Rust

Rust’s measured performance with the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D shows a configuration that scales predictably across resolutions and presets, with the 4K Ultra setting pushing the GPU hard while lower resolutions expose a CPU bottleneck. The data set includes average FPS for High, Low, Medium, and Ultra presets at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160, with only the Medium preset providing minimum and maximum FPS values across all three resolutions. This combination sits at rank 459 out of 2953 tested combos for Rust, placing it in the upper tier of the database’s results.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows reveal that the Medium preset delivers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, offering a substantial uplift over High and Ultra while maintaining playable frame rates even at 4K. At 3840x2160, Medium averages 95 FPS with a minimum of 81 FPS and a maximum of 109 FPS, which is a 15 FPS improvement over High’s 80 FPS average and a 34 FPS improvement over Ultra’s 61 FPS average. The minimum FPS of 81 at 4K Medium ensures smoother frame pacing than the Ultra preset, which lacks min/max data but averages 19 FPS lower than Medium, indicating a heavier GPU workload that likely produces more frequent dips.

At 2560x1440, Medium again stands out with an average of 118 FPS and a narrow 100–136 FPS range, while High trails at 111 FPS and Ultra drops to 101 FPS. The gap between Medium and Ultra at 1440p is 17 FPS, similar to the 19 FPS gap at 4K, but the absolute numbers are higher, making Medium the clear choice for high refresh rate monitors without sacrificing visual fidelity beyond the Low preset’s stark reductions. At 1920x1080, Medium averages 134 FPS with a 114–154 FPS range, which is 8 FPS ahead of High’s 126 FPS and 20 FPS ahead of Ultra’s 114 FPS, while Low pushes to 156 FPS—the highest average in the entire data set.

For players prioritizing maximum frame rates, Low at 1080p delivers 156 FPS, but this comes at the cost of visual quality; Medium provides 134 FPS, which is only 22 FPS lower and likely offers significantly better shadows, textures, and draw distances typical of Rust’s survival environments. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware combo, as it consistently provides the best balance of average FPS and recorded minimums across all three resolutions. Ultra, while visually demanding, shows diminishing returns: at 4K it averages 61 FPS, which is below the 80 FPS High preset and only 34 FPS above the Low preset’s 115 FPS, indicating that the GPU is heavily stressed at this setting. For competitive play, Low at 1440p (137 FPS) or 1080p (156 FPS) offers the highest headroom, but for general use, Medium at 1440p is the recommended preset given its 118 FPS average and robust frame time consistency.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 D’s specifications explain its behavior in Rust’s measured results, particularly at higher resolutions where the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. The card features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for Rust’s texture streaming and large world rendering at 4K. The GPU’s 21760 shading units and 176 ROPs drive pixel throughput of 423.6 GPixel/s, while the 680 TMUs provide a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s—these figures support the high average FPS observed at 1440p and 1080p, where the GPU is not fully saturated. The boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz are modest for a flagship, but the architecture’s efficiency compensates, allowing the card to maintain 115 FPS at 4K Low and 95 FPS at 4K Medium.

The RTX 5090 D’s FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS is a key indicator of its compute headroom, yet Rust’s engine appears to utilize this power unevenly. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 61, a 36% reduction from Medium’s 95 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset introduces effects like advanced lighting, volumetric shadows, or increased draw distances that heavily tax the GPU’s shading and texture units. The card’s 92.2 billion transistors on a 750 mm² die provide substantial hardware resources, but the data shows that Rust’s Ultra preset can still overwhelm them at 4K, as evidenced by the 34 FPS gap between Ultra and Low at that resolution. In contrast, at 1080p, the gap between Ultra (114 FPS) and Low (156 FPS) is 42 FPS, but the absolute averages are high enough to mask the GPU load, indicating that the CPU begins to limit performance at lower resolutions.

The GPU’s benchmark scores corroborate its strong rasterization capabilities: a Passmark G3D score of 44065 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14326 place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs tested. However, the nearest rivals in the database—AMD’s RX 6650M XT (76904 avg score, 1.1% delta) and RX 6850M XT (78940 avg score, -1.6% delta)—show that the 5090 D’s raw performance is closely matched by older mobile parts in synthetic tests, yet Rust’s measured FPS reflects the 5090 D’s superior memory bandwidth and VRAM capacity. The 32 GB VRAM is particularly relevant for Rust, which can consume significant memory for player bases, terrain, and entity caches; none of the measured FPS rows show signs of texture pop-in or stutter that would indicate VRAM exhaustion, even at 4K Ultra, where the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s allows for high-resolution texture streaming without bottlenecking.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combo in Rust?

A: Based on measured FPS, 2560x1440 with Medium settings provides the best balance, averaging 118 FPS with a 100–136 FPS range, which is high enough for smooth gameplay while maintaining visual quality. 3840x2160 at Medium averages 95 FPS, but the 4K Ultra preset drops to 61 FPS, making 1440p the safer choice for consistent frame rates.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: The Low preset averages 156 FPS at 1920x1080, which is 42 FPS higher than Ultra’s 114 FPS average. This represents a 37% improvement in average FPS, though the Medium preset at 134 FPS offers a smaller gap of 20 FPS with likely better visual fidelity.

Q: Does the RTX 5090 D bottleneck the Ryzen 7 3700X at any resolution?

A: The data indicates a CPU bottleneck at 1080p, where the FPS difference between Low (156) and Ultra (114) is only 42 FPS, narrower than the 54 FPS gap at 4K (115 vs 61). This suggests the Ryzen 7 3700X limits performance at lower resolutions, preventing the GPU from reaching its full potential.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The only rows with min FPS data are at Medium settings: 81 FPS at 3840x2160, 100 FPS at 2560x1440, and 114 FPS at 1920x1080. These minimums indicate the worst-case frame drops, with 4K Medium showing the lowest absolute value.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations for Rust?

A: It ranks 459 out of 2953 combos, placing it in the top 15.5% of all tested setups. The Ryzen 7 3700X scores in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, while the RTX 5090 D scores in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, indicating a high-end pairing.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever recommended for this combo?

A: At 1440p, Ultra averages 101 FPS, which is playable, but the Medium preset at 118 FPS offers a 17 FPS advantage. At 4K, Ultra’s 61 FPS is below the 80 FPS High preset and 95 FPS Medium preset, making it the least desirable setting for this hardware.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured rows show a clear progression from Low to Ultra: Low averages 156 FPS, Medium averages 134 FPS with a 114–154 FPS range, High averages 126 FPS, and Ultra averages 114 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 42 FPS, with Medium and High occupying the middle ground. The min/max data for Medium (114–154 FPS) shows a 40 FPS variance, which is the largest of any resolution’s Medium setting, indicating that 1080p gameplay can have significant frame spikes depending on the scene complexity.

At 2560x1440, the averages compress: Low delivers 137 FPS, Medium averages 118 FPS with a 100–136 FPS range, High averages 111 FPS, and Ultra averages 101 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 36 FPS, which is smaller than at 1080p but still substantial. The Medium range of 36 FPS (100–136) is tighter than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is handling more of the workload as resolution increases, smoothing out CPU-bound spikes.

At 3840x2160, the resolution scaling becomes more pronounced: Low averages 115 FPS, Medium averages 95 FPS with a 81–109 FPS range, High averages 80 FPS, and Ultra averages 61 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap widens to 54 FPS, the largest of all resolutions, reflecting the GPU’s increased load at 4K. The Medium range of 28 FPS (81–109) is the narrowest in the data set, indicating that 4K Medium provides the most consistent frame pacing, while the Ultra preset’s 61 FPS average leaves little headroom for demanding scenes. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently offers the best compromise, with average FPS at least 15 FPS higher than High and 20 FPS higher than Ultra, while also providing documented minimums that assure users of worst-case performance.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals how the workload shifts between CPU and GPU. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Medium settings reduces the average FPS from 134 to 118, a 12% decrease, while the Low preset drops from 156 to 137, an 12.2% decrease. From 1440p to 4K, the Medium preset drops from 118 to 95 FPS, a 19.5% decrease, and Low drops from 137 to 115 FPS, a 16.1% decrease. The larger percentage drops at higher resolutions indicate that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as pixel count increases, which is expected given the RTX 5090 D’s specifications.

The Ultra preset shows the steepest scaling: 114 FPS at 1080p, 101 FPS at 1440p, and 61 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is a 39.6% reduction, the largest of any preset, highlighting that the Ultra setting’s additional effects are disproportionately expensive at 4K. In contrast, the Low preset’s drop from 1440p to 4K is 16.1%, suggesting that Low settings are more GPU-friendly and allow the CPU to maintain higher frame rates longer. The High preset exhibits moderate scaling: 126 FPS at 1080p, 111 FPS at 1440p, and 80 FPS at 4K, with a 27.9% drop from 1440p to 4K.

These scaling patterns indicate that at 1080p, the Ryzen 7 3700X with 8 cores and 16 threads is likely the bottleneck, as the FPS differences between presets are relatively small (156 Low vs 114 Ultra) compared to 4K (115 Low vs 61 Ultra). At 4K, the GPU’s load dominates, and the 54 FPS gap between Low and Ultra reflects the RTX 5090 D’s struggle to maintain high frame rates with maxed-out settings. The data suggests that for 4K gaming, users should stick to Medium or High to avoid the Ultra preset’s performance cliff, while at 1080p, even Ultra remains playable, though the CPU limit means the GPU’s power is underutilized.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, based on Zen 2 architecture with 8 cores and 16 threads, has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its benchmark scores—Cinebench R15 multi-core 2092, single-core 204, Geekbench multi-core 8899, single-core 1593, and Passmark multi-thread 22458—place it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 34260 that is nearly identical to its nearest rivals: the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (34222, 0.1% delta), AMD EPYC 4244P (34220, 0.1% delta), Intel Core i5-13450HX (34333, -0.2% delta), and Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (34083, 0.5% delta). This indicates that the 3700X performs on par with modern mid-range and high-end laptop CPUs, despite being a 2019 desktop part.

In Rust, the CPU’s role is most evident at 1080p, where the FPS scaling between presets is limited. At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 156 FPS, but Ultra only reaches 114 FPS—a 42 FPS gap—which suggests that the CPU is not the sole bottleneck, but its single-thread performance (Passmark single-thread 2656, Geekbench single-core 1593) limits how fast the game’s simulation and physics can run. Rust is known for its entity-heavy gameplay, and the 3700X’s 32 MB L3 cache and 16 threads provide adequate parallelism, but the 3.60 GHz base clock may cause frame dips in crowded areas, as seen in the Medium preset’s minimum FPS of 114 at 1080p.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU’s influence diminishes as the GPU takes over. The 3700X’s memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s is a potential constraint for Rust’s streaming world, but the RTX 5090 D’s 1.79 TB/s bandwidth likely compensates by offloading texture data. The CPU’s Passmark physics score of 1181 is moderate, suggesting that Rust’s physics calculations are handled adequately but not exceptionally, which aligns with the observed frame rate stability at higher resolutions where the GPU’s workload masks CPU limitations. Overall, the 3700X is a capable pairing for the 5090 D, but the data shows that it prevents the GPU from reaching its maximum FPS at 1080p, making this combo better suited for 1440p or 4K gaming where the GPU’s power is fully utilized.