Dave The Diver

Dave The Diver is not the kind of title that typically stresses high-end hardware, but the benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 tells a compelling story about headroom, frame pacing, and where the true bottleneck lies. This combination produces exceptionally high frame rates across all resolutions, but the scaling patterns reveal a system that is largely GPU-bound at higher settings, yet begins to expose CPU limitations at the most extreme frame rates. The data shows a configuration that is overqualified for the task, delivering playable—if not excessive—performance even at 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K provides a clear picture of how this combo handles increasing pixel throughput. At 1080p High, the system produces an average of 305 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops that to 230 FPS, a 24.6% reduction, and then to 4K High at 154 FPS, another 33% drop. This pattern indicates that the RTX 4080 is still the primary driver at these settings, but the significant percentage losses suggest that the CPU is beginning to cap the upper ceiling.

The Low preset tells an even more revealing story about the CPU limit. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 408. Dropping to 1440p Low yields 307 FPS, and 4K Low manages 206 FPS. The fact that 1080p Low cannot break past the 408 FPS mark—despite the RTX 4080's massive compute headroom—strongly suggests that the i5-12600KF's single-thread performance is the limiting factor at this resolution. The difference between 1080p Low (408 FPS) and 1440p Low (307 FPS) is a 24.8% decline, which is nearly identical to the percentage drop seen on High settings, reinforcing that the CPU is holding the system back from achieving even higher numbers.

When examining the Medium preset, which includes min and max FPS data, the scaling is similarly steep. At 1080p Medium, the average is 342 FPS with a minimum of 290 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average falls to 257 FPS (a 24.9% drop), and at 4K Medium, it reaches 172 FPS (a 33.1% drop from 1440p). The 4K to 1440p delta is larger than the 1440p to 1080p delta, which is typical for GPU-bound workloads, but the absolute numbers are so high that the system is never in danger of dropping below playable thresholds.

The Ultra preset shows the most pronounced scaling. From 1080p Ultra at 269 FPS to 1440p Ultra at 203 FPS (a 24.5% drop), and then to 4K Ultra at 136 FPS (a 33% drop from 1440p). This consistent ~24-25% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings, followed by a ~33% drop from 1440p to 4K, indicates that the rendering pipeline is scaling almost perfectly with pixel count, with no sudden cliff or stutter-inducing bottleneck. The data suggests that at 4K, the GPU is doing the heavy lifting, while at 1080p, the CPU is the ceiling, but neither component is ever overwhelmed to the point of poor performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is a formidable piece of silicon, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC. It features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. The core clock runs at a base of 2205 MHz and boosts to 2505 MHz, with memory clocked at 1400 MHz (22.4 Gbps effective). This memory configuration is more than sufficient for Dave The Diver, which is not a texture-heavy title, but it explains why the GPU can maintain such high frame rates without hitting memory-related stutters.

In the context of these benchmarks, the RTX 4080's 9728 shading units and 304 texture mapping units are clearly not being fully utilized. The card's FP32 performance is rated at 48.74 TFLOPS, yet even at 4K Ultra, the average FPS of 136 does not suggest the card is operating near its thermal or power limits. The GPU's percentile rank among all GPUs is 86, with an average benchmark score of 54247, placing it just 0.1% ahead of the RTX 4080 SUPER in synthetic tests. This headroom means that the card is likely running at lower clocks in this game, as it does not need to boost to maximum to achieve these frame rates.

The 16 GB VRAM buffer is another indicator that the card is coasting. At 4K Ultra, the game's memory footprint is unlikely to approach even half of the available VRAM, meaning there is no risk of texture swapping or memory compression artifacts. The 112 ROPs and 280.6 GPixel/s pixel rate ensure that fill-rate is never a constraint, even at 4K. The data suggests that the RTX 4080 is so far ahead of this game's requirements that its role is almost trivial, yet it still manages to deliver smooth, high-refresh-rate gameplay at every preset.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12600KF and RTX 4080 combination ranks 215th out of 3710 tested combos in Dave The Diver, placing it in the top 5.8% of all systems benchmarked. This is a strong showing, but it is not at the very top, which reflects the CPU's role as a potential limiter in this particular title. The CPU itself has a percentile rank of 79 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 27799, putting it in a tight cluster with rivals like the Intel Core i9-10900K (deltaPct of -0.3%) and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D (deltaPct of -0.3%).

The RTX 4080's percentile rank of 86 among all GPUs, with an average score of 54247, is similarly strong but not top-tier. Its nearest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, is only 0.1% faster in synthetic benchmarks, while the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB is 2.6% faster and the AMD Radeon 8060S is 2.7% faster. These rival deltas are small, indicating that the GPU is performing exactly as expected. The combo's rank of 215 suggests that there are 214 other CPU-GPU pairings that produce higher average FPS in this game, likely featuring newer or higher-clocked CPUs that can push the frame rate even higher at 1080p.

The gap between this combo and the top 214 is not specified in the data, but the CPU's benchmark scores provide context. The i5-12600KF achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 23391 and a single-core score of 3302, which are respectable but not class-leading. The fact that the combo ranks in the 94th percentile overall, despite the CPU being in the 79th percentile, underscores that the GPU is the dominant factor in this game's performance, but the CPU's ceiling prevents it from breaking into the top 100 combos.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates, with the Low preset averaging 408 FPS, Medium at 342 FPS (minimum 290 FPS, maximum 393 FPS), High at 305 FPS, and Ultra at 269 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 139 FPS, which represents a 34% reduction in performance when maxing out settings. The minimum FPS at Medium (290 FPS) is still well above the refresh rate of most monitors, indicating that there are no severe frame-time spikes.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 307 FPS on Low, 257 FPS on Medium (minimum 219 FPS, maximum 296 FPS), 230 FPS on High, and 203 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset's minimum of 219 FPS is notably lower than the 1080p Medium minimum of 290 FPS, showing a 24.5% reduction in the worst-case frame rate, which aligns with the average FPS scaling. The Ultra preset at 1440p is still above 200 FPS, making it ideal for 144Hz or 165Hz displays.

At 3840x2160, the performance remains highly playable. The Low preset averages 206 FPS, Medium averages 172 FPS (minimum 146 FPS, maximum 198 FPS), High averages 154 FPS, and Ultra averages 136 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 146 FPS is the lowest recorded in any of the measured rows, but it is still comfortably above the 120 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate 4K monitors. The Ultra preset at 136 FPS is a 50% reduction from the 1080p Ultra figure, but it remains a very playable experience for a game like Dave The Diver, which does not require twitch-reflex responsiveness.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-12600KF a bottleneck for the RTX 4080 in Dave The Diver?

A: The data indicates that at 1080p Low, the system reaches 408 FPS, and the scaling from 1080p to 1440p is a consistent ~24-25% drop across all presets. This pattern, combined with the CPU's 79th percentile rank, suggests that the i5-12600KF is the limiting factor at lower resolutions, preventing the RTX 4080 from pushing even higher frame rates.

Q: What is the best resolution to play at for a 144Hz monitor?

A: At 1440p Ultra, the system averages 203 FPS, which is well above 144Hz. Even at 4K Ultra, the average of 136 FPS is close to 144Hz but may dip below on occasion, as seen in the Medium preset's minimum of 146 FPS at 4K. For a 144Hz display, 1440p Ultra provides the best mix of fidelity and headroom.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4080 has an average benchmark score of 54247, which is 0.1% higher than the RTX 4080 SUPER (54209) and 1.1% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (54828). The AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB scores 55698, which is 2.6% higher than the RTX 4080.

Q: Does the game use more than 16 GB of VRAM at 4K Ultra?

A: The benchmark data does not include VRAM usage figures, but the RTX 4080's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory with 716.8 GB/s bandwidth is more than adequate for this game. The high average FPS of 136 at 4K Ultra suggests that memory bandwidth is not a constraint, as no frame rate anomalies or stutters are present in the data.

Q: What is the lowest frame rate recorded in any of the measured tests?

A: The lowest minimum FPS recorded is 146 FPS, observed at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. This is still a very high minimum, indicating that the system never drops below a smooth threshold in any tested configuration.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all other tested systems?

A: The Intel Core i5-12600KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination ranks 215th out of 3710 tested combos in Dave The Diver, placing it in the top 5.8% of all systems. This rank reflects the CPU's slight limitation at 1080p, but the overall performance is excellent.

Settings Recommendations

For users with a 1080p 60Hz or 144Hz monitor, the data shows that even the Ultra preset, which averages 269 FPS, is massively overkill. The Medium preset at 1080p averages 342 FPS with a minimum of 290 FPS, which provides a 47% performance uplift over Ultra while likely looking nearly identical on a small screen. However, given the massive headroom, there is no reason to use anything less than Ultra at 1080p, as the system never drops below 269 FPS.

At 1440p, the Ultra preset averages 203 FPS and is the recommended choice for 144Hz or 165Hz displays, as it provides the best visual quality while still offering a 41% buffer above 144Hz. If a user has a 240Hz monitor, the High preset at 230 FPS is a better choice, as it is more likely to sustain frame rates above the refresh rate, though the Medium preset at 257 FPS offers an even larger buffer with a minor reduction in visual fidelity. The minimum FPS at 1440p Medium is 219 FPS, which is still above 144Hz, making it a safe bet for high-refresh gaming.

At 4K, the Ultra preset averages 136 FPS, which is suitable for 120Hz displays but may occasionally dip below on faster panels. The High preset at 154 FPS provides a 13% performance boost over Ultra and is the recommended setting for 144Hz 4K monitors, as it maintains an average above the refresh rate. For users who prioritize maximum frame rates, the Medium preset at 172 FPS (minimum 146 FPS) is the best choice, as it offers a 26% improvement over Ultra and ensures that even the minimum frame rate stays above 144Hz. The Low preset at 4K, which averages 206 FPS, offers diminishing returns in visual quality for the frame rate increase, so it is only recommended for competitive players using 240Hz 4K panels. In summary, the data shows that this combo can handle High settings at 4K with ease, and Ultra at 1440p is the sweet spot for most high-refresh displays.