Road 96

The Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER pairing in Road 96 produces playable frame rates at 1080p, with heavy scaling penalties at higher resolutions and settings. Measured FPS demonstrates that the GPU is the dominant performance limiter, while the CPU’s strong multi-threaded headroom ensures that even the most demanding presets at lower resolutions never tax the processor. This combination lands in the bottom half of tested setups, yet still offers a solid experience for users who prioritize 1080p or are willing to lower graphics quality at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

Scaling from 1080p to 1440p and then to 4K yields a consistent, near-linear drop in average frame rate across every preset. At Low settings, average FPS falls from 187 at 1080p to 119 at 1440p and finally 63 at 2160p—a reduction of 63% from 1080p to 4K. Medium settings show 137 (1080p), 87 (1440p), and 46 (2160p), while High presets deliver 110, 70, and 37 FPS respectively. Ultra settings are the most demanding: 86, 55, and 29 FPS for the same order. The pattern is clear: each doubling of total pixel count reduces frame rate by roughly a third, which is indicative of a GPU-bound workload where resolution dominates the render cost.

The scaling ratios are extremely consistent across presets. For instance, moving from 1080p to 1440p (a 2.25× pixel increase) results in a 63% drop for Low (187→119), 63% for Medium (137→87), 64% for High (110→70), and 64% for Ultra (86→55). This small variation confirms that the GPU’s framebuffer and compute resources, not the CPU or memory, are the performance bottleneck at every quality level. At 4K, even the most manageable preset—Low—achieves 63 FPS, whereas the Ultra setting struggles to maintain 29 FPS average, indicating that the graphical load at 4K is extreme for this GPU.

Min FPS data available for Medium presets shows similar scaling: 1080p min 116, 1440p min 74, 4K min 39. The max values follow the same vector, reinforcing that this scaling is not limited to average frames but holds across the entire frame time distribution. The steady behavior underscores that this game is optimized for lower resolutions and that the RTX 2070 SUPER’s compute power is insufficient for 4K Ultra with a comfortable margin.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, built on the TU104 chip with Turing architecture, contains 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus. Its memory delivers 448.0 GB/s bandwidth at an effective speed of 14 Gbps. The GPU’s base clock is 1605 MHz with a boost of 1770 MHz, and it packs 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. These specifications contribute to measured synthetic scores: PassMark G3D benchmark reports 18169 and PassMark DirectX 11 scores 151, while 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 shows 1651. In the broader comparison, this GPU sits at the 65th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 20282. Its nearest rivals are within 1.5–1.5% in performance: the Quadro M4000M (avg 20480, −1%), the RTX 3070 Mobile (20534, −1.2%), the Intel Arc B570 (20556, −1.3%), and the Arc A750 (20582, −1.5%). This places the RTX 2070 SUPER in the lower-mid range of current graphics cards, which is consistent with its 4K results.

In Road 96 specifically, the GPU is the limiting factor as resolved by the scaling analysis above. The 8 GB framebuffer is sufficient for the presets tested; however, the GPU’s overall compute capability, reflected in its FP32 of 9.062 TFLOPS and texture rate of 283.2 GTexel/s, is primarily what prevents 4K Ultra, which averages 29 FPS, from reaching playable smoothness. The 63 FPS average at 4K Low shows that even at the lowest settings, the pixel processing load is still high. The GPU’s 40 ray tracing cores and 320 tensor cores are present, but Road 96 does not appear to be a ray-tracing title, so they likely have minimal influence on frame rates.

The data shows a clear GPU threshold: 1440p High achieves 70 FPS, while 4K High only 37. That 2.4× gap explains why the GPU must be treated as the dominant component in this configuration, not the CPU.

Settings Recommendations

According to the measured FPS, the best trade-off between visual quality and performance depends on the target resolution. At 1080p, all four presets—Low (187 FPS), Medium (137 FPS), High (110 FPS), and Ultra (86 FPS)—remain above 75 FPS, providing fluid motion for the highest setting. Users seeking maximum fidelity at 1080p can select Ultra and still achieve an average above 80 FPS. Since the game’s Adventure genre typically does not require extremely high heat-of-battle frame timing, Ultra is a viable recommendation at this resolution.

At 1440p, Low and Medium exceed 80 FPS, High sits at 70 FPS, and Ultra hovers at 55 FPS. The 70 FPS at High is the baseline for a smooth 1440p experience—it is 15% lower than the Ultra equivalent but still well above 60. Medium at 87 FPS is another option if minimal blur is desired, but High’s extra visual effects likely warrant the slightly lower count. The combination of resolution and attainable frame rate suggests that 1440p High is the sweet spot for both quality and fluidity.

For 4K, the practical choices are limited. Low achieves 63 FPS, while Medium and above fall to 46, 37, and 29 FPS respectively. Thus, only Low offers a sustained 60+ FPS on a 4K display. If users are willing to accept 46 FPS for Medium, they could do so with a % but the numbers clearly indicate that 4K is stressfully GPU and a lower render scale or resolution bin would be recommended. Since the game explorer is not tied to competitive, 4K Low is the only preset that keeps the frame rate above 60, and even that is marginal.

How This Combo Ranks

The pairing of the Core 12th and RTX 2070 SUPER places this combination at rank 2154 out of 3713 tested setups, which translates to being better than 42% of all combos (since 1559 of the 3713 combos have lower FPS). In other words, the system sits in the lower-middle portion of the performance chart. It outperforms a significant minority of options, likely because the RTX 2070 SUPER is not a high-end card, but it falls short of more powerful GPUs and newer CPUs that might pair with them.

This ranking aligns with the GPU’s position among its own peers: the closest rival is the Quadro M4000M, with only a 1% gap. The rank itself illustrates that when compared to various combinations of CPUs and GPUs, typical gaming rigs that include mid-range GPUs achieve more notable results. For an adventure title like Road 96, this rank is perfectly acceptable for high-quality 1080p play, as the image above shows.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core, 20-thread processor based on Raptor Lake Refresh architecture. It clocks from a base of 3.50 GHz to a boost of 5.30 GHz, and has 24 MB of L3 cache. The CPU is Rated 90th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48618. In Cinebench R23, it record 24491 multi-core and 2064 single-core, while Geekbench results show 16673 multi-core and 2494 single-core, confirming very strong integer and floating point performance. Meanwhile, the PassMark Multithread score of 38682 and single-thread 4270 complement these results, showing no restriction in this game context.

Road 96 does not appear to demand heavy computation; the 1080p Low result of 187 FPS is far above what any CPU would struggle to handle. Even at 4K Low (63 FPS), the CPU has plenty of headroom, as the GPU is doing the heavy rendering. Given that the i5-14600K is in the top 10% of measured CPUs, it is not a bottleneck for any scene of this title within the measured presets. The processor’s 20 threads may be overkill for an adventure game with asset demands of this size, but they assure the user of smooth minimum frame rates in open segments and on complex overlay UI.

The CPU also supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory, with dual-channel memory bus and PCIe Gen 5 lanes, though none of these impact this specific game’s FPS. The absence of a 3D V-Cache does not affect the outcome either, as Road does not exploit efficient cache hierarchies. In short, the CPU’s role in this benchmark is to supply frames faster than the GPU can render—exactly what a gaming CPU should do—and it does so without breaking a sweat.

FAQ

Q: What is the observed frame rate at 1440p Medium preset in Road 96?

A: The measured result is an average of 87 FPS, with a minimum of 74 and maximum of 100 for that combination.

Q: Does this configuration handle 4K Low acceptably?

A: Yes, the average FPS at 4K Low is 63—the only preset at 4K to exceed 60. All other presets (Medium, High, Ultra) yield 46, 37, and 29 FPS respectively.

Q: Where does this CPU and GPU combo rank overall in the test suite?

The cumulative rank is □ 2154 out of 3713 combinations, meaning it outperforms 1559 other tested combos, placing it better than 42% of the field.

Q: What is the GPU’s memory configuration?

A: The RTX 2070 SUPER uses 8 GB of GDDR6 with a 256-bit bus and a memory clock of 1750 MHz (or 14 Gbps effective), delivering a bandwidth of 448 GB/s.

Q: How does the i5-14600K’s core thread design impact performance here?

A: The 14 cores (20 threads) with boost up to 5.30 GHz ensure the CPU is never a constraint: in Cinebench R23 it scores 2064 single-core and 24491 multi-core, giving ample compute capacity that goes unused in this game, as demonstrated by FPS above 100 at 1080p for most presets.

Q: Is this pair more GPU or CPU bound?

A: The data indicates a clear GPU bound scenario. At 1080p Low, FPS is 187, which is 63% higher than the 1080p rating of 86 at Ultra, while the CPU only variables are unchanged. The ratio of FPS drop light from 4K to 1080p is 3× at all settings, which is a pixel-limited scenario, tying the GPU as the sole limiter.