Overpower

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a playable experience across all tested settings in Overpower, but the data reveals a clear bottleneck shift as resolution climbs. At 1080p, the average frame rates range from 104.5 FPS on Ultra to 160.7 FPS on Low, indicating that the CPU is the primary limiting factor at lower resolutions; the gap between Low and Ultra is substantial, a 56.2 FPS delta, which is typical for a six-core processor without hyper-threading. Moving to 1440p, the averages compress slightly—the Low setting yields 155.3 FPS while Ultra drops to 88 FPS—suggesting the GPU begins to take on more load, but the CPU still holds back the higher-refresh-rate potential. At 4K, the picture changes decisively: the RTX 4070 becomes the dominant constraint, with High settings producing 90.7 FPS and Ultra falling to 80.2 FPS, a narrow spread that shows the graphics card is working near its limits. The scaling from 1080p to 4K on High settings is telling: the frame rate drops from 124.5 FPS to 90.7 FPS, a 27% reduction, which is modest compared to what a purely GPU-bound system might show, indicating that the i5-9400’s six threads still impose a ceiling even at higher resolutions. In short, this combo is balanced for 1440p gaming, but at 1080p the CPU leaves performance on the table, while at 4K the GPU is the clear arbiter of frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark database places this specific CPU-GPU pairing at rank 571 out of 1744 tested combos in Overpower, which puts it in the upper third of all configurations. This ranking is notable because the CPU itself sits at the 50th percentile among all processors, while the GPU is far stronger, ranking at the 81st percentile among all graphics cards. The disparity in component percentiles explains why the combo does not break into the top quartile: the Intel Core i5-9400’s average benchmark score of 2305 places it just 0.2% ahead of the Intel Core i3-10305 (score 2300) and 0.2% ahead of the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (score 2299), yet 0.6% behind the Intel Core i7-8809G (score 2319). These rival CPUs are all close in raw compute, but none of them are modern high-core-count parts, so the i5-9400 is not uniquely weak—it is simply an older mid-range chip. On the GPU side, the RTX 4070’s average benchmark score of 37283 is 2.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 5300M (score 36371), but 0.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (score 37507) and 1.9% behind the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A (score 38008). Interestingly, the nearest rivals for the GPU include mobile parts like the RTX 4080 Mobile (score 38135), which outperforms the desktop RTX 4070 by 2.2%, highlighting that this desktop card is strong but not exceptional in aggregate benchmarks. Given that the CPU is average and the GPU is above-average, the 571st rank out of 1744 is a reasonable outcome; the data suggests that many combos with newer, faster processors achieve higher ranks even with weaker GPUs, because Overpower’s frame pacing at lower resolutions is sensitive to single-thread performance.

FAQ

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: The measured average is 104.5 FPS, which is the lowest result at 1080p but still comfortably above 60 FPS, indicating fluid gameplay even on maximum presets.

*Q: Does the RTX 4070’s 12 GB VRAM cause any issues in Overpower?*

A: No benchmark data shows VRAM capacity as a limiting factor; the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s and 192-bit bus width are sufficient for the tested resolutions, as evidenced by the 4K Ultra average of 80.2 FPS.

Q: How does this combo compare to a system with a similar GPU but a faster CPU?

A: The data does not include such a comparison, but the combo’s rank of 571 out of 1744 suggests that many higher-ranked configurations likely pair the RTX 4070 with newer processors, given that this CPU’s 6 cores and 6 threads produce a 50th percentile score.

Q: Is the i5-9400 a bottleneck at 4K?

A: No, at 4K the GPU is the limiting component; the frame rate spread between Low (148.5 FPS) and Ultra (80.2 FPS) is wide, but the CPU’s influence diminishes because the GPU is fully saturated at higher pixel counts.

Q: What is the best resolution for this pairing?

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1440p High (109 FPS) or 1440p Medium (117.3 FPS) offers the best balance, as the i5-9400 can still feed the GPU sufficiently while the RTX 4070 handles the resolution without dropping below 88 FPS on Ultra.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-core performance affect the game?

A: The i5-9400’s Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1125 is low by modern standards, and this likely explains why 1080p Low (160.7 FPS) does not scale higher; the game’s engine appears to rely on single-thread efficiency, which this older chip lacks.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4070 and i5-9400 produce a wide range of results depending on settings. Low settings hit an average of 160.7 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded for this combo across all resolutions. Medium settings drop to 132.5 FPS, High yields 124.5 FPS, and Ultra pulls the average down to 104.5 FPS. The 56.2 FPS difference between Low and Ultra shows that graphical presets have a significant impact, but even at Ultra, the system never dips below the 100 FPS threshold, making 1080p a high-refresh-rate playground. However, the fact that Low does not exceed 160 FPS suggests a CPU limitation, as a more powerful processor would typically push this GPU to 200+ FPS on Low at 1080p. At 2560x1440, the averages compress: Low produces 155.3 FPS, Medium 117.3 FPS, High 109 FPS, and Ultra 88 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 67.3 FPS, which is larger than at 1080p, indicating the GPU is starting to work harder, but the High and Medium results are still well above 100 FPS, making 1440p the sweet spot for this pairing. At 3840x2160, the GPU takes over as the primary constraint. Low settings average 148.5 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K and suggests the game is not graphically intensive at lower presets, but Medium drops to 97.9 FPS, High to 90.7 FPS, and Ultra to 80.2 FPS. The 4K Low result is notable because it is only 12.2 FPS lower than the 1080p Low result (160.7 FPS), indicating that at Low settings, the CPU is still the limiting factor even at 4K, whereas at Ultra, the GPU’s 80.2 FPS is the hard floor. Overall, the measured data shows a system that is capable of 60+ FPS at every resolution and setting combination tested, with the only caveat being that 1080p Ultra and 4K Ultra both hover near the 80-104 FPS range, which is good but not exceptional for a GPU that ranks in the 81st percentile.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain much of the measured performance. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, the card offers a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is sufficient to handle 4K textures without stuttering, as evidenced by the 4K Ultra average of 80.2 FPS. The GPU’s boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1920 MHz are typical for the Ada Lovelace architecture, and its 5888 shading units provide a raw FP32 throughput of 29.15 TFLOPS. In Overpower, the GPU’s role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases; at 1080p, the frame rate is capped by the CPU’s six threads, but at 4K, the card’s 64 ROPs and 184 texture mapping units are fully utilized, producing the 80-90 FPS range on High and Ultra settings. The GPU’s pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s are high enough to avoid bottlenecks, but the card’s 200 W TDP and dual-slot design mean it runs warm under sustained load, which is not reflected in the frame rate data but is a physical constraint. The RTX 4070’s aggregate benchmark scores—such as a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3854 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 168006—place it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, yet its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (average score 37507, 0.6% faster) and the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A (average score 38008, 1.9% faster), which are older or lower-tier parts. This suggests that while the RTX 4070 is a strong performer, it does not dominate its price-adjusted peers in synthetic tests, but in Overpower, its 12 GB memory capacity and high bandwidth ensure that it never becomes the limiting factor at any tested setting, leaving the CPU as the main constraint at lower resolutions. The GPU’s support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4 also means it can handle modern rendering features, though the measured FPS data does not isolate these effects, so the performance can be attributed to raw compute and memory throughput rather than any specific API optimization.