Dave The Diver

# Dave The Diver — Intel Core Ultra 7 265 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Dave The Diver, an adventure title released in mid-2023, proves remarkably scalable across resolutions and settings with this high-end combination. The measured data shows a system that delivers playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra, with substantial headroom at lower resolutions that suggests the CPU becomes the limiting factor only at 1080p. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265, a 20-core Arrow Lake-S desktop processor, paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, a 32 GB GDDR7 Blackwell GPU, produces a performance profile that rewards high-refresh-rate displays and demanding graphical presets alike. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS data, contextualizes the component roles, and ranks the combination against thousands of other tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling curve, though the magnitude of the drop depends heavily on the selected preset. At Low settings, average FPS falls from 462 at 1920x1080 to 348 at 2560x1440 — a reduction of approximately 24.7% — and then further to 233 at 3840x2160, which is another 33.0% drop from 1440p. This steep decline at Low settings indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck even at lower graphical loads, as the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at these high rates.

Moving to Medium settings, the scaling pattern shifts slightly. The 1080p average of 387 FPS drops to 291 at 1440p (a 24.8% decrease) and then to 195 at 4K (a 33.0% decrease from 1440p). The consistency of these percentages across Low and Medium presets suggests that resolution scaling is governed by pixel throughput rather than preset-specific effects. At High settings, the numbers compress somewhat: 345 FPS at 1080p, 260 at 1440p (down 24.6%), and 174 at 4K (down 33.1%). The Ultra preset shows the tightest curve: 305 FPS at 1080p, 229 at 1440p (down 24.9%), and 154 at 4K (down 32.8%).

The near-identical percentage drops across all four presets — hovering around 25% from 1080p to 1440p and 33% from 1440p to 4K — indicate that Dave The Diver's rendering pipeline scales linearly with pixel count. The RTX 5090's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth ensure that texture streaming and memory bandwidth never become constraints, even at 4K Ultra. The data shows no anomalous spikes or plateaus, which points to a well-optimized engine that distributes load predictably across the GPU's 21,760 shading units.

At 4K Ultra, the 154 FPS average remains far above the 60 FPS threshold, demonstrating that this combination is not resolution-limited in any practical sense. However, the diminishing returns from 1440p to 4K — a 33% performance hit for a 2.25x pixel increase — suggest that players prioritizing maximum frame rates over absolute visual fidelity should consider 1440p, where the RTX 5090 can push 229 FPS on Ultra. The 1080p numbers, exceeding 300 FPS on every preset, are largely academic for most displays, but they confirm that the CPU keeps pace with the GPU even at extreme frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm TSMC process, serves as the dominant performance driver in this configuration. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivers 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Dave The Diver's art style and texture requirements. The GPU's boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz provide the raw compute throughput needed to sustain the high frame rates observed in the measured data.

The VRAM capacity is notably generous for this title. Dave The Diver's stylized 2D-meets-3D aesthetic does not demand the same memory footprint as photorealistic AAA titles, yet the 32 GB allocation ensures that even 4K Ultra textures and effects load entirely into VRAM without spillover to system memory. This explains the absence of any frame rate stuttering or min-FPS anomalies in the measured rows, particularly at 4K Medium where the minimum FPS of 166 remains well above playable thresholds.

The GPU's compute capabilities, reflected in its 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture rate, directly correlate with the settings scaling observed. Moving from Low to Ultra at 4K reduces average FPS from 233 to 154 — a 33.9% penalty — which is modest for a full preset tier increase. This suggests that Dave The Diver's Ultra preset adds effects that are efficiently handled by the Blackwell architecture's 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores, though the game itself is not ray-tracing heavy. The 176 ROPs and 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate ensure that fill-rate-intensive effects at 4K do not bottleneck the pipeline.

Notably, the RTX 5090's percentile ranking versus all GPUs sits at 92, with an average benchmark score of 79,842. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks — the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (0.3% lower), Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (0.6% lower), and AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.1% lower) — are all dramatically different products, yet the measured game performance shows the RTX 5090 operating at a level that no rival in this comparison can approach in real-world gaming. The GPU's 92nd percentile placement underscores that this is a top-tier part, though the game's relatively light graphical demands mean the full potential is only visible at 4K Ultra.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience in Dave The Diver. At 4K, the Ultra preset delivers 154 FPS average, which is already above the refresh rate of most high-end displays. The High preset at 4K bumps this to 174 FPS — a 13.0% improvement over Ultra with presumably minor visual trade-offs. The Medium preset at 4K offers 195 FPS, a 26.6% gain over Ultra, while Low reaches 233 FPS.

For players with 1440p displays, the Ultra preset at 229 FPS is the recommended starting point, as it remains in excess of 200 FPS while providing the highest fidelity. The High preset at 260 FPS and Medium at 291 FPS offer additional headroom for variable refresh rate displays, but the incremental gains over Ultra are smaller in percentage terms. At 1080p, even the Ultra preset at 305 FPS exceeds the capabilities of most monitors, making preset selection purely a matter of visual preference rather than performance necessity.

The min-FPS data, available for Medium settings across all resolutions, provides insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the minimum FPS of 329 against an average of 387 represents a 15.0% dip; at 1440p Medium, the minimum of 247 against 291 is a 15.1% dip; and at 4K Medium, the minimum of 166 against 195 is a 14.9% dip. The consistency of these ratios suggests that Dave The Diver's frame pacing is stable regardless of resolution, with no unexpected spikes or hitches. This makes the Medium preset a reliable choice for competitive play or high-refresh-rate displays, while Ultra remains the choice for visual fidelity without sacrificing playability.

The best overall experience, based on the measured rows, is 1440p Ultra. It delivers 229 FPS, which exceeds the refresh rate of most gaming monitors, while providing the full visual feature set. For 4K users, High at 174 FPS strikes the optimal balance between fidelity and frame rate, as the jump to Ultra costs 20 FPS (11.5%) for what is likely a marginal visual improvement in this art style.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5090 and Core Ultra 7 265 combination produces extraordinary numbers. Low settings yield 462 FPS average, the highest measured across all configurations. Medium settings drop to 387 FPS with a minimum of 329 and maximum of 445, while High settings reach 345 FPS. Ultra at 1080p produces 305 FPS, still far beyond any display's refresh rate, indicating that the CPU and GPU together are not meaningfully stressed at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern holds with slightly lower absolute values. Low settings produce 348 FPS, Medium reaches 291 FPS (minimum 247, maximum 335), High achieves 260 FPS, and Ultra sits at 229 FPS. The 1440p numbers remain sufficiently high that no preset at this resolution would ever feel sluggish, even on 240 Hz monitors.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to show its workload. Low settings deliver 233 FPS, Medium produces 195 FPS (minimum 166, maximum 224), High reaches 174 FPS, and Ultra drops to 154 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is particularly notable because it stays above 144 FPS, meaning even the most demanding configuration in this dataset clears high-refresh-rate thresholds. The Medium preset at 4K, with its minimum of 166 FPS, offers the best combination of consistency and visual quality for players who prioritize stable frame delivery.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: each preset tier at a given resolution costs roughly 30-50 FPS, and each resolution step at a given preset costs roughly 25-33% of the frame rate. This predictability makes it easy to anticipate performance for unmeasured configurations, though the measured rows cover all practical combinations for this title.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of 2,867 tested combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 52 in Dave The Diver. This places it in the top 1.8% of all tested configurations, which is consistent with the hardware's capabilities but not at the absolute pinnacle. The top 51 configurations presumably include even more potent CPU-GPU pairings or overclocked variants that edge out this combination in this specific title.

The rank of 52 is notable given that the RTX 5090 is the flagship GPU in the GeForce 50-series and the Core Ultra 7 265 is a high-end desktop processor. The fact that this combination does not crack the top 50 suggests that Dave The Diver may favor certain CPU architectures or that other configurations with slightly different core counts or clock speeds extract marginally higher frame rates. However, the delta between this rank and the top spot is likely small in absolute FPS terms, given how high the measured averages are across all resolutions.

The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score — the AMD EPYC 4464P at -0.3%, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F at +0.3%, and the AMD EPYC 7343 at +0.7% — are all within 1% of the Core Ultra 7 265's average score of 64,640. This narrow spread indicates that the CPU is not a differentiator in this game; the GPU dominates the performance equation. Similarly, the GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are all within 1.4% of its average score of 79,842, yet none of those products (Tesla P100 variants, Radeon RX 6850M XT, Radeon Pro Vega 64X) would realistically deliver comparable gaming performance, underscoring that synthetic benchmarks do not fully capture gaming-relevant capabilities.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265, with 20 cores and 20 threads, operates at a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Its 30 MB of shared L3 cache, alongside 192 KB L1 and 3 MB L2 per core, provides ample data locality for game logic and asset streaming. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking versus all processors, with an average benchmark score of 64,640, places it well above the median but not at the extreme top, which is consistent with its position in the Core Ultra Series 2 lineup.

In Dave The Diver, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and game state updates. The measured FPS at 1080p — exceeding 300 FPS on all presets — indicates that the CPU is not a bottleneck at this resolution. The near-linear scaling of FPS with resolution (as described in the Resolution Scaling section) further confirms that the GPU is the limiting component across all measured configurations. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see 1080p and 1440p results clustering closer together, with the GPU only becoming limiting at 4K.

The CPU's boost clock of 5.30 GHz is particularly relevant for this game, as Dave The Diver's adventure gameplay likely involves single-threaded logic in certain scenarios. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5,960 and PassMark single-thread score of 4,689 indicate strong per-core performance, which helps maintain high minimum frame rates. The multi-threaded capabilities, reflected in the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42,216 and PassMark multithread score of 49,682, ensure that background tasks and any multi-threaded game systems do not interfere with frame delivery.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for this title's requirements. The 20 cores and 20 threads (no hyperthreading) represent a deliberate design choice for Arrow Lake, and the data shows this does not disadvantage gaming performance. The nearest rival CPUs — all within 0.7% in average benchmark score — would likely produce nearly identical results in Dave The Diver, confirming that the CPU is not a meaningful variable in this combination's performance profile.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS achievable at 1080p with this combination?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 462, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. Medium settings produce 387 FPS, High produces 345 FPS, and Ultra produces 305 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM necessary for Dave The Diver?

A: The data shows no VRAM-related performance issues at any measured resolution or preset. The 32 GB capacity exceeds the game's requirements, but the absence of min-FPS anomalies at 4K Ultra suggests the memory allocation is sufficient for the most demanding configurations.

Q: How does the Core Ultra 7 265 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Core Ultra 7 265 has an average benchmark score of 64,640, which is 0.3% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F and 0.7% higher than the AMD EPYC 7343, but 0.3% lower than the AMD EPYC 4464P and 0.7% lower than the AMD EPYC 9124. These differences are negligible in real-world gaming.

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this setup?

A: Based on the measured data, High at 3840x2160 offers 174 FPS average, which is 13.0% faster than Ultra (154 FPS) while providing most of the visual benefits. For maximum frame consistency, Medium at 4K delivers 195 FPS with a minimum of 166 FPS.

Q: Does this combination rank among the top configurations for Dave The Diver?

A: Yes, it ranks 52nd out of 2,867 tested combinations, placing it in the top 1.8% of all tested systems. The high ranking is driven primarily by the RTX 5090's performance, as the CPU's synthetic benchmark scores are within 1% of several rivals.

Q: At what resolution does the GPU become the clear bottleneck?

A: The GPU is the bottleneck at all measured resolutions, as evidenced by the consistent 25-33% FPS drops when moving from 1080p to 1440p and from 1440p to 4K. The CPU maintains sufficient headroom even at 1080p Ultra, where 305 FPS average indicates no CPU limitation.