Outriders

# Outriders with Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 delivers a playable but inconsistent Outriders experience across resolutions, with the measured data showing a clear GPU-bound pattern at higher settings and a shift toward CPU limitation only at the lowest preset. The combination ranks 1415th out of 1693 tested combos, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database, yet the raw frame rates tell a more nuanced story depending on the resolution and quality preset selected.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 exposes a steep performance curve that is characteristic of a mid-range GPU being pushed beyond its comfortable envelope. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 104.6 FPS at 1080p to 64 FPS at 1440p, a drop of roughly 39%, and then further to 37.1 FPS at 4K, representing an additional 42% decline from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 2060’s rendering throughput diminishes rapidly as pixel count grows, with the gap between 1440p and 4K being particularly punishing.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 128 FPS, but at 1440p Low it still manages 112 FPS, a modest 12.5% reduction. Even at 4K Low, the system holds 62 FPS, which is more than double the High-preset 4K result. This disparity suggests that at Low settings, the bottleneck shifts away from the GPU’s pixel processing and toward other system components, allowing the frame rate to scale more gracefully with resolution. The difference between High and Low at 4K is a striking 24.9 FPS, or 67% higher performance at Low, which underscores how much headroom exists when visual complexity is reduced.

Medium settings occupy the middle ground predictably: 116.3 FPS at 1080p, 86.8 FPS at 1440p, and 45.9 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset, however, demonstrates the steepest cliff, with 72.1 FPS at 1080p falling to 48.4 FPS at 1440p and finally 23.1 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is barely above single-digit territory and would be considered unplayable for most users, while the 1080p Ultra figure remains acceptable. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Ultra represents a 68% performance loss, which is the largest of any preset, indicating that Ultra settings place an extreme load on the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading resources.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060’s specifications directly explain the observed behavior. With 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, the card offers 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves adequate for 1080p and 1440p but becomes strained at 4K, particularly with High and Ultra presets that likely increase texture and shadow memory footprints. The GPU’s boost clock of 1680 MHz and base clock of 1365 MHz provide the computational foundation, with 1920 shading units and 48 ROPs handling the pixel output. The 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores are present but are not specifically leveraged by Outriders’ traditional rasterization workload, meaning the card’s raw FP32 performance of 6.451 TFLOPS is the primary driver.

The measured data confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 4K High, the 37.1 FPS result sits well below the 60 FPS target, and the 4K Ultra figure of 23.1 FPS is clearly GPU-bound. The fact that dropping from High to Low at 4K more than doubles the frame rate (37.1 to 62 FPS) indicates that the GPU’s shading and memory subsystems are the bottleneck, as reducing visual quality directly alleviates their load. At 1080p, however, the GPU has more headroom, with even Ultra reaching 72.1 FPS, suggesting that the CPU may begin to play a larger role at lower resolutions and settings.

The GPU’s percentile rank of 58 among all GPUs, combined with an average benchmark score of 16074, places it slightly above the midpoint, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600S at 0.5% higher and the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 at 1.7% higher. These are modest deltas, indicating the RTX 2060 sits in a tightly contested performance band. In Outriders specifically, the GPU’s capabilities are sufficient for 1080p gaming across all presets, but 1440p requires Medium or Low for smooth frame rates, and 4K demands Low to stay playable.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal experience for this combo depends on the target resolution and desired frame rate. At 1920x1080, High settings deliver 104.6 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold and only slightly below the Low preset’s 128 FPS. The jump from High to Ultra costs 32.5 FPS (from 104.6 to 72.1), which is a significant loss for what is likely a modest visual gain in a fast-paced looter shooter. Medium at 1080p offers 116.3 FPS, a 11.7 FPS improvement over High, but the visual degradation may not justify the difference. The data suggests High is the sweet spot at 1080p, providing a smooth frame rate while retaining most visual fidelity.

At 2560x1440, the situation changes. High settings produce 64 FPS, which is playable but not comfortably above 60 FPS, while Medium raises this to 86.8 FPS, offering a more substantial margin. Low at 1440p reaches 112 FPS, but this preset likely sacrifices too much visual quality for a 1440p panel. The Ultra preset at 48.4 FPS falls below the 60 FPS target and is not recommended for competitive or smooth play. For most users, Medium at 1440p represents the best balance, delivering nearly 87 FPS while maintaining reasonable visual quality.

At 3840x2160, the only viable option is Low, which produces 62 FPS. Medium drops to 45.9 FPS, and High falls to 37.1 FPS, both of which are below the playable threshold for a shooter. Ultra at 23.1 FPS is effectively a slideshow. Users with 4K displays should accept Low settings or consider lowering the resolution, as the data shows no preset other than Low achieves even 60 FPS. The 4K Low result of 62 FPS is the only acceptable option, and even that may have noticeable visual compromises on a large screen.

How This Combo Ranks

This particular pairing of the Intel Core i5-9400 and RTX 2060 ranks 1415th out of 1693 tested combos in Outriders, placing it in the 16th percentile of all configurations in the database. This is a low ranking, reflecting that most tested combinations deliver higher average frame rates in this game. The ranking suggests that while the combo is playable at certain settings, it does not compete with higher-tier hardware that combines more powerful CPUs and GPUs.

The CPU’s own benchmark positioning provides context. The i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2305 across all tests, with a percentile rank of 50 among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i3-10305 at 0.2% higher and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 at 0.2% higher, while the Intel Core i7-8809G is 0.6% faster. These tiny deltas indicate the i5-9400 sits at the median of CPU performance, neither significantly stronger nor weaker than its immediate peers. The GPU, as noted, ranks at the 58th percentile, slightly better than the CPU’s median position.

The combination’s low game-specific ranking despite decent individual component percentiles suggests that Outriders may be particularly sensitive to the balance between CPU and GPU, or that the game’s engine favors certain hardware combinations. The 1415th rank out of 1693 combos means roughly 278 configurations perform worse, but the vast majority of tested systems outperform this pairing. This is not a top-tier setup by any measure, but the measured FPS data shows it is capable of delivering acceptable performance at 1080p and 1440p with appropriate settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 brings 6 cores and 6 threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. This Coffee Lake architecture chip, built on a 14 nm process, offers 9 MB of shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. In the context of Outriders, a game that likely benefits from multiple cores but does not heavily utilize many threads, the 6-core/6-thread configuration is sufficient but not exceptional. The lack of hyper-threading means the CPU has fewer threads than some rivals, but the boost clock of 4.10 GHz helps mitigate this in single-threaded workloads.

The CPU’s benchmark scores show a multicore Cinebench R23 result of 7969 and a single-core result of 1125, with a Cinebench R20 multicore score of 3346. These numbers place the i5-9400 at the 50th percentile, meaning half of all CPUs in the database perform better and half worse. The nearest rivals, including the Core i3-10305 and Core i3-1125G4, are essentially tied within 0.2%, indicating that the i5-9400’s performance level is common among mid-range desktop and mobile parts.

In Outriders, the CPU’s role is most evident at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU is not saturated. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 128 FPS, which is the highest measured result across all settings and resolutions. This suggests the CPU can feed the GPU enough frames to reach this level, but the fact that 1080p Medium (116.3 FPS) and High (104.6 FPS) are lower indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as settings increase. At 4K Low, the 62 FPS result is likely GPU-bound, as the CPU has ample headroom at lower pixel counts. The data does not show a scenario where the CPU alone caps performance below 60 FPS, as even the most demanding 4K Ultra result of 23.1 FPS is clearly limited by the GPU’s pixel throughput rather than the processor.

The i5-9400’s 65 W TDP and PCIe Gen 3 interface are modest by modern standards, but they are adequate for this workload. The CPU’s 6 threads may become a constraint in scenes with heavy AI or physics calculations, but the measured frame rates do not indicate a severe CPU bottleneck in Outriders. Instead, the data points to the GPU as the primary limiter at higher settings, with the CPU providing sufficient performance for the lower-resolution and lower-quality presets where the GPU is less stressed.