Road 96

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a highly playable experience in Road 96, a narrative-driven adventure where frame pacing matters more than peak throughput. The measured data shows a clear pattern: the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, providing a significant jump over High settings while maintaining smooth minimums where recorded. At 1920x1080, Medium achieves an average of 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 FPS, which is 21 FPS higher than High and only 39 FPS below Low. The story holds at 2560x1440, where Medium averages 67 FPS with a 57 FPS minimum, comfortably above the 54 FPS average of High. Even at 3840x2160, Medium is the only preset besides Low that stays above 30 FPS, averaging 36 FPS with a 30 FPS floor. Ultra, while visually demanding, drops to 23 FPS at 4K and 43 FPS at 1440p, making it unsuitable for consistent gameplay. Low settings are always the fastest, but the jump from Low to Medium costs only about 27% performance at 1080p while providing substantially better visual fidelity for an adventure game where atmosphere is key.

Settings Recommendations

The data strongly favors the Medium preset as the optimal choice for this combination. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers an average of 106 FPS, which is 39 FPS lower than Low but 21 FPS higher than High. The minimum of 90 FPS at Medium ensures no noticeable stutter, whereas High only manages an 85 FPS average with no recorded minimum to guarantee smoothness. Moving up to 2560x1440, Medium holds a 67 FPS average with a 57 FPS minimum, which is a 24% improvement over High’s 54 FPS. At 3840x2160, Medium’s 36 FPS average with a 30 FPS minimum is the only preset besides Low that remains technically playable, though 4K gaming is borderline.

Ultra is not recommended for this pairing. The performance cost is severe: at 1080p, Ultra averages 67 FPS, which is 39 FPS below Medium; at 1440p, it drops to 43 FPS; and at 4K, it falls to 23 FPS. These numbers indicate that Ultra is designed for higher-end GPUs, and the Arc B570’s 10 GB VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient to maintain fluid motion at that preset. High settings present a compromise that rarely pays off—at 1080p, High is only 20% faster than Ultra but 20% slower than Medium, with no recorded minimums to suggest stability.

For the best experience, the recommendation is to use Medium settings at 1920x1080 or 2560x1440. The 1080p Medium configuration delivers near-maximum refresh rates for most displays, while 1440p Medium offers a solid 60+ FPS experience that balances detail and smoothness. At 4K, Medium is the highest preset that avoids sub-30 FPS territory, but users should expect a cinematic rather than competitive frame rate. Low settings are only advisable if the user prioritizes maximum FPS over visuals, as the 145 FPS at 1080p Low demonstrates, but the visual downgrade is unnecessary for a story-driven game.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570’s specifications directly explain the measured performance in Road 96. The GPU features 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, yielding 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is adequate for the game’s moderate texture demands, as evidenced by the 145 FPS average at 1080p Low. However, the 23 FPS at 4K Ultra suggests that the memory bandwidth becomes a limiting factor when higher-resolution textures and effects are enabled. The GPU’s base and boost clocks are both fixed at 2500 MHz, which is a modest clock speed for a 150 W TDP part, and this contributes to the scaling pattern seen across presets.

The Arc B570’s rendering capabilities, including 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, provide a peak pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s. These figures translate to strong performance at lower resolutions but struggle to maintain frame rates as pixel count increases. The 4K Medium average of 36 FPS, compared to 67 FPS at 1440p Medium, shows a 46% performance drop, which aligns with the 2.25x pixel count increase from 1440p to 4K. The GPU’s FP32 throughput of 11.52 TFLOPS is sufficient for Road 96’s stylized visuals, but the 23 FPS at 4K Ultra indicates that the game’s Ultra preset likely enables heavy post-processing that exceeds the GPU’s fill rate capabilities.

The 10 GB VRAM capacity is never explicitly stressed in the measured data, but the fact that Ultra at 4K drops to 23 FPS while Medium at 4K holds 36 FPS suggests that memory allocation, rather than pure compute, is a bottleneck. The GPU’s 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 20556 place it in the mid-range tier, which is consistent with its performance in this game. Notably, the Arc B570’s nearest rival, the Intel Arc A750, has a nearly identical average score (20582 vs. 20556), and the measured FPS data likely mirrors that close competition in Road 96.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU-GPU combo in Road 96?*

A: The data shows 1920x1080 as the most comfortable resolution, with Medium settings averaging 106 FPS and a minimum of 90 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium still achieves a playable 67 FPS average, while 3840x2160 drops to 36 FPS on Medium, making 1080p the optimal choice for smooth, stutter-free gameplay.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High in terms of performance?

A: Ultra is consistently slower than High across all resolutions. At 1080p, Ultra averages 67 FPS versus 85 FPS for High; at 1440p, the gap is 43 FPS versus 54 FPS; and at 4K, Ultra falls to 23 FPS while High manages 29 FPS. The performance penalty for Ultra ranges from 21% at 1080p to 26% at 4K.

Q: Is the Intel Arc B570 capable of 4K gaming in this title?

A: Only at Low settings, where the average FPS is 49. Medium settings at 4K yield a 36 FPS average with a 30 FPS minimum, which is borderline playable but not ideal. High and Ultra at 4K produce 29 FPS and 23 FPS respectively, both below the 30 FPS threshold for acceptable motion.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Medium at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Low averages 92 FPS while Medium averages 67 FPS, a difference of 25 FPS. Medium also records a minimum of 57 FPS, ensuring no major drops, whereas Low has no recorded minimum to confirm stability.

*Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations for Road 96?*

A: The combination ranks 2324 out of 2903 tested combos, placing it in the lower-mid portion of the database. This rank reflects the Arc B570’s mid-range GPU status (65th percentile) paired with the Core i5-12400’s solid but not top-tier CPU performance (72nd percentile).

Q: Does the game benefit more from CPU or GPU upgrades based on this data?

A: The scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a larger FPS drop than the scaling from Low to Ultra at a fixed resolution, indicating GPU-bound behavior. For example, 1080p Medium averages 106 FPS, but 4K Medium drops to 36 FPS, a 66% reduction, which points to the GPU as the primary limiter.

How This Combo Ranks

In the benchmark database, this Intel Core i5-12400 + Intel Arc B570 combination sits at rank 2324 out of 2903 tested combos for Road 96. This places it in the 80th percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly one in five configurations performs worse. The ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU’s mid-range standing—the Arc B570 ranks in the 65th percentile among all GPUs—while the CPU ranks higher at the 72nd percentile. This disparity suggests that the GPU is the performance ceiling for this pairing.

The nearest rival CPUs to the i5-12400, based on average benchmark scores, include the AMD EPYC 7643 (deltaPct -0.1%), Intel Core i7-1355U (deltaPct -0.3%), and AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 (deltaPct -0.7%). These deltas are all within 1% of the i5-12400’s average score of 18683, indicating that CPU choice among these options would have minimal impact on Road 96’s frame rates. Similarly, the Arc B570’s nearest GPU rival, the Intel Arc A750, has a deltaPct of -0.1% with an average score of 20582, meaning the two Intel GPUs are virtually interchangeable in performance. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile is 0.1% faster, while the AMD Radeon R9 M390X is 0.5% slower—all within noise margins.

The rank of 2324 out of 2903 suggests that many combinations with higher-end GPUs or CPUs achieve better frame rates, but the data also shows that this combo delivers playable performance at 1080p and 1440p on Medium settings. The gap to the top of the database is substantial, but for a narrative adventure like Road 96, the rank is less critical than the actual measured FPS, which remain above 60 FPS at 1440p Medium. The combo’s rank is a reflection of its mid-range hardware, not a judgment on its playability.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 provides six cores and twelve threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. This Alder Lake-S architecture CPU has an 18 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory, though the memory bandwidth is not listed in the data. In Road 96, an adventure game that is not heavily threaded, the CPU’s single-thread performance is more relevant than its multi-core capabilities. The CPU’s 3DMark single-thread score of 910 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2257 indicate strong per-core performance, which is sufficient to feed the Arc B570 in most scenarios.

The measured FPS data shows that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 145 FPS, which is likely near the game’s engine limit or the GPU’s rendering ceiling, but the drop to 67 FPS at 1080p Ultra suggests the GPU is struggling with increased visual load rather than the CPU being starved. The CPU’s passmark single-thread score of 3456 and multithread score of 18747 place it in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs, meaning it outperforms a majority of processors. This headroom is evident in the 4K Medium result of 36 FPS, which, while low, is not caused by CPU limitations—the GPU’s fill rate at 4K is the limiting factor.

The i5-12400’s 12 threads are more than adequate for Road 96, which likely uses fewer than eight threads based on typical adventure game engines. The 3DMark max-threads score of 5890 and Cinebench R20 multicore score of 6715 confirm that the CPU has ample multi-threaded capacity, but this power is largely untapped in this title. The CPU’s 65W TDP and 10nm process node keep power draw modest, and its launch MSRP is $199, though this price is not a factor in the performance analysis. The data shows that upgrading the CPU would yield minimal gains in Road 96; instead, a GPU upgrade would be the logical next step to improve 4K performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the combo achieves 145 FPS on Low, 106 FPS on Medium (with a 90 FPS minimum and 122 FPS maximum), 85 FPS on High, and 67 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset’s minimum of 90 FPS indicates excellent frame pacing, while the lack of minimums for other presets makes it harder to assess their stability. At 2560x1440, Low averages 92 FPS, Medium averages 67 FPS (57-78 FPS range), High averages 54 FPS, and Ultra averages 43 FPS. The 1440p Medium result is particularly notable for maintaining a minimum above 60 FPS, which is often considered the threshold for smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops significantly. Low averages 49 FPS, Medium averages 36 FPS (30-41 FPS range), High averages 29 FPS, and Ultra averages 23 FPS. The 4K Medium minimum of 30 FPS is just at the edge of playability, while High and Ultra fall below 30 FPS, making them difficult to recommend. The 4K Low result of 49 FPS shows that even at the highest resolution, the combo can achieve near-50 FPS if visual settings are minimized.

Comparing settings within a resolution reveals consistent scaling. At 1080p, moving from Low to Medium costs 39 FPS (27% reduction), from Medium to High costs 21 FPS (20% reduction), and from High to Ultra costs 18 FPS (21% reduction). This linear scaling suggests the GPU is the limiting factor, as each settings tier adds a similar percentage of load. At 1440p, the drops are 25 FPS (Low to Medium, 27%), 13 FPS (Medium to High, 19%), and 11 FPS (High to Ultra, 20%), showing a similar pattern. At 4K, the drops are 13 FPS (Low to Medium, 27%), 7 FPS (Medium to High, 19%), and 6 FPS (High to Ultra, 21%), indicating that the percentage-based scaling remains consistent regardless of resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p and 4K reveals how the Arc B570’s rendering capabilities scale with pixel count. At Medium settings, the combo delivers 106 FPS at 1080p, 67 FPS at 1440p, and 36 FPS at 4K. This represents a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 46% drop from 1440p to 4K. The 1080p to 4K drop is 66%, which is significant but not as steep as the 75% pixel count increase (from 2.07 million to 8.29 million pixels) would suggest, indicating that the GPU is not purely pixel-bound.

The scaling pattern is consistent across all settings. Low settings show 145 FPS at 1080p, 92 FPS at 1440p, and 49 FPS at 4K—a 37% drop to 1440p and a 47% drop to 4K. High settings show 85 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K—a 36% drop to 1440p and a 46% drop to 4K. Ultra shows 67 FPS at 1080p, 43 FPS at 1440p, and 23 FPS at 4K—a 36% drop to 1440p and a 47% drop to 4K. This uniform scaling (approximately 36-37% for 1080p to 1440p, and 46-47% for 1440p to 4K) indicates that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints, rather than the CPU.

The fact that the resolution scaling percentages are nearly identical across all settings suggests that the Arc B570’s 10 GB VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth are the limiting factors. The 160-bit memory bus is narrower than many high-end GPUs, and the 19 Gbps effective memory speed cannot compensate for the increased data demands of 4K. This is corroborated by the 4K Ultra result of 23 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS threshold for playability. The CPU’s role in this scaling is minimal, as the i5-12400’s 4.40 GHz boost clock provides enough single-thread performance to keep up with the GPU’s frame generation at all resolutions. The data suggests that users with 4K displays should stick to Low or Medium settings, while 1440p users can comfortably use Medium or High, and 1080p users can push to High or even Ultra if they accept a 67 FPS average.