Dave The Diver

Dave The Diver is not a typical stress-test title, but the measured data for the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination reveals a fascinating profile of a game that is far more demanding on the CPU than its pixel-art aesthetic suggests. At 1080p, this combo is pushing frame rates that are almost absurdly high, yet the scaling pattern shows that the processor is the primary limiter well before the GPU breaks a sweat. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS data to show exactly where this pairing excels and where its massive GPU headroom goes unused.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression across resolutions tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies in Dave The Diver. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo produces 368 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 drops that to 277 FPS, and at 3840x2160 it falls further to 186 FPS. This is a steep slope: 1080p to 1440p costs 91 FPS (a 24.7% drop), and 1440p to 4K costs another 91 FPS (a 32.9% drop). The absolute numbers are high, but the percentage declines are substantial, which is unusual for a game that looks this simple.

The key insight is the gap between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution. At 1080p, Low settings hit 471 FPS while Ultra drops to 325 FPS—a 146 FPS spread that shows the settings menu has a massive impact on performance. At 1440p, the same spread is 371 FPS (Low) versus 245 FPS (Ultra), a 126 FPS difference. At 4K, Low achieves 248 FPS while Ultra falls to 164 FPS, an 84 FPS gap. The fact that the delta between settings shrinks as resolution increases indicates that the GPU is starting to become more relevant at 4K, but even at the highest resolution, the CPU is still doing the heavy lifting.

Comparing the 1080p to 4K scaling on High settings, the FPS drops from 368 to 186, which is a 49.5% reduction. For a game with Dave The Diver's visual complexity, this is a surprisingly large penalty. Typically, a game this lightweight would show less than a 30% drop from 1080p to 4K when paired with a top-tier GPU, but the data shows a near-halving of performance. This suggests that the game's engine has significant CPU overhead per frame, and as resolution increases, the GPU does not become the sole bottleneck—the processor's per-core performance is still the limiting factor even at 4K. The RTX 5090 D has 32 GB of VRAM and a 512-bit memory bus, but those resources are largely idle in this title; the measured FPS is not constrained by memory bandwidth or capacity at any resolution.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. In Dave The Diver, the data indicates that the game relies heavily on a few high-frequency cores rather than the full 20-core complement. The benchmark results for this CPU are strong—a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 33440.5 and a single-core score of 2160—but the game's performance pattern suggests it is not using the multi-core muscle effectively.

The evidence for a single-thread bottleneck is the 1080p Low result of 471 FPS. That number is extraordinarily high, yet it is not higher. The RTX 5090 D is capable of far more than 471 FPS in a game with this visual load, and the fact that the frame rate caps around that level at 1080p points directly at the CPU's single-thread performance ceiling. The i7-14700K's single-core Cinebench R23 score of 2160 is competitive, but the game appears to be hitting a hard limit around 470 FPS regardless of how much GPU headroom exists.

At 4K, the CPU's role shifts slightly but does not disappear. The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 yields 164 FPS, which is still a very playable number, but it is not the 300+ FPS that a purely GPU-bound scenario would produce. The game's engine seems to have a fixed per-frame CPU cost that does not scale down with resolution. The 20-core processor's PassMark multi-thread score of 52392 and Cinebench R20 multi-core score of 18544 are impressive, but they are not the metrics that matter here. The game is likely using one or two threads for the simulation logic, and the i7-14700K's boost clock of 5.60 GHz is what keeps the frame rates as high as they are.

The CPU's 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache are more than adequate for this game's data footprint, but the architecture does not provide a meaningful advantage over rivals. The nearest CPU rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (which scores 69515 on average, just 0.2% higher than the i7-14700K's 69355), show that the i7-14700K is not a standout in raw compute, yet the game still delivers high frame rates because the clock speed is sufficient for Dave The Diver's demands.

Settings Recommendations

Looking at the measured rows, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance, but the data also reveals that the differences between presets are enormous. At 1080p, Medium achieves 412 FPS with a minimum of 351 FPS and a maximum of 474 FPS. High settings drop to 368 FPS, and Ultra falls to 325 FPS. The jump from Low (471 FPS) to Medium (412 FPS) is a 59 FPS loss, which is significant but still leaves the game at a level where any display would be the limiting factor.

At 1440p, Medium hits 310 FPS (min 264, max 357), which is 33 FPS faster than High (277 FPS) and 65 FPS faster than Ultra (245 FPS). The Medium preset at 1440p is the sweet spot for high-refresh-rate monitors, as it keeps the frame rate above 300 FPS while still providing a visual upgrade over Low. The data suggests that Ultra is not worth the performance penalty, as it drops the frame rate by 21% compared to Medium at 1440p and 20.9% at 1080p.

At 4K, Medium produces 208 FPS (min 177, max 239), which is the only 4K preset with a recorded minimum above 170 FPS. High settings at 4K yield 186 FPS, and Ultra drops to 164 FPS. The recommendation for a 4K display is Medium, as it provides a 22 FPS advantage over High and a 44 FPS advantage over Ultra, while the visual difference between Medium and High in a game like this is likely negligible on most displays. Low settings at 4K (248 FPS) are playable, but the medium preset's 208 FPS is still well above the 144 Hz threshold, making it the most sensible choice for maintaining smooth motion without sacrificing too much visual fidelity.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 15th out of 2867 tested combinations in Dave The Diver. This is an excellent placement, placing the combo in the top 0.5% of all tested configurations. The data shows that this pairing is not just good—it is elite, outpacing nearly every other CPU and GPU combination that has been benchmarked in this game.

However, the rank is not number one, and the reason is clear from the FPS data. The RTX 5090 D is a GPU that ranks in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77712. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT, which scores 78940 (1.6% higher), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, which scores 79605 (2.4% higher). These are not gaming GPUs, but the data shows that the RTX 5090 D is not the absolute top performer in synthetic tests. In Dave The Diver, the 15th place rank suggests that there are 14 other combos that manage to extract slightly higher frame rates, likely due to CPUs with marginally better single-thread performance.

The i7-14700K's percentile of 94 against all CPUs is strong, but it is not the best. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX scores 69875 (0.7% higher) and the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F scores 69996 (0.9% higher). These small deltas in CPU benchmark scores translate to the FPS differences that push this combo from the top 10 into the 15th spot. For a builder, this rank means the combo is overkill for Dave The Diver in the best possible way—it will never struggle, but it is not the absolute fastest pairing for this specific title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is a massive GPU with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. It has 21760 shading units and a boost clock of 2407 MHz. In Dave The Diver, these specifications are almost entirely wasted. The game does not need 32 GB of VRAM, and the 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is far beyond what is required for the pixel-art graphics.

The GPU's role in this combo is to ensure that there is never a frame rate drop due to graphics processing. The measured data shows that even at 4K Ultra, the game runs at 164 FPS, which confirms the GPU's capability but also a sign of massive headroom. The RTX 5090 D's PassMark G3D score of 44065 and its 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 14326 indicate a top-tier part, but in Dave The Diver, the limiting factor is the CPU's ability to feed the GPU with draw calls.

The most telling metric is the 1080p Low result of 471 FPS. At that resolution and settings, the GPU is barely working, yet the frame rate is still capped. The RTX 5090 D's memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s could handle far more data than the game generates, and the 176 ROPs are not being utilized to their full extent. The GPU is essentially a bystander in this title, only becoming relevant at 4K Ultra where it still delivers 164 FPS without breaking a sweat. The GPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database, such as the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (which scores 76904, just 1.1% lower), show that the RTX 5090 D is not the undisputed king in all tests, but in this game, any modern GPU would likely produce similar frame rates because the bottleneck is entirely on the CPU side.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data is as follows, organized by resolution and settings:

1920x1080:

• Low: 471 FPS average
• Medium: 412 FPS average, 351 FPS minimum, 474 FPS maximum
• High: 368 FPS average
• Ultra: 325 FPS average

2560x1440:

• Low: 371 FPS average
• Medium: 310 FPS average, 264 FPS minimum, 357 FPS maximum
• High: 277 FPS average
• Ultra: 245 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 248 FPS average
• Medium: 208 FPS average, 177 FPS minimum, 239 FPS maximum
• High: 186 FPS average
• Ultra: 164 FPS average

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, and those numbers are crucial for understanding frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the minimum of 351 FPS is only 61 FPS below the average, indicating a very stable experience. At 1440p Medium, the minimum of 264 FPS is 46 FPS below the average, and at 4K Medium, the minimum of 177 FPS is 31 FPS below the average. These minimums are all well above 144 Hz, meaning that even the worst-case frame drops are imperceptible on standard high-refresh displays.

The delta between Low and Ultra at each resolution is consistent: 146 FPS at 1080p, 126 FPS at 1440p, and 84 FPS at 4K. This shrinking delta as resolution increases is the signature of a CPU-bound game. At 1080p, the CPU is the absolute limit, and the settings have a huge impact because they change the GPU workload, but the CPU can only produce so many frames. At 4K, the GPU workload increases, but the CPU is still the primary limiter, so the settings have less of an impact because the GPU is starting to catch up to the CPU's frame production rate. The 4K Ultra result of 164 FPS is the only data point where the GPU is arguably close to being the bottleneck, but even then, the CPU is likely still holding it back from reaching its true potential.