Outriders

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 presents a stark study in bottleneck dynamics within Outriders. Across the three tested resolutions, the scaling pattern reveals a system that transitions from being heavily CPU-bound at 1080p to progressively GPU-bound as pixel count increases. At 1920x1080, the frame rate spread between Low and Ultra settings is dramatic, with the Low preset delivering 187.7 FPS against Ultra’s 71.4 FPS. This 116.3 FPS gap indicates that the GPU is the primary limiter even at the lowest settings, as the processor has ample headroom to feed frames. However, the scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a more moderate drop—from 187.7 FPS to 120.1 FPS at Low settings—suggesting that while the GPU workload is increasing, the CPU still has significant capacity to spare. The transition to 3840x2160 is where the curve flattens dramatically; at 4K Low, the average FPS falls to 60.6, which is roughly half the 1440p Low figure, indicating that the GPU is now the absolute bottleneck, with the processor’s role receding into the background.

The data shows a classic resolution-scaling behavior: the higher the resolution, the smaller the relative performance difference between Low and Ultra settings. At 1080p, Ultra is just 38% of the Low preset’s frame rate (71.4 FPS vs 187.7 FPS). At 1440p, that ratio improves slightly to 38.6% (46.4 FPS vs 120.1 FPS). But at 4K, Ultra delivers 23.4 FPS versus Low’s 60.6 FPS, which is a 38.6% ratio as well—showing that the GPU’s fill-rate limits dominate regardless of preset. The 4K High setting at 36 FPS and Medium at 47.3 FPS further confirm that the RX 6600’s 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface are stretched thin at this resolution, making the CPU’s 20 cores and 28 threads largely irrelevant to the final output.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a Navi 23 chip, manufactured on TSMC’s 7 nm process. Its 1792 shading units and 64 ROPs are paired with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. The card’s game clock is rated at 2044 MHz, with a boost clock of 2491 MHz, and it draws a TDP of 132 W. In Outriders, these specifications translate to a GPU that can handle 1080p and 1440p with relative ease, but struggles at 4K. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra—23.4 FPS—is below the playable threshold, and even 4K High at 36 FPS is marginal. This suggests that the card’s 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the game’s textures, but the 128-bit memory bus becomes a limiting factor at higher resolutions where bandwidth demands increase.

The GPU’s benchmark scores place it in the 69th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25235. Its nearest rivals in the database include the AMD Radeon 890M (deltaPct 0), the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (deltaPct -0.2), the AMD Radeon RX 6700M (deltaPct 0.2), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (deltaPct 0.5). These near-identical scores indicate that the RX 6600 sits in a competitive mid-range tier, but its performance in Outriders is clearly more constrained by resolution than by any architectural deficiency. The 1080p Low result of 187.7 FPS shows the card can push high frame rates when the load is light, but the steep drop to 71.4 FPS at 1080p Ultra—a 61.9% reduction—reveals that the shader and texture work at Ultra settings quickly overwhelms the 1792 shading units. The 4K results, which never exceed 60.6 FPS even at Low, confirm that the RX 6600 is not designed for 4K gaming in this title.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. It features 33 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Its benchmark scores are formidable: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44557 and a single-core score of 6290, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. The nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-14700K (deltaPct 0), the AMD EPYC 9115 (deltaPct 0.3), the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (deltaPct -0.4), and the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 (deltaPct -1.3). These scores indicate that the CPU is far more powerful than what Outriders requires, especially at lower resolutions where the GPU is the primary bottleneck.

In the measured results, the CPU’s influence is most visible at 1080p Low, where the frame rate reaches 187.7 FPS. This high value suggests that the processor can feed frames faster than the GPU can render them, creating a CPU-bound scenario at the lightest settings. However, the drop to 1440p Low (120.1 FPS) and 4K Low (60.6 FPS) shows that the GPU quickly becomes the limiting factor. The CPU’s 5.60 GHz boost clock and 20 cores provide ample headroom for the game’s physics and AI calculations, but Outriders does not appear to leverage multi-threading heavily, as evidenced by the fact that the 1080p Ultra result (71.4 FPS) is still far below the CPU’s theoretical capability. The 28 threads are underutilized, and the game’s frame rate is dictated almost entirely by the GPU’s rasterization throughput. The data indicates that this CPU would be better paired with a more powerful GPU for 4K gaming, but for 1080p and 1440p, it ensures that the GPU is always the limiting component, which is generally the preferred scenario for consistent frame pacing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of the combo’s performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low delivers 187.7 FPS, Medium drops to 136.7 FPS, High settles at 101.3 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 71.4 FPS. This represents a scaling efficiency where each step up in settings costs roughly 25-35% of the frame rate, with the largest single drop occurring between Medium and High (a 25.9% reduction). The 1080p Ultra figure of 71.4 FPS is still playable, indicating that the combo can handle high refresh rate monitors at this resolution with settings turned down.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates show a proportional decrease. Low achieves 120.1 FPS, Medium hits 88.2 FPS, High manages 64.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 46.4 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is roughly 64% of the 1080p value at every setting, which is consistent with the increased pixel count (1.78x) and the GPU’s fill-rate limitations. The 1440p Ultra result of 46.4 FPS is borderline for smooth gameplay, but High at 64.6 FPS offers a better balance. At 3840x2160, the performance collapses. Low still manages 60.6 FPS, which is surprising given the 4K pixel count, but Medium drops to 47.3 FPS, High to 36 FPS, and Ultra to a nearly unplayable 23.4 FPS. The 4K Low result suggests that the RX 6600’s 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for the game’s textures at lower settings, but the 128-bit memory bus becomes a severe constraint at higher settings, where bandwidth demands increase.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Outriders, this pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and AMD Radeon RX 6600 ranks 1375 out of 1693 total combos. This places it in the bottom 18.8% of all tested configurations, which is a surprising result given the CPU’s high percentile ranking. The discrepancy is explained by the GPU’s mid-range positioning—the RX 6600 sits in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, but when paired with a top-tier CPU, the overall combo rank is dragged down by the graphics card’s limitations. The rank of 1375 indicates that there are 1374 other combinations that deliver higher average frame rates in Outriders, likely because they pair more balanced CPUs with faster GPUs.

The combo’s rank is a reflection of the CPU-GPU imbalance. The i7-14700KF is a 96th-percentile processor, while the RX 6600 is a 69th-percentile GPU. In a game like Outriders, which is not heavily CPU-threaded, the processor’s power is largely wasted, and the GPU becomes the sole determinant of performance. The data shows that this combo performs best at 1080p, where the GPU can keep up with the CPU’s frame-feeding ability, but at 1440p and especially 4K, the GPU’s limitations dominate. For users seeking higher frame rates at 1440p or above, the benchmark results suggest that a more powerful GPU would be a better investment, as the CPU is not the bottleneck in any measured scenario. The rank of 1375 out of 1693 places this combo in the lower quartile, signaling that while it is capable of 1080p and 1440p gaming, it is not competitive with more balanced pairings in Outriders.