Outriders

# Outriders with Intel Core Ultra 5 235 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a highly capable Outriders experience across all tested resolutions, though the scaling pattern reveals a system that leans heavily on the GPU at higher settings. The combo ranks 380th out of 3710 tested configurations, placing it in the top 11% of all systems measured for this title. Across the three resolutions tested, the RTX 5070's 12 GB of GDDR7 memory and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth prove sufficient for smooth gameplay, while the 14-core, 14-thread Ultra 5 235 with its 5.00 GHz boost clock keeps frame pacing consistent even at lower resolutions where CPU overhead becomes more relevant.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and predictable drop as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop varies significantly depending on the settings preset. At Low settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p is relatively modest—278 FPS at 1920x1080 falls to 228 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 50 FPS or roughly 18%. Continuing to 4K at Low settings yields 119 FPS, which represents a further drop of 109 FPS from the 1440p figure. This pattern indicates that at Low settings, the system is still partially CPU-limited at 1080p, as the 278 FPS ceiling suggests the Ultra 5 235 is keeping the RTX 5070 well-fed but the GPU is not yet the sole bottleneck.

The Medium preset tells a similar story with slightly different numbers. At 1080p Medium, the system produces 248 FPS, dropping to 166 FPS at 1440p and 87 FPS at 4K. The 4K Medium result includes measured minimum and maximum values of 74 and 100 FPS respectively, showing some frame variance but nothing that would suggest instability. The gap between 1080p and 1440p Medium is 82 FPS, while the gap between 1440p and 4K Medium is 79 FPS—a nearly linear scaling pattern that suggests the GPU is becoming the limiting factor as resolution climbs.

High settings exhibit the steepest relative drop. From 197 FPS at 1080p, the frame rate falls to 124 FPS at 1440p—a 73 FPS reduction—and then to 65 FPS at 4K, another 59 FPS lower. The 4K High result of 65 FPS is still comfortably playable, but the percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings is approximately 67%, compared to roughly 57% at Low settings. This steeper decline indicates that the higher-quality shaders and effects at High settings place additional load on the RTX 5070, making the GPU more decisively the bottleneck at 4K.

Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling behavior. At 1080p Ultra, the system manages 142 FPS, dropping to 90 FPS at 1440p and 47 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra figure of 47 FPS is the only sub-60 result in the entire dataset, and the scaling from 1080p to 4K represents a 67% reduction. This suggests that Ultra settings at 4K push the RTX 5070's 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 compute to its limits, with the 80 ROPS and 192 TMUs struggling to keep up with the pixel and texture throughput demands at that resolution.

The overall scaling pattern reveals that the limiting component shifts with settings. At Low and Medium presets, the CPU's influence is visible at 1080p, where frame rates exceed what the GPU alone might sustain. At High and Ultra presets, particularly at 4K, the GPU is unambiguously the constraint. The fact that 4K Low produces 119 FPS while 4K Ultra produces 47 FPS—a 72 FPS spread—demonstrates that Outriders' settings menu has a substantial impact on GPU workload, making resolution scaling highly dependent on the chosen preset.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications directly explain the observed frame rates. Built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, the GPU features 6144 shading units, 192 tensor cores, and 48 RT cores. The boost clock of 2512 MHz, combined with a 192-bit memory bus and 12 GB of GDDR7 memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective), yields a memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s. This bandwidth proves adequate for Outriders' texture streaming and particle effects, as evidenced by the smooth frame pacing at Medium settings across all resolutions.

The GPU's 82nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, based on an average benchmark score of 40377, places it well above the median for modern graphics cards. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (0.1% lower score), AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (0.8% lower), and AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (1.2% higher), though these comparisons are based on aggregate benchmarks rather than Outriders-specific performance. In actual game testing, the RTX 5070 demonstrates that its 12 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient even at 4K Ultra, where the 47 FPS result is constrained by compute throughput rather than memory capacity.

The VRAM allocation at 4K Ultra settings does not appear to cause swapping or stuttering, as the minimum frame rates at Medium settings—74 FPS at 4K and 141 FPS at 1440p—indicate stable performance without memory-related hitches. The GPU's pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s are the key metrics that determine fill-rate-bound scenarios, and the data shows that at 4K Ultra, the 47 FPS average corresponds to roughly 81.9 million pixels per frame, which is well within the GPU's theoretical pixel throughput but still results in sub-60 performance due to shader complexity.

The RTX 5070's 250 W TDP and dual-slot design suggest that thermal throttling is unlikely to be a significant factor in these results, as the card maintains consistent performance across the benchmark suite. The PCIe 5.0 x16 interface provides ample bandwidth for data transfer, and the display outputs—1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b—support the tested resolutions without bandwidth limitations. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 30.87 TFLOPS, while not the highest in its class, is clearly sufficient for Outriders at 1440p and below, where the system achieves well over 124 FPS at High settings.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance for this combination. At 1440p Medium, the system delivers 166 FPS with a minimum of 141 FPS and maximum of 191 FPS, which provides a comfortable margin above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on modern monitors. At 4K Medium, the 87 FPS average with 74 FPS minimum remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, making this the recommended preset for 4K displays.

For players targeting 1080p, the High preset at 197 FPS is the superior choice over Medium's 248 FPS, as the visual improvements from Medium to High are more perceptible than the frame rate difference between 197 and 248 FPS on most displays. The Ultra preset at 1080p produces 142 FPS, which is still playable but represents a 28% reduction from High—a significant drop for what may be marginal visual gains in Outriders' art style.

At 1440p, the choice between High and Medium depends on refresh rate priorities. High settings at 124 FPS are ideal for 120 Hz displays, while Medium at 166 FPS suits 144 Hz or 165 Hz panels. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 90 FPS, which is acceptable for 90 Hz displays but not recommended for competitive play where higher frame rates provide a tangible advantage.

For 4K displays, the data strongly favors Medium settings. The 87 FPS average at Medium is more than double the 47 FPS at Ultra, and the 74 FPS minimum ensures that even demanding scenes remain fluid. High settings at 4K produce 65 FPS, which is playable but with less headroom for dips during intense combat sequences. Low settings at 4K yield 119 FPS, but the visual quality degradation is likely too severe for most players to justify the frame rate gain over Medium.

The measured frame data suggests that Outriders' quality settings have a roughly linear impact on performance, with each step from Low to Medium to High to Ultra costing approximately 20-30% of the previous frame rate. This makes the Medium preset the sweet spot for this hardware combination across all resolutions, offering the best compromise between visual fidelity and performance headroom.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 + RTX 5070 combination ranks 380th out of 3710 tested combos in Outriders, placing it in the 89.8th percentile of all systems measured. This top-11% ranking reflects the strong performance of both components, though it also indicates that a substantial number of more powerful configurations—likely featuring higher-tier GPUs—achieve better frame rates in this title.

The CPU's individual ranking provides context for this combo position. The Ultra 5 235 sits in the 89th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 46062. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (0.1% higher score), Intel Core i9-13900HX (0.1% lower), AMD EPYC 4364P (0.2% higher), and AMD EPYC 7303 (0.2% higher). These extremely tight margins—all within 0.2%—indicate that the Ultra 5 235 is positioned in a dense cluster of similarly performing processors, where individual game optimizations can shift the relative standing.

The GPU's 82nd percentile ranking is slightly lower than the CPU's 89th percentile, suggesting that the RTX 5070 is the relative weak point in this pairing for Outriders. The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—AMD Radeon Pro 580, Radeon Pro WX 7100, Radeon Pro 5300, and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile—are all professional or mobile parts that would not typically be compared to the RTX 5070 in gaming scenarios, highlighting the GPU's strong position in the consumer desktop market.

The combination of a top-11% CPU and a top-18% GPU yields a top-11% overall combo ranking, which indicates that the pairing is well-balanced for Outriders. The fact that the combo rank (380th) is better than the GPU's individual percentile (82nd) suggests that the CPU's strength compensates for the GPU's relative position, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU performance plays a larger role in determining frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process by TSMC. With a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, the CPU delivers strong single-thread performance that is critical for Outriders' game logic and physics calculations. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache, combined with 3 MB of L2 cache per core, provides ample storage for frequently accessed data, reducing memory latency and improving frame consistency.

The CPU's role in these benchmark results is most evident at lower resolutions and settings, where the GPU is not fully saturated. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 278 FPS, which is likely approaching the CPU's limit for Outriders' frame rate ceiling. The fact that 4K Low produces 119 FPS—only 43% of the 1080p Low figure—indicates that the GPU becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases, while the CPU maintains sufficient headroom to feed the GPU at all tested settings.

The Ultra 5 235's benchmark scores provide context for its gaming performance. In Cinebench R23, the CPU scores 14769 in multicore and 2085 in single-core tests, with the single-core result being particularly relevant for Outriders' main thread workload. The Passmark single-thread score of 4516 and multithread score of 37816 confirm that the CPU excels in both lightly-threaded and heavily-threaded scenarios, though Outriders is unlikely to fully utilize all 14 threads given its genre and age.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s via dual-channel DDR5 support is sufficient for Outriders' data streaming requirements, and the PCIe Gen 5 implementation with 20 lanes ensures that the GPU and storage devices have adequate bandwidth. The integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 24EU is present but irrelevant for gaming with a discrete RTX 5070 installed, serving as a fallback for display output rather than a performance contributor.

The CPU's 89th percentile ranking places it alongside processors like the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 and Intel Core i9-13900HX, both of which are mobile or high-end desktop parts with similar aggregate benchmark scores. The 65 W TDP and 14-thread configuration make the Ultra 5 235 an efficient choice that does not bottleneck the RTX 5070 in Outriders, as evidenced by the strong frame rates at 1080p where CPU limitations would manifest most clearly.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce 278 FPS average, Medium settings yield 248 FPS with a minimum of 210 FPS and maximum of 285 FPS, High settings achieve 197 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 142 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 136 FPS, demonstrating that settings have a substantial impact even at this resolution where the GPU is less stressed.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show the expected reduction. Low settings deliver 228 FPS, Medium settings achieve 166 FPS with minimum and maximum values of 141 and 191 FPS respectively, High settings produce 124 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 90 FPS. The 1440p results show a more uniform scaling pattern than 1080p, with each settings step costing approximately 20-25% of the previous frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the system's performance is increasingly GPU-bound. Low settings produce 119 FPS, Medium settings achieve 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 FPS and maximum of 100 FPS, High settings deliver 65 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 47 FPS. The 4K Ultra result of 47 FPS is the only sub-60 measurement in the entire dataset, indicating that this settings/resolution combination exceeds the RTX 5070's comfortable performance envelope for Outriders.

The Medium preset is the only settings level that includes measured minimum and maximum values across all three resolutions, providing insight into frame consistency. At 1080p Medium, the 210-285 FPS range represents a 75 FPS spread, which is proportionally larger than the 50 FPS spread at 1440p (141-191 FPS) and the 26 FPS spread at 4K (74-100 FPS). This suggests that at lower resolutions, the system has more performance headroom and thus exhibits greater frame variance as the GPU and CPU contend for workload distribution.

The complete dataset reveals that the RTX 5070 scales almost linearly with resolution when settings are held constant. At High settings, the frame rates are 197, 124, and 65 FPS for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K respectively—a nearly perfect halving of performance at each resolution step. At Low settings, the progression is 278, 228, and 119 FPS, which shows a less dramatic drop from 1080p to 1440p (50 FPS) compared to 1440p to 4K (109 FPS), reflecting the CPU's greater influence at lower resolutions. These measured results confirm that the system is well-balanced for 1080p and 1440p gaming across all settings, while 4K gaming is best experienced at Medium or High settings to maintain smooth frame rates.