Rust

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT presents a mid-range configuration for Rust, a survival title known for its demanding simulation and rendering loads. Measured data shows that this combo lands at rank 1090 out of 1717 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the performance distribution. This analysis walks through how the system scales across resolutions and settings, what the CPU and GPU each contribute, and where the bottlenecks appear.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, indicating a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 143.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 98.9 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 31%. Moving to 3840x2160, the average drops further to 58.7 FPS, which represents a 59% decline from the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is typical for a graphics card that has ample headroom at lower resolutions but becomes the limiting factor as pixel count rises.

The High preset shows a similar trajectory: 81.3 FPS at 1080p, 54.5 FPS at 1440p, and 33.8 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 33%, and from 1440p to 4K is another 38%. At Ultra settings, the numbers are 63.3 FPS, 45.9 FPS, and 22.9 FPS respectively, with the 4K result falling below playable thresholds for most users. The consistent pattern across presets suggests that resolution scaling is smooth and predictable, with no sudden cliff drops that would indicate a driver or memory bandwidth anomaly.

The delta between Low and Ultra widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, Ultra produces 56% fewer frames than Low (63.3 vs 143.6). At 4K, Ultra produces 61% fewer frames than Low (22.9 vs 58.7). This widening gap implies that the GPU’s compute resources are more heavily taxed by the higher preset’s effects at 4K, while at 1080p the CPU can partially mask some of the GPU’s workload limitations.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7600 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 33 chip, fabricated on a 6 nm process by TSMC. It carries 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. The memory clock is listed at 2250 MHz with 18 Gbps effective speed, while the GPU’s base clock is 1980 MHz, the game clock is 2470 MHz, and the boost clock reaches 2755 MHz. The card has 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with 32 ray tracing cores. Its pixel rate is 176.3 GPixel/s and texture rate is 352.6 GTexel/s, producing an FP32 throughput of 22.57 TFLOPS.

In Rust, the GPU’s 16 GB frame buffer is more than sufficient for the game’s asset streaming, even at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS of 22.9 indicates compute limits rather than memory capacity issues. The card’s 63rd percentile ranking among all GPUs suggests it sits near the middle of the performance spectrum, but its nearest rivals show how close the competition is. The RX 7600 XT’s average benchmark score of 20146 is only 0.3% above the AMD Radeon RX 460 (20088), and 1.9% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (19774). It trails the RX 7600 by 0.6% (20258) and the RTX 3070 Mobile by 1.9% (20534). These narrow margins indicate that the RX 7600 XT is not dramatically faster than its immediate peers, which explains why it cannot push Rust’s 4K Ultra preset past 23 FPS.

The GPU’s DirectX 12 benchmark score of 65 and DirectX 11 score of 167 are modest, but Rust’s engine responds well to the card’s raw rasterization throughput. The compute score of 8987 in Passmark suggests the GPU handles shader workloads adequately, yet the 4K results show that effects-heavy presets overwhelm the 64 ROPs.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Comet Lake generation, built on Intel’s 14 nm process. Its base clock is 2.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, and it carries 12 MB of shared L3 cache with 256 KB L2 per core. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration, providing 42.7 GB/s of bandwidth, and connects via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes. Its thermal design power is 65 W.

This processor ranks in the 73rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 14168. Its nearest rivals show it is tightly clustered: it sits 0.4% above the AMD EPYC 7552 (14115), and is 0.8% below the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14277), 1.1% below the Intel Core i5-8500 (14332), and 1.2% below the AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 (14336). The single-thread performance in Cinebench R23 is 1453, while the multi-core score is 10297, indicating a balanced chip that does not excel in either extreme.

In Rust, the CPU’s role becomes evident at 1080p Low settings, where the average FPS of 143.6 is high enough to suggest the CPU is keeping up with the GPU’s output. The 3DMark single-thread score of 688 and the 2-thread score of 1350 show moderate single-core strength, which matters for Rust’s main thread. The multi-thread scores (4-thread at 2560, 8-thread at 3929, max-thread at 4735) indicate that the CPU can handle the game’s background simulation tasks without becoming a hard bottleneck at lower resolutions. However, the data shows that at 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting component, as the CPU cannot compensate for the GPU’s inability to render at that resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results. Low settings produce an average of 143.6 FPS, Medium yields 96.5 FPS, High reaches 81.3 FPS, and Ultra drops to 63.3 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 80.3 FPS, showing that the GPU has enough headroom at 1080p to absorb the increased graphical load without collapsing below 60 FPS even at Ultra.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 98.9 FPS on Low, 65.4 FPS on Medium, 54.5 FPS on High, and 45.9 FPS on Ultra. The Low setting remains comfortably above 60 FPS, but High and Ultra fall below the 60 FPS mark, indicating that this resolution requires a compromise in visual fidelity for smooth play. The drop from 1080p Low to 1440p Low is 44.7 FPS, while the drop from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra is 17.4 FPS, showing that the higher presets suffer less in absolute terms because they are already closer to the GPU’s limit.

At 3840x2160, the results are marginal. Low averages 58.7 FPS, Medium 39.5 FPS, High 33.8 FPS, and Ultra 22.9 FPS. Only the Low preset approaches playability, and even that sits below 60 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K produces less than a quarter of the frames that Low at 1080p achieves, underscoring the GPU’s limitation at this resolution. The data shows no anomalies: each settings step at each resolution produces a monotonic decrease in FPS, confirming that the GPU scales predictably with load.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 1090 out of 1717 tested combinations in Rust, placing it in the 36th percentile of all tested systems. This rank is lower than the individual component percentiles might suggest — the CPU is in the 73rd percentile and the GPU in the 63rd — which indicates that the pairing is not maximizing either component’s potential. The gap likely stems from the GPU being insufficient for Rust’s high-resolution demands, while the CPU’s mid-tier performance does not boost the combo above similarly priced alternatives.

The nearest GPU rivals illustrate the tight competition: the RX 7600 XT is nearly identical in average benchmark score to the RX 460 (0.3% difference), yet the RX 460 is an older, lower-tier card. This suggests that the RX 7600 XT’s 16 GB memory and higher clocks do not translate into a substantial performance advantage in Rust’s specific workload, or that the CPU pairing holds it back. The CPU’s nearest rivals (EPYC 7552, Ryzen 3 7320C, i5-8500, V2546) all have average scores within 1.2% of the i5-10400F, meaning swapping the CPU for any of these would likely produce negligible FPS changes in Rust.

The rank of 1090 out of 1717 confirms that this is a functional but not exceptional combination. It will handle Rust at 1080p with high frame rates and at 1440p with adjusted settings, but it is not built for 4K gaming beyond the Low preset.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings for this combo to maintain 60 FPS?

A: At 1920x1080, all presets from Low to Ultra exceed 60 FPS, with Ultra averaging 63.3 FPS. At 2560x1440, only the Low preset (98.9 FPS) and Medium preset (65.4 FPS) stay above 60 FPS. At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS.

Q: How much of a frame rate drop occurs when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 High is 81.3, while at 3840x2160 High it is 33.8. This is a 47.5 FPS drop, or approximately 58% fewer frames.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the primary bottleneck at 4K?

A: The data shows the GPU is the limiting component at 4K. The FPS drops consistently across all settings as resolution increases, and the GPU’s 63rd percentile ranking combined with the 4K Ultra result of 22.9 FPS indicates the graphics card cannot handle the pixel load.

Q: How does the RX 7600 XT compare to the RTX 2060 SUPER in average benchmark score?

A: The RX 7600 XT has an average benchmark score of 20146, which is 1.9% higher than the RTX 2060 SUPER’s score of 19774. This margin is small and would not produce a noticeable difference in Rust’s frame rates.

Q: What is the CPU’s multi-thread performance relative to its nearest rival?

A: The i5-10400F scores 10297 in Cinebench R23 multi-core. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C, has an average benchmark score that is 0.8% higher, indicating the i5 is slightly slower in aggregate multi-thread workloads.

Q: Can this combo run Rust at 1440p Ultra smoothly?

A: No. The average FPS at 2560x1440 Ultra is 45.9, which is below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Users would need to select the Medium or Low preset to achieve higher frame rates at this resolution.