Overpower

The Intel Core i5-14600K paired with the Intel Arc B390 presents a striking imbalance in the benchmark data for Overpower. The CPU is a high-end desktop part, while the GPU is a low-power integrated graphics solution. The measured FPS figures across all resolutions and settings tell a clear story of a system that is entirely constrained by its graphics processor, making the choice of in-game settings crucial for achieving a playable experience.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for this combination indicates that the visual preset has a massive impact on performance, far more than resolution scaling does. The most striking finding is the performance cliff between the "Low" preset and the next step up, "Medium". Across all three tested resolutions, the "Low" preset delivers a significantly higher average FPS than "Medium", "High", or "Ultra".

For players seeking the highest possible frame rates, the Low preset is the clear choice. At 1920x1080, this setting yields an average of 72 FPS, which is a substantial 60% higher than the 45 FPS achieved on the Medium preset at the same resolution. This pattern repeats at higher resolutions. At 2560x1440, Low produces 64 FPS compared to Medium's 40 FPS, and even at 3840x2160, Low manages 54 FPS versus Medium's 34 FPS. The data suggests that the "Low" preset disables a specific, demanding rendering feature that the Arc B390 cannot handle, allowing the system to breathe.

The "Medium", "High", and "Ultra" presets form a separate, tightly-clustered group of performance. The differences between them are relatively small. For example, at 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 45 on Medium to 42 on High and 35 on Ultra. This indicates that once you move past the "Low" preset, the GPU is already saturated, and the additional visual features of "High" and "Ultra" have a diminishing, yet still noticeable, cost. The "Ultra" preset appears to be a poor trade-off, as it offers only marginal visual improvements over "High" for a clear performance penalty (e.g., 42 FPS to 35 FPS at 1080p).

Given the data, the best experience is a trade-off between visual fidelity and smoothness. If a stable 60 FPS is the target, the Low preset is the only reliable way to achieve it, and it can do so even at 2560x1440. If the user prefers a more detailed image and can tolerate a lower frame rate, the Medium preset is the most balanced of the higher tiers, offering the best FPS of that group. The "High" preset offers a marginal improvement in FPS over "Ultra" and should be considered over it if the user wants to be in that quality tier. The "Ultra" preset is not recommended based on the measured data, as it provides the lowest performance with likely minimal visual gain over "High".

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Overpower smoothly at 4K resolution?*

A: The data shows that it is challenging but possible under specific conditions. At 3840x2160 with the Low preset, the system achieves an average of 54 FPS. However, switching to the Medium preset drops the average to 34 FPS, suggesting that a stable 60 FPS at 4K is not achievable on any preset.

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combination?

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1920x1080 provides the best performance ceiling. With the Low preset, it reaches 72 FPS average, which is the highest score recorded for this combo. While 2560x1440 on Low (64 FPS) is also very playable, the 1080p resolution offers the most headroom.

Q: How much of a performance difference is there between the "Low" and "Ultra" presets?

A: The difference is dramatic. At 1920x1080, the average FPS drops from 72 on Low to 35 on Ultra, representing a performance reduction of slightly more than half. This gap is consistent across all resolutions, highlighting that the Low preset is in a league of its own for this specific hardware.

Q: Should I use the "High" or "Ultra" preset?

A: The benchmark results suggest that the "Ultra" preset offers a poor return on investment. At 2560x1440, "High" averages 37 FPS, while "Ultra" averages 31 FPS. Given the minimal visual difference usually found between these two settings, the "High" preset is preferable as it provides a more fluid experience.

Q: Is the frame rate more dependent on the CPU or the GPU?

A: The data strongly indicates the GPU is the sole limiting factor. The Intel Core i5-14600K is a high-performance processor, but the Intel Arc B390 is an integrated GPU. The fact that FPS scales so dramatically with graphics settings, while the CPU remains constant, confirms that rendering performance is the bottleneck.

Q: What is the lowest FPS I can expect on the "Medium" preset?

A: The measured data includes minimum FPS figures for the Medium preset. At 1920x1080, the minimum is 38 FPS. At 2560x1440, it is 34 FPS, and at 3840x2160, it is 29 FPS. These figures suggest that frame pacing may be inconsistent, with occasional dips below the average.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390's role in this system is the primary determinant of performance, and the data shows it is severely underpowered for modern gaming. Its benchmark score in 3DMark Steel Nomad is 1482, which places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals in this score range include the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX and GeForce GT 710, which are older entry-level parts. This context makes the measured FPS in Overpower unsurprising.

The GPU's specifications explain the performance ceiling. It has 1536 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 24 ROPs, which are relatively low numbers. It relies on "System Shared" memory, meaning it has no dedicated VRAM and instead uses a portion of the system's main memory. The bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent," which is a major factor in performance. This shared memory architecture is a significant bottleneck, especially at higher resolutions where the demand for memory bandwidth increases.

The clock speeds of the Arc B390 are listed with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz. While the boost clock is high, the thermal and power constraints of an integrated GPU (with a TDP of 80 W) likely prevent it from sustaining that speed under load. The data from the game suggests that the GPU's compute and memory limitations are the primary reasons for the low frame rates. The performance difference between the "Low" and "Medium" presets is a classic sign of a GPU that is hitting a hard architectural limit, such as fill-rate or memory bandwidth, when a particular rendering feature is enabled.

How This Combo Ranks

The overall performance of this specific combination in Overpower is near the bottom of the tested pool. The data shows it holds a combo rank of 2638 out of 2980 tested combinations. This places it in the bottom 12% of all systems, which is consistent with the GPU's low percentile ranking.

This low rank is entirely a consequence of the graphics card. The CPU, when assessed on its own, is a top-tier performer. The Intel Core i5-14600K has an average benchmark score of 48618, which places it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H and the AMD EPYC 4345P, with the i5-14600K performing within 0.8% of these parts. This indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding data to a much more powerful GPU.

The massive discrepancy between the CPU's high percentile (90) and the GPU's low percentile (9) is the defining characteristic of this combo. The system's rank of 2638 is a direct reflection of the GPU's inability to keep up with the CPU. In a game like Overpower, this means the user is leaving a significant amount of CPU performance on the table. Any upgrade to a more powerful discrete GPU would likely catapult this system's rank to a much higher position, as the CPU would no longer be held back.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals an interesting pattern in how the system scales with resolution. Typically, a GPU-bound system will show a significant drop in FPS as resolution increases. However, for this combo, the drop from 1080p to 1440p, and then to 4K, is surprisingly modest on the higher presets.

For instance, on the "High" preset, the average FPS only drops from 42 at 1920x1080 to 37 at 2560x1440, and then to 32 at 3840x2160. This is a total drop of just 10 FPS from 1080p to 4K. Similarly, on the "Medium" preset, the FPS goes from 45 to 40 to 34. This small delta suggests that the system is not purely pixel-bound; if it were, the difference between 1080p and 4K would be much larger, as the 4K resolution has over four times the pixels.

This behavior implies that the bottleneck is not just the pixel fill rate. Instead, it points to a limitation in the GPU's geometry processing or shader execution capabilities. The Arc B390 seems to be struggling with the complexity of the scene itself, regardless of the resolution. The "Low" preset is the exception, showing a larger drop from 72 FPS at 1080p to 64 FPS at 1440p and then 54 FPS at 4K. This suggests that even with the simpler "Low" rendering path, the memory bandwidth for the increased pixel count becomes a more significant factor. The data indicates that the system is so heavily GPU-limited that resolution scaling has a muted effect until the "Low" preset alleviates the compute bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following data points are directly from the measured benchmarks for the Intel Core i5-14600K + Intel Arc B390 combination in Overpower.

At 1920x1080:

• On the Low preset, the average FPS is 72.
• On the Medium preset, the average FPS is 45, with a minimum of 38 and a maximum of 52.
• On the High preset, the average FPS is 42.
• On the Ultra preset, the average FPS is 35.

At 2560x1440:

• On the Low preset, the average FPS is 64.
• On the Medium preset, the average FPS is 40, with a minimum of 34 and a maximum of 46.
• On the High preset, the average FPS is 37.
• On the Ultra preset, the average FPS is 31.

At 3840x2160:

• On the Low preset, the average FPS is 54.
• On the Medium preset, the average FPS is 34, with a minimum of 29 and a maximum of 39.
• On the High preset, the average FPS is 32.
• On the Ultra preset, the average FPS is 26.

These numbers show a consistent hierarchy. The "Low" preset is always the fastest by a wide margin. The "Medium" and "High" presets are very close in performance, with "Medium" holding a slight edge. The "Ultra" preset is always the slowest. The minimum FPS data for the "Medium" preset suggests that there can be occasional stutters, especially at 4K where the minimum dips to 29 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a powerful processor that is not the limiting factor in this combination. It features 14 cores and 20 threads, based on the Raptor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, which allows for high single-threaded performance. Its cache configuration includes 24 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's synthetic benchmark scores confirm its strength; for instance, it scores 24491 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2064 in single-core. It is ranked in the 90th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48618.

In the context of Overpower, the CPU's role is to prepare frames for the GPU to render. Given the low FPS figures, the GPU is taking a long time to render each frame, meaning the CPU is likely idle most of the time, waiting for the GPU to finish. The CPU could handle a much higher frame rate, as evidenced by its high benchmark scores. The data suggests that the game is not CPU-bound at any of the tested settings or resolutions.

The fact that the FPS changes very little between 1080p and 4K on the "High" preset is a clear sign that the CPU is not the bottleneck. If the CPU were struggling, the FPS would be higher at lower resolutions where the CPU has to do less work per frame to feed the GPU. Instead, the FPS is low across the board, confirming that all performance limits are imposed by the Intel Arc B390. The i5-14600K is a capable gaming CPU, but its performance is entirely untapped in this specific system.