Fortnite

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Fortnite with the Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER reveals a clear and predictable scaling pattern as resolution climbs. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo delivers 205.3 FPS, which serves as the baseline for understanding how the system behaves under lighter loads. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same Low preset drops the average to 128.8 FPS, a reduction of roughly 37%. Pushing further to 3840x2160 at Low yields 71.7 FPS, which is about 44% lower than the 1440p figure. This progressive decline is steep but not unexpected for a GPU in this class.

The pattern becomes more telling when examining the High preset. At 1080p High, the system produces 110.9 FPS. At 1440p High, that number falls to 75.1 FPS, a 32% drop. At 4K High, the average plummets to 36.8 FPS, which is a 51% reduction from the 1440p result. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at High settings shows a total loss of 74.1 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the dominant limiting factor at higher resolutions. The data suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256-bit bus are being saturated as pixel count increases, particularly at Ultra settings where 4K drops to 25.2 FPS.

Interestingly, the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens dramatically as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low (205.3 FPS) and Ultra (73.5 FPS) is 131.8 FPS. At 1440p, that gap narrows to 79.2 FPS (128.8 vs 49.6). At 4K, the spread compresses to 46.5 FPS (71.7 vs 25.2). This compression indicates that at higher resolutions, the GPU's compute resources become the bottleneck, and settings-related overhead matters less in absolute terms. The frame rate ceiling at 4K Ultra is remarkably low, suggesting that this configuration is not viable for competitive play at that resolution.

What does this imply about the limiting component? At 1080p Low, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are likely keeping pace with the GPU, as evidenced by the 205.3 FPS figure. However, as resolution increases, the RTX 2060 SUPER's raw throughput—7.181 TFLOPS of FP32 performance—becomes the constraining factor. The data points to a system where the CPU has headroom at lower resolutions, but the GPU's pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s are insufficient for 4K Ultra in Fortnite.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable with this combo at 1080p?

A: The highest measured average is 205.3 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only preset that breaks the 200 FPS barrier in the data.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score of 19774 places it 0.3% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (19706), 0.5% ahead of the RTX 2070 (19680), and 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 (19623). It trails the Tesla K40m (19519) by 1.3%.

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

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 128.8 FPS, while Ultra drops to 49.6 FPS. This represents a 79.2 FPS reduction, or roughly 61.5% lower performance when moving from the least to most demanding preset.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to bottleneck at 4K Ultra?

A: The data shows 4K Ultra yields only 25.2 FPS, which is far below the CPU's demonstrated capability at lower resolutions. The GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth appear insufficient for this workload, making the RTX 2060 SUPER the clear limiting component.

Q: How does the i5-10400F rank against other CPUs in the database?

A: The CPU holds a 73rd percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 14168. Its nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 7552, scores 14115, a 0.4% difference, while the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C scores 14277, which is 0.8% higher.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking for Fortnite specifically?

A: This combo ranks 1122 out of 1564 tested combinations in Fortnite, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database for this game.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F brings 6 cores and 12 threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. The Comet Lake architecture, built on Intel's 14 nm process, provides 12 MB of shared L3 cache. Benchmark results show a single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark and 1453 in Cinebench R23, indicating competent per-core performance for a mid-range desktop part. The multi-threaded results are more revealing: Cinebench R20 multicore reaches 4324, while Geekbench multicore hits 5783, showing that the 12 threads scale reasonably well.

In Fortnite, the CPU's role appears to diminish as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the 205.3 FPS result suggests the CPU is feeding the GPU adequately, but the frame rate is likely approaching the GPU's limit even at this low setting. The CPU's Passmark single-thread score of 2541 and multithread score of 12115 indicate solid performance, yet the game's engine may not fully utilize all 12 threads. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 4748 versus the max-thread score of 4735 shows minimal scaling beyond 16 threads, which aligns with the 6-core/12-thread configuration.

The data implies that at 1080p, the CPU has enough headroom to push high frame rates, but the GPU caps performance. At 4K, the CPU's influence wanes further, as evidenced by the 71.7 FPS at Low settings—a figure that would be higher if the CPU were the bottleneck. The 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR4 memory support at 42.7 GB/s bandwidth suggest a balanced platform, but Fortnite's optimization appears to favor GPU throughput over CPU compute. The nearest CPU rivals include the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (0.8% higher score) and Intel Core i5-8500 (1.1% lower), demonstrating that the i5-10400F sits in a competitive mid-range tier.

Settings Recommendations

Examining the measured FPS across all presets, the Medium setting at 1080p delivers 144.3 FPS, which represents a strong balance between visual quality and performance. This is notably higher than the 110.9 FPS at High and far above the 73.5 FPS at Ultra. For players targeting high refresh rates, 1080p Low at 205.3 FPS is the only option that exceeds 200 FPS, but the visual compromises may be significant. The data suggests that Medium at 1080p is the sweet spot, offering over 140 FPS while retaining more graphical fidelity than Low.

At 1440p, Medium produces 90 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for competitive scenarios. High at 1440p drops to 75.1 FPS, while Low reaches 128.8 FPS. For 1440p users, Low appears to be the most sensible choice if frame rate is the priority, as the jump from Low to Medium costs 38.8 FPS. At 4K, all settings struggle: Low yields 71.7 FPS, Medium 49.9 FPS, High 36.8 FPS, and Ultra 25.2 FPS. The 4K data suggests that this combo is not suited for 4K gaming beyond Low settings, and even then, the frame rate is marginal for fast-paced Battle Royale play.

The Ultra preset at any resolution appears to be a poor trade-off. At 1080p Ultra, the 73.5 FPS figure is barely above the 1440p High result, indicating diminishing returns from the highest settings. The gap between High and Ultra at 1080p is 37.4 FPS, which is substantial. Based on the measured rows, Medium at 1080p or Low at 1440p provide the best experience per frame rate, depending on the display resolution. The data does not support Ultra as a viable preset for this hardware in Fortnite.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1122 out of 1564 tested combinations places this system in the 28th percentile for Fortnite performance. This is a notably low ranking for a setup with a dedicated GPU and a modern 6-core CPU. The rank suggests that many other CPU-GPU pairings outperform this configuration in this specific game, which could be due to Fortnite's engine favoring certain architectures or the RTX 2060 SUPER's age relative to newer GPUs in the database.

The GPU's 63rd percentile ranking among all GPUs (average benchmark score 19774) is higher than the combo's overall game rank, implying that the CPU may be holding back performance in some scenarios. The CPU's 73rd percentile ranking (average score 14168) is also higher than the combo's game rank, which is puzzling. This discrepancy might indicate that Fortnite's optimization does not scale well with this particular combination, or that the measured FPS data captures specific bottlenecks not visible in synthetic benchmarks.

Comparing to the nearest GPU rivals, the RTX 2060 SUPER performs nearly identically to the RTX 2070 (0.5% delta) and GTX TITAN (0.3% delta), yet the game rank suggests other factors are at play. The 4K Ultra result of 25.2 FPS is particularly weak, dragging down the overall ranking. The combo's position in the lower third of tested configurations indicates that for Fortnite specifically, this hardware pairing is not ideal, despite respectable synthetic scores. The data implies that Fortnite's performance profile rewards different hardware combinations more heavily than general-purpose benchmarks would suggest.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 205.3 FPS, Medium 144.3 FPS, High 110.9 FPS, and Ultra 73.5 FPS. The progression from Low to Medium costs 61 FPS, from Medium to High costs 33.4 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 37.4 FPS. The 1080p results show that the GPU can handle high frame rates at lower settings, with Low achieving nearly triple the frame rate of Ultra.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 128.8 FPS, Medium 90 FPS, High 75.1 FPS, and Ultra 49.6 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings is 76.5 FPS, while at Ultra the drop is 23.9 FPS. The 1440p Medium result of 90 FPS is notable as it is the only non-Low setting that breaks the 90 FPS threshold at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 71.7 FPS, Medium 49.9 FPS, High 36.8 FPS, and Ultra 25.2 FPS. The 4K results show a stark contrast: Low is nearly three times faster than Ultra. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Low is a 57.1 FPS drop, while at Ultra the drop is 24.4 FPS. These numbers illustrate that the RTX 2060 SUPER's 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for 4K Ultra, but Low settings at 4K remain playable at above 70 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using TSMC's 12 nm process, with a die size of 445 mm² and 10,800 million transistors. It features 2176 shading units, 136 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, along with 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores. The base clock runs at 1470 MHz with a boost of 1650 MHz, while memory operates at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, yielding 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GPU's FP32 performance is 7.181 TFLOPS, with a pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s.

In Fortnite, the GPU's role is dominant at higher resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 25.2 FPS indicates that the GPU is severely overburdened, likely due to the combination of high pixel count and demanding settings. The 8 GB VRAM may also be a limiting factor at 4K Ultra, as Fortnite's texture and shadow quality at that preset could exceed the memory capacity. The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 16462 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2011 reflect its mid-range standing, which aligns with the measured game performance.

The RTX 2060 SUPER's nearest rivals in the database are the GTX TITAN (0.3% lower score), RTX 2070 (0.5% lower), and Quadro K5200 (0.8% lower). This clustering suggests that the GPU sits at a performance plateau where minor architectural differences yield similar results. However, Fortnite's specific engine demands appear to expose the GPU's weaknesses more than synthetic benchmarks do. The 175 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a power-hungry card, but the data shows that raw compute is not translating into 4K capability. The GPU's 63rd percentile ranking is respectable, yet the game's measured FPS at 4K Ultra is below 30 FPS, making this resolution and preset combination impractical for actual play.