Overpower

The pairing of AMD’s Ryzen 5 2600 with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090 presents one of the most extreme generational mismatches in the database. The data indicates a platform constrained by a 2018-era CPU while being driven by a flagship 2022 GPU. Benchmark results in Overpower show that this combination produces playable frame rates across all tested configurations, but the performance ceiling is dictated by the processor's six Zen cores rather than the graphics card's immense compute resources.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for Overpower reveal a clear hierarchy where the Ultra preset delivers the most consistent experience relative to the system's capabilities. At 4K, the Ultra setting yields 100.9 FPS average, which is only 6.7 FPS lower than the High preset’s 107.6 FPS. This narrow gap between High and Ultra suggests that the visual fidelity gains from Ultra come at a minimal performance cost, making it the optimal choice for users prioritizing image quality without sacrificing smoothness. The Medium preset at 4K produces 115.2 FPS, which is 14.3 FPS above Ultra, but the jump from Medium to High is only 7.6 FPS, indicating diminishing returns at lower settings.

At 1440p, the pattern shifts slightly. The Ultra preset achieves 107.2 FPS, while High reaches 116.2 FPS, a difference of 9 FPS. The Low preset at 1440p hits 144.7 FPS, which is the highest value at this resolution outside of 1080p Low. However, the Medium setting at 1440p lands at 120.0 FPS, which is only 3.8 FPS above High. This suggests that for 1440p gaming, the High preset offers the best balance, as it sits within 8.5% of Medium while providing noticeably better visual quality. The Ultra preset at 1440p is the least favorable option, as it only trails High by 9 FPS but demands more from the CPU for marginal graphical improvements.

At 1080p, the data shows a peculiar non-linearity. The High preset (122.8 FPS) and Medium preset (122.5 FPS) are nearly identical, differing by just 0.3 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 112.1 FPS, which is 10.7 FPS below High. The Low preset reaches 149.6 FPS, the highest measured value across all resolutions. Given that High and Medium are statistically indistinguishable, the High preset is the recommended choice for 1080p, as it provides superior visuals at no measurable frame rate penalty. The Ultra preset's 112.1 FPS is still playable but represents a 8.7% reduction from High, which is hard to justify given the CPU bottleneck evident at this resolution.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 brings a substantial hardware foundation to this pairing. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory operates across a 384-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. The AD102 chip, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, contains 76,300 million transistors across a 609 mm² die. The GPU’s base clock runs at 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz, while memory clocks at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). The shading units number 16,384, with 512 TMUs and 176 ROPs. The pixel rate is 443.5 GPixel/s and the texture rate reaches 1,290.2 GTexel/s, while FP32 performance peaks at 82.58 TFLOPS.

In Overpower, the GPU's role is paradoxically underutilized. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (100.9 FPS) versus 1080p Ultra (112.1 FPS) shows only an 11.2 FPS spread, which is remarkably small for a 4x resolution increase. This indicates that the RTX 4090 is not the limiting factor at any tested resolution. The GPU's raw capabilities—evidenced by its 38,194 Passmark G3D score and 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs—suggest it could deliver far higher frame rates if the CPU were not throttling the pipeline. The 24 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for Overpower's demands, likely remaining underutilized even at 4K Ultra, as the game's engine does not appear to stress memory capacity based on the consistent frame rates across settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is surprisingly modest for this combination. At High settings, the progression is 122.8 FPS (1080p) → 116.2 FPS (1440p) → 107.6 FPS (4K), representing a 12.4% decrease from 1080p to 4K. At Low settings, the drop is from 149.6 FPS to 144.7 FPS to 133.1 FPS, a 11.0% decrease. The Ultra preset shows 112.1 FPS → 107.2 FPS → 100.9 FPS, a 10.0% decrease. These percentages are far smaller than what would be expected if the GPU were the primary bottleneck, where 4K typically halves frame rates compared to 1080p.

This scaling pattern strongly indicates a CPU-limited scenario. The Ryzen 5 2600’s six cores and twelve threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost of 3.90 GHz, are being saturated even at 1080p. The fact that 4K Ultra only costs 11.2 FPS compared to 1080p Ultra means the GPU has ample headroom to absorb the increased pixel workload. The limiting component is the processor, which cannot feed the RTX 4090 enough draw calls or physics calculations to keep it fully occupied. The memory bandwidth of the CPU, rated at 46.9 GB/s over dual-channel DDR4, likely compounds this issue, as the GPU's 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is orders of magnitude higher.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 496th out of 1,744 tested combos in Overpower, placing it in the 71.5th percentile of all pairings. This rank is respectable but far below what the RTX 4090 alone would suggest. For context, the GPU alone sits in the 91st percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU is in the 77th percentile among all CPUs. The combination's rank is dragged down by the CPU's inability to leverage the GPU's full potential. The RTX 4090's nearest rivals—the Tesla T4 (delta -0.4%), Tesla P40 (delta +0.5%), Radeon Pro Vega 56 (delta -0.9%), and Quadro P6000 (delta -1.3%)—all have similar average benchmark scores, yet none of those cards would realistically be paired with a Ryzen 5 2600 in a gaming system. The CPU's nearest rivals, such as the Core i5-1345U (delta -0.4%) and Ryzen 5 7530U (delta +0.6%), are mobile or lower-tier desktop parts, highlighting the 2600's mid-range standing.

The rank of 496 out of 1,744 means that roughly 72% of tested combinations deliver better or equal performance in Overpower. This is not a poor result—the game runs smoothly at all settings—but it underscores the inefficiency of pairing a 450 W flagship GPU with a 65 W six-core processor from 2018. The combo's performance is closer to what a mid-range GPU like an RTX 4070 might achieve with a modern CPU, based on the frame rates observed, though no such comparison data exists in this pack.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 2600 is the definitive bottleneck in this system. Its specifications—6 cores, 12 threads, 3.40 GHz base, 3.90 GHz boost—are modest by 2024 standards, and its Zen architecture on a 12 nm process from GlobalFoundries limits its instruction throughput. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 96 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB shared L3, which is adequate but not generous for modern game engines. The processor's Passmark single-thread score of 2,239 and multithread score of 13,160 place it at the 77th percentile, but these scores are roughly 30% lower than what contemporary mid-range CPUs achieve (based on the rival deltas of 0.6-0.7% against the 7530U, not direct comparisons).

In Overpower, the CPU's role is evident in the frame rate ceilings across all resolutions. The 1080p Low setting maxes out at 149.6 FPS, which appears to be the hard limit for this processor in this game. Even at 4K Low, the system achieves 133.1 FPS, meaning the CPU is still managing to push over 130 FPS despite the GPU handling four times the pixels. This suggests the game's simulation or physics thread is bound to the CPU's single-core performance, which is underwhelming given the 3.90 GHz boost clock. The transistor count of 4,800 million and die size of 213 mm² are small by modern standards, reinforcing that this CPU was designed for efficiency rather than raw gaming throughput. The 16 MB shared L3 cache likely causes frequent cache misses in complex scenes, further limiting the frame rate. The data shows that the RTX 4090 is effectively capped at around 150 FPS in Overpower regardless of resolution, which is a direct consequence of the Ryzen 5 2600's processing limits.