Outriders

# Outriders — Intel Core i7-14700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050

The Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 delivers a broadly playable Outriders experience across most settings, with the measured data showing a clear progression from high refresh rate 1080p operation to a 4K ceiling that requires settings compromises. This combo ranks 1715th out of 2913 tested combinations in Outriders, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which reflects the RTX 5050's position as a 66th-percentile GPU while the i7-14700K sits at the 94th percentile among all CPUs. The following analysis breaks down how these components interact across resolutions, settings, and specific workloads.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance curve as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 119 FPS at 1080p to 75 FPS at 1440p, then to 39 FPS at 4K. This represents a 37% reduction moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 48% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 5050 becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the pixel throughput demands outpace what the GPU's 13.17 TFLOPS FP32 compute and 320.0 GB/s memory bandwidth can sustain.

At Low settings, the resolution scaling is even more pronounced in absolute terms: 218 FPS at 1080p, 137 FPS at 1440p, and 72 FPS at 4K. The 1080p Low result is particularly telling — the 218 FPS figure suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU well beyond typical display refresh rates, and the i7-14700K's 20 cores and 28 threads with a 5.60 GHz boost clock are not the bottleneck at this resolution. However, the drop to 137 FPS at 1440p Low and 72 FPS at 4K Low indicates that even with minimal graphics load, the GPU's rendering pipeline saturates quickly as pixel count rises.

The Medium settings data includes min and max FPS values, which provide additional insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the average is 158 FPS with a minimum of 135 FPS and maximum of 182 FPS — a 47 FPS spread that suggests reasonable consistency. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 100 FPS with a 85-115 FPS range (30 FPS spread), and at 4K Medium, the average falls to 52 FPS with a 44-60 FPS range (16 FPS spread). The narrowing spread at higher resolutions indicates that frame pacing becomes more uniform when the GPU is the bottleneck, whereas at 1080p, CPU-side variability introduces larger fluctuations.

Ultra settings demonstrate the most aggressive scaling: 86 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 28 FPS is below playable thresholds for most users, and the 1440p Ultra figure of 54 FPS sits at the edge of acceptable smoothness. The data clearly shows that 4K gaming with this combo requires Medium or Low settings to maintain playable frame rates, while 1080p and 1440p offer more headroom for higher quality presets.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset provides the best balance of visual quality and performance across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the 158 FPS average is more than sufficient for high refresh rate displays, and the 135 FPS minimum ensures that even demanding scenes stay above typical 120 Hz thresholds. At 1440p Medium, the 100 FPS average with an 85 FPS minimum keeps gameplay fluid on 144 Hz monitors, though dips below 90 FPS may be noticeable to sensitive users. The 4K Medium result of 52 FPS average with a 44 FPS minimum is the only 4K option that remains consistently above 40 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K displays.

High settings are viable at 1080p and 1440p but not at 4K. The 1080p High figure of 119 FPS is excellent for most gaming scenarios, and the 1440p High result of 75 FPS is playable on 60 Hz monitors or with adaptive sync. However, the 4K High result of 39 FPS falls below the 60 FPS target that most users expect, so High settings should be reserved for lower resolutions.

Low settings offer the highest frame rates but sacrifice visual fidelity. The 1080p Low result of 218 FPS is ideal for competitive play or very high refresh rate displays (240 Hz+), and the 1440p Low figure of 137 FPS remains competitive-friendly. The 4K Low result of 72 FPS is playable but represents a significant visual compromise. Ultra settings are only recommended at 1080p, where the 86 FPS average is acceptable, while 1440p Ultra (54 FPS) and 4K Ultra (28 FPS) fail to meet smoothness requirements for most users. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot, with High serving as a viable upgrade at 1080p and 1440p.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Outriders at 60 FPS on a 4K display?

A: Yes, but only with Low settings, which produce 72 FPS average. Medium settings at 4K yield 52 FPS average (44 FPS minimum), which falls short of a consistent 60 FPS target. High and Ultra settings at 4K produce 39 FPS and 28 FPS respectively, making them unsuitable for 60 FPS gameplay.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming with this hardware?

A: Medium settings provide the most consistent experience at 1440p, with a 100 FPS average and 85 FPS minimum. High settings at 1440p achieve 75 FPS average, which is playable but less comfortable on high refresh rate displays. Ultra at 1440p drops to 54 FPS, making it a marginal choice.

Q: How does the RTX 5050's 8 GB VRAM affect Outriders performance?

A: The measured data does not indicate VRAM capacity issues, as the 8 GB GDDR6 memory with 320.0 GB/s bandwidth sustains the observed frame rates across all tested settings. The 128-bit memory bus and 2500 MHz memory clock (20 Gbps effective) are sufficient for this game's requirements at the tested resolutions.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-14700K a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data suggests minimal CPU bottleneck at 1080p. The Low preset result of 218 FPS average indicates that the CPU can drive frame rates well above typical monitor refresh rates. The i7-14700K's 20 cores, 28 threads, and 5.60 GHz boost clock provide ample headroom for Outriders' CPU demands.

Q: What frame rates can be expected at 1080p Ultra?

A: The measured average is 86 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This is playable but represents a significant drop from Medium (158 FPS) and High (119 FPS). The 42% reduction from High to Ultra suggests that Ultra settings impose substantial GPU load that the RTX 5050 handles with moderate success.

Q: How does this combo's ranking in Outriders compare to its overall hardware percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 1715th out of 2913 tested combinations (approximately the 41st percentile in this game). This is notably lower than the GPU's 66th-percentile ranking and the CPU's 94th-percentile ranking, indicating that Outriders is particularly demanding on the GPU and that the RTX 5050's performance in this title is weaker than its aggregate benchmark scores suggest.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1715 out of 2913 tested combinations places this pairing in the lower-middle tier for Outriders specifically. This ranking is notably worse than what the individual component percentiles might suggest — the CPU sits at the 94th percentile among all CPUs, and the GPU at the 66th percentile among all GPUs. The discrepancy between the component percentiles and the in-game rank indicates that Outriders places heavy demands on the GPU, and the RTX 5050's performance characteristics are less favorable in this title than in the broader benchmark suite.

The GPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks include the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL (0.6% ahead), AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1% ahead), AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (1.6% behind), and NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile (1.6% ahead). These very close scores — all within 1.6% of the RTX 5050's average benchmark score of 21035 — suggest that the GPU's performance class is well established, and the Outriders results likely fall in line with these peers. The fact that the RTX 5050's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2502 and Passmark G3D score of 17326 are among its lower benchmark results suggests that the GPU may struggle with certain rendering workloads, which could explain the weaker in-game ranking.

The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 9115 (0.1% ahead), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.2% ahead), AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.7% ahead), and AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (0.9% ahead). The extremely tight deltas — all under 1% — indicate that the i7-14700K's processing power is not a differentiator in this game. Since the CPU is far more powerful than the GPU relative to their respective markets, the combo's ranking is almost entirely GPU-bound.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 is the determining factor for Outriders performance across all tested configurations. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus providing 320.0 GB/s bandwidth, the GPU's memory subsystem is modest by current standards, and the 2560 shading units operating at a boost clock of 2572 MHz deliver 13.17 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. These specifications place the GPU at the 66th percentile overall, but the Outriders results show that the game's rendering requirements push the GPU to its limits, particularly at higher resolutions.

The measured FPS data shows a clear GPU-bound pattern. At 1080p, the GPU can deliver between 86 FPS (Ultra) and 218 FPS (Low), demonstrating that the card has sufficient throughput for lower resolutions. However, the scaling from 1080p to 4K at identical settings reveals the GPU's limitations. At Low settings, the drop from 218 FPS to 72 FPS (a 67% reduction) shows that pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth become critical constraints. At High settings, the drop from 119 FPS to 39 FPS (a 67% reduction) follows the same pattern, confirming that the GPU's rendering pipeline scales poorly with resolution.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is not indicated as a limiting factor in the data, as no settings combination shows anomalous performance drops that would suggest memory swapping. The 20 RT cores and 80 tensor cores are present in the GPU, but Outriders' rendering workload appears to be primarily rasterization-based, as the FP32 compute and texture rate (205.8 GTexel/s) are the most relevant specifications for this title. The pixel rate of 82.30 GPixel/s helps contextualize the 4K results: at 4K resolution, the GPU must fill approximately 8.3 million pixels per frame, and at 39 FPS with High settings, it is processing roughly 323 million pixels per second, which is below its theoretical pixel rate but constrained by other pipeline stages.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are 218 FPS (Low), 158 FPS (Medium), 119 FPS (High), and 86 FPS (Ultra). The Medium preset includes a minimum of 135 FPS and maximum of 182 FPS, showing a 47 FPS spread. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 60.6% reduction in frame rate, indicating that each settings tier adds substantial GPU workload. The 1080p results are all playable, with even the lowest Ultra figure of 86 FPS suitable for 60 Hz displays and competitive for 144 Hz monitors.

At 2560x1440, the measured averages are 137 FPS (Low), 100 FPS (Medium), 75 FPS (High), and 54 FPS (Ultra). The Medium preset shows a minimum of 85 FPS and maximum of 115 FPS, a 30 FPS spread that is tighter than at 1080p. The 1440p results show a 60.6% reduction from Low to Ultra (137 to 54 FPS), nearly identical to the 1080p scaling, confirming that the GPU's performance scales consistently with settings at this resolution. The 137 FPS Low result remains excellent, while the 54 FPS Ultra figure is marginal for smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, the measured averages are 72 FPS (Low), 52 FPS (Medium), 39 FPS (High), and 28 FPS (Ultra). The Medium preset shows a minimum of 44 FPS and maximum of 60 FPS, a 16 FPS spread that indicates tighter frame pacing when the GPU is heavily loaded. The 4K results show a 61.1% reduction from Low to Ultra (72 to 28 FPS), maintaining the same scaling pattern. Only the Low preset exceeds 60 FPS at 4K, while Medium is the only other option that stays above 40 FPS consistently. The Ultra result of 28 FPS is below playable thresholds for most users, and the High result of 39 FPS is marginal at best.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K provides substantial processing headroom that is not fully utilized in Outriders. With 20 cores, 28 threads, a 3.40 GHz base clock, and 5.60 GHz boost clock, the CPU's architecture delivers strong single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. The Cinebench R23 scores of 2160 (single-core) and 33440.5 (multi-core) place the CPU at the 94th percentile among all CPUs, and the Geekbench scores of 2569 (single-core) and 20767 (multi-core) reinforce this positioning.

In Outriders, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls, physics calculations, and game logic. The 1080p Low result of 218 FPS average demonstrates that the CPU can sustain very high frame rates when the GPU is not the bottleneck. The fact that the 1080p Low result is 59% higher than the 1440p Low result (218 vs 137 FPS) indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases, not the CPU. The i7-14700K's 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample capacity for game data, and the 10 nm process node allows for the high boost clocks that Outriders benefits from.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks are all within 0.9% of its average score of 69355, which means that swapping to any of these alternatives would produce nearly identical results in Outriders. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.2% ahead) and AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.7% ahead) are the closest competitors, but the differences are negligible for gaming workloads. The CPU's 125 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 platform are not directly relevant to game performance, but the 5.60 GHz boost clock is the key specification for Outriders' frame generation, as the game appears to be sensitive to single-thread performance based on the high frame rates achievable at low GPU load. The measured data shows no evidence of CPU bottlenecking at any resolution or settings combination, confirming that the i7-14700K is more than sufficient for this title.