Dave The Diver

# Dave The Diver: Intel Core i9-14900K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Dave The Diver, an adventure title from June 2023, presents an interesting benchmark scenario when paired with Intel's 24-core Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA's flagship RTX 5090. The measured data reveals a game that is surprisingly demanding at higher presets, yet scales in ways that highlight the balance between CPU and GPU workloads. This combination ranks 9th out of 1626 tested combos in this game, placing it in the top fraction of configurations, though the FPS deltas across resolutions suggest the game's engine has distinct bottlenecks.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at each preset tells a clear story about where the limiting component shifts. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 468.3 at 1920x1080 to 235.3 at 3840x2160, a reduction of roughly 49.8%. This is a substantial drop, indicating that even at Low, the GPU is being pushed harder as pixel count increases. At Medium, the decline goes from 394 at 1080p to 195.7 at 4K, a 50.3% reduction. High settings show 347.5 down to 173.4, a 50.1% drop, while Ultra goes from 306.4 to 157.2, a 48.7% reduction. The consistency of these percentage drops—hovering near 50%—suggests that the scaling from 1080p to 4K is largely linear, which is typical of a GPU-bound scenario at 4K, but the absolute numbers reveal something else.

At 1080p Low, 468.3 FPS is extraordinarily high, far beyond what most displays can show, which implies the CPU is feeding frames faster than the GPU can render at higher resolutions. The data indicates that at 1080p, the Core i9-14900K's 24 cores and 32 threads are not the bottleneck; instead, the RTX 5090's rendering pipeline at lower pixel counts is. As resolution increases to 1440p and then 4K, the GPU's workload grows, and the FPS drops proportionally. The near-identical percentage drops across presets suggest that the RTX 5090's memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s and 32 GB of GDDR7 are sufficient to handle the increased pixel throughput without hitting a bandwidth wall, but the raw compute demand limits frame rates. This points to a GPU-bound scenario at 4K, while at 1080p, the system is likely hitting engine-level frame caps or CPU instruction overheads, given the game's 2023 release date and adventure genre.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a Raptor Lake-R architecture chip with 24 cores (likely a mix of performance and efficiency cores) and 32 threads, boosting up to 6.00 GHz from a 3.20 GHz base. In Dave The Diver, a game that is not typically associated with heavy CPU demands, the processor's role is to maintain high minimum frame rates and ensure that the GPU is never starved. The benchmark results for this CPU show a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 49872 and a single-core score of 7040, which are top-tier numbers, placing it in the 97th percentile of all CPUs. The nearest rivals, such as the AMD EPYC 7413 with a deltaPct of -0.3% and the Intel Core i9-14900KF at 0.7%, indicate that this chip is at the very top of the performance stack.

In the measured FPS data, the CPU's influence is most visible at 1080p Low, where 468.3 FPS is achieved. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU can issue draw calls and game logic updates fast enough to support such output, but the 50% drop to 4K Low indicates that the GPU becomes the primary limiter as pixel count rises. The fact that the CPU has 36 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory (though memory bandwidth is not specified) means it can handle the game's asset streaming without causing stutters. However, the game's adventure genre likely has simple AI and physics, so the CPU's 24 cores are overkill for this title. The data implies that the Core i9-14900K is not the bottleneck in any scenario tested; instead, it provides headroom that allows the RTX 5090 to operate at its maximum potential, especially at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU with 21760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs, paired with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, offering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz, combined with 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, make it the most powerful consumer GPU in the data. The benchmark scores reflect this, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14411 and a Passmark G3D score of 39650, placing it in the 94th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the RTX 5090 D (0.1% delta) and the RTX 5050 Mobile (0.2% delta), showing that the desktop 5090 is barely ahead of some other variants in synthetic tests.

In Dave The Diver, the GPU's role is clearly the dominant factor at 4K. At Ultra settings, 157.2 FPS at 4K is the lowest measured, while at 1080p Ultra, 306.4 FPS is achieved. The scaling from Ultra to Low at 4K shows an increase from 157.2 to 235.3 FPS, a 49.7% improvement, which indicates that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are heavily taxed by the game's visual effects at higher presets. The 32 GB VRAM is likely far more than needed for this game, as even at 4K Ultra, the memory footprint is unlikely to exceed 8-10 GB, but the bandwidth ensures that texture streaming at high resolutions does not cause frame drops. The data suggests that the RTX 5090 is the limiting component at 4K, as the FPS scales almost perfectly with resolution, but at 1080p, the GPU is so fast that the game's engine or CPU overhead becomes the ceiling, as evidenced by the 468.3 FPS cap at Low.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the best experience per the data is achieved at High settings across all resolutions, as it offers a balance between visual quality and performance. At 4K High, the average FPS is 173.4, which is smooth for most displays, while Ultra drops to 157.2 FPS, a 9.3% decrease that may not justify the visual gain. At 1440p High, 264.2 FPS is exceptionally smooth, and at 1080p High, 347.5 FPS is far beyond any display's refresh rate. Medium settings provide a small FPS boost over High—195.7 at 4K, 294.3 at 1440p, and 394 at 1080p—but the increase from High to Medium is only about 12.8% at 4K, which might not be worth the reduction in visual fidelity. Low settings offer the highest FPS (235.3 at 4K, 351.4 at 1440p, 468.3 at 1080p), but the visual downgrade is substantial for a game that likely relies on atmospheric visuals.

For players with 4K 120Hz displays, High settings at 173.4 FPS are ideal, as they exceed the refresh rate while maintaining quality. For 1440p 144Hz monitors, High at 264.2 FPS provides headroom, and even Ultra at 230.8 FPS is above 144Hz, so Ultra could be chosen for maximum visual quality. At 1080p, any preset works, but High at 347.5 FPS is recommended over Ultra at 306.4 FPS to avoid unnecessary GPU load. The data shows that Ultra settings provide diminishing returns, with only a 9.3% FPS cost from High at 4K, but at 1440p, the drop from High to Ultra is 12.7%, making High the sweet spot.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum FPS this combo can achieve in Dave The Diver?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 468.3, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At 4K Ultra, the lowest is 157.2 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck at 4K?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the limiting component at 4K, as FPS drops by approximately 50% from 1080p to 4K across all presets, showing linear scaling with pixel count.

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

A: This combination ranks 9th out of 1626 tested combos in Dave The Diver, placing it in the top 0.6% of all configurations.

Q: What is the difference between Ultra and High settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 230.8 FPS, while High averages 264.2 FPS, a difference of 33.4 FPS or 12.7% lower performance for Ultra.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM provide any advantage in this game?

A: The measured data does not show VRAM capacity as a limiting factor, as FPS scales consistently with resolution, suggesting 32 GB is more than sufficient for this title.

Q: Should I use Low settings for competitive play?

A: Low settings offer the highest FPS (468.3 at 1080p, 351.4 at 1440p, 235.3 at 4K), but these frame rates exceed most display refresh rates, so the visual trade-off may not be necessary.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 468.3 on Low to 306.4 on Ultra. Medium sits at 394, and High at 347.5. The delta from Low to Ultra is 161.9 FPS, a 34.6% reduction, indicating that Ultra settings impose a significant load even at 1080p. At 2560x1440, Low achieves 351.4 FPS, Medium 294.3, High 264.2, and Ultra 230.8. The drop from Low to Ultra is 120.6 FPS, or 34.3%, nearly identical to the 1080p percentage, suggesting the settings' relative cost is consistent regardless of resolution. At 3840x2160, the numbers are 235.3 FPS on Low, 195.7 on Medium, 173.4 on High, and 157.2 on Ultra. The reduction from Low to Ultra is 78.1 FPS, or 33.2%, slightly less than at lower resolutions, implying that at 4K, the GPU's compute limits begin to flatten the scaling curve. Across all resolutions, the step from Low to Medium accounts for a roughly 16-17% FPS drop, Medium to High about 11-12%, and High to Ultra around 9-10%. This pattern shows that each preset tier has diminishing returns on performance cost, with the largest FPS hit coming from the first step up from Low.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 9th out of 1626 tested combos in Dave The Diver, positioning it among the elite configurations for this game. This rank is notable because the CPU's own percentile is 97th among all CPUs, and the GPU's percentile is 94th, yet the combo still lands in the top 0.6% of all pairs, suggesting that the synergy between this specific CPU and GPU is particularly effective for this title. The rank implies that while there are 8 other combos that perform better, the vast majority of the 1626 tested systems—likely those with lower-end CPUs or GPUs—cannot match this level of performance. Given that the game is an adventure title from 2023, the high rank suggests that Dave The Diver benefits from both the CPU's strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7040) and the GPU's raw throughput. However, the rank also indicates that the game is not solely GPU-bound, as a weaker CPU with the same GPU might drop the rank. The data shows that this combo is 0.7% faster than the Intel Core i9-14900KF in CPU benchmarks, but the game's rank depends on the entire system, making this 9th place achievement a signal of the hardware pairing's balance.