Dave The Diver

# Dave The Diver with Intel Core i7-14700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

This combo ranks 50th out of 1,626 tested combinations in Dave The Diver, placing it comfortably in the top 3% of all configurations evaluated for this game. That position reflects a pairing where both the CPU and GPU bring substantial headroom to an adventure title that rarely stresses either component to its limit. The measured frame rates across all resolutions and settings presets are exceptionally high, with even the most demanding Ultra preset at 4K producing an average of 146.8 FPS — a figure that exceeds the refresh rate of all but the fastest gaming displays.

How This Combo Ranks

The 50th place out of 1,626 combos represents a top-tier result for Dave The Diver, a game that is not traditionally considered a hardware showcase. The rank indicates that this pairing outperforms the vast majority of tested configurations, which includes both older generation parts and mid-range options. What makes this ranking notable is that the game itself is 2D-focused with pixel-art aesthetics, so the hardware is clearly delivering far more performance than the visual complexity demands. The data shows that this combo sits in the 97th percentile of all tested systems for this title, meaning only 49 other combinations achieved higher average frame rates across the tested scenarios.

The CPU alone holds a 96th percentile ranking among all processors tested on this platform, while the GPU sits at an 89th percentile among all graphics cards. These individual strengths compound in a game like Dave The Diver, where the frame rate is often limited by the faster of the two components rather than the slower. The combination of a top-4% CPU and a top-11% GPU explains why the overall combo ranking lands so high — neither component bottlenecks the other in any meaningful way, even at 1080p where CPU load is typically highest.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF brings 20 cores and 28 threads to the table, running at a base clock of 3.40 GHz with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. This Raptor Lake-R architecture part, built on Intel's 10 nm process, delivers benchmark scores that place it among the fastest consumer processors available. In Cinebench R23, it scores 44,557 multi-core and 6,290 single-core; in Geekbench, it reaches 19,287 multi-core and 2,972 single-core. The Passmark multi-thread score of 52,425 further confirms its capacity to handle heavy parallel workloads, though Dave The Diver rarely exercises more than a few threads at once.

For Dave The Diver specifically, the CPU's single-thread performance is the more relevant metric. The game's simulation and logic run on limited threads, and the 6,290 single-core score in Cinebench R23 indicates that the 14700KF's boost clock of 5.60 GHz provides ample processing power to keep the game logic from becoming a bottleneck. The nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700K, posts an average benchmark score of 70,074 versus the 14700KF's 70,104, a delta of 0% — essentially identical performance. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X scores 70,420, just 0.4% higher, while the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 trails by 1.3% at 71,056. These margins are negligible for gaming, confirming that the CPU is not the limiting factor in any of the measured frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, carries 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock of 2295 MHz boosts to 2617 MHz, and its 10,752 shading units process graphics data at 56.28 TFLOPS FP32. The 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores provide additional acceleration for ray tracing and AI workloads, though Dave The Diver's 2D presentation uses none of these features. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 8,637 and Passmark G3D score of 36,565 place it in the 89th percentile of all GPUs.

In the context of this game, the RTX 5080 is dramatically overprovisioned. Even at 4K Ultra settings, the GPU produces 146.8 FPS average, which is far beyond what the game's visual fidelity requires. The nearest GPU rivals — the Intel Arc A570M at 58,239 average score (1.6% lower) and the Intel Arc Pro A60 at 60,326 (1.9% higher) — are not in the same performance class, yet the frame rates in this game would likely be similar on those parts because the title simply does not demand heavy GPU resources. The 16 GB VRAM is never taxed by a game of this visual complexity, and the 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is irrelevant at the pixel rates this game generates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the combo delivers frame rates that exceed 400 FPS on Low settings: 433.8 FPS average. Medium settings produce 364.3 FPS, High settings drop to 326 FPS, and Ultra settings still maintain 286.7 FPS. These numbers indicate that at 1080p, the system is almost entirely CPU-limited, as the GPU can render frames far faster than the CPU can feed it game state updates.

Moving to 1440p, the frame rates remain exceptionally high but show the expected scaling. Low settings average 324.3 FPS, Medium settings reach 272.8 FPS, High settings hit 240.5 FPS, and Ultra settings sustain 216.5 FPS. The drop from 1080p Low to 1440p Low is 109.5 FPS, a 25.2% reduction, which suggests the GPU is beginning to take on more of the workload as pixel count increases.

At 4K, the results still impress. Ultra settings average 146.8 FPS, High settings reach 163.9 FPS, Medium settings produce 183.5 FPS, and Low settings hit 218.4 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the only configuration in the entire measured set that dips below 150 FPS, yet it remains perfectly playable on any high-refresh-rate display. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 71.6 FPS, or 32.8% of the Low value, which indicates that the GPU is scaling with settings as expected.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a system that transitions from CPU-bound to GPU-bound as resolution increases. At Low settings, moving from 1080p to 1440p reduces the frame rate from 433.8 FPS to 324.3 FPS, a 25.2% decrease. From 1440p to 4K at Low settings, the drop is from 324.3 FPS to 218.4 FPS, another 32.6% decrease. The total drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 215.4 FPS, or 49.6% — a substantial reduction that clearly demonstrates the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions.

At Ultra settings, the scaling pattern is similar. From 1080p Ultra at 286.7 FPS to 1440p Ultra at 216.5 FPS, the drop is 24.5%. From 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra at 146.8 FPS, the drop is 32.2%. The total reduction from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra is 48.8%. These consistent percentages across settings presets indicate that the resolution scaling is predictable and that neither the CPU nor GPU introduces unexpected bottlenecks at any point in the range. The fact that even the lowest 4K result (146.8 FPS) remains above 144 FPS suggests that this combo can drive high-refresh-rate 4K displays in this game without any compromise.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to Ultra at 4K as the optimal configuration for this combo, despite producing the lowest average frame rate of 146.8 FPS. This result remains above the 144 Hz refresh rate that many high-end monitors offer, and the visual quality benefit of Ultra settings over High is noticeable in the game's detailed pixel art. At 1440p, Ultra settings at 216.5 FPS are the clear choice, as the frame rate is so high that any settings reduction would provide no perceivable benefit — the game is running at nearly four times the refresh rate of a typical 60 Hz display.

For 1080p users, even Ultra settings at 286.7 FPS are overkill, but there is no reason to reduce quality when the system still delivers nearly 300 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 147.1 FPS, which represents a 33.9% performance cost for maximum visual fidelity — a trade-off that makes no sense to decline when the baseline is already so high. The data suggests that players should simply set the game to Ultra at any resolution and enjoy the fact that this hardware pairing never drops below 146.8 FPS, even under the heaviest load tested.