Road 96

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the Intel Arc B570 places at rank 2324 out of 2903 tested combos in Road 96, putting it in the 20th percentile of all system configurations. This is a modest standing for a combo that features a top-tier CPU but a mid-range GPU. The data indicates that this pairing is heavily constrained by the graphics card in this particular title, as the CPU's raw capability far exceeds what the GPU can feed to the screen in most scenarios.

The rank of 2324 reflects that roughly 580 other combos deliver better measured performance in Road 96. Given that the i7-14700F sits in the 91st percentile among all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 53,620, the bottleneck is unambiguous. The Arc B570, by contrast, holds only the 65th percentile among GPUs with an average score of 20,556. This imbalance between a top-decile processor and a mid-pack graphics card explains the combo's overall placement. The system is not weak; it is simply lopsided, and in a game like Road 96, the GPU carries most of the rendering weight.

Comparatively, the CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—such as the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X at a 0.6% delta and the AMD EPYC 7313P at 0.8%—show that the i7-14700F is essentially tied with these parts in aggregate compute performance. Yet in gaming, the GPU becomes the deciding factor. The Arc B570's nearest rivals include the Intel Arc A750 with a -0.1% delta and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile at 0.1%, indicating the B570 performs in line with those parts. This means the combo's rank is not an indictment of the CPU but rather a reflection of the GPU's mid-tier standing relative to the full spectrum of tested graphics cards.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 brings 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, delivering 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 2375 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed, while the GPU core operates at a fixed 2500 MHz for both base and boost. These specifications place the B570 as a capable 1080p performer, but the data from Road 96 shows it struggling beyond that resolution when settings are pushed higher.

In Road 96, the GPU's memory capacity and bandwidth become critical at 4K. At 3840x2160 with High settings, the combo produces 29 FPS average. Dropping to Medium yields 36 FPS with a minimum of 30 and maximum of 41. Low settings at 4K improve things to 49 FPS, but Ultra drops to 23 FPS. These numbers indicate that the 10 GB framebuffer is adequate for the game's textures, but the 160-bit bus and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth are not sufficient to maintain smooth frame rates at 4K with higher quality presets. The pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s are respectable on paper, yet the measured results show the card hitting its ceiling around the 50 FPS mark even at the lowest settings in 4K.

The GPU's architecture, Xe2-HPG on the Battlemage generation, uses a 5 nm process from TSMC with 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die. The 2304 shading units and 144 TMUs provide enough compute for 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. However, in Road 96, the practical output is limited by the game's engine demands. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,649 and PassMark G3D score of 14,195 place it in the 65th percentile globally, which aligns with the observed gaming performance. The GPU clearly dominates the combo's results—at every resolution and settings combination, the FPS scales in a pattern consistent with a graphics-bound workload rather than a CPU-bound one.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck shifts. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo achieves 85 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same settings drops the average to 54 FPS, a 36% reduction. At 3840x2160, the average falls to 29 FPS, another 46% drop from 1440p. This steep decline—from 85 to 29 FPS across three resolution steps—indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor at every step. A CPU-bound scenario would show much smaller drops at higher resolutions, since the CPU work stays constant regardless of pixel count.

The Low settings tell a similar story. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 145 FPS, which is excellent. At 1440p Low, it drops to 92 FPS, a 37% reduction. At 4K Low, it falls to 49 FPS, another 47% reduction. The consistency of these percentage drops across settings suggests that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints. The Arc B570's 200.0 GPixel/s pixel rate is simply not enough to drive 4K at high frame rates, regardless of how light the settings are.

Medium settings show a similar pattern with a narrower data set. At 1080p Medium, the average is 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 and maximum of 122. At 1440p Medium, it drops to 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 and maximum of 78. At 4K Medium, it falls to 36 FPS with a minimum of 30 and maximum of 41. The minimum FPS values at Medium settings show that the combo maintains playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the minimum of 30 FPS is borderline. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium is a 66% reduction in average FPS, confirming that the GPU is saturated at the higher resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to Medium settings as the best balance for this combo across most resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the combo delivers 106 FPS average with a tight range of 90 to 122 FPS, which is ideal for smooth gameplay. At 1440p Medium, it maintains 67 FPS average with a range of 57 to 78 FPS, still comfortably playable. Even at 4K Medium, the 36 FPS average with a 30 to 41 range is technically playable, though it pushes the boundary of acceptable smoothness.

High settings offer a marginal visual improvement but at a significant FPS cost. At 1080p High, the average drops to 85 FPS, which is still fine but 20% lower than Medium. At 1440p High, it falls to 54 FPS, which is borderline for a game that benefits from consistent frame pacing. At 4K High, the 29 FPS average is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. Ultra settings are not recommended for any resolution: 1080p Ultra yields 67 FPS, 1440p Ultra yields 43 FPS, and 4K Ultra yields 23 FPS, all of which are worse than Medium at the next lower resolution.

Low settings provide the highest frame rates—145 FPS at 1080p and 92 FPS at 1440p—but they sacrifice visual fidelity in a game that has a stylized art direction. For most users, the data suggests Medium at 1080p or 1440p as the sweet spot, with High at 1080p as a viable alternative if visual quality is prioritized over frame rate headroom. At 4K, only Low settings (49 FPS) approach playable territory, and even then, the 49 FPS average is not ideal for a game that may have quick camera movements. Medium at 4K is the highest playable preset, but users should expect occasional dips to 30 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its best results. Low settings yield 145 FPS average, which is the highest measured value across all configurations. Medium settings produce 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 and maximum of 122. High settings drop to 85 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 67 FPS. The spread from 145 to 67 FPS across settings at 1080p shows that the GPU has headroom at this resolution, and the CPU is not a limiting factor even at the highest preset.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates scale down predictably. Low settings deliver 92 FPS average, Medium produces 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 and maximum of 78, High yields 54 FPS, and Ultra drops to 43 FPS. The minimum FPS at Medium (57) is still above the 50 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, indicating that 1440p Medium is a reliable choice. The drop from 92 FPS at Low to 43 FPS at Ultra represents a 53% reduction, which is a steeper penalty than at 1080p, suggesting the GPU is working harder at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are the weakest. Low settings produce 49 FPS average, Medium yields 36 FPS with a minimum of 30 and maximum of 41, High drops to 29 FPS, and Ultra falls to 23 FPS. Only Low settings exceed 30 FPS, and even that is marginal. The Medium settings range of 30 to 41 FPS means the game will occasionally dip below 30 FPS, which is noticeable in a game that relies on atmospheric pacing. The 4K data confirms that this combo is not suited for 4K gaming beyond the lowest settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor from the Raptor Lake Refresh generation, with a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. It features 33 MB of shared L3 cache, 2 MB L2 per core, and 80 KB L1 per core. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 35,122 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4,958 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 19,620 and single-core of 2,429. These numbers place it in the 91st percentile among all CPUs.

In Road 96, however, the CPU's role is secondary. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (145 FPS) is the only scenario where the CPU might approach a limiting factor, but even there, the GPU is still the primary constraint. At 1080p Ultra, the 67 FPS average is far below what the CPU could theoretically support, given its single-core performance. The PassMark single-thread score of 4,257 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,958 indicate that the CPU can handle high frame rates in lightly threaded games, but the Arc B570 cannot match that throughput at higher settings.

The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads are overkill for Road 96, which is unlikely to use more than a few threads given its adventure genre. The data supports this: the FPS does not improve when moving from High to Low settings at the same resolution in a way that would indicate CPU relief. Instead, the FPS scales almost entirely with GPU workload. The CPU's 65W TDP and dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory support are adequate for this game, but they are not the deciding factor. In short, the i7-14700F is never the bottleneck in this combo for Road 96; the Arc B570 is the limiting component at every resolution and settings combination measured.