Outriders

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers exceptional performance in Outriders, placing this combination in the top 1% of all tested configurations. The data indicates that this setup is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions but provides a remarkably smooth experience across the board, with the most balanced and playable results found at the High preset.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data clearly shows that the High preset is the optimal choice for this hardware combination, offering the best balance between visual fidelity and frame rate. At 1080p, the High preset delivers 226 FPS, while the Ultra preset only achieves 201 FPS — a mere 11% difference that does not justify the potential visual strain on the system. The Medium preset at 251 FPS is faster, but the jump from Medium to High costs only 25 FPS (roughly 10%), making High the sweet spot for image quality without sacrificing responsiveness.

At 1440p, the case for High becomes even stronger. The High preset produces 180 FPS, which is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays. The Medium preset reaches 216 FPS, but the visual upgrade to High is worth the 36 FPS drop, especially since the result remains far above the 144 Hz threshold. The Low preset at 243 FPS is technically the fastest, but it strips away the graphical detail that makes Outriders' looter-shooter environments engaging, and the difference between Low and High is only 63 FPS (26%).

At 4K, High remains the recommended preset with 94 FPS. This is the first resolution where the system dips below the 100 FPS mark, but 94 FPS is still highly playable for a game of this genre. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 68 FPS, which is a significant 28% reduction from High and begins to approach the territory where input latency becomes noticeable in fast-paced combat scenarios. The Medium preset at 4K offers 125 FPS, but the 31 FPS gain over High comes at a substantial cost to shadow quality and texture filtering, which are critical for spotting enemies in the game's darker environments.

The data suggests that Low preset is never the right choice for this combination. At every resolution, the Low preset's performance gains are marginal compared to the visual degradation. At 1080p, Low only achieves 57 FPS more than High (283 vs 226), but the game loses its atmospheric lighting and particle effects that are central to the Outriders experience. The Ultra preset, conversely, is only recommended for players who prioritize maximum visual fidelity over frame rate stability, as it delivers the lowest minimum frame rates in the dataset.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, with 24 MB of shared L3 cache. In the context of Outriders, this CPU configuration is more than adequate to feed the RTX 5090 D, as evidenced by the scaling patterns across resolutions.

Looking at the CPU's synthetic benchmarks, it scores 32,924 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4,648 in single-core, placing it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 7900, which scores a nearly identical average of 49,228 versus the Ultra 5 245's 48,995 — a delta of only -0.5%. This indicates that the CPU is not a bottleneck in this system, as its performance is on par with top-tier desktop processors.

The 14-core configuration is particularly well-suited for Outriders, which benefits from multiple threads for physics, AI, and streaming game worlds. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 283 FPS, which is close to the practical limit for most displays. If the CPU were a limiting factor, we would expect to see frame rates plateau at lower resolutions regardless of GPU headroom. Instead, the frame rates continue to climb as resolution decreases, indicating that the CPU has sufficient headroom to handle the game's logic at these extreme frame rates.

The L3 cache of 24 MB shared across all cores is sufficient for the game's asset streaming requirements, and the dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth ensures that data can be fed to the GPU without stalling. The processor's single-thread performance, as reflected in the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,648, is critical for Outriders' main game loop, and this score is competitive with the best consumer CPUs available.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is a monster of a graphics card, featuring the GB202 chip on a 5 nm process with 92,200 million transistors. It has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The card's boost clock of 2407 MHz and 21,760 shading units provide the raw compute power needed to drive Outriders at high resolutions.

The GPU's benchmark results are staggering. It scores 44,065 in Passmark G3D and 14,326 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the database are notably weaker: the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT scores 78,940 (a -1.6% delta), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scores 79,605 (a -2.4% delta). This shows that the RTX 5090 D is not just ahead of its direct competitors — it is in a class by itself.

The 32 GB of VRAM is far more than Outriders requires, even at 4K Ultra settings. This means that the GPU will never be constrained by memory capacity, allowing the card to run at its full potential without texture swapping. The 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth ensures that the GPU can quickly access the large texture files used in the game's environments, preventing any stuttering that might occur on lesser cards.

The GPU's role in this system is clearly the primary driver of performance. At 4K Ultra, the system achieves 68 FPS, which is a 28% drop from the 94 FPS at 4K High. This scaling is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where increasing the graphical load directly impacts frame rate. The RTX 5090 D's 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the engine that powers these results, and the data shows that it is fully utilized at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 15th out of 2,913 tested combos in Outriders. This places it in the top 0.5% of all systems tested, which is an exceptional result for a mid-range CPU paired with a flagship GPU.

The ranking is particularly impressive given that the CPU is not the absolute fastest available. The Core Ultra 5 245 sits at the 90th percentile of all CPUs, while the RTX 5090 D is at the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The fact that this combination outranks 99.5% of all systems tested suggests that Outriders is far more dependent on GPU performance than CPU performance, and the RTX 5090 D is able to carry the system to elite status.

The data shows that the top 14 combos ahead of this one likely feature even faster CPUs, but the performance difference is probably minimal. The nearest CPU rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900, has an average benchmark score that is only 0.5% higher than the Core Ultra 5 245, indicating that the CPU choice has a negligible impact on the final ranking. This confirms the GPU's dominance in this game's workload.

For players considering this combination, the 15th-place ranking out of 2,913 should be reassuring. It means that this system is capable of running Outriders at the highest settings with frame rates that are competitive with the absolute best money can buy, while using a processor that is far more accessible than the top-tier halo chips.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound profile. At High settings, the system achieves 226 FPS at 1080p, 180 FPS at 1440p, and 94 FPS at 4K. This represents a 20% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 48% drop from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is roughly linear with the number of pixels, which confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 283 FPS at 1080p, 243 FPS at 1440p, and 172 FPS at 4K. The 4K result at Low is still remarkably high, showing that the RTX 5090 D has enough raw power to push even the most demanding resolution at playable frame rates. The drop from 1080p to 4K at Low is 39%, which is less than the 58% drop at High, suggesting that the GPU has more headroom at lower settings where the shader workload is lighter.

The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 251 FPS at 1080p, 216 FPS at 1440p, and 125 FPS at 4K. The 4K Medium result is 31 FPS higher than 4K High, which indicates that the GPU is sensitive to the specific effects enabled at High versus Medium. The minimum frame rate data available for Medium shows 214 FPS at 1080p, 183 FPS at 1440p, and 106 FPS at 4K, all of which are well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

The Ultra preset demonstrates the most aggressive scaling: 201 FPS at 1080p, 130 FPS at 1440p, and 68 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the only configuration that dips below 70 FPS, showing that this combination is capable of running the game at maximum settings at 1440p and above but begins to strain at 4K with all features enabled. The 47% drop from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is the steepest of all presets, indicating that the Ultra preset includes effects that are particularly demanding on the GPU's ray tracing and compute units.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptionally high across all presets. The Low preset delivers 283 FPS, which is the highest result in the entire dataset. The Medium preset achieves 251 FPS with a minimum of 214 FPS and a maximum of 289 FPS. The High preset produces 226 FPS, and the Ultra preset reaches 201 FPS. All of these results are far beyond what any standard 1080p monitor can display, making the CPU and GPU combination severely overkill for this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the results remain impressive. The Low preset hits 243 FPS, the Medium preset averages 216 FPS with a tight range of 183 to 248 FPS, the High preset delivers 180 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 130 FPS. The 1440p High result of 180 FPS is particularly noteworthy, as it provides enough headroom for a 144 Hz or even a 170 Hz monitor without any risk of frame drops during intense combat. The Ultra preset at 1440p, at 130 FPS, is still above the 120 Hz threshold, making it a viable option for players who prioritize visual quality.

At 3840x2160, the performance is where the system finally starts to show its limits. The Low preset achieves 172 FPS, which is remarkable for 4K and indicates that the GPU has tremendous overhead. The Medium preset averages 125 FPS with a minimum of 106 FPS, which is still comfortably above the 60 FPS standard for console-quality gameplay. The High preset delivers 94 FPS, which is the recommended setting for 4K as it balances the visual fidelity of the game with a frame rate that remains responsive. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 68 FPS, which is the only result below 70 FPS in the entire dataset, and it represents a 28% reduction from High that is difficult to justify unless the player insists on absolute maximum quality.

The minimum frame rates, where available, show that the system maintains consistent performance. At 4K Medium, the minimum of 106 FPS is only 15% below the average, indicating that the frame pacing is smooth without major hitches. At 1440p Medium, the minimum of 183 FPS is 15% below the average of 216 FPS, and at 1080p Medium, the minimum of 214 FPS is 15% below the average of 251 FPS. This consistent 15% variance across resolutions suggests that the frame time distribution is stable, with no single scene or effect causing disproportionate drops.