Dave The Diver

Dave The Diver is not a typical GPU stress test, but the measured frame rates for the Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 reveal a configuration that is decisively GPU-bound at the highest settings and surprisingly capable of high refresh rates even at 4K. The data shows a combo that scales predictably with resolution, with the delta between Low and Ultra settings growing as pixel count increases, which is the classic signature of a graphics card that is doing most of the heavy lifting. This pairing lands in the middle of the pack for this specific title, and the frame time data offers a clear picture of where the bottleneck shifts across the three tested resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial and uniform across all settings, but the shape of that curve tells the story of the limiting component. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 262 FPS average. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 197 FPS, a 65 FPS reduction, and then to 4K Low it falls further to 132 FPS. That is a 50% reduction from 1080p to 4K on Low settings, which suggests that even at the lowest graphical preset, the GPU is still the primary constraint. The i7-14700F has enough headroom to feed the RTX 3070 at 1080p, but the gap narrows as resolution climbs because the GPU's pixel throughput becomes the wall.

With High settings, the scaling is similar but the absolute numbers are lower. The combo starts at 196 FPS at 1080p, drops to 147 FPS at 1440p, and then to 99 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K is about 49%, nearly identical to Low settings. This consistency across presets indicates that the game's rendering load scales almost entirely with resolution rather than with the complexity of individual settings. The RTX 3070's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are being taxed more heavily at 4K, but the fact that Low and High show similar proportional drops suggests that Dave The Diver's visual effects are not creating a memory capacity cliff at this resolution.

The most revealing data point comes from the Ultra preset, which shows the largest absolute drop from 1080p to 4K. At 1080p Ultra, the combo hits 173 FPS average. At 1440p Ultra, it falls to 130 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it bottoms out at 87 FPS. The 1080p-to-4K reduction here is 86 FPS, or roughly 50% of the 1080p figure. This is the same proportional drop seen elsewhere, but the lower starting point means the 4K Ultra result dips below 90 FPS, which is the threshold where some users might notice a difference on high refresh rate displays. The data indicates that the RTX 3070 is the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, as the CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads have ample compute for a game of this genre.

Interestingly, the Medium preset provides the only min/max FPS data in the entire set, and those numbers reinforce the GPU-bound conclusion. At 1080p Medium, the combo averages 220 FPS with a minimum of 187 FPS and a maximum of 252 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average is 165 FPS with a min of 140 FPS and a max of 190 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average is 111 FPS with a min of 94 FPS and a max of 127 FPS. The minimum frame times at 4K Medium (94 FPS) are still well above 60 FPS, which suggests that even in demanding scenes, this combo does not suffer from severe stutters. The spread between min and max FPS grows slightly as resolution increases, but the gap remains modest, indicating consistent frame pacing rather than sporadic hitches.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific CPU-GPU combination holds the rank of 1588 out of 3710 tested combos for Dave The Diver. That places it in the 57th percentile of all pairings, which is a solid middle-tier result. The rank reflects the balance between the i7-14700F's strong single-thread performance and the RTX 3070's mid-range rasterization capabilities. The combo is not near the top of the list, but it is also far from the bottom, and for a game that is not graphically demanding, this rank indicates that the pairing is adequate for smooth gameplay at most settings.

The CPU alone sits at the 91st percentile among all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 53620. Its nearest rivals in raw compute include the Intel Xeon 6505P, which scores 53701 and is 0.2% faster, and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, which scores 53288 and is 0.6% slower. This means the i7-14700F is very close in synthetic performance to a high-end Ryzen 9, which is noteworthy because the Ryzen 9 7900X typically commands a different price bracket. The GPU, by contrast, sits at the 61st percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17208. Its closest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, scores 17083 and is 0.7% slower, while the NVIDIA Tesla K40c scores 17468 and is 1.5% faster. The RTX 3070 is therefore a mid-pack GPU in the database, which aligns with its position as a previous-generation upper-midrange card.

The combo rank of 1588 out of 3710 suggests that this pairing is well-matched for Dave The Diver specifically. If the CPU were severely underpowered, the rank would be lower, but the i7-14700F's high percentile ranking ensures that it is not the bottleneck. Conversely, if the GPU were overkill, the combo would rank higher, but the RTX 3070's mid-tier percentile keeps the overall pairing in the middle. The data shows a configuration that is balanced for 1440p gaming, where the CPU can push high frame rates and the GPU can keep up with the rendering load.

GPU Role

The RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip manufactured on Samsung's 8 nm process. It has 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units, along with 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores. The card's base clock is 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1725 MHz, and the memory runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective on a 256-bit bus. This yields a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, which is sufficient for Dave The Diver's art style, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity is the more relevant factor for high-resolution play.

In this game, the GPU's role is to render 2D sprites and 3D environments with a mix of effects that do not stress the ray tracing cores heavily. The measured FPS shows that the RTX 3070 can handle 4K Ultra at 87 FPS average, which is a respectable result for a card that launched in the previous generation. The drop from 4K High (99 FPS) to 4K Ultra (87 FPS) is 12 FPS, or about 12%, which indicates that the Ultra preset adds a noticeable but not crippling load. The 8 GB VRAM is likely sufficient because the game's textures are not massive, but the bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases.

The GPU's FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS is the key metric for rasterization, and the pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 317.4 GTexel/s are both respectable for a card of this class. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3162 and the PassMark G3D score of 22214 place the RTX 3070 in the 61st percentile among all GPUs, which is consistent with its performance in Dave The Diver. The card's OpenCL score of 112821 and Vulkan score of 21022 in Geekbench are less relevant for this game, but they confirm that the GPU is not weak in compute tasks. The data indicates that the RTX 3070 is the primary driver of the frame rate differences between settings, as the CPU has enough headroom to keep up at all resolutions tested.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings, providing a complete picture of this combo's performance in Dave The Diver. At 1920x1080, the Low setting produces an average of 262 FPS, which is exceptionally high and indicates that the CPU is not limiting at this resolution. The Medium setting at 1080p averages 220 FPS, with a minimum of 187 FPS and a maximum of 252 FPS. High settings at 1080p yield 196 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 173 FPS average. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 89 FPS, which shows that the GPU's load increases significantly with the Ultra preset, but the absolute numbers remain far above the refresh rate of most monitors.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low setting averages 197 FPS, which is still very high for a 1440p resolution. Medium at 1440p averages 165 FPS, with a min of 140 FPS and a max of 190 FPS. High settings at 1440p produce 147 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 130 FPS average. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across settings, with the Low preset losing 65 FPS, Medium losing 55 FPS, High losing 49 FPS, and Ultra losing 43 FPS. This pattern shows that the higher the setting, the smaller the absolute FPS loss from resolution scaling, which is expected because the GPU is already more loaded at higher presets.

At 3840x2160, the Low setting averages 132 FPS, which is still playable on a 120 Hz 4K display. Medium at 4K averages 111 FPS, with a min of 94 FPS and a max of 127 FPS. High settings at 4K produce 99 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 87 FPS average. The 4K results are the most interesting because they show that this combo can handle 4K gaming at all settings, with even the Ultra preset staying above 85 FPS. The min FPS of 94 FPS at 4K Medium is particularly notable because it indicates that the frame rate does not dip below 60 FPS even in the most demanding moments, which is a strong result for a mid-range GPU.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake-R architecture, with a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. It has 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 cache per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and its 65 W TDP is notably low for a 20-core part, which suggests that power delivery is not a concern for most motherboards. The CPU's integrated graphics are listed as N/A, which means this F-series part requires a discrete GPU, and the PCIe Gen 5 support with 16 lanes from the CPU provides ample bandwidth for the RTX 3070, which uses PCIe 4.0 x16.

In Dave The Diver, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, physics, and AI for the underwater exploration and restaurant management mechanics. The benchmark results show that the i7-14700F is not a bottleneck at any resolution, because the FPS scales consistently with resolution and settings, which is a hallmark of a GPU-limited scenario. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 35122 and single-core score of 4958 are both strong, and the Geekbench multicore score of 19620 with a single-core score of 2429 confirms that it has both high multi-threaded throughput and fast single-thread performance. In a game like Dave The Diver, which likely relies more on single-thread performance for simulation, the 5.40 GHz boost clock is the key asset.

The CPU's PassMark data shows a multithread score of 41317 and a single-thread score of 4257, which places it in the 91st percentile among all CPUs. The nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, is only 0.6% slower in average benchmark score, which means the i7-14700F is essentially on par with a popular high-end Ryzen part in synthetic tests. However, the 20-core count and 28 threads provide more parallel compute than most games need, and Dave The Diver is unlikely to utilize all of those cores. The data shows that the CPU's high single-core boost clock is what enables the 262 FPS result at 1080p Low, because the game's main thread can run at 5.40 GHz without being held back by other processes.

The CPU's L3 cache of 33 MB is shared across all cores, which is sufficient for a game with relatively small working sets. The L2 cache of 2 MB per core is also generous, and the 10 nm process node (though listed as Intel's 10 nm, which is their older node) allows the CPU to maintain high clocks without excessive power draw. The 65 W TDP is a standout feature because it means this CPU can be cooled by a standard air cooler, which is a qualitative statement since no cooler size is in the data. The fact that the CPU is not unlocked (multiplierUnlocked is false) means it cannot be overclocked, but the boost clock of 5.40 GHz is already high enough for gaming.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 4K Ultra settings for this combo?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 produces an average of 87 FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings in Dave The Diver.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU bottleneck at 1080p Low settings?

A: The 262 FPS average at 1920x1080 Low settings indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor, as the RTX 3070 is still able to render frames at a very high rate, and the GPU remains the primary constraint even at this low-resolution preset.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations in Dave The Diver?

A: The combo ranks 1588 out of 3710 tested combinations, which places it in the middle tier of the database for this specific game.

Q: What is the FPS drop from 1080p to 4K on High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 196 at 1920x1080 to 99 at 3840x2160, a reduction of 97 FPS, or approximately 49%.

Q: Is the RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM sufficient for 4K in this game?

A: The measured data shows that 4K Ultra still achieves 87 FPS average, and 4K Medium achieves 111 FPS with a minimum of 94 FPS, indicating that the 8 GB GDDR6 memory is sufficient for Dave The Diver at these settings.

Q: What is the CPU's percentile ranking among all CPUs in the database?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700F sits at the 91st percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 53620, and its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, is just 0.6% slower in average score.