Rust

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER delivers a playable, though not exceptional, experience in Rust across most settings. The data indicates that the Low preset is the only configuration that consistently provides frame rates above the 60 FPS threshold at 1440p and 1080p, while High and Medium presets are viable for 1080p gaming. Given the measured average FPS, the Low preset offers the most balanced experience, providing a 137.6 average FPS at 1080p and a 95.7 average FPS at 1440p, which are both significantly smoother than the higher quality settings. For users prioritizing visual fidelity at 1080p, the Medium preset, with an average of 89.7 FPS, is a reasonable compromise, but the High preset’s 79.4 average FPS shows a clear step down in performance. At 4K, the Low preset’s 55.3 average FPS is the only one that approaches playability, making it the definitive choice for that resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results show a clear hierarchy in performance across the four tested presets. The Low preset stands out as the optimal choice for achieving high frame rates, yielding an average of 137.6 FPS at 1920x1080. This is a substantial lead over the Medium preset, which produces an average of 89.7 FPS at the same resolution, representing a performance advantage of roughly 53%. The gap narrows at 2560x1440, where Low delivers 95.7 FPS compared to Medium’s 61.8 FPS, but the Low preset still offers a commanding lead. For competitive play or high-refresh-rate monitors, the Low preset is the only setting that consistently maximizes the hardware’s potential.

The Medium preset emerges as the best option for those who want a balance between visual quality and smoothness, particularly at 1080p where it maintains an average of 89.7 FPS. This is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, making it a viable alternative to Low. However, at 1440p, the Medium preset’s 61.8 FPS average dips closer to that threshold, suggesting that users with 1440p displays should stick with Low for a safer margin. The High preset is playable at 1080p with a 79.4 FPS average, but its 56.7 FPS average at 1440p falls short of ideal smoothness. The Ultra preset is not recommended for any resolution, as its 61.4 FPS average at 1080p is the minimum playable score, and it drops to a 41.8 FPS average at 1440p and a 22.9 FPS average at 4K, indicating it is too demanding for this hardware combination.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is the primary driver of performance in Rust, as evidenced by the significant frame rate variations across different quality settings. The GPU’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides a 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth, which is a critical factor for a game like Rust that features a large, persistent world with many assets. The data suggests that this memory configuration is sufficient for the game’s demands, as the performance drop from Low to Ultra is more consistent with a fill-rate or shader-bound scenario rather than a memory capacity limitation.

The GPU’s core clocks, with a base of 1470 MHz and a boost of 1650 MHz, determine its raw processing throughput. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (137.6 FPS) versus 1080p Ultra (61.4 FPS) shows a performance delta of over 120% from the lowest to highest settings, which is directly attributable to the increased workload on the GPU’s 2176 shading units and 136 texture mapping units. The RTX 2060 SUPER’s Turing architecture, with its 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores, does not appear to offer a specific advantage in Rust based on these results, as the game is not explicitly leveraging ray tracing or DLSS in the measured data. The GPU’s 63rd percentile ranking among all GPUs in the database indicates it is a mid-range performer, which aligns with its observed behavior in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader context of all tested hardware combinations for Rust, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1259 out of 1717 combos. This places it in the bottom 27% of all configurations, indicating that it is not a top-tier setup for this game. The rank suggests that the combination is adequate for 1080p gaming at lower settings but struggles to keep pace with more powerful hardware at higher resolutions and quality presets.

Looking at the individual components, the Ryzen 7 3700X performs well in synthetic benchmarks, with a passmark multithread score of 22458 and a percentile ranking of 85 among all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12600, has a nearly identical average benchmark score with a delta of -0.1%, suggesting comparable CPU processing power. However, the RTX 2060 SUPER’s GPU performance is less impressive, with a passmark G3D score of 16462 and a percentile ranking of 63. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, is only 0.5% faster in average benchmark scores. This indicates that the GPU is the bottleneck in this pairing for Rust, as the CPU has more headroom relative to its peers than the GPU does. The combo’s low rank is therefore more attributable to the GPU’s mid-range capabilities than the CPU’s performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a full range of performance depending on the preset. The Low preset achieves an average of 137.6 FPS, which is excellent for competitive play. The Medium and High presets deliver 89.7 FPS and 79.4 FPS, respectively, both of which are above the 60 FPS playability threshold. The Ultra preset yields 61.4 FPS, which is playable but leaves little margin for frame drops in demanding scenes. This pattern shows a clear scaling from Low to Ultra, with each step up in quality reducing the average frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance drops noticeably. The Low preset still provides a strong 95.7 FPS average, which is ideal for high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors. The Medium preset’s 61.8 FPS average is right at the edge of smoothness, while the High preset’s 56.7 FPS average begins to show signs of strain. The Ultra preset falls to a 41.8 FPS average, which is not ideal for a smooth experience. At 3840x2160, the results are more challenging. Only the Low preset achieves a playable score with a 55.3 FPS average. The Medium preset drops to 35.3 FPS, the High preset to 30.5 FPS, and the Ultra preset to a barely playable 22.9 FPS. These numbers indicate that 4K gaming is only feasible with the lowest settings on this hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The impact of resolution scaling is stark, revealing the GPU as the limiting component. At the Low preset, the average FPS drops from 137.6 at 1080p to 95.7 at 1440p, a reduction of approximately 30%. The further drop to 55.3 FPS at 4K represents a total reduction of about 60% from the 1080p score. This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound workload, as the number of pixels increases dramatically from 2.07 million at 1080p to 8.29 million at 4K, placing a heavier load on the GPU’s pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s.

The scaling is even more aggressive at higher settings. At the Ultra preset, the average FPS drops from 61.4 at 1080p to 41.8 at 1440p, a 32% reduction, and then to 22.9 at 4K, a 63% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This shows that the RTX 2060 SUPER’s computational resources are quickly saturated as resolution increases, particularly when combined with the heavy shader and texture loads of the Ultra preset. The data suggests that the CPU, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, is not the primary constraint at these resolutions, as the frame rate drops are proportionally larger with resolution increases than they are with preset changes at a fixed resolution. This confirms that for Rust, the GPU is the definitive bottleneck for this combination, especially at 1440p and 4K resolutions.