Ready Or Not

# Ready Or Not: Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER

Ready Or Not presents a demanding tactical-shooter workload, and this pairing of a six-core Coffee Lake CPU with NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace flagship produces a dataset that clearly separates GPU-bound scaling from CPU-imposed ceilings. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at 4K, increasingly CPU-limited at 1440p, and heavily CPU-bound at 1080p. The RTX 4080 SUPER's 88th-percentile standing among all GPUs and the i5-9400's 50th-percentile CPU rank set the stage for a combo whose performance profile is defined less by raw component strength and more by the interaction between resolution, preset, and the aging processor's six threads.

Resolution Scaling

The frame-rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep but uneven across presets, which indicates where the bottleneck shifts. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 308.4 at 1920x1080 to 152.9 at 3840x2160 — a 50.4% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 254.6 to 87.1, a 65.8% reduction. The Low-preset scaling is notably shallower because at 1080p Low, the i5-9400's six cores without hyper-threading are already saturated; the RTX 4080 SUPER is waiting on the CPU, so raising resolution to 1440p (268.7 FPS) and then 4K (152.9) still allows the GPU to do progressively more work. The Ultra preset, by contrast, loads the GPU heavily enough that the 4K result of 87.1 FPS reflects true GPU-bound performance, with the 4080 SUPER's 52.22 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 736.3 GB/s memory bandwidth being exercised fully.

The intermediate steps confirm this interpretation. At Medium settings, 1080p yields 297.2 FPS, 1440p yields 256, and 4K yields 133.2. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is just 41.2 FPS (13.9%), while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 122.8 FPS (48%). This pattern — small early drop, large late drop — is the signature of a system that is CPU-limited at lower resolutions and becomes GPU-limited only as pixel count climbs. At High settings, the same shape appears: 284.4 at 1080p, 231.4 at 1440p (an 18.6% drop), then 124.1 at 4K (a 46.4% drop). The 4K-to-1080p ratio for High is 43.6%, meaning the GPU is delivering less than half its low-resolution frame rate when pushed to 4K, which is expected for a game with heavy shading and post-processing loads.

How This Combo Ranks

Among 1,748 tested combinations in Ready Or Not, this pairing ranks 350th, placing it in the top 20% of all combos. That rank is respectable but not elite, and the reason is clear: the RTX 4080 SUPER is a top-tier GPU, but the i5-9400's six threads and 9 MB of shared L3 cache limit how much of that GPU's potential can be realized in a game that is not purely GPU-bound at lower resolutions. The GPU's nearest rivals — the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (0.2% higher average score), AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (0.4% higher), AMD Radeon RX 7700S (2.1% higher), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (2.9% higher) — are all within a few percentage points in synthetic benchmarks, yet the 4080 SUPER's 88th-percentile GPU rank suggests it should be capable of far more than the 350th combo rank implies. The CPU is the limiting factor.

The i5-9400 sits at the 50th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 2305. Its nearest rivals are tightly clustered: the Intel Core i3-10305 (0.2% higher score), Intel Core i3-1125G4 (0.2% higher), Intel Xeon E-2134 (0.4% higher), and Intel Core i7-8809G (0.6% lower). This clustering means the CPU is neither a standout nor a laggard — it is squarely mid-pack. In Ready Or Not, that mid-pack status translates to a hard ceiling at high frame rates. The combo rank of 350 out of 1,748 (top 20%) is actually better than the CPU's percentile rank alone would suggest, because at 4K the GPU dominates and the CPU's weakness is masked. At 1080p, however, the combo rank would likely be lower if measured separately, as the data shows the CPU capping frame rates below what the GPU could deliver on its own.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 SUPER brings 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a substantial memory subsystem that matters for Ready Or Not, a tactical shooter with detailed environments and potential for large texture loads. The 4K Ultra result of 87.1 FPS is the most GPU-stressed data point, and it is here that the 4080 SUPER's 80 RT cores and 10,240 shading units come into play. The GPU's boost clock of 2550 MHz and base of 2295 MHz are high for the Ada Lovelace architecture, and the 320 TMUs and 112 ROPs ensure that texture-heavy scenes and post-processing effects are handled without becoming the primary bottleneck.

The GPU's measured performance in synthetic tests reinforces its capability. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6,600 and PassMark G3D score of 34,245 both place it in the upper echelon, while the Geekbench OpenCL score of 246,994 and Vulkan score of 226,163 indicate strong compute throughput that can assist with any GPU-driven physics or simulation in Ready Or Not. The 88th-percentile GPU rank means it outperforms 88% of all GPUs in the database, and its nearest rivals are all within 2.9% in average score, confirming that the 4080 SUPER is at the top of its class. Yet in this combo, the GPU's role is often that of a performer waiting for instructions — at 1080p Low, the 308.4 FPS average is likely near the CPU's maximum draw-call throughput, not the GPU's rendering limit.

The 16 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for Ready Or Not at any preset, and the 736.3 GB/s bandwidth ensures that even at 4K Ultra, texture streaming and memory allocation are unlikely to cause stutters. The GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS FP32 and 52.22 TFLOPS FP16 (1:1) rates provide ample compute headroom. The 320-watt TDP and triple-slot cooler are design choices that prioritize sustained performance over efficiency, and the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface is fully compatible with the i5-9400's PCIe Gen 3, 16-lane configuration, though the older standard may slightly reduce bandwidth in edge cases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the dataset shows a narrow spread across presets, indicating CPU limitation. Low settings average 308.4 FPS, Medium 297.2, High 284.4, and Ultra 254.6. The difference between Low and Ultra is 53.8 FPS, or 17.4% — a modest gap that would be much larger if the GPU were the limiting factor. The CPU's six threads are the constraint here; the 4080 SUPER is capable of far more, but the i5-9400's 4.10 GHz boost clock and 2.90 GHz base cannot feed frames fast enough. Even at Low, the 308.4 FPS result is a ceiling that the CPU cannot exceed regardless of how light the graphics load becomes.

At 2560x1440, the spread widens, showing the GPU beginning to take on more responsibility. Low averages 268.7 FPS, Medium 256, High 231.4, and Ultra 163.4. The Low-to-Ultra gap is now 105.3 FPS (39.2%), nearly double the 1080p gap. The Ultra preset at 163.4 FPS is still high, but the drop from High to Ultra (231.4 to 163.4, a 29.4% reduction) indicates that the Ultra preset's additional effects — likely shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion — are now loading the GPU enough to matter. The CPU is still partially in the picture, but the GPU's 4K-class performance is starting to show through.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is fully engaged. Low averages 152.9 FPS, Medium 133.2, High 124.1, and Ultra 87.1. The Low-to-Ultra gap is 65.8 FPS (43%), and the spread between presets is now driven almost entirely by GPU load. The 4K Ultra result of 87.1 FPS is the only data point below 100 FPS in the entire dataset, confirming that Ready Or Not at maximum settings and 4K is a genuine stress test for even a top-tier GPU. The 4K Low result of 152.9 FPS shows that the GPU has significant headroom when settings are reduced, and the 4K Medium result of 133.2 FPS suggests that a balanced preset can maintain high refresh rates at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

For 4K displays, the Ultra preset's 87.1 FPS average is playable but not ideal for a tactical shooter where precision matters. The High preset at 124.1 FPS is a substantial improvement — a 42.5% increase over Ultra — with likely minimal visual degradation in actual gameplay. The data indicates that High at 4K provides the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate for this combo. Medium at 133.2 FPS is another 7.3% higher, but the step from Ultra to High is the most significant gain, so High is the recommended 4K preset.

For 1440p displays, the Ultra preset's 163.4 FPS is already excellent, and the High preset at 231.4 FPS is well beyond what most displays can show. The recommendation here is Ultra, as the 163.4 FPS average comfortably exceeds 144 Hz refresh rates and the visual enhancements of Ultra are worth the FPS cost. Medium at 256 FPS and Low at 268.7 FPS offer diminishing returns — the gains over Ultra are 56.7% and 64.4% respectively, but the visual compromise is significant and the frame rate is already high enough that the difference is imperceptible on most monitors.

For 1080p displays, the CPU bottleneck means that all presets deliver very high frame rates, from 254.6 FPS at Ultra to 308.4 FPS at Low. The Ultra preset is the clear recommendation, as its 254.6 FPS average is still far above any display refresh rate, and the visual quality benefits are fully realized without meaningful FPS sacrifice. The High preset at 284.4 FPS (11.7% higher than Ultra) and Medium at 297.2 FPS (16.7% higher) offer marginal gains that are unlikely to be noticed. The Low preset at 308.4 FPS is only 21.1% higher than Ultra and comes with a significant visual downgrade, so it is not recommended unless the user prioritizes absolute frame rate over everything else. In all cases, the i5-9400's CPU limitation means that no preset at 1080p will push the 4080 SUPER to its full potential — the GPU is effectively underutilized at this resolution.