Rust

FAQ

Q: What is the combo rank of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER in Rust?

A: This combination ranks 1505 out of 1717 tested combos in Rust, placing it in the lower portion of the database. The rank reflects that while the CPU is extremely capable, the GPU heavily constrains overall performance in this title.

Q: Which resolution and settings produce the highest average FPS for this combo?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 105, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The lowest measured average FPS is 21.5, which occurs at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9800X3D compare to its nearest rival in CPU benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has an average benchmark score of 37780, which is 0.1% lower than the Intel Xeon 6353P (37811) and 0.1% lower than the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (37831). It trails the Intel Core i9-13900HK by 0.6% and the Intel Core i5-13600KF by 0.7%.

Q: What is the GPU's memory configuration, and does it limit performance?

A: The GTX 1660 SUPER has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s. Given that Rust at 4K Ultra only reaches 21.5 FPS, the 6 GB frame buffer and overall GPU compute capacity appear to be significant limiting factors at higher resolutions.

Q: Which setting preset offers the best balance of FPS and visual quality at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 74 FPS average, which is 12.1 FPS higher than High (61.9) and 26.8 FPS higher than Ultra (47.2). This makes Medium the most balanced option for smoother gameplay without the sharp FPS drop seen at Ultra.

Q: How does the GPU's percentile ranking compare to the CPU's percentile ranking?

A: The GPU sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU is at the 90th percentile among all CPUs. This substantial gap indicates a heavily CPU-favoring imbalance, reinforcing that the GPU is the bottleneck in this pairing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture with a 12 nm process node. Its base clock runs at 1530 MHz and boosts to 1785 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The card has 1408 shading units, 88 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units. Its FP32 performance is 5.027 TFLOPS, and it provides a texture rate of 157.1 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 85.68 GPixel/s. The GPU's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus yields 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

In Rust, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution scales upward. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 105 FPS, but at 4K Low, it drops to 42.2 FPS — a 62.8 FPS decline. The 4K High result of 23.8 FPS and 4K Ultra of 21.5 FPS suggest the card is overwhelmed by pixel throughput demands at 3840x2160. The GTX 1660 SUPER's 55th percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the mid-range, which is consistent with its end-of-life production status. The data shows that the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth become the hard ceiling for frame rates at higher resolutions, regardless of the CPU's capability.

The GPU's average benchmark score is 14286, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 at 14314 (0.2% higher). The Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics scores 14315 (0.2% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT scores 14389 (0.7% higher). This close clustering indicates the GTX 1660 SUPER performs right at the edge of this performance tier. For Rust specifically, the GPU's DirectX 12 support and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility matter, though the measured results suggest the card's raw throughput is the limiting factor at higher settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) using a 4 nm process. Its base clock is 4.70 GHz with a boost clock of 5.20 GHz. The CPU has 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 96 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and an 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth. The CPU's average benchmark score is 37780, placing it at the 90th percentile among all CPUs.

In Rust, the CPU's role is most visible at lower resolutions where the GPU is less burdened. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 105 FPS, which is the highest measured value. This suggests that at this setting, the CPU is able to feed the GPU adequately, though the GPU still caps the frame rate. The CPU's single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 1212) and multi-thread performance (3dmark_max_threads score of 10067) are strong, but the data indicates that Rust's engine does not fully leverage the CPU's 16 threads — or the GPU simply cannot keep up.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Xeon 6353P (37811, 0.1% higher), Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (37831, 0.1% higher), Intel Core i9-13900HK (38020, 0.6% higher), and Intel Core i5-13600KF (38028, 0.7% higher). The Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 96 MB L3 cache is a notable feature for gaming, but in this pairing with a GTX 1660 SUPER, the CPU's advantages are largely unrealized because the GPU becomes the bottleneck before the CPU's cache or clock speeds can matter. The 120 W TDP and unlocked multiplier indicate headroom for overclocking, but benchmark results show the GPU is the primary constraint.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers an average of 105 FPS on Low settings, 74 FPS on Medium, 61.9 FPS on High, and 47.2 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a 31 FPS drop, while the drop from Medium to High is 12.1 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 14.7 FPS. These results indicate that the GPU's shading units and texture units are progressively saturated as quality increases.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are 75.3 on Low, 47.8 on Medium, 42 on High, and 28.6 on Ultra. The drop from 1080p Low to 1440p Low is 29.7 FPS, showing the resolution impact. The 1440p Ultra result of 28.6 FPS is only 7.1 FPS higher than the 4K Low result of 42.2 FPS, which is surprising — the 4K Low outperforms 1440p Ultra by 13.6 FPS. This suggests that at Ultra settings, the GPU's memory bandwidth and fill rate are the limiting factors more than raw pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS values are 42.2 on Low, 26.9 on Medium, 23.8 on High, and 21.5 on Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is only 20.7 FPS, indicating that the GPU is so heavily pixel-bound at this resolution that settings changes have diminishing returns. The 4K Medium result of 26.9 FPS is only 3.1 FPS higher than 4K High (23.8), and 4K High is only 2.3 FPS higher than 4K Ultra (21.5). The data shows a clear pattern: at 4K, even Low settings cannot push past 42.2 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across settings. At Low settings, the combo drops from 105 FPS at 1080p to 75.3 FPS at 1440p (a 29.7 FPS loss) and then to 42.2 FPS at 4K (a 33.1 FPS loss from 1440p). At Medium settings, the drop is from 74 FPS at 1080p to 47.8 FPS at 1440p (26.2 FPS loss) and then to 26.9 FPS at 4K (20.9 FPS loss). At High settings, the drop is from 61.9 FPS at 1080p to 42 FPS at 1440p (19.9 FPS loss) and then to 23.8 FPS at 4K (18.2 FPS loss).

The scaling pattern reveals that the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions above 1080p Low. The percentage reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is 59.8% (from 105 to 42.2 FPS), while at Ultra settings it is 54.4% (from 47.2 to 21.5 FPS). This relatively consistent percentage drop regardless of settings suggests that pixel throughput is the dominant constraint. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to stay more stable across resolutions, as CPU workload typically does not scale with resolution. The data shows the opposite: FPS scales nearly linearly with pixel count, confirming the GTX 1660 SUPER is the limiting factor.

For a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is a top-tier gaming CPU at the 90th percentile, the resolution scaling behavior indicates that its potential is unrealized. At 1080p Low, the 105 FPS result is likely close to what the GPU can deliver, but the CPU could theoretically push much higher frame rates with a stronger GPU. The 4K results, particularly the 21.5 FPS at Ultra, are unplayable for most users, reinforcing that this combo is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming at lower settings.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the best experience for this combo is at 1920x1080 with Medium settings, which delivers 74 FPS average. This is comfortably above 60 FPS, offering a smooth gameplay experience while retaining some visual quality. The Low preset at 1080p provides 105 FPS, which is ideal for competitive play, but the visual downgrade may not be necessary given that Medium only costs 31 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset at 75.3 FPS is the only setting that exceeds 60 FPS. Medium at 1440p drops to 47.8 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced action. High at 1440p (42 FPS) and Ultra at 1440p (28.6 FPS) are below 60 FPS and may suffer from noticeable stutter in Rust's open-world environment. For 1440p users, Low is the recommended preset.

At 3840x2160, all settings fail to reach 60 FPS. The best result is Low at 42.2 FPS, followed by Medium at 26.9 FPS, High at 23.8 FPS, and Ultra at 21.5 FPS. None of these are suitable for smooth gameplay, so 4K is not a viable option for this combo. The data suggests that users should stick to 1080p Medium or 1440p Low for the best balance of performance and visual fidelity. The Medium preset at 1080p offers the highest FPS above 60 while maintaining some graphical features, making it the optimal choice.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1505 out of 1717 tested combos places this pairing in the bottom 12.3% of all tested configurations in Rust. This is a surprisingly low rank given the CPU's 90th percentile standing. The discrepancy is entirely explained by the GPU's 55th percentile ranking. The GTX 1660 SUPER's average benchmark score of 14286 is closely matched by its nearest rivals — the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (14314, 0.2% higher), Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14315, 0.2% higher), and AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (14389, 0.7% higher) — which means the GPU is firmly in the mid-range tier.

The rank of 1505 suggests that most other tested combos include either a stronger GPU or a more balanced CPU-GPU pairing. For Rust, which is known to be CPU-heavy in some scenarios, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D should theoretically excel, but the measured FPS data shows that the GPU's limits are hit first. The 1080p Low result of 105 FPS is the only measurement that approaches what one might expect from a top-tier CPU, and even that is likely GPU-bound.

The data implies that this combo is severely unbalanced for Rust. The CPU's 8 cores, 16 threads, and 5.20 GHz boost clock are wasted on a GPU that cannot push frame rates beyond 105 FPS even at the lowest settings. The combo rank of 1505 is a clear indicator that users should prioritize a more powerful GPU if they intend to play Rust at higher resolutions or settings. The 90th percentile CPU paired with a 55th percentile GPU creates a situation where the GPU is the unequivocal bottleneck, and the rank confirms this mismatch.