Fivem

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a fundamentally GPU-bound experience in Fivem, but the data reveals a nuanced shift in the bottleneck as resolution and settings change. The RTX 3070, sitting at the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, provides overwhelming compute headroom at lower resolutions, allowing the six-core i5-9400 to stretch its legs. However, the 50th percentile CPU becomes the limiting factor in the most demanding configurations, creating a performance curve that favors high-refresh-rate 1080p and 1440p gaming.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data in Fivem shows a classic resolution-scaling pattern, but the degree of the drop is heavily modulated by the graphics preset. At Ultra settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 results in a frame rate decline from 106.7 FPS to 69.5 FPS, a reduction of approximately 35%. Pushing further to 3840x2160 Ultra yields only 39.2 FPS, which is a 63% drop from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline indicates that at Ultra, the game is heavily taxing the RTX 3070’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and its 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, making the GPU the primary constraint.

The scaling story changes dramatically at Low settings. At 1920x1080 Low, the combo achieves 216 FPS, but this falls to 142.9 FPS at 2560x1440 and 77 FPS at 3840x2160. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Low is 64%, which is nearly identical to the drop at Ultra. However, the absolute headroom suggests a different dynamic. At 1080p Low, the system is likely CPU-limited, as the i5-9400’s six threads and 9 MB of shared L3 cache become the ceiling. The RTX 3070 is barely breaking a sweat, evidenced by the fact that the 4K Low result of 77 FPS is still higher than the 1080p Ultra result of 106.7 FPS, showing the GPU can brute-force the resolution increase when effects are stripped away.

The intermediate presets confirm the trend. At Medium, the frame rate drops from 168 FPS at 1080p to 108.6 FPS at 1440p, then to 61.7 FPS at 4K. At High, the numbers are 133.7, 90.5, and 50.9 FPS respectively. The data indicates that the RTX 3070 maintains a strong advantage at 1080p and 1440p across all settings, but the 4K Ultra configuration is the only point where the combination becomes marginal for smooth playability, falling below the 40 FPS threshold. The scaling behavior suggests that while the GPU is the primary driver of performance degradation at higher resolutions, the CPU’s 2.90 GHz base clock and 4.10 GHz boost clock are sufficient to keep up until the pixel count becomes extreme.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Fivem with this combo for a high-refresh-rate monitor?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 at Medium settings delivers 168 FPS, while High settings produce 133.7 FPS. Even at 2560x1440 High, the combo maintains 90.5 FPS, indicating that 1440p is viable for 60-90 Hz displays, but 1080p is required to push past 144 FPS consistently.

Q: How does the i5-9400 hold up against the RTX 3070 in this game?

A: The CPU is not a significant bottleneck at 1080p Low, where the system reaches 216 FPS. However, the gap between 1080p Low (216 FPS) and 1080p Ultra (106.7 FPS) is only 2x, whereas the GPU’s raw compute (20.31 TFLOPS) suggests it could handle more if the CPU were not limiting. At 4K Ultra, the CPU is less relevant, as the GPU is clearly the constraint.

Q: Is the RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM sufficient for Fivem?

A: The benchmark results show that the 8 GB frame buffer is adequate for all tested settings. The 4K Ultra configuration drops to 39.2 FPS, which is more likely a function of raw compute limits rather than memory capacity, as the 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is substantial for a multiplayer title.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested configurations in Fivem?

A: The combination ranks 816th out of 1792 tested combos, placing it in the 46th percentile of all pairings. This suggests that while the GPU is powerful, the older six-core CPU prevents the system from reaching the top tier of performance in this specific game.

Q: What is the impact of the CPU's memory bandwidth on the results?

A: The i5-9400 supports dual-channel DDR4 with a maximum bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. This is substantially lower than the GPU's 448.0 GB/s, but the benchmark data shows that the system still achieves high frame rates at 1080p, indicating that Fivem does not rely heavily on CPU memory throughput at lower resolutions.

Q: Should a user prioritize lowering resolution or settings to improve performance?

A: Based on the data, dropping from Ultra to High at 2560x1440 yields a 30% frame rate improvement (69.5 to 90.5 FPS). Dropping from High to Medium at the same resolution provides a further 20% gain (90.5 to 108.6 FPS). Lowering resolution from 1440p to 1080p at High settings provides a 48% gain (90.5 to 133.7 FPS), so resolution scaling is more impactful than settings changes.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame data places this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 at position 816 out of 1792 total tested combinations. This median placement is telling, as it highlights a mismatch between the components. The RTX 3070 alone ranks in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 28238 is notably higher than its nearest rival, the AMD FirePro S7150, which scores 28409 (a -0.6% delta). In contrast, the i5-9400 sits at the 50th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 2305, placing it just 0.2% above the Intel Core i3-10305 and 0.4% above the Intel Xeon E-2134.

The ranking in Fivem reflects a system that is dragged down by the CPU in a game that appears to favor higher core counts. The i5-9400’s six cores and six threads, while adequate for many titles, cannot fully feed the RTX 3070’s 5888 shading units in all scenarios. The data shows that the combo’s 816th rank is not a reflection of the GPU’s capability, but rather the CPU’s inability to consistently push frame rates into the top tier. Compared to other combos with similar GPUs but newer or higher-core-count CPUs, this pairing would likely trail by a significant margin. The delta between the CPU and GPU percentiles (22 points) indicates a substantial imbalance that manifests as the CPU bottleneck observed at 1080p Low, where the system still cannot exceed 216 FPS despite the GPU’s immense headroom.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Intel Core i5-9400 and RTX 3070 produce a wide spread of results across the four settings. Low settings yield an average of 216 FPS, which is the highest score recorded for this combo. Medium settings drop to 168 FPS, while High settings produce 133.7 FPS. The most demanding preset, Ultra, still manages 106.7 FPS, indicating that the system is more than capable of driving high-refresh-rate 1080p monitors even with maxed-out graphics.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low settings produce 142.9 FPS, which is a 34% reduction from 1080p. Medium settings deliver 108.6 FPS, and High settings achieve 90.5 FPS. Ultra settings at 1440p produce 69.5 FPS, which is still comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The results at this resolution suggest that the GPU is starting to become more involved, but the CPU is still holding the system back from reaching the higher frame rates seen at 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the combo shows its limits. Low settings produce 77 FPS, which is impressive for 4K but represents a 64% drop from 1080p Low. Medium settings achieve 61.7 FPS, while High settings drop to 50.9 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that falls below playable standards, producing just 39.2 FPS. This breakdown confirms that the RTX 3070 is the dominant factor at 4K, as the performance gap between Low and Ultra (77 vs. 39.2 FPS) shows the GPU’s compute and memory bandwidth being saturated by the higher preset’s demands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070’s specifications directly correlate with the observed performance scaling in Fivem. The GPU is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip manufactured on an 8 nm process from Samsung. It features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operation pipelines, which collectively deliver 20.31 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The boost clock of 1725 MHz, combined with the memory clock of 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective), allows the card to process the game’s geometry and effects efficiently.

The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a critical figure for Fivem at higher resolutions, as the 4K Ultra result of 39.2 FPS indicates that the GPU is running out of compute headroom rather than memory capacity. The pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 317.4 GTexel/s are substantial, but the data shows that the card’s performance is heavily influenced by the CPU’s ability to feed it. At 1080p Low, the GPU is likely idling, waiting for the i5-9400 to deliver draw calls, which explains why the frame rate caps at 216 FPS despite the GPU being capable of much more.

The RTX 3070’s 72nd percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 28238 place it in the upper mid-range of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, scores 27985 (a 0.9% delta), showing that the 3070 holds a slight edge in raw compute. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti scores 27956 (a 1% delta), which is remarkably close, suggesting that the 3070’s advantages are more pronounced in modern titles with ray tracing or DLSS, rather than in a multiplayer game like Fivem. The GPU’s role in this combo is to provide a high ceiling that the CPU cannot always reach, but at 4K, the card’s 8 GB frame buffer and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth become the deciding factors in the performance cliff observed at Ultra settings.