Road 96

Road 96 is an adventure title that places narrative and atmosphere above raw graphical demands, yet the measured frame rates for this particular hardware pairing—Intel Core i5-9400 with Intel Arc B390—reveal a system that is heavily constrained by its graphics solution. The data shows a combination that ranks near the bottom of the tested pool, and the performance profile across resolutions and settings consistently points to the GPU as the primary bottleneck, with the CPU rarely being the limiting factor.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-9400 and Intel Arc B390 combination ranks 2575 out of 2903 tested combos for Road 96, placing it in the bottom 11% of all systems evaluated. This is a low position that reflects the GPU's standing in the broader benchmark hierarchy more than the CPU's. The Arc B390's average benchmark score across all tested applications is 1482, which places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs—meaning roughly 91% of graphics cards in the database outperform it. The CPU, by contrast, sits in the 47th percentile of all processors, a much more middling position.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the overall benchmark database are all legacy NVIDIA parts: the GeForce GT 520MX (scoring 1463, a 1.3% delta), the GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% delta), the GeForce GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% delta), and the GeForce GT 710 (1443, 2.7% delta). The Arc B390 leads all of these, but the margins are slim—between 1.3% and 2.7%—which indicates that this is a very low-end graphics solution in absolute terms. The combo's rank in Road 96 is consistent with this: the game is not particularly demanding, yet the system still lands in the bottom tier, suggesting the GPU struggles even with lighter workloads.

The CPU's nearest rivals tell a different story. The Core i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2254, which is only 0.2% behind the Core i7-1068NG7 (2259) and 0.3% ahead of the Core i7-10710U (2248), with the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2246) just 0.4% behind and the Core i3-10305 (2264) 0.4% ahead. These deltas are negligible, meaning the processor is well within the normal range for its class. The bottleneck is not the CPU.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics processor built on the Xe3-LPG architecture, fabricated on a 3 nm process. Its base clock is 300 MHz, boosting up to 2500 MHz, and it contains 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output units. The memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning it draws from the system's DDR4 RAM rather than dedicated VRAM, with bandwidth described as "System Dependent." This is a critical detail for Road 96 performance, as shared memory can create additional latency and bandwidth constraints in texture-heavy scenes.

The GPU's raw compute figures are modest: 7.680 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 15.36 TFLOPS of FP16 (at a 2:1 ratio). The pixel rate is 60.00 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 120.0 GTexel/s. In the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark, it scores 1482, which—as noted—places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. For Road 96, this translates into playable but not comfortable frame rates at lower settings, and outright unplayable performance at higher settings and resolutions.

The measured data shows that the GPU is the limiting component across the board. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 94 FPS, but dropping to 1080p Medium reduces that to 69 FPS, and 1080p High falls to 56 FPS. The trend is steep and consistent with a GPU that runs out of compute or memory bandwidth as the settings increase. The Arc B390's 24 ROPs are a particular constraint at higher resolutions, which is visible in the 4K results where even Low settings only produce 32 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 94. Moving to 1440p Low, the average drops to 60 FPS—a 36% reduction. At 4K Low, the average is 32 FPS, which is a 66% reduction from 1080p Low. This steep drop-off indicates that the GPU is not able to keep up with the increasing pixel count, and the shared memory bandwidth becomes a severe limitation.

At Medium settings, the same pattern holds: 1080p averages 69 FPS, 1440p averages 44 FPS (a 36% drop), and 4K averages 23 FPS (a 67% drop from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across settings suggests that the limiting factor is purely the GPU's fill rate and memory throughput, not any CPU-related constraint.

High settings show a similar trajectory: 56 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p (a 37.5% drop), and 19 FPS at 4K (a 66% drop from 1080p). Ultra settings are the most demanding: 43 FPS at 1080p, 28 FPS at 1440p (a 35% drop), and 15 FPS at 4K (a 65% drop). The fact that the percentage reduction from 1080p to 4K remains almost identical across all four settings—hovering around 65-67%—is a strong indicator that the CPU is not contributing to the bottleneck. If the CPU were limiting, the gap between resolutions would shrink at higher settings as the GPU becomes more saturated, but here the scaling is uniform.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 sufficient for Road 96?

A: Yes. The CPU's benchmarks place it in the 47th percentile of all processors, and its nearest rivals—the Core i7-1068NG7, Core i7-10710U, and Ryzen 5 PRO 1500—all perform within 0.4% of it. The resolution scaling data shows consistent FPS drops from 1080p to 4K across all settings, indicating the CPU is not the limiting component in this configuration.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo?

A: 1080p is the only resolution where the combo achieves consistently playable frame rates. At Low settings, it averages 94 FPS; at Medium, 69 FPS; at High, 56 FPS. The 1440p Low setting averages exactly 60 FPS, which is borderline, but 1440p Medium drops to 44 FPS, and 4K is below playable thresholds at all settings.

Q: How does the Arc B390 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B390 scores 1482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, which is 1.3% ahead of the GeForce GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% ahead of the GeForce 800M (1460), 2.5% ahead of the GeForce GT 625 OEM (1446), and 2.7% ahead of the GeForce GT 710 (1443). These are all legacy low-end parts, and the margins are small.

Q: Why does the frame rate drop so much from 1080p to 4K?

A: The GPU has 24 ROPs and uses system-shared memory with no dedicated VRAM. At 4K, the pixel count quadruples from 1080p, and the fill rate and memory bandwidth are insufficient. The data shows a consistent 65-67% FPS reduction from 1080p to 4K across all settings, which points to a pure GPU bottleneck.

Q: Can this combo handle Ultra settings?

A: Only at 1080p, where it averages 43 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, the average drops to 28 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 15 FPS. The Ultra preset is playable at 1080p but not at higher resolutions.

Q: What does the combo's rank of 2575 out of 2903 mean?

A: It places the system in the bottom 11% of all tested combinations for Road 96. This rank is driven by the GPU's low performance (9th percentile globally), not the CPU (47th percentile), and the measured frame rates confirm that the graphics card cannot keep up with the game's demands at higher settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a desktop processor from the Coffee Lake Refresh generation, built on a 14 nm process. It has 6 cores and 6 threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. The cache configuration includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 256 KB of L2 per core, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a theoretical bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s, and it connects to the system via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-9400 scores 668 in Cinebench R15 multi-core, 94 in single-core; 2784 in Cinebench R20 multi-core, 392 in single-core; 6629 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, 935 in single-core; and 5141 in Geekbench multi-core with 1389 in single-core. The average benchmark score is 2254, placing it in the 47th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals all cluster within 0.4% of its score, indicating that it is a typical mid-range processor in terms of raw compute.

For Road 96, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with frame data. The measured FPS results show that the CPU is not the bottleneck: if it were, we would expect to see similar frame rates across different resolutions at the same settings, because the CPU workload would be identical. Instead, the data shows that lowering the resolution from 4K to 1080p at any given setting produces a dramatic FPS increase, which is the signature of a GPU-limited system. The CPU has enough single-thread performance (935 in Cinebench R23 single-core) to handle the game's logic and physics, but the Arc B390 cannot render frames fast enough to utilize it fully.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal balance of visual quality and playability is the Medium preset at 1080p, which averages 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 79 FPS. This is the only combination of resolution and settings that offers both a smooth average and a minimum frame rate that stays above 60 FPS. The High preset at 1080p averages 56 FPS, which is playable but with more noticeable frame pacing issues, and the Low preset at 1080p averages 94 FPS but sacrifices visual fidelity.

At 1440p, the Low preset averages exactly 60 FPS, but the Medium preset drops to 44 FPS with a minimum of 37 FPS, which is borderline for an adventure game that relies on atmosphere and pacing. The 4K resolution is not recommended at any setting: even Low averages only 32 FPS, and Ultra drops to 15 FPS, which is a slideshow.

The Ultra preset at 1080p averages 43 FPS, which is technically playable but below the 60 FPS target, and the minimum FPS is not reported for this configuration. Given that Road 96 is a narrative-driven adventure game, the Medium preset at 1080p provides the best experience: it maintains a minimum of 59 FPS, ensuring no major hitches during cutscenes or exploration, while still offering a reasonable level of graphical detail.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data covers four resolutions and four settings, with each row reporting the average FPS and, where available, the minimum and maximum frame rates.

1080p (1920x1080):

• Low: 94 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Medium: 69 FPS average, 59 FPS minimum, 79 FPS maximum.
• High: 56 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Ultra: 43 FPS average, no min/max reported.

1440p (2560x1440):

• Low: 60 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Medium: 44 FPS average, 37 FPS minimum, 50 FPS maximum.
• High: 35 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Ultra: 28 FPS average, no min/max reported.

4K (3840x2160):

• Low: 32 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Medium: 23 FPS average, 20 FPS minimum, 27 FPS maximum.
• High: 19 FPS average, no min/max reported.
• Ultra: 15 FPS average, no min/max reported.

The only rows that include minimum and maximum frame rates are the Medium settings at each resolution. At 1080p Medium, the range is 59-79 FPS, which is tight and indicates consistent performance. At 1440p Medium, the range is 37-50 FPS, showing more variability. At 4K Medium, the range is 20-27 FPS, which is both low and narrow—the GPU is so saturated that it cannot push much beyond the average. The absence of min/max data for other settings suggests the measurement methodology only captured those for Medium, but the averages alone are sufficient to characterize the performance.

The scaling from 1080p to 4K is severe: at Low settings, the average drops from 94 to 32 FPS (a 66% reduction); at Medium, from 69 to 23 FPS (a 67% reduction); at High, from 56 to 19 FPS (a 66% reduction); and at Ultra, from 43 to 15 FPS (a 65% reduction). The uniformity of these reductions across settings reinforces the conclusion that the GPU is the sole limiting factor, and the CPU's performance is adequate for this game. The Intel Core i5-9400 provides 6 cores and 6 threads with a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, which is more than sufficient for Road 96's adventure game mechanics; the Arc B390's 24 ROPs and system-shared memory are simply not enough to drive higher resolutions or settings.