Road 96

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 produces a striking performance profile in Road 96, where the GPU’s immense raw power is frequently constrained by the older six-core processor. The data shows a combination that ranks 142nd out of 1684 tested configurations, placing it in the top 8.4% of all combos, yet the scaling patterns reveal a system where frame rates depend heavily on both resolution and quality preset. The RTX 5080, with its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth, is clearly capable of far higher output than the CPU can consistently feed at lower resolutions, making this a study in bottleneck behavior rather than pure GPU capability.

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-9400 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2305, placing it at the 50th percentile of all CPUs. It sits nearly level with the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300, 0.2% faster) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (2299, 0.2% faster), while the Intel Xeon E-2134 trails at 2295 (0.4% slower). The Intel Core i7-8809G leads the group slightly at 2319, being 0.6% faster.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to its closest competitors?

A: The RTX 5080 holds an average benchmark score of 59188, placing it at the 89th percentile of all GPUs. It is 1.6% faster than the Intel Arc A570M (58239), 2.5% faster than the Intel Arc A580 (57756), and 2.6% faster than the AMD Radeon Pro W5500X (57661). However, the Intel Arc Pro A60 (60326) is 1.9% faster than the RTX 5080.

Q: What is the best performance result for this combo in Road 96?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 260.7 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The most demanding preset, Ultra at 3840x2160, yields an average of 58.6 FPS, which is the lowest result in the dataset.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking among tested systems?

A: This specific CPU and GPU pairing achieves a rank of 142 out of 1684 tested combinations in Road 96. This places the configuration significantly above the median, indicating that it delivers high-level performance for this title despite the CPU's age.

Q: How much faster is the RTX 5080's memory compared to the CPU's memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 5080's GDDR7 memory provides 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, while the i5-9400's dual-channel DDR4 support offers 42.7 GB/s. This represents a roughly 22.5-fold difference in memory bandwidth, which is a major factor in the CPU's inability to keep pace with the GPU at lower resolutions.

Q: What are the architectural specifications of the CPU and GPU?

A: The i5-9400 is a Coffee Lake architecture chip built on Intel's 14 nm process, featuring 6 cores and 6 threads with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. The RTX 5080 uses the Blackwell 2.0 architecture on TSMC's 5 nm process, with 10752 shading units and a boost clock of 2617 MHz.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the dominant hardware component in this pairing, providing the vast majority of the computational power required for Road 96. Its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, a figure that dwarfs the system's CPU memory throughput and ensures that texture streaming and high-resolution assets are never constrained at the GPU level. The card's 10752 shading units, operating at a boost clock of 2617 MHz, produce a fill rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s, allowing it to handle the game's stylized visuals with considerable headroom.

In the context of Road 96, the GPU's role shifts depending on the workload. At 4K resolution with Ultra settings, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck, as the pixel and shading demands exceed what even this high-end card can process at refresh-rate levels. The measured data shows a drop from 94.3 FPS at Medium to 58.6 FPS at Ultra in 3840x2160, indicating that the GPU's compute resources are being saturated by the increased visual complexity. Conversely, at 1080p with Low settings, the GPU is largely underutilized, as the frame rate of 260.7 FPS is more likely limited by the CPU's ability to issue draw calls and process game logic than by the GPU's rendering capacity.

The RTX 5080's architecture also includes 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores, though the measured FPS data does not specify whether ray tracing or DLSS features are enabled. The benchmark results, which range from 260.7 FPS at 1080p Low to 58.6 FPS at 4K Ultra, suggest that the card operates across a wide efficiency curve. The 360 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a high-power component that requires substantial cooling and a 750 W suggested PSU, but within the scope of this game, its performance is consistently high, with no average result falling below 58 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 achieves a rank of 142 out of 1684 tested combos in Road 96, placing it in the 91.6th percentile of all configurations. This high ranking is somewhat unexpected given the CPU's age, as the i5-9400 was released in 2018 and has a benchmark percentile of only 50 among all CPUs. The result suggests that Road 96 is not heavily CPU-bound in most scenarios, allowing the RTX 5080's formidable GPU compute capabilities to shine.

However, the ranking does not tell the full story of the combo's behavior. The CPU's average benchmark score of 2305 places it near the bottom half of processors, and its nearest rivals—the i3-10305, i3-1125G4, and Xeon E-2134—are all within 0.4% of its performance. This means that in CPU-limited situations, the i5-9400 performs essentially identically to budget and older workstation chips. The RTX 5080, by contrast, sits at the 89th percentile of GPUs, with its nearest rival being the Intel Arc A580, which is 2.5% slower. The disparity between the two components' relative standings is stark, and it manifests in the frame rate scaling.

The combo's rank of 142 out of 1684 indicates that it outperforms the vast majority of systems, but it also implies that there are 141 other configurations that deliver higher average performance in this game. Given the GPU's top-tier status, those higher-ranked combos almost certainly feature more modern CPUs with higher single-thread performance, such as newer Core i7 or i9 parts, which can better feed the RTX 5080 at high frame rates. This interpretation is supported by the measured FPS data, which shows diminishing returns at 1080p as settings are lowered, a classic sign of CPU limitation.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark data for Road 96 provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four quality presets, yielding twelve distinct average FPS measurements. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates, starting with 260.7 FPS at Low settings. Progressing to Medium yields 237.1 FPS, High produces 216 FPS, and Ultra drops to 176 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 84.7 FPS, a 32.5% reduction, which is relatively modest compared to higher resolutions, indicating that the CPU is beginning to cap performance at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a more pronounced impact from settings changes. Low settings produce 229.2 FPS, Medium drops to 177.4 FPS, High yields 142.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 110.9 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 118.3 FPS, representing a 51.6% decrease. This suggests that the GPU is starting to take on a more significant role, as the increased pixel count places greater demand on the shading units and memory bandwidth.

At 3840x2160, the performance profile shifts decisively toward GPU limitation. Low settings average 128 FPS, Medium drops to 94.3 FPS, High produces 72.4 FPS, and Ultra yields 58.6 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 69.4 FPS, a 54.2% drop, confirming that the RTX 5080 is now the primary bottleneck. Notably, the 4K Low result of 128 FPS is still higher than the 1080p Ultra result of 176 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU has enough headroom to maintain playable frame rates even at the highest resolution, provided the visual quality is reduced.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear pattern of bottleneck shifting between the CPU and GPU. At 1920x1080, the average FPS across all settings is 222.5, which is remarkably high and suggests that the RTX 5080 is not being fully utilized. The jump from 1080p Low (260.7 FPS) to 1440p Low (229.2 FPS) represents a 12.1% decrease, which is less than the theoretical 77% increase in pixel count (from 2.07 million to 3.69 million pixels). This sub-linear scaling indicates that the CPU is capping performance at 1080p, preventing the GPU from reaching even higher frame rates.

When moving from 1440p to 4K, the scaling becomes more pronounced and GPU-bound. At Low settings, the drop from 229.2 FPS at 1440p to 128 FPS at 4K is a 44.2% reduction, while the pixel count increases by 125% (from 3.69 million to 8.29 million). This suggests that the GPU is now the limiting factor, as its rendering throughput cannot keep up with the massive pixel workload. The pattern is consistent across all settings: at Medium, the drop is from 177.4 FPS to 94.3 FPS (46.8% decrease); at High, from 142.5 FPS to 72.4 FPS (49.2% decrease); and at Ultra, from 110.9 FPS to 58.6 FPS (47.2% decrease).

The data indicates that the i5-9400's 6-core, 6-thread configuration with a 2.90 GHz base clock becomes a limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU's single-thread performance, as reflected in its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1125, is insufficient to feed the RTX 5080's 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power. This is evident in the relatively small frame rate gains when lowering settings from Ultra to Low at 1080p, where the increase is only 48.1% (from 176 to 260.7 FPS), compared to a 118.4% increase at 4K (from 58.6 to 128 FPS). Consequently, users seeking maximum frame rates at 1080p will find the CPU to be the limiting component, while those targeting 4K will be constrained by the GPU's performance, which still delivers a playable 58.6 FPS at Ultra settings.