Outriders

# Outriders with Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

The pairing of Intel's six-core Coffee Lake i5-9400 with NVIDIA's flagship Blackwell RTX 5080 produces a lopsided but playable experience in Outriders, a 2021 looter shooter. The data shows this combo ranks 1089th out of 1693 tested configurations, placing it in the lower-mid tier of the database. The RTX 5080's raw power is consistently held back by the i5-9400's aging architecture, yet frame rates remain respectable across most settings and resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average frame rate this combo achieves in Outriders?

A: The highest recorded average is 130.1 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At the same resolution, Ultra settings drop the average to 92.8 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5080 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5080's average benchmark score of 59,188 places it 1.6% ahead of the Intel Arc A570M (58,239) and 2.5% ahead of the Intel Arc A580 (57,756), while trailing the Intel Arc Pro A60 (60,326) by 1.9%.

Q: What is the CPU's synthetic single-core performance?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 scores 1,125 points in Cinebench R23 single-core and 472 points in Cinebench R20 single-core. Its multi-core scores are 7,969 (R23) and 3,346 (R20).

Q: Does the combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS ranges from 57.8 (Ultra) to 87.9 (Low). Only the Ultra preset falls below the 60 FPS threshold, while High settings deliver 68.5 FPS.

Q: How much VRAM does the GPU have, and what memory type?

A: The RTX 5080 features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1875 MHz with 30 Gbps effective speed.

Q: What is the CPU's position relative to all tested CPUs?

A: The i5-9400 sits at the 50th percentile among all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 2,305. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i3-10305, scores 2,300 (0.2% difference).

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 1089 out of 1,693 tested combos, this configuration lands in the 35th percentile of all pairings tested in Outriders. The ranking reflects a fundamental imbalance: the RTX 5080 is a top-tier GPU (89th percentile among all GPUs), while the i5-9400 sits exactly at the median for CPUs. The 64th-percentile gap between the two components' relative standings explains why the combo underperforms what the GPU alone would suggest.

The data indicates that the CPU becomes the primary constraint in most scenarios. The i5-9400's six cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost of 4.10 GHz, represent a 2018-era design. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7,969 is strong for its generation but pales against modern CPUs. In Outriders, which benefits from higher single-thread performance, the CPU's R23 single-core score of 1,125 likely limits the GPU's ability to stretch its legs, particularly at lower resolutions where the CPU must feed frames faster.

The RTX 5080's synthetic results — including a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 8,637 and a Passmark G3D score of 36,565 — indicate massive headroom. Yet the combo's rank shows that raw GPU power alone cannot overcome CPU bottlenecks in this title. Interestingly, the ranking is not catastrophic: the combo still outperforms roughly 35% of tested configurations, suggesting that Outriders is not entirely CPU-bound at all settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how resolution affects the balance between CPU and GPU load. Moving from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, the average frame rate drops consistently across all settings, but the magnitude of the drop tells the story of which component is the limiting factor.

At High settings, the average FPS goes from 102.9 at 1080p to 89.2 at 1440p (a 13.3% drop) and then to 68.5 at 4K (a 23.2% drop from 1440p). The scaling is nearly linear with pixel count, which typically indicates a GPU-bound scenario. However, the absolute numbers are lower than what the RTX 5080 should deliver, suggesting the CPU is capping the maximum frame rate even at 1080p.

The Low settings tell a similar story: 130.1 FPS at 1080p, 109.2 at 1440p, and 87.9 at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop of 16.1% is steeper than the pixel count increase (77% more pixels), which hints that the CPU is becoming the bottleneck at 1080p. If the GPU were fully in charge, the FPS drop would be closer to the pixel ratio.

Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling: 92.8 FPS at 1080p, 76.2 at 1440p, and 57.8 at 4K. The 4K result falling below 60 FPS indicates that even with the powerful RTX 5080, the combination of CPU overhead and heavy graphics settings pushes the system past its limit. The data suggests that resolution scaling is smooth but that the i5-9400 prevents the GPU from reaching its full potential at any resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best performance. Low settings produce 130.1 FPS, which is the only result above 120 FPS in the entire dataset. Medium settings average 116.4 FPS, High settings hit 102.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 92.8 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 37.3 FPS, indicating that graphics settings have a meaningful impact even at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, all results fall below 110 FPS. Low settings still manage 109.2 FPS, followed by Medium at 96.0 FPS, High at 89.2 FPS, and Ultra at 76.2 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra narrows to 33.0 FPS, suggesting that the CPU is beginning to exert more influence as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop significantly. Low settings average 87.9 FPS, Medium hits 80.7 FPS, High delivers 68.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 57.8 FPS — the only sub-60 result in the dataset. The Low-to-Ultra gap shrinks further to 30.1 FPS, reinforcing that the CPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as the GPU should be able to handle these settings with ease given its 56.28 TFLOPS FP32 compute and 293.1 GPixel/s pixel rate.

Across all resolutions, the pattern is consistent: Low settings provide 20-25% more FPS than Ultra. The largest absolute gap between Low and Ultra is at 1080p (37.3 FPS), while the smallest is at 4K (30.1 FPS). This narrowing gap at higher resolutions indicates that the CPU bottleneck becomes more pronounced as pixel count rises, preventing the GPU from stretching its advantage.

GPU Role

The RTX 5080 is built on TSMC's 5 nm process with 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. Its Blackwell 2.0 architecture features 10,752 shading units, 336 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, along with 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores. The GPU runs at a base clock of 2,295 MHz with a boost of 2,617 MHz, delivering 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 879.3 GTexel/s texture rate.

In Outriders, the GPU's 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is ample for the game's textures and effects, even at 4K Ultra settings. The memory clock of 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective) ensures that data throughput is not a bottleneck. The 89th percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms that the RTX 5080 is a high-end part, yet the measured FPS in Outriders falls short of what this GPU typically achieves in other titles.

The data suggests that the GPU is underutilized in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the 130.1 FPS result is likely near the CPU's maximum frame delivery capability. The i5-9400's 2.90 GHz base clock and 4.10 GHz boost, combined with its 9 MB shared L3 cache, cannot feed the GPU fast enough to reach higher frame rates. The RTX 5080's Passmark G3D score of 36,565 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 264,461 indicate far more performance headroom than Outriders allows.

The GPU's power delivery and cooling requirements — a 360 W TDP, 1x 16-pin connector, and 750 W suggested PSU — are substantial, but the benchmark results show that the i5-9400 is the weak link. The combo's 1089th rank out of 1,693 configurations reflects this imbalance. Users seeking higher frame rates would need a more modern CPU to unlock the RTX 5080's full potential in Outriders.