Outriders

# Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Outriders with the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 reveals a clear pattern of performance scaling across the three tested resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 290 FPS average, which drops to 248 FPS at 1440p and further to 161 FPS at 4K. This represents a 14.5% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 35.1% reduction from 1440p to 4K at Low settings. The scaling pattern indicates that the system is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions, as the frame rate drops proportionally with pixel count.

At High settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 232 FPS at 1080p falls to 168 FPS at 1440p (a 27.6% drop) and then to 88 FPS at 4K (a 47.6% drop from 1440p). This steeper decline at High settings compared to Low suggests that the additional graphical workload amplifies the GPU bottleneck. The RTX 5090's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth appear sufficient to feed the rendering pipeline, yet the sheer pixel throughput at 4K overwhelms even this flagship GPU.

The Medium preset provides the most complete dataset, with min and max FPS recorded alongside averages. At 1080p Medium, the average is 257 FPS with a minimum of 219 and maximum of 296. Moving to 1440p Medium, the average drops to 221 FPS, with a range of 188 to 254. At 4K Medium, the average falls to 117 FPS, with a minimum of 100 and maximum of 135. The narrowing FPS range at higher resolutions—from a 77 FPS spread at 1080p to a 35 FPS spread at 4K—indicates that the GPU is becoming the consistent limiting factor, reducing frame-time variance as it saturates.

Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling: 193 FPS at 1080p, 122 FPS at 1440p, and 64 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 36.8%, while the 1440p to 4K drop is 47.5%. These percentages closely mirror the pixel count increases (78% more pixels from 1080p to 1440p, and 125% more from 1440p to 4K), confirming that Outriders at Ultra settings is almost purely pixel-throughput-bound. The 4K Ultra result of 64 FPS is the only measured average below 60 FPS in the entire dataset, highlighting that this configuration is the most demanding scenario tested.

The data also reveals how settings presets interact with resolution scaling. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 97 FPS (290 vs 193), a 33.4% penalty for maxing out settings. At 1440p, this gap grows to 126 FPS (248 vs 122), a 50.8% penalty. At 4K, the gap is also 97 FPS (161 vs 64), but the percentage penalty jumps to 60.2%. This shows that higher resolutions amplify the cost of Ultra settings, as the GPU must process both more pixels and more complex shading simultaneously.

FAQ

Q: What is the best-performing settings preset at 4K for this combo?

A: At 3840x2160, Low settings produce the highest average FPS at 161, followed by Medium at 117 FPS, High at 88 FPS, and Ultra at 64 FPS. The data shows Low is the only preset exceeding 144 FPS at 4K.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations in Outriders?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 22nd out of 2,913 tested combinations in Outriders, placing it in the top 0.8% of all recorded configurations.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded at 1440p Medium settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the minimum FPS is 188, with an average of 221 and a maximum of 254. This provides a 188 FPS floor, well above typical high-refresh display requirements.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM show any benefit in Outriders?

A: The 32 GB GDDR7 memory with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is more than sufficient for Outriders at all tested settings and resolutions. The data shows no VRAM-related performance cliffs, as even 4K Ultra maintains playable FPS.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Core Ultra 7 265 has an average benchmark score of 64,640, which is 0.3% higher than the AMD EPYC 4464P and 0.7% higher than the AMD EPYC 7343. It trails the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F by 0.3% and the AMD EPYC 9124 by 0.7%.

Q: What is the FPS difference between 1080p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 232 at 1920x1080 to 88 at 3840x2160, representing a 62.1% reduction. This indicates the GPU is the dominant performance limiter at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a rank of 22 out of 2,913 tested combos in Outriders, placing it in the 99.2nd percentile of all configurations. This top-1% placement is consistent with the hardware's benchmark standings: the CPU ranks in the 93rd percentile against all CPUs, while the GPU ranks in the 92nd percentile against all GPUs. The slight discrepancy between component percentiles and the combo's higher game rank suggests that this pairing is particularly well-suited to Outriders' workload characteristics.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 64,640 places it just 0.3% below the AMD EPYC 4464P's 64,823 and 0.7% below the AMD EPYC 9124's 65,104. It outperforms the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F by 0.3% (64,438) and the AMD EPYC 7343 by 0.7% (64,202). These narrow margins indicate that the Core Ultra 7 265 sits in a tightly contested performance band, with less than 1% separating it from its nearest rivals. In gaming scenarios like Outriders, where the GPU typically dominates, these small CPU differences rarely translate into measurable FPS gaps.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 79,842 is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB's 79,605 and 0.6% higher than the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB's 79,396. It trails the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X by 1.4% (80,959) and leads the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT by 1.1% (78,940). Despite being a flagship consumer card, the RTX 5090's percentile ranking of 92 places it below the top 8% of all GPUs, largely due to the inclusion of professional and data-center parts in the comparison pool.

The combo's 22nd-place finish in Outriders suggests that the game's engine responds well to this hardware pairing. Given that the CPU and GPU both rank in the low-90s percentiles individually, achieving a top-1% game rank indicates synergistic performance rather than one component carrying the other. The measured FPS data supports this: even at 4K Ultra, the combo maintains 64 FPS average, demonstrating that neither component becomes a severe bottleneck in the most demanding scenario.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results span from 290 FPS average at Low settings down to 193 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset records an average of 257 FPS, with a minimum of 219 and maximum of 296. High settings average 232 FPS. The 97 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p represents the full range of settings impact at this resolution, with every preset comfortably exceeding 144 FPS for high-refresh monitors.

Moving to 2560x1440, Low settings deliver 248 FPS average, Medium averages 221 FPS with a range of 188 to 254, High averages 168 FPS, and Ultra averages 122 FPS. The 126 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p is larger than at 1080p, showing that resolution scaling amplifies settings costs. The 1440p Medium minimum of 188 FPS still exceeds the 1080p Ultra average, illustrating the performance headroom available at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results compress significantly. Low settings produce 161 FPS average, Medium averages 117 FPS with a range of 100 to 135, High averages 88 FPS, and Ultra averages 64 FPS. The 97 FPS gap between Low and Ultra matches the 1080p gap in absolute terms but represents a much larger percentage change (60.2% vs 33.4%). The 4K Medium minimum of 100 FPS and the 4K Ultra average of 64 FPS are the only data points below the 144 FPS threshold in the entire dataset.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset provides the most complete FPS data with min and max values recorded. At 1080p Medium, the 219-296 range shows a 77 FPS variance; at 1440p Medium, the 188-254 range shows a 66 FPS variance; and at 4K Medium, the 100-135 range shows a 35 FPS variance. This decreasing variance at higher resolutions further confirms the GPU-bound nature of 4K rendering, where frame delivery becomes more consistent as the GPU operates at higher utilization.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 brings substantial resources to Outriders: 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivering 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, 21,760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. The GPU's boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz support a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS provides the compute headroom needed for the game's effects and post-processing.

In Outriders, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. At 1080p, the 290 FPS Low result suggests the GPU has ample headroom, and the 97 FPS gap between Low and Ultra indicates that settings changes meaningfully impact GPU load. By 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor: even at Low settings, the frame rate drops to 161 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 64 FPS. The 32 GB VRAM is never a constraint, as the largest memory footprint in Outriders at these settings fits comfortably within the available capacity.

The GPU's benchmark performance aligns with its in-game results. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355 and PassMark G3D score of 39,650 place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 334,370 and Vulkan score of 376,728 indicate strong compute capabilities that support the game's rendering pipeline. The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—Tesla P100 variants and Radeon Pro/consumer parts—show that the RTX 5090's gaming performance is competitive within its class.

The memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s is particularly relevant for 4K rendering, where texture fetches and framebuffer operations demand high throughput. The 512-bit bus width and 28 Gbps effective memory speed provide the data rate needed to sustain the observed 4K performance. The GPU's 575 W TDP and 950 W suggested PSU requirement reflect the power needed to maintain these clock speeds under load, though the measured FPS data shows stable performance across all tested scenarios.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 provides 20 cores and 20 threads with a base clock of 2.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz. This Arrow Lake-S architecture processor, built on TSMC's 3 nm process with 17,800 million transistors, features a 30 MB shared L3 cache and per-core L2 cache of 3 MB. The dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth ensures the CPU can feed the GPU without becoming a bottleneck in most scenarios.

In Outriders, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU at higher resolutions but becomes more relevant at 1080p. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42,216 and single-core score of 5,960 indicate strong thread handling and per-core performance. The PassMark multithread score of 49,682 and single-thread score of 4,689 show balanced capabilities across both metrics. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking against all CPUs reflects its position among modern desktop processors.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are all server or workstation parts—AMD EPYC 4464P, EPYC 7343, and EPYC 9124—with performance differences under 1%. This indicates that the Core Ultra 7 265's gaming performance is not solely determined by raw compute scores, as Outriders benefits from the CPU's strong single-thread performance and low-latency cache hierarchy. The 20-core configuration ensures that any background tasks or game engine threads have sufficient resources without contending with the main game threads.

At 1080p, where the GPU is less stressed, the CPU's boost clock of 5.30 GHz becomes more significant. The 290 FPS Low result at 1080p suggests the CPU can sustain high frame rates when the GPU is not the limiting factor. The 20 threads also provide headroom for the game's physics, AI, and streaming systems, preventing CPU-related stutter even during intense combat sequences. The CPU's 65 W TDP and 3 nm process node contribute to efficient operation, though the measured FPS data does not show thermal throttling at any tested setting.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the combo delivers 257 FPS average with a 219-296 range, comfortably supporting 240 Hz displays. At 1440p Medium, 221 FPS average with a 188-254 range exceeds all but the highest refresh rate monitors. Even at 4K Medium, the 117 FPS average with a 100-135 range provides smooth gameplay on 120 Hz displays.

For players seeking maximum visual quality on high-refresh monitors, High settings at 1440p deliver 168 FPS average, which is sufficient for 144 Hz displays while offering better visual fidelity than Medium. The 4K High result of 88 FPS falls below 100 FPS but remains playable on 90 Hz or 120 Hz displays with adaptive sync. Ultra settings are only recommended for players prioritizing visuals over frame rate, as the 4K Ultra average of 64 FPS is the only measured result that approaches the 60 FPS threshold.

Low settings provide the highest frame rates at every resolution—290 FPS at 1080p, 248 FPS at 1440p, and 161 FPS at 4K—and are suitable for competitive play or for users with ultra-high refresh rate displays (240 Hz or higher). However, the visual quality trade-off at Low settings is substantial, and the data shows that Medium provides significantly better visuals with only a 33 FPS penalty at 1080p (from 290 to 257), a 27 FPS penalty at 1440p (from 248 to 221), and a 44 FPS penalty at 4K (from 161 to 117).

The most demanding scenario—4K Ultra at 64 FPS—still maintains playable performance, but the 97 FPS gap between Ultra and Low at 4K highlights the significant cost of maxing out settings. For the best balance of visual quality and performance, the data supports Medium settings at 4K, High settings at 1440p, and either High or Ultra at 1080p depending on monitor refresh rate. The Medium preset's consistent performance across all resolutions, with minimum FPS values staying well above 100 at 1440p and above 100 at 4K, makes it the most reliable choice for varied gaming scenarios.