Road 96

Road 96 is an Adventure title that scales broadly across hardware, and the pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D produces a wide spread of framerates depending on how you configure it. The measured data covers three resolutions and four quality presets, and the results show a system that is clearly GPU-limited at higher settings but becomes increasingly CPU-bound as you drop resolution and quality. For builders, the key takeaway is that the RTX 5090 D is overkill for this game at 1080p, while at 4K Ultra the Ryzen 5 5500 still manages to keep the experience playable, though not at the high refresh rates the GPU alone would suggest.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear picture of how each preset behaves at each resolution, and the data points to the Medium preset as the best overall experience for most users. At 3840x2160, Medium delivers an average of 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 FPS and a maximum of 121 FPS. That is a smooth, locked-feeling experience on a 60 Hz or even a 100 Hz display, with the minimum frame rate staying well above typical refresh rate thresholds. The jump from Low to Medium at 4K is significant: Low averages 144 FPS, but Medium drops to 106 FPS, a 38 FPS penalty. That is a large cost for what is typically a modest visual improvement in an adventure game. However, the minimum of 90 FPS at Medium suggests headroom, and the consistency of the frame pacing is better than the raw average difference implies.

At 2560x1440, Medium produces an average of 200 FPS with a minimum of 170 FPS and a maximum of 229 FPS. This is the sweet spot for high refresh rate monitors, as even the minimum is far above 144 Hz. The step from High to Medium at 1440p is 161 FPS to 200 FPS, a 39 FPS gain, while the step from Medium to Low is 200 FPS to 272 FPS, a 72 FPS gain. The diminishing returns are clear: Low offers a massive framerate boost but typically removes shadows, ambient occlusion, and other effects that define the game’s moody road-trip aesthetic. Medium preserves enough visual fidelity to keep the atmosphere intact while still delivering performance that exceeds what most 1440p panels can display.

At 1920x1080, Medium averages 313 FPS with a minimum of 266 FPS and a maximum of 360 FPS. This is far beyond any mainstream monitor’s refresh rate, and the only reason to choose Low (388 FPS average) would be for competitive play, which is irrelevant in a narrative adventure. High at 1080p averages 253 FPS, and Ultra averages 198 FPS, both still excellent. Given that the data shows Medium as the middle ground with the best balance of consistency and quality, it is the recommended preset. Ultra at 4K averages 67 FPS, which is playable but noticeably below the 90 FPS minimum of Medium, and the visual upgrade from High to Ultra is rarely worth a 18 FPS loss at 4K (85 to 67 FPS). For most systems, High at 4K (85 FPS) is a solid alternative if you want more visual polish and have a 60 Hz display, but Medium is the safer recommendation for maintaining headroom.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is a massive piece of silicon with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU’s base clock is 2017 MHz, boosting to 2407 MHz, and the data shows that this card is rarely the limiting factor in Road 96 at lower resolutions. The GPU’s benchmark scores are strong: it holds a 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77712. Its nearest rivals in the database are the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76904, 1.1% higher), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940, -1.6% lower), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79396, -2.1% lower), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605, -2.4% lower). This places the RTX 5090 D in a strange spot: it is a top-tier card by percentile, but its nearest rivals in this benchmark set are mobile and data center parts, not other desktop flagships.

In Road 96, the GPU’s role becomes clear when you compare framerates across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system averages 388 FPS, which is almost certainly CPU-limited given that the Ryzen 5 5500 has a modest single-thread score. At 4K Ultra, the average drops to 67 FPS, and this is where the GPU is doing heavy lifting, but the drop from High (85 FPS) to Ultra (67 FPS) is a 21% reduction, which is larger than typical for a game of this visual complexity. The 32 GB VRAM is far beyond what Road 96 needs, and the 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is irrelevant at 1080p but starts to matter at 4K where texture streaming and memory pressure increase. The GPU’s passmark G3D score of 44065 and passmark GPU compute score of 28396 indicate strong compute performance, but the game’s measured results show that the RTX 5090 D is not the bottleneck until you reach 4K Ultra. At 1440p and below, the CPU is the limiting factor, which explains why the framerates scale so dramatically with settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a clear pattern of framerate degradation as resolution increases, but the curve is not linear. At Low settings, the system goes from 388 FPS at 1080p to 272 FPS at 1440p to 144 FPS at 4K. That is a 30% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 47% drop from 1440p to 4K. At High settings, the progression is 253 FPS at 1080p, 161 FPS at 1440p, and 85 FPS at 4K, with the 1440p to 4K drop being 47% again. The consistency of these percentage drops suggests that the GPU is becoming more dominant as resolution increases, but the absolute numbers tell a more nuanced story.

At 1080p, even Ultra settings produce 198 FPS, which is far above what the Ryzen 5 5500 can push in CPU-limited scenarios. The fact that Low at 1080p hits 388 FPS while Ultra at 1080p hits 198 FPS indicates that the settings are shifting load from the CPU to the GPU. At Low, the CPU is likely the bottleneck, as the GPU has little work to do. At Ultra, the GPU takes over, but the CPU still has enough headroom to keep the framerate high. Moving to 1440p, the framerates drop across all settings, but the relative differences between presets remain similar. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, as Ultra drops to 67 FPS and even Low only reaches 144 FPS, which is below the 1440p Medium score of 200 FPS.

The scaling suggests that this combo is unbalanced for Road 96. The RTX 5090 D is capable of far more than 144 FPS at 4K Low, but the Ryzen 5 5500’s single-thread performance (a 3dmark single-thread score of 836 and a passmark single-thread score of 3058) caps the framerate in lighter scenes. At 4K Ultra, the GPU is fully utilized, and the 67 FPS average reflects the game’s rendering demands at that resolution and quality. For a player targeting 4K, the data shows that Medium (106 FPS) is the highest preset that remains comfortably above 90 FPS, while High (85 FPS) is borderline and Ultra (67 FPS) is only for those who prioritize visuals over smoothness.

How This Combo Ranks

The Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the RTX 5090 D places 48th out of 2903 tested combos for Road 96, which is a top 1.7% ranking. This is a strong result, but it is worth remembering the rank is driven almost entirely by the GPU’s raw power, as the CPU is a mid-range part. The combo’s percentile position reflects the fact that most tested systems use more balanced pairings, and the RTX 5090 D alone would rank higher if paired with a faster processor. The measured data shows that this combo outperforms the vast majority of systems at all resolutions, but the gap narrows at 4K Ultra where the CPU becomes less relevant and the GPU’s limits are reached.

In the context of the database, the Ryzen 5 5500 has an average benchmark score of 19593 and holds a 73rd percentile among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (19617, -0.1% delta), the Intel Core i5-12500 (19668, -0.4% delta), the Intel Core i7-10700F (19499, 0.5% delta), and the Intel Core i5-11600KF (19723, -0.7% delta). These rivals are all within 1% of the Ryzen 5 5500’s average score, which means the CPU is firmly in the mid-range tier. The RTX 5090 D, by contrast, sits in the 92nd percentile for GPUs, so the combo rank of 48th out of 2903 is a reflection of the GPU carrying the load. For Road 96, this ranking is meaningful because the game is not particularly CPU-intensive, so the combo performs better than its CPU would suggest in many other titles.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne codename) on a 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, with 16 MB of L3 cache and a 65 W TDP. The CPU’s benchmark scores are modest: a cinebench R23 multicore score of 16429 and a single-core score of 2319, a geekbench multicore score of 7976 and single-core score of 1730, and a passmark multithread score of 19330. These numbers place it in the mid-range, and the data shows that it is the bottleneck in Road 96 at lower resolutions and settings.

At 1080p Low, the system averages 388 FPS, which is likely near the CPU’s maximum frame generation capability in this game. The 3dmark scores are telling: a single-thread score of 836, a 2-thread score of 1645, and a 4-thread score of 3151. Road 96, as an adventure game, likely uses only a few threads for the main game logic, so the single-thread performance is what matters most. The CPU’s boost clock of 4.20 GHz is decent, but the architecture’s IPC is lower than newer designs, which explains why the framerate caps at 388 FPS rather than going higher. At 1440p Low, the framerate drops to 272 FPS, which is still CPU-bound, and at 4K Low, it drops to 144 FPS, where the GPU starts to take over.

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent when comparing settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low (388 FPS) and Ultra (198 FPS) is 190 FPS, which is a massive gap that indicates the GPU is doing much more work at Ultra. But the CPU’s ceiling is still visible: even at 4K Ultra, the system averages 67 FPS, and if the CPU were faster, the GPU might push higher in scenes with less draw call overhead. The Ryzen 5 5500’s 12 threads are sufficient for this game, as the passmark data compression score of 245533 and integer math score of 65001 show solid multi-threaded throughput, but the single-thread score of 3058 (passmark) is the limiting factor for frame pacing. For a game like Road 96, which is not a heavily threaded title, the CPU’s single-core strength is what determines the maximum framerate, and the data shows that the RTX 5090 D is held back by the Ryzen 5 5500 at 1080p and 1440p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for this combo covers three resolutions and four settings each, providing a complete picture of performance.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset produces an average of 388 FPS. The Medium preset averages 313 FPS, with a minimum of 266 FPS and a maximum of 360 FPS, indicating a wide variance but no dips below playable thresholds. The High preset averages 253 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 198 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra is a 190 FPS drop, which is steep but expected given the GPU’s role at higher settings. The minimum FPS at Medium (266 FPS) is higher than the average of High (253 FPS), which shows that the Medium preset provides a more consistent experience than High, even if the visual quality is lower.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 272 FPS. The Medium preset averages 200 FPS, with a minimum of 170 FPS and a maximum of 229 FPS. The High preset averages 161 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 126 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 146 FPS, which is less than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is becoming more of a factor. The minimum FPS at Medium (170 FPS) is still well above 144 Hz, making this the best resolution for high-refresh monitors. The High preset’s 161 FPS average is close to the Medium minimum, suggesting that High can cause occasional dips below 144 Hz if you have a 144 Hz display.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 144 FPS. The Medium preset averages 106 FPS, with a minimum of 90 FPS and a maximum of 121 FPS. The High preset averages 85 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 67 FPS. This is the only resolution where the GPU is the clear bottleneck, as the framerates scale with settings in a way that reflects GPU load. The Medium preset’s minimum of 90 FPS is the key number here: it means that even in demanding scenes, the game stays above 90 FPS, which is smooth on most displays. The High preset’s 85 FPS average is borderline for a 90 Hz display, and the Ultra preset’s 67 FPS average is only suitable for 60 Hz displays. The data shows that 4K Medium is the highest quality setting that maintains a consistent 90+ FPS experience, while 4K High and Ultra are for users who prioritize visual fidelity over frame rate stability.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset offers the best balance of performance and quality, with the 1080p Medium minimum of 266 FPS and the 4K Medium minimum of 90 FPS both being strong results. The Low preset at 4K (144 FPS) is playable without V-sync on a 144 Hz monitor, but the visual quality loss is significant. The Ultra preset at 1080p (198 FPS) is still excellent, but the jump to 1440p Ultra (126 FPS) and 4K Ultra (67 FPS) shows a rapid decline that makes Ultra a poor choice for this game unless you are using a 60 Hz 4K display. For most users, the recommendation is clear: use Medium at your native resolution, and only move to High if you have a 60 Hz display and want better shadows and textures. Ultra is not recommended for smooth gameplay at 4K, and Low is only for those chasing maximum framerates on high-refresh monitors at 1080p or 1440p.