Outriders

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 paired with the Intel Core i5-9400 delivers a solid 1080p and 1440p experience in Outriders, though the data shows that the Ultra preset is largely impractical at higher resolutions. The measured results place this combination in the 2196th position out of 2913 tested configurations for this game, indicating a mid-tier standing that aligns with the CPU’s 47th percentile ranking and the GPU’s 58th percentile ranking among all hardware. The performance curve across resolutions and settings reveals a system where the GPU is the primary driver of frame rates at 4K, while the older six-core processor begins to show its limitations at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for Outriders presents a clear hierarchy across the four tested presets at each resolution. For players targeting a smooth 60 frames-per-second experience, the Medium preset is the optimal choice at 3840x2160, delivering an average of 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 72 FPS. This is the only 4K configuration that consistently clears the 60 FPS threshold without sacrificing significant visual fidelity, as the High preset drops to 47 FPS average and Ultra falls to 34 FPS average, making both less suitable for fluid gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the High preset becomes the standout recommendation, achieving an 88 FPS average that comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS target while maintaining enhanced visual quality over Medium’s 98 FPS. The jump from Medium to High at this resolution costs only 10 FPS on average, which is a reasonable trade-off for the graphical improvements. The Low preset at 1440p produces 110 FPS, but the visual compromise is rarely necessary given the headroom available at this resolution.

For 1920x1080, the High preset at 102 FPS average offers the best balance of quality and performance, though the Medium preset at 114 FPS with a minimum of 97 FPS provides an even more stable frame-time experience for competitive play. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields 91 FPS, which is playable but represents a noticeable 11 FPS drop from High without a proportional visual benefit in many scenes. The data suggests that High is the sweet spot at 1080p, with Medium serving as a fallback for those prioritizing frame consistency, as indicated by the narrower gap between its minimum and maximum FPS values.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run Outriders at 4K with playable frame rates?

A: Yes, but only at Medium settings. The measured data shows a 62 FPS average at 3840x2160 with Medium settings, with a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 72 FPS. The High preset drops to 47 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 34 FPS, both of which are below the standard 60 FPS playability threshold.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: The Ultra preset at 2560x1440 produces an average of 65 FPS, which is 23 FPS lower than the High preset’s 88 FPS average. This represents a substantial performance penalty of roughly 26% for the additional visual features, making High the more practical choice for maintaining higher frame rates.

Q: What is the best setting for a 144Hz 1080p monitor?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers 114 FPS average with a minimum of 97 FPS and a maximum of 131 FPS, which is the closest configuration to maximizing a 144Hz refresh rate. The Low preset achieves 128 FPS average but sacrifices visual quality, while High drops to 102 FPS average.

Q: Is the frame rate stable at 4K Medium?

A: The data shows a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 72 FPS at 3840x2160 Medium, which is a spread of 19 FPS. This indicates some frame-time variance, but the minimum stays above 50 FPS, suggesting generally stable performance without severe drops.

Q: How does the CPU affect performance at 1080p versus 4K?

A: At 1080p, the CPU becomes more involved, and the frame rates scale with settings from 91 FPS at Ultra to 128 FPS at Low. At 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, as evidenced by the wider performance gap between Low at 86 FPS and Ultra at 34 FPS, indicating the CPU has less influence at higher resolutions.

Q: Should I use the Low preset for competitive play?

A: At 1080p, the Low preset offers the highest average frame rate at 128 FPS, which provides the lowest input latency for competitive play. However, the Medium preset at 114 FPS may offer a better balance, as its minimum frame rate of 97 FPS suggests more consistent performance during intense combat scenarios.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 is the dominant component in this pairing, equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s. The GPU’s architecture is RDNA 3.0 on a 5 nm process from TSMC, featuring 2,560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units. The boost clock reaches 2459 MHz, with a game clock of 2041 MHz and a base clock of 1900 MHz, while the memory operates at 2438 MHz with an effective 19.5 Gbps transfer rate.

In Outriders, the GPU’s role becomes increasingly critical as resolution rises. At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop dramatically from Low to Ultra, with the Low preset at 86 FPS average falling to 34 FPS average at Ultra, a reduction of 52 FPS. This steep decline indicates that the RX 7700’s raw compute throughput, rated at 25.18 TFLOPS FP32, is the primary constraint at 4K, particularly under the heavier shading and post-processing loads of the Ultra preset.

The GPU’s performance percentile of 58 places it slightly above average among all tested graphics cards, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 9060 with a 1% higher average score and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with a 1.7% higher score. The RX 7700’s 16 GB VRAM capacity ensures that memory capacity is not a bottleneck in Outriders, as the game’s asset streaming demands are well within this allocation even at 4K Ultra. The benchmark results show that the GPU maintains a consistent performance profile across DirectX 12 workloads, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 2865 and a Passmark G3D score of 20974, confirming its capability to handle the game’s rendering requirements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear progression across settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 128 FPS, while Medium delivers 114 FPS with a minimum of 97 FPS and a maximum of 131 FPS. High settings produce 102 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 91 FPS average. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 37 FPS, representing a 29% reduction in frame rate when enabling the highest visual features.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales downward as expected. The Low preset remains the fastest at 110 FPS average, followed by Medium at 98 FPS with a minimum of 83 FPS and a maximum of 112 FPS. High settings yield 88 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 65 FPS average. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p widens to 45 FPS, a 41% reduction, showing the increased GPU load at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens considerably. The Low preset manages 86 FPS average, while Medium drops to 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 72 FPS. High settings achieve 47 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 34 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra at 4K is 52 FPS, a 60% reduction, demonstrating the significant computational demands of 4K rendering on this GPU. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently provides the most balanced frame-time data, as evidenced by the recorded minimum and maximum values, while the High and Ultra presets show increasingly pronounced performance penalties.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the system’s bottleneck characteristics. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 128 at 1080p to 110 at 1440p and further to 86 at 4K, representing a 33% reduction from 1080p to 4K. This relatively moderate decline suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is contributing more significantly to overall performance, as the GPU is not fully saturated.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is more aggressive. The average FPS falls from 91 at 1080p to 65 at 1440p and then to 34 at 4K, a 63% reduction across the full resolution range. This steeper decline indicates that the RX 7700 becomes the limiting component at higher resolutions when the Ultra preset’s effects are active, as the GPU’s compute resources are increasingly strained by the additional pixel count and visual complexity.

The Medium settings provide a middle ground, with FPS declining from 114 at 1080p to 98 at 1440p and 62 at 4K, a 46% reduction. The High settings show a similar pattern, dropping from 102 at 1080p to 88 at 1440p and 47 at 4K, a 54% reduction. The data suggests that at 1080p, the Intel Core i5-9400’s six cores and six threads become more relevant, as the frame rates at lower settings approach the CPU’s capability ceiling. Conversely, at 4K, the GPU’s role dominates, and the frame rates are dictated almost entirely by the RX 7700’s rendering throughput, with the CPU having minimal impact on the final output.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a six-core, six-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, manufactured on a 14 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The processor features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 256 KB of L2 cache per core, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache, and it supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration with 42.7 GB/s of bandwidth.

In Outriders, the CPU’s role is most apparent at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the primary constraint. At 1080p, the frame rate differences between settings are relatively modest, with the gap from Low to Ultra being 37 FPS. This suggests that the i5-9400 can keep up with the game’s threading demands at this resolution, though its six threads without Hyper-Threading may limit performance in scenes with heavy physics or AI calculations. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multicore score of 6629 and single-core score of 935 place it in the 47th percentile of all processors, indicating a mid-range standing.

The nearest rivals to the i5-9400 include the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 with a 0.2% lower average score, the Intel Core i7-10710U with a 0.3% higher score, and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 with a 0.4% higher score. These close margins suggest that the CPU’s performance is well within the expected range for its class. At 4K, the CPU’s influence diminishes significantly, as evidenced by the minimal impact of resolution on the frame rate differences between settings. The data shows that at 4K, the Low preset achieves 86 FPS, which is only 24 FPS lower than the 1080p Low result, indicating that the GPU is the dominant factor at this resolution. The i5-9400’s PCIe Gen 3 interface with 16 lanes provides adequate bandwidth for the RX 7700, and its memory support for DDR4 ensures sufficient data throughput for the game’s streaming needs.