Fivem

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 lands at rank 259 out of 1,792 tested combos in Fivem, placing it in the top 15% of all configurations. This is a peculiar pairing—a six-core Coffee Lake CPU from 2018 driving one of the most powerful consumer GPUs ever made—and the benchmark data reflects a system that is heavily skewed by the graphics card's raw capability while being held back by an aging processor in CPU-bound scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 259 out of 1,792 tested configurations indicates a strong overall position, but it is far from the top tier. The RTX 4090 sits at the 91st percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66,473, while the i5-9400 sits at exactly the 50th percentile among all CPUs, with an average score of 2,305. This asymmetry is the defining characteristic of this pairing: the GPU is elite, the CPU is middling.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the i5-9400 is effectively tied with the Intel Core i3-10305, which scores 2,300 (a 0.2% delta), and the Intel Core i3-1125G4, also at 2,299 (0.2% delta). It edges out the Intel Xeon E-2134 (2,295, 0.4% ahead) and trails the Intel Core i7-8809G (2,319, 0.6% behind). These deltas are negligible—less than one percent in all cases—meaning the i5-9400 offers no meaningful CPU performance advantage over its closest competitors. In Fivem, a multiplayer mod that often stresses single-thread performance, this CPU's six cores and six threads (with no hyper-threading) may become a bottleneck in crowded server scenarios, even though the average FPS numbers remain high.

The GPU side tells a different story. The RTX 4090's nearest rivals are all professional or workstation cards: the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66,733, 0.4% higher), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (67,097, 0.9% higher), and the NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (67,320, 1.3% higher). The RTX 4090 actually scores lower than all three in average benchmark terms, but this is likely due to driver optimizations and test methodology differences rather than real-world gaming performance. In Fivem specifically, the GPU's massive 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are overkill for a game that is not graphically demanding, but they ensure that the GPU is rarely the limiting factor at any resolution.

FAQ

Q: Is the RTX 4090 wasted in this CPU pairing?

A: The data suggests partial waste. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 213 FPS, which is likely CPU-limited given the i5-9400's modest single-thread score of 1,125 in Cinebench R23. At 4K Ultra, it drops to 66.1 FPS, where the GPU's capabilities are more fully utilized. The CPU's 50th percentile ranking versus the GPU's 91st percentile creates an imbalance that manifests mainly at lower resolutions.

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

A: It ranks 259th out of 1,792, which is roughly the 85th percentile. This means about 15% of tested combos outperform it. Given that the RTX 4090 is near the top of GPU charts, the ranking is dragged down by the i5-9400's average CPU performance.

Q: What is the best resolution to run Fivem with this combo?

A: 1440p appears to be the sweet spot. At 1440p High, the combo delivers 151.9 FPS, and at 1440p Ultra it still manages 119.7 FPS. These are high enough to take advantage of high-refresh monitors without pushing into the CPU-limited territory seen at 1080p, where the jump from 1080p High (181.5 FPS) to 1080p Low (213 FPS) is only 31.5 FPS—a small gain that indicates CPU constraints.

Q: Does the i5-9400 bottleneck the RTX 4090?

A: The evidence points to yes at 1080p. The FPS gain from 1080p Ultra (166.2) to 1080p Low (213) is only 28%, whereas at 4K, the gain from Ultra (66.1) to Low (134.8) is 104%. This larger scaling at 4K indicates the GPU is the limiting factor there, while the smaller scaling at 1080p suggests the CPU is holding things back.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark score compare to its rivals?

A: The i5-9400's average benchmark score of 2,305 is within 0.6% of all four nearest rivals. It is statistically identical to the i3-10305 and i3-1125G4, and only slightly behind the i7-8809G. This means swapping the CPU for any of these would yield no measurable performance difference in Fivem.

Q: Is this a balanced build for Fivem?

A: No. The GPU is at the 91st percentile while the CPU is at the 50th. For a game like Fivem that is known to be CPU-heavy in multiplayer sessions, the i5-9400's six threads are a weak link. The RTX 4090's 16,384 shading units and 128 RT cores are far beyond what this game requires.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck shifts. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 213 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops this to 182.8 FPS (a 14% reduction), and at 4K Low it falls to 134.8 FPS (a 37% reduction from 1080p). This is a gentle scaling curve, suggesting that even at 1080p, the CPU is not fully saturating the GPU's potential—otherwise the drop from 1080p to 1440p would be larger.

At Ultra settings, the pattern is more revealing. 1080p Ultra yields 166.2 FPS, 1440p Ultra drops to 119.7 FPS (28% lower), and 4K Ultra falls to 66.1 FPS (60% lower than 1080p). The steep decline at 4K Ultra indicates that the GPU is finally being taxed heavily at that resolution and settings combination. The RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM is not a factor here—Fivem is not a VRAM-intensive title—but the GPU's compute resources are.

The limiting component shifts clearly with resolution. At 1080p, the CPU's six threads cap performance, as evidenced by the modest FPS gains when lowering settings from Ultra to Low (166.2 to 213, a 28% increase). At 4K, the GPU becomes the limiter, as the same settings change produces a 104% FPS increase (66.1 to 134.8). This 4x difference in scaling efficiency confirms that the i5-9400 is the primary constraint at lower resolutions, while the RTX 4090 takes over as the bottleneck at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce 213 FPS, Medium drops to 194.3 FPS, High yields 181.5 FPS, and Ultra sits at 166.2 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 46.8 FPS (22%), which is relatively narrow—a sign that the CPU is limiting performance before the GPU's power can be fully expressed. Even at Ultra, 166.2 FPS is far above what the RTX 4090 would normally produce in a GPU-bound scenario.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers remain high but start to show GPU influence. Low settings hit 182.8 FPS, Medium produces 172 FPS, High delivers 151.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 119.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra grows to 63.1 FPS (34.5%), indicating that the GPU is beginning to matter more. The 1440p Medium result of 172 FPS is notable—it is only 10.8 FPS lower than 1080p Medium (194.3 FPS), showing that the resolution increase has a modest impact at mid-settings.

At 3840x2160, the GPU takes charge. Low settings produce 134.8 FPS, Medium drops to 104.5 FPS, High yields 82.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 66.1 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread is now 68.7 FPS (51%), nearly double the 1080p spread. The 4K Ultra result of 66.1 FPS is the lowest on the chart, but it is still playable. Notably, 4K Low (134.8 FPS) is actually lower than 1440p Low (182.8 FPS), confirming that the GPU is now the limiting factor at this resolution.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 brings overwhelming specifications to Fivem: 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. With a base clock of 2,235 MHz and a boost clock of 2,520 MHz, the GPU's 16,384 shading units can process 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. These numbers are far beyond what Fivem requires, but they ensure that the GPU is never the bottleneck until 4K Ultra.

The VRAM allocation is irrelevant for this game—Fivem is not a texture-heavy title, and even at 4K Ultra, the 24 GB pool will not be stressed. The memory bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s is similarly excessive; the game's assets are simple enough that even a fraction of this bandwidth would suffice. The GPU's 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66,473, confirms its elite status, but in Fivem, the data shows that the CPU is the limiting factor in most scenarios.

The GPU's role in this combo is to provide headroom. At 1080p, the RTX 4090 is effectively idle, waiting for the i5-9400 to feed it data. At 1440p, it starts to work harder, and at 4K, it finally stretches its legs. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (66.1) is the only result that approaches a typical RTX 4090 gaming experience. For players targeting high refresh rates, this combo will deliver excellent results at 1440p, but the CPU will prevent the GPU from showing its full potential at 1080p. The i5-9400's 50th percentile CPU ranking, with a single-core Cinebench R23 score of 1,125, is simply not enough to keep up with the RTX 4090's capacity for frame generation in a CPU-bound multiplayer environment.