Road 96

Road 96 presents a modest workload for modern hardware, but the pairing of the Intel Core i7-12700KF with the AMD Radeon RX 570 produces a specific set of constraints. The benchmark data indicates this combination ranks 1651 out of 1684 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 2% of all configurations. This rank is heavily influenced by the GPU's age and the game's engine, which appears to favor more recent graphics architectures. The CPU, by contrast, is far more capable, with its average benchmark score of 35355 placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs tested.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's position at 1651 out of 1684 is a clear signal that this is not a high-performance pairing for Road 96. The data shows a significant bottleneck, and the culprit is not the processor. The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a high-end desktop part with 12 cores and 20 threads, boosting up to 5.00 GHz. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i5-14400 with a delta of 0.1% and the Intel Core i9-12900HX with a delta of 0.2%, showing it is competitive with much newer silicon in compute-bound scenarios. However, the GPU, the AMD Radeon RX 570, is an end-of-life product from 2017. Its average benchmark score of 30158 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, but its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, which are drastically different in terms of feature set and raw throughput.

The low combo rank is therefore a direct consequence of the GPU's limitations. While the CPU can easily feed frames, the RX 570 cannot render them fast enough, especially at higher resolutions and settings. The data suggests that the processor is not a limiting factor in this specific game; its multi-threaded performance, evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 28979, is far beyond what Road 96 requires. The GPU’s 4 GB of VRAM and its GCN 4.0 architecture are the primary reasons for the poor overall standing.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570's role in this configuration is the defining constraint. Its memory configuration is a 4 GB frame buffer of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a critical detail for Road 96, which is an adventure game with stylized visuals that can still consume memory at higher presets. The GPU's base clock is 1168 MHz with a boost clock of 1244 MHz, and its 2048 shading units deliver a theoretical FP32 performance of 5.095 TFLOPS. These specifications are modest by modern standards, and the benchmark results reflect that.

At 4K resolution, the GPU is overwhelmed. The data shows an average of 14.1 FPS on High settings and 11.5 FPS on Ultra, which are unplayable figures. Even at Low settings, the 4K average of 27.8 FPS is far from a smooth experience. The GPU's pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s are simply insufficient for the pixel count at 3840x2160. The bottleneck is clearly the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth. Moving to 1440p helps, but the GPU is still the primary limiter. The average of 28.9 FPS on High settings at 2560x1440 confirms that the card is struggling to maintain playable frame rates on anything but the lowest presets. The data indicates that the RX 570 is a capable card for 1080p gaming in this title, but its architectural age shows immediately when the resolution increases.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal experience for this combo is at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration that consistently delivers a frame rate above 60 FPS, with an average of 81.1 FPS. This setting provides a playable and responsive experience, which is crucial for an adventure game where narrative flow and quick-time events can be affected by stutter. The Medium preset at 1080p yields an average of 62.4 FPS, which is also acceptable, but the margin for error is smaller. The High preset at 1080p drops to an average of 49.8 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a smooth experience.

At 1440p, the data suggests that only Low settings are viable for a consistent experience, with an average of 49.5 FPS. The Medium preset at this resolution averages 36 FPS, which is below the threshold for comfortable play. The Ultra preset at 1080p is the worst choice, producing an average of 36.7 FPS, which is lower than the 1440p Low setting. This indicates that the Ultra preset's graphical demands, likely including higher shadow quality and draw distances, are too heavy for the RX 570. The measured data strongly points to 1080p Low or Medium as the only sensible choices for this hardware combination. For a stable 60 FPS, Low is the recommended preset; for a slightly better visual experience, Medium is acceptable if the user tolerates occasional dips.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of the combo's performance across different resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the scores are as follows: Low averages 81.1 FPS, Medium averages 62.4 FPS, High averages 49.8 FPS, and Ultra averages 36.7 FPS. This shows a linear degradation as settings increase, with the gap between Low and Ultra being 44.4 FPS. The scaling is consistent, indicating that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution, as the CPU has sufficient headroom.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops significantly. The Low preset averages 49.5 FPS, which is a 31.6 FPS decrease from the 1080p Low result. Medium averages 36 FPS, High averages 28.9 FPS, and Ultra averages 23.5 FPS. The drop from High to Ultra at 1440p is only 5.4 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional features are not as demanding as the jump from Low to Medium. The data shows that the GPU is struggling to fill the extra pixels, as the performance penalty from 1080p to 1440p is substantial across all settings.

At 3840x2160, the results are mostly unplayable. Low averages 27.8 FPS, Medium averages 18.6 FPS, High averages 14.1 FPS, and Ultra averages 11.5 FPS. The difference between Medium and High is only 4.5 FPS, and between High and Ultra is only 2.6 FPS, indicating that the GPU has hit a hard computational wall. The card cannot maintain a playable frame rate at this resolution, regardless of settings. The data confirms that 4K is not a viable option for this combo.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K is severe and reveals the limiting component. At 1080p Low, the average is 81.1 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low, the average drops to 49.5 FPS, a 39% reduction. Moving further to 4K Low, the average is 27.8 FPS, a 66% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU, with its high single-thread performance (3DMark single-thread score of 1043) and multi-thread capabilities, is not struggling with the increased resolution; it is the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth that cannot keep up with the pixel count.

The data shows that the frame rate drops by roughly half when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and then roughly half again from 1440p to 4K. This pattern is a classic sign of a pixel-bound workload. The RX 570's 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is insufficient for high-resolution textures and framebuffers. The 4 GB VRAM capacity also becomes a factor at 4K, as the card may be forced to swap assets to system memory. The conclusion is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon RX 570 is the limiting factor in this pairing. The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a far more capable component, and its performance potential is wasted in this configuration. The benchmark results indicate that users should stick to 1080p to get the most out of this combo, as any higher resolution will result in a significant and unacceptable performance penalty.