Road 96

Road 96, an adventure title from 2021, exhibits a clear performance scaling pattern with the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti combination. The measured frame rates show that the GPU becomes the primary constraint as resolution increases, while the high-end CPU ensures headroom at lower settings. This analysis breaks down the measured results, positioning the combo within the broader database and offering concrete settings guidance based solely on the collected data.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a predictable and steep decline in average FPS as resolution moves from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo delivers 239.7 FPS, which drops to 151.8 FPS at 1440p and further to 80.6 FPS at 4K. This represents a 66.4% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, indicating that the rendering load scales heavily with pixel count. The trend is consistent across all quality presets, but the relative drop becomes more pronounced at higher settings, suggesting the GPU is the limiting component.

For instance, at Ultra settings, the average FPS falls from 108.5 at 1080p to 71.8 at 1440p, a 33.8% decrease, and then to 39.7 at 4K, a further 44.7% drop from the 1440p figure. This nonlinear falloff is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where memory bandwidth and compute resources are saturated. The RTX 3070 Ti’s 8 GB of GDDR6X memory and 608.3 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K Ultra results at 39.7 FPS suggest the card is struggling to maintain playable rates under maximum load.

Conversely, the CPU’s role is evident at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 239.7 FPS result shows the system is not CPU-limited, as the i7-13700K with its 16 cores and 24 threads can feed frames quickly. The gap between Low and Medium settings at 1080p (239.7 vs 177.2 FPS) is larger than the gap between Medium and High (177.2 vs 139.8 FPS), indicating that the first quality tier change has a disproportionate impact on GPU load. Overall, the data indicates that for this title, 4K gaming is viable only at Low or Medium settings, while 1440p offers a balanced experience across all presets.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti ranks 683rd out of 1684 tested combos for Road 96. This places it in the top 40.5% of all configurations, which is a solid mid-to-upper-tier position. The rank reflects not just raw GPU power but also the synergy between the components; the i7-13700K is a high-end processor with an average benchmark score of 47282, placing it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark include the Intel Core i7-13700KF with a delta of -0.1% and the AMD EPYC 4364P with a delta of 0.3%, showing that this chip is essentially on par with its closest alternatives.

For the GPU, the RTX 3070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 30849 and sits in the 74th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME (delta 0.3%), the AMD Radeon RX 6700 (delta -0.8%), and the NVIDIA Quadro M5000 (delta -0.9%). The performance deltas are minimal, indicating that the GPU is closely matched with these cards in general workloads. However, in Road 96 specifically, the combo’s rank of 683 suggests that the game’s engine may favor certain hardware characteristics, and the 8 GB VRAM capacity could be a limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings.

The combination’s position relative to other tested combos is more meaningful when considering the game’s genre. As an adventure title, Road 96 is not typically as demanding as a fast-paced shooter, but the measured FPS numbers show it can still push modern hardware. The rank indicates that there are 1001 combos that perform better, which likely include more powerful GPUs or newer generations. Conversely, the combo outperforms a significant majority of the database, underscoring that it is a capable pairing for this game.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip, manufactured on an 8 nm process by Samsung. It features 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units. The core clocks are listed at 1575 MHz base and 1770 MHz boost, with memory running at 1188 MHz or 19 Gbps effective. This configuration yields a pixel rate of 169.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 339.8 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance at 21.75 TFLOPS. These specifications are substantial, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity is the most critical factor in Road 96.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU’s role becomes more dominant as settings increase. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS of 39.7 is below the 60 FPS target, suggesting that the GPU’s compute and memory bandwidth are insufficient for maximum quality at this resolution. The drop from 4K Medium (61.2 FPS) to 4K High (46.6 FPS) is a 23.9% decrease, which is larger than the drop from 4K Low (80.6 FPS) to 4K Medium (61.2 FPS) at 24.1%. This indicates that the High preset introduces a significant load increase, likely due to more complex shading and texture work that taxes the 8 GB frame buffer.

At 1440p, the GPU performs admirably, with Ultra settings achieving 71.8 FPS and High reaching 88.9 FPS. The RTX 3070 Ti’s 256-bit memory bus and 608.3 GB/s bandwidth are well-suited for this resolution, as the data shows only a 17.6% drop from Medium (111.5 FPS) to High (88.9 FPS). The 1080p results are less GPU-constrained, with Ultra still hitting 108.5 FPS, indicating that the CPU can keep up with the GPU’s output. The GPU’s 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores are present, but their impact on this game is not directly measured in the FPS data; however, the results suggest that standard rasterization is the primary workload.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal settings depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For 4K gaming, the data shows that Low settings are the only viable option for a smooth experience, with 80.6 FPS average. Medium settings at 4K yield 61.2 FPS, which is playable but close to the edge, while High (46.6 FPS) and Ultra (39.7 FPS) fall below acceptable thresholds for most players. The recommendation for 4K is to use Low settings to maximize frame rate, or Medium if the user can tolerate slightly lower performance.

At 1440p, the best balance between visual quality and performance is the High preset, which achieves 88.9 FPS. This is a 20.3% improvement over Ultra (71.8 FPS) while offering better visual fidelity than Medium (111.5 FPS). The data shows that Ultra at 1440p is still above 70 FPS, so it is a viable choice for those prioritizing image quality, but High offers the most headroom for consistent frame times. For 1080p, the Medium preset at 177.2 FPS provides an excellent experience, though High (139.8 FPS) and Ultra (108.5 FPS) are also well above the 60 FPS threshold. The Low preset at 239.7 FPS is unnecessary for most users unless targeting very high refresh rate displays.

The data suggests that a “High” preset at 1440p is the sweet spot for this combo, as it delivers nearly 90 FPS with a significant visual upgrade over Medium. For 1080p users, Ultra at 108.5 FPS is recommended, as it does not compromise on frame rate while providing the highest quality settings. In all cases, the measured numbers indicate that the GPU is the bottleneck at higher settings, so lowering resolution or settings will yield proportional gains.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured average FPS values is as follows:

At 1920x1080, the combo achieves 239.7 FPS on Low, 177.2 FPS on Medium, 139.8 FPS on High, and 108.5 FPS on Ultra. The progression shows a 26.1% drop from Low to Medium, a 21.1% drop from Medium to High, and a 22.4% drop from High to Ultra. This indicates that each quality tier adds a similar computational load at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the results are 151.8 FPS on Low, 111.5 FPS on Medium, 88.9 FPS on High, and 71.8 FPS on Ultra. The percentage decreases are 26.6% from Low to Medium, 20.3% from Medium to High, and 19.2% from High to Ultra. The smaller drop from High to Ultra at this resolution suggests that the GPU is beginning to saturate its memory bandwidth, as the absolute FPS values are lower.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 80.6 FPS on Low, 61.2 FPS on Medium, 46.6 FPS on High, and 39.7 FPS on Ultra. The relative differences are 24.1% from Low to Medium, 23.9% from Medium to High, and 14.8% from High to Ultra. The final drop is smaller, indicating that the GPU is hitting a performance ceiling where additional settings changes have less impact.

Comparing across resolutions, the 1080p Low result of 239.7 FPS is nearly triple the 4K Low result of 80.6 FPS, highlighting the pixel-count dependence. The 1440p Medium result of 111.5 FPS is close to the 1080p Ultra result of 108.5 FPS, suggesting that resolution scaling and quality settings can be traded off to achieve similar frame rates. The data is consistent and shows no anomalies, with all FPS values measured and reported without minimum or maximum frame data.