Fivem

Fivem, the multiplayer modification framework built on Grand Theft Auto V, presents a unique performance profile that differs significantly from standard single-player benchmarks. In this analysis, the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is evaluated using measured FPS data at three resolutions and four quality presets. The dataset provides a clear picture of how this particular pairing handles the CPU-intensive and often inconsistent workloads typical of Fivem servers.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for this combo reveals a clear hierarchy across the four quality presets, with the optimal choice depending heavily on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 1920x1080, all settings are playable, but the gap between presets is substantial. The Low preset achieves an average of 262 FPS, while Medium drops to 207 FPS, High to 165 FPS, and Ultra to 128 FPS. For users with high-refresh-rate 1080p monitors, the Medium preset offers the best balance, delivering over 200 FPS while providing a significant visual upgrade over Low.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out as the sweet spot. It produces an average of 136 FPS, with a minimum of 116 FPS and a maximum of 156 FPS, which is well-suited for 144Hz displays. The High preset at this resolution yields 109 FPS, still acceptable for many users, but the Medium setting maintains a more comfortable margin above the 100 FPS threshold. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 84 FPS, which is below the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, making it less ideal for competitive play.

The 3840x2160 resolution presents a different challenge. Here, only the Low preset achieves a triple-digit average at 96 FPS. The Medium preset manages 75 FPS with a minimum of 64 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced scenarios. High settings at 4K average exactly 60 FPS, which is the minimum threshold for smooth gameplay on standard 60Hz displays. The Ultra preset at 4K falls to 47 FPS, which introduces noticeable stutter in a multiplayer environment. Given these numbers, the Medium preset is the recommended choice for 4K, as it provides the best combination of visual quality and playable frame rates, while the Low preset is the only option that approaches high-refresh-rate territory at this resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a flagship mobile GPU with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and a 384-bit memory bus, delivering a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. Its boost clock is rated at 2520 MHz, with a base clock of 2235 MHz. The GPU's raw compute capabilities are substantial, with an FP32 throughput of 82.58 TFLOPS. In the context of Fivem, the GPU's role is primarily to render the dense urban environments and vehicle models, but the game's engine is known to be heavily CPU-bound, especially in multiplayer scenarios where many players and scripts are active.

The data shows that the RTX 4090 is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the frame rates scale dramatically with settings, from 262 FPS on Low to 128 FPS on Ultra. This wide spread indicates that the GPU is capable of far more than the CPU can feed it at lower settings, and the bottleneck shifts to the processor. However, at 4K, the GPU's workload increases significantly. The average FPS on Ultra at 4K is 47, which is less than half of the 128 FPS seen at 1080p Ultra. This confirms that the RTX 4090 is being fully utilized at higher resolutions, and its 24 GB VRAM buffer is more than sufficient for any texture-heavy scenario Fivem can present.

The GPU's performance relative to its nearest rivals, as measured by average benchmark score, shows the RTX 4090 is essentially tied with the Intel Arc Pro A60 (0% delta) and slightly ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (0.3% delta). It trails the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M by 2.5%, but these comparisons are based on general compute benchmarks, not Fivem-specific performance. In this game, the RTX 4090's high pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s help maintain playable frame rates even at the demanding 4K Ultra preset, though the 47 FPS average indicates that even this powerful GPU struggles with the game's unoptimized draw calls at maximum settings.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior of this combo is telling. Moving from 1080p to 1440p on the Medium preset, the average FPS drops from 207 to 136, a reduction of approximately 34%. This is a significant decline and indicates that the GPU is becoming more involved as resolution increases. The scaling from 1440p to 4K on the same Medium preset shows a further drop from 136 to 75 FPS, a reduction of about 45%. This steep decline at 4K confirms that the RTX 4090 is the primary bottleneck at this resolution, as the pixel throughput requirements double from 1440p to 4K.

At the Low preset, the scaling is even more pronounced. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS falls from 262 to 172, a 34% drop. From 1440p to 4K, it falls from 172 to 96, a 44% drop. This pattern suggests that even at the lowest settings, where the CPU should have more headroom, the GPU is still the limiting factor at higher resolutions. Conversely, the Ultra preset shows a more gradual scaling curve in percentage terms: from 1080p to 1440p, the drop is from 128 to 84 FPS (34%), and from 1440p to 4K, it's from 84 to 47 FPS (44%). The consistency of these percentage drops across all settings indicates that the GPU's rendering workload scales predictably with resolution, and the CPU overhead remains relatively constant.

The data from the High preset mirrors this trend. At 1080p, High produces 165 FPS; at 1440p, it drops to 109 FPS (34% reduction); and at 4K, it reaches 60 FPS (45% reduction). The fact that the 4K High preset lands exactly at 60 FPS is notable, as it suggests a performance ceiling that aligns with the GPU's capability to push frames at that resolution with these visual settings. This uniform scaling behavior points to a system where the RTX 4090's performance scales linearly with resolution, while the CPU's contribution becomes relatively less important as the GPU workload increases.

How This Combo Ranks

Among all tested combinations in the database for Fivem, this particular pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 625 out of 3005 total combinations. This places it in the top 21% of all tested systems, which is a respectable position given the mobile CPU component. The rank is influenced by the fact that Fivem is a CPU-intensive game, and the Core Ultra 7 165H, while capable, is not a desktop-class processor.

The CPU itself has an average benchmark score of 34,083, placing it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the Intel Core Ultra 5 338H (0.3% faster), the AMD EPYC 4244P and AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (both 0.4% faster), and the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (0.5% faster). These small deltas indicate that the Core Ultra 7 165H is competitive with these processors in general workloads, but its mobile form factor and 28W TDP may limit sustained performance in gaming scenarios compared to desktop parts.

The GPU, by contrast, is a top-tier component, ranking in the 88th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 60,347. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are remarkably close, with the Intel Arc Pro A60 matching its score exactly (0% delta), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 just 0.3% behind. The AMD Radeon Pro W6600M is 2.5% faster, while the AMD Radeon PRO V710 is 2.9% slower. This suggests that in pure GPU-bound scenarios, the RTX 4090 should perform exceptionally well. However, the combo rank of 625 indicates that in Fivem, the CPU bottleneck prevents this system from reaching the top tier of performance, as many higher-ranked combos likely pair the RTX 4090 with more powerful desktop CPUs.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core, 22-thread processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It features 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB of L2 cache per core. The CPU's TDP is rated at 28W, which is characteristic of a mobile processor designed for laptops rather than desktops. Its integrated graphics are Arc Xe-LPG with 128 execution units, but in this configuration, the discrete RTX 4090 handles all rendering tasks.

In Fivem, the CPU's role is critical because the game's multiplayer framework requires constant communication between the server and client, along with processing many concurrent scripts and player actions. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 262 FPS, which is a strong result and indicates that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at lower settings. However, the fact that the frame rates do not scale linearly with GPU power suggests that the CPU is still the limiting factor at higher settings.

The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 14,551, and its single-core score is 1,759. These scores are modest compared to high-end desktop CPUs, which typically score much higher. In Fivem, single-core performance is particularly important because the game engine's main thread often cannot utilize multiple cores efficiently. The Core Ultra 7 165H's single-core performance, while decent for a mobile chip, may not be sufficient to fully unlock the RTX 4090's potential at lower resolutions. This is evidenced by the fact that the Ultra preset at 1080p only reaches 128 FPS, which is well below what the GPU could theoretically deliver if the CPU could keep up. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 3,509 further confirms its moderate single-thread capability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS across settings is as follows: Low achieves 262 FPS, Medium achieves 207 FPS with a minimum of 176 and a maximum of 238, High achieves 165 FPS, and Ultra achieves 128 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum values, indicating a frame time range of 62 FPS. This wide variance is typical of Fivem, where server-side events and player interactions can cause frame drops.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 172 FPS, Medium at 136 FPS (min 116, max 156), High at 109 FPS, and Ultra at 84 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 116 FPS is still above the threshold for smooth gameplay on a 120Hz display, but the variance of 40 FPS is noticeable. The Ultra preset at 84 FPS is borderline for 144Hz displays, and users may experience occasional dips below the refresh rate.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 96 FPS, Medium at 75 FPS (min 64, max 87), High at 60 FPS, and Ultra at 47 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 64 FPS is close to the 60 FPS floor for comfortable gaming, and the maximum of 87 FPS shows that the system can push higher in less demanding scenes. The High preset's 60 FPS average is exactly at the standard refresh rate, but any significant on-screen action could cause drops below this level. The Ultra preset's 47 FPS is not recommended for a smooth experience, especially in a multiplayer setting where consistency is key.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 1440p monitor with this combo?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 provides the best experience, with an average of 136 FPS and a minimum of 116 FPS. This ensures smooth gameplay on most 144Hz displays while offering a visual upgrade over Low settings.

Q: Can this system run Fivem at 4K with high refresh rates?

A: No, the data shows that at 3840x2160, even the Low preset only achieves 96 FPS. The Medium preset averages 75 FPS, and High drops to 60 FPS. For a 144Hz 4K monitor, this combo would not be able to maintain consistently high frame rates.

Q: How does the CPU bottleneck affect performance at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the frame rates range from 262 FPS on Low to 128 FPS on Ultra. The large spread suggests that the CPU is limiting performance at higher settings, as the RTX 4090 is capable of much higher frame rates in GPU-bound scenarios.

Q: What is the expected frame rate on Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: The measured average FPS on Ultra at 1920x1080 is 128 FPS. This is still playable on a 120Hz monitor, but it is significantly lower than the Low preset's 262 FPS, indicating a heavy performance cost for maximum visual quality.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems in Fivem?

A: This pairing ranks 625th out of 3005 tested combinations, placing it in the top 21%. This is a strong result, but the mobile CPU prevents it from reaching the very top tier where desktop processors paired with the same GPU would likely rank.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM sufficient for Fivem at 4K?

A: Yes, the 24 GB GDDR6X memory is more than sufficient for Fivem's texture and geometry demands. The bottleneck at 4K is not VRAM capacity but rather the GPU's rendering throughput, as evidenced by the 47 FPS average on Ultra settings.