPS, which remains playable but shows a 33.5% reduction from 4K High's 131.3 FPS — a meaningful cost for marginal visual gains.

For users prioritizing maximum frame rates, 1080p Low delivers 358.1 FPS, but this sacrifices the game's visual presentation for performance that far exceeds display refresh rate capabilities. The sweet spot is 1440p High at 201.7 FPS, which balances the GPU's 504.2 GB/s bandwidth utilization against the 6-core CPU's ability to maintain high frame pacing. At 4K, High settings at 131.3 FPS offer the best compromise, as dropping to Medium only recovers 16.3 FPS (to 147.6), while the visual degradation is more noticeable than the performance gain.

Interestingly, the scaling from Medium to High at all resolutions is modest — at 1080p, Medium yields 297.5 FPS while High yields 265.5 FPS, a 10.8% reduction for improved visuals. This suggests that the game's High preset is efficiently implemented, making it the recommended choice for 1440p and 4K gaming.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce 358.1 FPS, Medium reaches 297.5 FPS, High achieves 265.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 232.8 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 35% reduction in frame rate, but even the lowest Ultra result at 1080p exceeds what most 1080p displays can show.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance remains exceptionally high. Low settings yield 266.1 FPS, Medium posts 226.3 FPS, High reaches 201.7 FPS, and Ultra delivers 177.7 FPS. The 1440p results show a tighter spread between presets — the difference between Low and Ultra is 88.4 FPS, compared to 125.3 FPS at 1080p — indicating that the GPU's compute resources are becoming more evenly utilized.

At 3840x2160, the 4K results demonstrate the GPU's limits. Low settings produce 180.9 FPS, Medium reaches 147.6 FPS, High achieves 131.3 FPS, and Ultra drops to 118.1 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the only sub-120 FPS figure in the entire dataset, but it remains above the 60 FPS threshold and shows that this combo can handle 4K gaming without compromise in this title. The 4K scaling from Low to Ultra (62.8 FPS reduction) is proportionally smaller than at lower resolutions, confirming that the GPU's pixel throughput is the dominant constraint at 4K.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Dave The Diver at 4K 120 FPS?

A: Yes, at 4K High settings the combo achieves 131.3 FPS, and at 4K Medium it reaches 147.6 FPS. However, 4K Ultra drops to 118.1 FPS, so reaching 120 FPS at Ultra would require slightly reducing some settings.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the CPU becomes more relevant at 1080p, where Low settings yield 358.1 FPS. The i5-12400's 12 threads and 4.40 GHz boost clock are sufficient to feed the GPU at these rates, but the relatively small gap between 1080p and 1440p results (358.1 vs 266.1 FPS at Low) indicates the GPU still handles the primary rendering load.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals in this game?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER's average benchmark score of 42,576 places it within 0.3% of the NVIDIA RTX A6000 and AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE. It outperforms the AMD Radeon Pro 580X by 1.4% and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 by 1.6%.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming?

A: Ultra settings at 1440p deliver 177.7 FPS, which is the recommended choice. The drop from High (201.7 FPS) to Ultra (177.7 FPS) costs 24 FPS but provides the best visual quality while remaining far above display refresh rate limits.

Q: Does the 12 GB VRAM cause any issues at 4K?

A: No issues are indicated by the data. The 4K Ultra result of 118.1 FPS shows no performance anomalies that would suggest VRAM capacity problems, and the 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth supports smooth 4K rendering.

Q: How much performance is lost when going from 1080p to 4K at the same settings?

A: At High settings, the drop from 265.5 FPS (1080p) to 131.3 FPS (4K) represents a 50.5% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop from 232.8 FPS to 118.1 FPS is a 49.3% reduction, showing consistent scaling across presets.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 brings 6 physical cores and 12 threads to this pairing, built on Intel's 10 nm Alder Lake architecture. Its 2.50 GHz base clock and 4.40 GHz boost clock provide the single-thread performance necessary for high-FPS gaming, as evidenced by the 3dmark single-thread score of 910 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,249. The processor's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core help maintain frame pacing in Dave The Diver's exploration-heavy gameplay.

The CPU's benchmark profile shows strong multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 15,935, and the 3dmark max-threads score reaches 5,890. However, the game's frame rates at 1080p (up to 358.1 FPS) suggest that single-thread performance matters more, as the 3dmark 2-thread score of 1,692 and 4-thread score of 3,012 indicate the processor's efficiency with fewer active threads. The PassMark single-thread score of 3,456 reinforces this, placing the i5-12400 in the 77th percentile among all CPUs tested.

The processor's 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 platform make it a modest power consumer, but the data shows it is not a limiting factor at any tested resolution. Even at 1080p Low where CPU load is highest, the 358.1 FPS result demonstrates that the 6-core design with 12 threads can sustain frame rates far beyond typical display capabilities, and the nearest rivals (i7-9700, i7-8700, i5-11600K) all score within 0.4% in synthetic benchmarks, confirming that this CPU class is well-matched to the RTX 4070 SUPER for this game.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, built on the 5 nm Ada Lovelace architecture with 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and the 7,168 shading units deliver 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The GPU's 2,475 MHz boost clock and 1,980 MHz base clock support the high frame rates observed across all resolution and settings combinations.

The GPU's benchmark results place it in the 84th percentile among all GPUs, with a PassMark G3D score of 29,995 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,627. The GPU compute score of 17,108 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 192,684 indicate strong compute capabilities that benefit the physics and particle effects common in adventure games. The 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for ray-traced effects, though the measured FPS data does not include RT-enabled settings.

The memory subsystem is critical to the 4K results. The 12 GB VRAM capacity prevents capacity-based stuttering, and the 504.2 GB/s bandwidth supports the 4K High result of 131.3 FPS. The 198.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 554.4 GTexel/s texture rate explain the smooth scaling from 1080p to 1440p, where the GPU maintains over 177 FPS at all settings. The 220 W TDP and dual-slot design with a 1x 16-pin power connector are appropriate for the performance delivered, and the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface provides sufficient bandwidth for the GPU's data requirements. The GPU's nearest rivals — RTX A6000, RX 7650 GRE, Radeon Pro 580X, and Tesla M40 — all score within 1.6% in synthetic benchmarks, confirming the 4070 SUPER's position as a high-end performer that drives the combo's strong rank in Dave The Diver.