Outriders

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER delivers an exceptional Outriders experience, ranking in the 95th percentile of all tested combinations. The data indicates a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, with CPU limitations only becoming apparent at 1080p. The combination of a 14-core, 14-thread processor and a 16 GB GDDR6X graphics card ensures high frame rates across all settings, though the performance scaling reveals distinct bottlenecks depending on the resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates show a clear and predictable progression as resolution increases, but the degree of the drop is heavily influenced by the graphics settings. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 results in a drop from 223 FPS to 148 FPS, a 34% reduction. Moving from 1440p to 3840x2160 at High settings yields a further decline to 77 FPS, a 48% drop. This scaling pattern is typical of a system where the GPU is the primary limiting factor, as the rendering load increases exponentially with pixel count.

The Low settings data provides a stark contrast. At 1920x1080 Low, the system achieves 278 FPS. At 2560x1440 Low, it reaches 239 FPS, and at 4K Low it still manages 142 FPS. The scaling here is more moderate — a 14% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 41% drop from 1440p to 4K — suggesting that at lower settings, the CPU has more headroom to feed the GPU, but the GPU still becomes the bottleneck at 4K. The fact that 4K Low (142 FPS) is significantly higher than 4K High (77 FPS) confirms that the GPU's workload is the dominant factor.

The Ultra settings curve is the steepest. At 1080p Ultra, the system produces 169 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, this falls to 107 FPS, a 37% reduction. At 4K Ultra, the frame rate plummets to 56 FPS, a 48% drop from 1440p. This aggressive scaling indicates that the RTX 4080 SUPER's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is being fully taxed by the highest visual fidelity, and the 4K Ultra result is the only configuration where the system falls below the 60 FPS threshold.

The Medium settings results, which include min and max FPS data, show a similar trend. At 1080p Medium, the average is 248 FPS with a minimum of 210 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 197 FPS with a minimum of 168 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average is 103 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS. The min FPS values are consistently about 15% below the average, indicating that the system maintains reasonably stable frame pacing even under load, with no severe stuttering observed in the data.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and RTX 4080 SUPER combination ranks 95th out of 2913 tested combos in Outriders, placing it in the top 3.3% of all systems evaluated. This is a strong performance indicator, suggesting that this pairing is well above the median for this specific game. The rank reflects a system that can handle the game's demanding environments and particle effects with ease, particularly at 1440p and below.

The GPU's individual benchmark percentile is 86, meaning it outperforms 86% of all GPUs in the database. The CPU's percentile is 89, indicating it outperforms 89% of all CPUs. The fact that the combo rank (95) is higher than either individual component percentile suggests a synergistic pairing, where the CPU and GPU complement each other well for this title. The data implies that the CPU is strong enough to keep the GPU fed at most resolutions, and the GPU is powerful enough to capitalize on that.

The nearest rivals for the CPU include the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, with a deltaPct of 0.1% (the Ultra 5 235 is slightly faster), and the Intel Core i9-13900HX, with a deltaPct of -0.1% (the Ultra 5 235 is slightly slower). This places the Ultra 5 235 in a performance bracket with high-end laptop and desktop processors, confirming its capability for gaming workloads. For the GPU, the nearest rival is the standard RTX 4080, with a deltaPct of -0.1% (the SUPER is marginally faster), indicating that the SUPER variant offers a negligible performance uplift over its non-SUPER predecessor.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this system for Outriders, as evidenced by the significant frame rate drops when resolution increases. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. This large memory pool and high bandwidth are crucial for a looter shooter like Outriders, which often features large, open environments with many on-screen enemies and destructible objects.

The GPU's clock speeds are 2295 MHz base and 2550 MHz boost, with a memory clock of 1438 MHz (23 Gbps effective). These clocks, combined with the 10240 shading units, allow the card to achieve a pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s. These specifications directly correlate with the observed performance: at 1080p and 1440p, the GPU is fast enough to push well over 100 FPS at high settings. The 4K Ultra result of 56 FPS indicates that the card's compute resources are the limiting factor at the highest fidelity.

The GPU's 80 RT cores and 320 Tensor cores are present but less relevant for Outriders, which does not heavily feature ray tracing in the measured data. The FP32 performance of 52.22 TFLOPS is the primary driver of traditional rasterization performance. The GPU's 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs underscores its high-end positioning, and the data shows it is more than sufficient for smooth gameplay at 1440p, with 4K High providing a playable 77 FPS average.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the system is clearly CPU-limited at lower settings, as the GPU is capable of rendering frames faster than the CPU can issue draw calls. The Low preset achieves 278 FPS, Medium hits 248 FPS, High reaches 223 FPS, and Ultra still manages 169 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 109 FPS, or 39%, showing that even at 1080p, graphics settings have a substantial impact, but the system never drops below 169 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the GPU begins to take on more responsibility. Low produces 239 FPS, Medium 197 FPS, High 148 FPS, and Ultra 107 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 132 FPS, or 55%, indicating that the GPU is working harder. The 1440p Medium result includes a min FPS of 168 and a max of 227, showing a 59 FPS variance, which is typical for a game with dynamic action sequences.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is the sole bottleneck. Low delivers 142 FPS, Medium 103 FPS (min 88, max 119), High 77 FPS, and Ultra drops to 56 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K is a 60% reduction in performance, highlighting the massive computational load at this resolution. The 4K Ultra result is the only sub-60 FPS average in the entire dataset, suggesting that users targeting 4K should opt for High settings to maintain a comfortable frame rate.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to achieve 144 FPS?

A: At 2560x1440, the system achieves 148 FPS on High settings, making it the best balance for high refresh rate gaming. At 1920x1080, all settings exceed 169 FPS, with Low reaching 278 FPS.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K High, the average FPS is 77, which is playable. At 4K Ultra, the average drops to 56 FPS, which may be below the preference of some users. For a locked 60 FPS, 4K Medium is the best option, with an average of 103 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in Outriders?

A: The data suggests the GPU is the primary limiter at 1440p and 4K, as frame rates scale significantly with resolution. At 1080p, the CPU becomes more of a factor, as evidenced by the 278 FPS Low result, but the GPU still has headroom.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 SUPER compare to the standard RTX 4080?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 54209, compared to the RTX 4080's 54247, with a deltaPct of -0.1%. This indicates the SUPER is marginally slower in synthetic benchmarks, though the difference is negligible in real-world gaming.

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High produces 148 FPS, while Ultra produces 107 FPS. This represents a 41 FPS or 28% reduction in performance for the highest quality preset.

Q: Does the 16 GB VRAM of the RTX 4080 SUPER matter for Outriders?

A: The 16 GB of GDDR6X memory with 736.3 GB/s bandwidth ensures that the GPU does not run out of memory for textures and geometry at any resolution, as evidenced by the consistent performance scaling without sudden drops.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 plays a supporting role in this pairing, but its characteristics are essential for achieving the high frame rates seen at 1080p. The CPU features 14 cores and 14 threads with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. This configuration, based on the Arrow Lake architecture on a 3 nm process, delivers strong single-threaded performance, as indicated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2085 and a Passmark single-thread score of 4516.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities are also robust, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769 and a Passmark multithread score of 37816. These scores place the Ultra 5 235 at the 89th percentile of all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 46062 is nearly identical to that of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 and Intel Core i9-13900HX, with deltaPct values of 0.1% and -0.1% respectively. This means that for Outriders, the CPU provides sufficient throughput to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at most settings.

The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 278 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's maximum frame output for this game. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth help maintain low latency and fast data access, which is critical for a game with frequent asset streaming. The CPU's 65W TDP and 3 nm process node indicate high efficiency, but the benchmark results are what matter most: the Ultra 5 235 ensures that the RTX 4080 SUPER is never left waiting for data, except at the lowest resolution and settings where frame rates exceed 250 FPS.