Outriders

# Outriders: Intel Core i5-11400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D — Benchmark Analysis

This combination pairs a 6-core, 12-thread Rocket Lake processor with NVIDIA's flagship Blackwell GPU, producing a dataset that reveals a heavily GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions while exposing CPU limitations at 1080p. The measured frames per second across three resolutions and four settings presets provide a clear picture of how this specific pairing handles Outriders' looter-shooter gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions shows a consistent pattern: the Medium preset delivers the most balanced experience when considering both average framerate and the available minimum/maximum frame data. At 2560x1440, Medium produces an average of 140 FPS with a minimum of 119 FPS and maximum of 161 FPS, representing a 24.4% improvement over High settings at the same resolution. The jump from Low to Medium at 1440p costs only 18 FPS on average (158 down to 140), yet the visual quality gain from Low to Medium is substantial in a game like Outriders where environmental detail matters.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 163 average FPS with a minimum of 139 FPS, which keeps framerates well above the refresh rate of most high-frequency displays. The 4K Medium result of 113 average FPS with 96 minimum FPS remains playable, though the gap between Medium and Ultra at 4K is stark—45 FPS difference (113 vs 68). For players prioritizing smoothness over absolute visual fidelity, Medium at 1440p appears to be the sweet spot: it maintains 119 FPS minimum, which prevents noticeable hitches during combat-heavy sequences with multiple enemies on screen.

Ultra settings are technically playable at 1440p with 112 average FPS, but the 4K Ultra result of 68 average FPS suggests the GPU is being pushed to its limits with the highest preset. The data does not include minimum FPS values for Ultra at any resolution except Medium, which makes it difficult to assess frame-time consistency for the highest preset. Based on the available measurements, Medium at 1440p or 1080p offers the best combination of performance headroom and visual fidelity, while 4K Medium remains viable for players who prefer higher resolution over maximum graphical detail.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F operates with 6 cores and 12 threads, featuring a base clock of 2.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.40 GHz. This 14 nm Rocket Lake processor carries 12 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration, providing 51.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth. In synthetic benchmarks, the processor achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14340 and a single-core score of 2024, placing it at the 71st percentile among all tested CPUs.

The CPU's role in Outriders becomes evident when examining the framerate scaling from 1080p to 4K. At 1080p with Low settings, the combination reaches 184 average FPS, but this represents a ceiling imposed by the processor rather than the GPU. When resolution increases to 1440p Low, framerate drops to 158 FPS—a 14.1% reduction—and at 4K Low, it falls to 127 FPS, a 31% decrease from the 1080p result. This scaling pattern suggests the CPU can sustain roughly 184 FPS in this game's engine, beyond which the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The 3DMark multi-threaded results show the processor scaling from 1691 in the 2-thread test to 5652 in the max-thread test, indicating reasonable multi-core efficiency. In Outriders, the 6-core/12-thread configuration appears sufficient to feed the RTX 5090 D at 1440p and 4K, where GPU load dominates. However, the 1080p results indicate that the CPU's single-thread performance—evidenced by a 3DMark single-thread score of 868—sets an upper boundary for maximum framerate in less demanding scenarios. The processor's PassMark single-thread score of 2981 and Geekbench single-core score of 1777 corroborate this assessment.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this combination?

A: Medium settings at 3840x2160 provide 113 average FPS with a minimum of 96 FPS, which is the only 4K preset with recorded minimum framerate data. High settings at 4K achieve 94 average FPS, while Ultra drops to 68 average FPS, making Medium the safest choice for maintaining playable framerates at 4K.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 D compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090 D scores 77712 on average, which places it 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76904), 1.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940), and 2.1% to 2.4% behind the NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants (79396 and 79605). This places the GPU at the 92nd percentile among all tested GPUs.

Q: Does the CPU become a bottleneck at any resolution?

A: The data suggests CPU limitation at 1080p, where Low settings produce 184 FPS. The framerate drops to 158 FPS at 1440p Low and 127 FPS at 4K Low, showing that resolution scaling impacts performance even on Low settings. The CPU's 71st percentile ranking among all processors indicates it is not a top-tier part, yet it still delivers respectable performance in this game.

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

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 158 average FPS while Ultra produces 112 average FPS, representing a 46 FPS difference. Medium sits between at 140 FPS, and High achieves 126 FPS. This spread of 46 FPS across presets indicates the GPU has significant headroom even at the highest settings.

Q: How does this combination rank among all tested combos in Outriders?

A: The combo ranks 670th out of 2913 tested combinations, placing it in the top 23% of all configurations tested in this game. This ranking reflects the strong GPU performance offset by the mid-range CPU.

Q: Is the 32 GB VRAM sufficient for Outriders at 4K?

A: The RTX 5090 D features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory with a 512-bit bus and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth. While no VRAM usage measurements are provided, the 4K Ultra preset still delivers 68 average FPS, suggesting the memory capacity does not become a limiting factor at any tested setting.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core i5-11400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves a rank of 670 out of 2913 tested combos in Outriders, placing it within the top 23% of all configurations evaluated. This ranking reflects a significant disparity between the two components: the GPU sits at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU rests at the 71st percentile among all processors. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 7H12 (0.3% faster), Intel Core i5-12450H (0.4% slower), AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (0.6% slower), and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (0.6% faster), all within a narrow performance band.

The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are notably different in class: the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT trails by 1.1%, while the Radeon RX 6850M XT leads by 1.6%, and the Tesla P100 variants lead by 2.1% to 2.4%. This indicates the RTX 5090 D's average benchmark score of 77712 is competitive with mobile and data-center parts, which is unusual for a desktop flagship. The combination's rank of 670 suggests that many other tested combos achieve higher framerates in Outriders, likely due to more balanced CPU-GPU pairings that avoid the CPU bottleneck observed at 1080p.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how this combination scales across 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 resolutions. At Low settings, the framerate drops from 184 FPS at 1080p to 158 FPS at 1440p (14.1% reduction) and then to 127 FPS at 4K (19.6% reduction from 1440p, 31% from 1080p). This scaling pattern indicates diminishing returns as resolution increases, with the CPU becoming less of a factor at higher resolutions where the GPU's rendering workload dominates.

At Medium settings, the scaling shows 163 FPS at 1080p, 140 FPS at 1440p (14.1% reduction), and 113 FPS at 4K (19.3% reduction from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and Medium presets suggests a predictable relationship between resolution and framerate for this combination. High settings produce 147 FPS at 1080p, 126 FPS at 1440p (14.3% reduction), and 94 FPS at 4K (25.4% reduction from 1440p).

Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling: 130 FPS at 1080p, 112 FPS at 1440p (13.8% reduction), and 68 FPS at 4K (39.3% reduction from 1440p). The 44 FPS gap between 1440p and 4K Ultra indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute resources are heavily taxed at the highest resolution and preset combination. The 4K Ultra result of 68 FPS represents a 47.7% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result, demonstrating that the RTX 5090 D's capabilities are stretched thin when both resolution and graphical fidelity are maximized.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combination delivers 184 average FPS on Low settings, 163 average FPS on Medium (with a minimum of 139 and maximum of 188), 147 average FPS on High, and 130 average FPS on Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 54 FPS, showing that the GPU has substantial headroom at this resolution even with the most demanding preset.

At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 158 average FPS, Medium produces 140 average FPS (minimum 119, maximum 161), High produces 126 average FPS, and Ultra produces 112 average FPS. The 46 FPS spread between Low and Ultra is narrower than at 1080p, reflecting the increased GPU workload at higher resolution. The Medium preset's minimum FPS of 119 at 1440p is particularly notable, as it maintains 85% of the average framerate even in demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the results show 127 average FPS on Low, 113 average FPS on Medium (minimum 96, maximum 130), 94 average FPS on High, and 68 average FPS on Ultra. The 59 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is the widest of any resolution, indicating that the GPU's performance envelope is being fully explored. The 4K Medium result of 113 FPS with a 96 FPS minimum demonstrates that this combination can maintain playable framerates at 4K with moderate settings, but the Ultra preset's 68 FPS average falls below the 70 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for smooth gameplay.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is built on the GB202 chip using a 5 nm process at TSMC, packing 92,200 million transistors into a 750 mm² die. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2017 MHz and boosts to 2407 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz achieving 28 Gbps effective throughput. The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory is accessed via a 512-bit bus, providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth—a figure that proves critical for 4K rendering in Outriders.

With 21760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs, the RTX 5090 D delivers 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance. The pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s indicate substantial fill-rate capabilities that directly benefit the particle effects and environmental detail present in Outriders' combat encounters. The 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for advanced rendering features, though the game's implementation of these features is not detailed in the measurement data.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark results show a PassMark G3D score of 44065 and a PassMark GPU compute score of 28396, with a Geekbench OpenCL score of 310674 and Vulkan score of 376915. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14326 reflects modern API performance. These benchmarks place the GPU at the 92nd percentile among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77712.

In Outriders specifically, the GPU's role becomes dominant at 1440p and 4K resolutions. The framerate differences between presets at these resolutions—46 FPS at 1440p and 59 FPS at 4K between Low and Ultra—demonstrate that the GPU has sufficient headroom to handle increased graphical loads. The 4K Ultra result of 68 FPS, while lower than other presets, indicates that even the most demanding settings are playable with this flagship GPU. The 575 W TDP and dual-slot design, along with the 1x 16-pin power connector and 950 W suggested PSU, reflect the power requirements necessary to sustain this level of performance.