Outriders

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER in Outriders delivers a wide spread of performance across its four quality presets, with the measured data clearly indicating that the Medium preset is the optimal balance for most users. At 1080p, the Medium preset achieves 166 FPS average, which is significantly higher than the 124 FPS of High and nearly double the 90 FPS of Ultra. The jump from Medium to High costs 42 FPS, a 25% reduction, while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 34 FPS, a 27% reduction. This pattern repeats at 1440p, where Medium delivers 105 FPS versus 78 FPS on High and 57 FPS on Ultra. At 4K, the differences become even more stark: Medium produces 55 FPS, High drops to 41 FPS, and Ultra falls to 30 FPS. The Low preset is the outlier, offering 189 FPS at 1080p and 144 FPS at 1440p, but it does so by presumably sacrificing the visual fidelity that makes the game's environments compelling. Given that Medium maintains a 46 FPS minimum at 4K and 89 FPS minimum at 1440p, it provides the most consistent experience without the steep performance penalties of High or Ultra, making it the recommended starting point for this hardware configuration.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for this combination reveals a clear hierarchy where Medium stands out as the sweet spot. At 1080p, Medium produces 166 FPS average with a 141 FPS minimum, which is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays and provides a 34% performance buffer over High. Moving to 1440p, Medium still holds 105 FPS average with an 89 FPS minimum, keeping gameplay smooth on standard 144Hz monitors. The 4K Medium result of 55 FPS average, while not ideal for competitive play, remains playable for a looter shooter where reaction times matter less than in arena shooters. The data suggests that High and Ultra presets are only viable if the user prioritizes visual quality over frame rate consistency, as Ultra at 4K drops to exactly 30 FPS, which is the bare minimum for playability and risks feeling sluggish during intense combat sequences. Low preset, while delivering 189 FPS at 1080p, likely strips away too much detail for a game that relies on visual cues for enemy telegraphs and environmental storytelling. Therefore, Medium is the recommended preset across all resolutions, as it offers the best combination of frame rate headroom and graphical fidelity, with the 1440p Medium result of 105 FPS being particularly compelling for users with mid-range monitors.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER carries the primary rendering load in Outriders, and its specifications directly explain the performance scaling observed. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the card has sufficient memory capacity for 1080p and 1440p but may face pressure at 4K with higher presets. The GPU's 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs, clocked at a base of 1605 MHz and boost of 1770 MHz, provide the raw compute power necessary for the game's particle effects and lighting systems. The Turing architecture's 40 RT cores and 320 tensor cores suggest the card is capable of handling DirectX 12 Ultimate features, which Outriders supports through its API list. The benchmark results show that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K, where even the Low preset only achieves 75 FPS, indicating that the 2070 SUPER's 9.062 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is stretched thin by the pixel count. At 1080p, the GPU has ample headroom, as evidenced by the 189 FPS Low result, which suggests the CPU is keeping pace adequately. The 12 nm process node and 215 W TDP indicate this is a power-hungry card, but the measured frame rates show it delivers consistent performance across the settings range, with the Medium preset at 1440p (105 FPS) representing a balanced workload for the hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals distinct patterns that indicate where the bottleneck shifts. At Medium settings, the progression is 166 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p, and 55 FPS at 4K, representing a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 48% drop from 1440p to 4K. This non-linear scaling suggests that the GPU is becoming increasingly strained as resolution increases, with the 4K result being less than a third of the 1080p performance. At High settings, the pattern is similar but more pronounced: 124 FPS at 1080p, 78 FPS at 1440p, and 41 FPS at 4K, representing drops of 37% and 47% respectively. The Low preset shows the most dramatic scaling: 189 FPS at 1080p, 144 FPS at 1440p, and 75 FPS at 4K, with the 4K result being only 40% of the 1080p figure. This scaling behavior indicates that at 1080p, the system is likely not fully GPU-bound, as the CPU can keep up with the lower pixel count, but by 4K, the GPU's pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint. The Ultra preset at 4K (30 FPS) versus 1080p (90 FPS) shows a 67% reduction, emphasizing that this resolution is only viable for users who prioritize visual fidelity over performance. The data implies that 1440p is the sweet spot for this combo, as it offers a significant resolution upgrade over 1080p while maintaining playable frame rates across all presets except Ultra.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combo in Outriders?

A: The data shows 1440p Medium provides 105 FPS average with an 89 FPS minimum, which is an excellent balance. At 1080p Medium, you get 166 FPS, but 4K Medium drops to 55 FPS, so 1440p offers the best compromise between visual clarity and smoothness.

Q: How much performance does the Ultra preset cost compared to Medium?

A: At 1080p, Ultra yields 90 FPS versus Medium's 166 FPS, a 46% reduction. At 1440p, Ultra gives 57 FPS versus 105 FPS, a 46% reduction. At 4K, Ultra drops to 30 FPS versus Medium's 55 FPS, a 45% reduction. The consistent ~45-46% penalty suggests Ultra is a significant visual upgrade but not worth the frame rate loss for most players.

Q: Is the RTX 2070 SUPER sufficient for 4K gaming in Outriders?

A: Only on Low settings, where it achieves 75 FPS average. Medium at 4K yields 55 FPS, which is playable but not ideal, while High (41 FPS) and Ultra (30 FPS) are marginal. The 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are adequate, but the GPU's compute power limits 4K performance to lower presets.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 5500 perform relative to its closest rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 5500 has an average benchmark score of 19593, which is 0.1% below the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (19617), 0.4% below the Intel Core i5-12500 (19668), 0.5% above the Intel Core i7-10700F (19499), and 0.7% below the Intel Core i5-11600KF (19723). These are all within 1% of each other, indicating near-identical CPU performance.

Q: Does the Low preset provide a consistent experience?

A: Yes, Low delivers 189 FPS at 1080p, 144 FPS at 1440p, and 75 FPS at 4K. These are the highest frame rates in the dataset, but the visual quality trade-off is substantial, as Low typically disables shadows, ambient occlusion, and other effects that affect gameplay readability.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average is 78 FPS, with no minimum or maximum recorded. This is 27 FPS lower than Medium (105 FPS) but still above 60 FPS, making it suitable for standard 60Hz monitors. However, the 57 FPS Ultra result at 1440p falls below 60 FPS, so High is the highest preset that maintains a comfortable margin.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 plays a supporting role in this configuration, and its specifications show why it does not bottleneck the GPU in most scenarios. With 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne codename), the CPU has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, providing solid single-threaded performance. The 16 MB L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for feeding the GPU in a game like Outriders, which is not particularly CPU-intensive. The CPU's benchmark scores reinforce this: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16429 and single-core score of 2319, with a Geekbench multi-core of 7976 and single-core of 1730. The 3DMark scores show scaling from 836 single-thread to 5411 max threads, indicating efficient multi-threading. The CPU's percentile rank of 73 among all CPUs places it above the majority of processors, and its nearest rivals are all within 1% of its average benchmark score of 19593, suggesting that swapping to any of these alternatives would have negligible impact on gameplay. The fact that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K, where even Low settings only reach 75 FPS, indicates the CPU is not holding back performance at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the 189 FPS Low result suggests the CPU can keep up with high frame rates, though the 124 FPS High result may reflect some CPU limitation combined with GPU load. The 65 W TDP and 7 nm process node indicate efficient power use, but the data shows this is a balanced partner for the RTX 2070 SUPER rather than a performance leader.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the resolution with the most headroom, the Low preset delivers 189 FPS average, which is the highest score in the entire dataset. Medium at 1080p produces 166 FPS with a 141 FPS minimum and 191 FPS maximum, showing excellent consistency. High at 1080p yields 124 FPS average, a significant step down from Medium but still very playable. Ultra at 1080p drops to 90 FPS, which is the lowest 1080p result but still above 60 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440, Low achieves 144 FPS, Medium produces 105 FPS with a 89 FPS minimum and 120 FPS maximum, High delivers 78 FPS, and Ultra falls to 57 FPS. The 1440p Medium result of 105 FPS is particularly notable as it offers a 40% improvement over High while maintaining smooth gameplay. At 3840x2160, the performance drops significantly: Low reaches 75 FPS, Medium produces 55 FPS with a 46 FPS minimum and 63 FPS maximum, High falls to 41 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 30 FPS. The 4K Medium result of 55 FPS is the only 4K preset that maintains an average above 50 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K displays. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset provides the most balanced frame rates, with the 1080p Medium result of 166 FPS being 34% higher than High, and the 1440p Medium result of 105 FPS being 35% higher than High. The data reveals that the performance gap between Medium and High is consistent at approximately 25-35% across resolutions, while the gap between High and Ultra is even larger, ranging from 27-31%.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER combination ranks 2179 out of 3710 tested combos in Outriders, placing it in the 41st percentile of all configurations. This mid-pack ranking reflects the hardware's position: the CPU is slightly above average (73rd percentile among all CPUs), while the GPU is also above average (65th percentile among all GPUs), but the combination does not reach the top tiers. The rank suggests that this system is capable of playing Outriders at reasonable settings, as evidenced by the measured FPS data, but it is not a high-end setup. The CPU's nearest rivals all have nearly identical average scores (within 0.7% of the 5500's 19593), meaning that upgrading or downgrading the processor would have minimal impact on this ranking. Similarly, the GPU's nearest rivals (NVIDIA Quadro M4000M, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile, Intel Arc B570, Intel Arc A750) are all within 1.5% of the 2070 SUPER's average score of 20282, indicating that the GPU sits in a competitive but not dominant position. The rank of 2179 out of 3710 means there are 1531 combinations that perform worse and 2178 that perform better, placing this system solidly in the middle of the pack. For a 1080p gamer, this rank is more than sufficient, as the data shows 124 FPS on High and 166 FPS on Medium at that resolution. For 1440p, the 105 FPS Medium result is also strong. However, 4K gaming is only feasible on Low settings (75 FPS) or Medium (55 FPS), which aligns with the mid-pack ranking. The data implies that this combo is optimized for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with the 4K results being a bonus rather than a primary use case.