Rust

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates for Rust on this Intel Core i5-11400F with AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT combination show a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and fluidity. Across all three resolutions, the Low preset delivers the highest average FPS, while the Ultra preset consistently produces the lowest. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 173 FPS, compared to 113.7 FPS on Medium, 97.1 FPS on High, and 73 FPS on Ultra. This represents a substantial 100 FPS gap between the lowest and highest quality settings, indicating that the game's preset scaling heavily influences performance.

For players prioritizing smoothness, Low at 1080p is the clear choice, delivering nearly double the frame rate of High. However, the Medium preset at 1080p still provides a highly playable 113.7 FPS, which is 17.1% faster than High and 55.8% faster than Ultra. Given that Rust is a survival game where quick reactions matter, Medium at 1080p appears to be the optimal balance between visual clarity and responsiveness, as it maintains a triple-digit frame rate while avoiding the stark visual compromises of Low.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low yields 119.2 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh monitors, while Medium drops to 78.3 FPS and High to 66.4 FPS. Ultra falls to 51.3 FPS. The data shows that 1440p Medium offers a 47.6% improvement over Ultra while still delivering a frame rate that remains above the 60 FPS threshold. At 3840x2160, all presets struggle to maintain high fluidity, with Low achieving 67.7 FPS, Medium 44.6 FPS, High 39.3 FPS, and Ultra 28 FPS. Here, Low is the only preset that reaches a consistently playable level, making it the recommended setting for 4K displays.

The overall recommendation is to use Medium at 1080p or 1440p for the best experience, as it provides a significant frame rate cushion over High and Ultra without the visual penalty of Low. For 4K, Low is the only viable option based on the measured data, as anything above it drops below 45 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT is the primary driver of graphical performance in Rust, and its specifications align with the observed frame rates. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 432.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is notable for Rust, which is known for its large, persistent world and frequent asset streaming; the ample 12 GB capacity likely prevents texture thrashing at higher settings, although the data does not directly measure VRAM utilization. The GPU's boost clock of 2600 MHz and game clock of 2495 MHz, with a base clock of 2150 MHz, contribute to its compute throughput of 13.31 TFLOPS FP32. This raw power translates into the measured performance deltas between presets, with the RDNA 2.0 architecture's 2560 shading units and 160 texture mapping units handling the game's deferred rendering pipeline.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 79 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35327, places it in the mid-to-upper tier. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, scores 35787, a delta of -1.3%, meaning the RX 6750 XT is just 1.3% slower on aggregate benchmarks. This proximity explains why the GPU can handle 1080p and 1440p with relative ease but becomes the limiting factor at 4K, where the Ultra preset drops to 28 FPS. The GPU's pixel rate of 166.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 416.0 GTexel/s are the theoretical limits that dictate how quickly the rasterizer can fill the screen, and the data shows a steep decline from 1080p to 4K, consistent with a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F provides the processing backbone for Rust's simulation and server-side logic, which runs concurrently with rendering. This CPU has 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its Rocket Lake architecture, built on a 14 nm process, features 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 512 KB of L2 cache per core. The CPU's single-thread performance, as measured by Cinebench R23, is 2029, while multi-core performance is 14372. These scores are relevant to Rust, which is known to be sensitive to single-thread performance due to its Unity engine's main thread limitations.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 75 places it above average, with an average benchmark score of 17181. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U, scores 17189, a delta of 0%, indicating near-identical aggregate performance. The Intel Core i7-1260P scores 17212, a delta of -0.2%, meaning the i5-11400F is 0.2% slower. This parity in CPU benchmarks suggests that the i5-11400F is not a bottleneck in Rust when paired with the RX 6750 XT, especially at lower resolutions where the GPU is more likely to be the constraint.

Evidence for this comes from the frame rate scaling: at 1080p, the difference between Low (173 FPS) and Ultra (73 FPS) is 100 FPS, which is a massive swing driven primarily by GPU workload. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect the frame rates to plateau regardless of settings. The fact that Low at 1080p reaches 173 FPS demonstrates that the CPU can feed the GPU with enough draw calls to reach that level, and the GPU's inability to maintain that rate at higher settings confirms the GPU is the bottleneck. At 4K, even Low drops to 67.7 FPS, a 60.9% reduction from 1080p Low, which further implicates the GPU as the limiting component in this configuration.

FAQ

Q: What is the best setting for 1080p gaming on this system?

A: The data shows Medium at 113.7 FPS provides the best balance, being 17.1% faster than High (97.1 FPS) while maintaining a triple-digit frame rate. Low reaches 173 FPS but may sacrifice visual quality, while Ultra drops to 73 FPS.

Q: Is this system capable of 4K gaming in Rust?

A: Only at Low settings, which achieves 67.7 FPS. Medium (44.6 FPS), High (39.3 FPS), and Ultra (28 FPS) all fall below the 60 FPS threshold, making them less suitable for smooth play.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rival?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT has an average benchmark score of 35327, which is 1.3% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (35787) and 0.2% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 5600M (35264).

Q: What is the CPU's single-thread performance relative to its multi-thread performance?

A: The Intel Core i5-11400F scores 2029 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 14372 in multi-core, indicating a single-to-multi ratio of about 1:7, which is typical for a 6-core/12-thread processor.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in Rust?

A: The data indicates no. At 1080p, frame rates scale dramatically with settings (from 73 to 173 FPS), showing the GPU is the primary constraint. If the CPU were the bottleneck, frame rates would cluster together regardless of settings.

Q: How much faster is 1080p Low compared to 4K Low?

A: 1080p Low achieves 173 FPS, while 4K Low achieves 67.7 FPS, representing a 60.9% reduction in performance when moving from 1080p to 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data across 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling. At Low settings, the frame rates are 173 FPS at 1080p, 119.2 FPS at 1440p, and 67.7 FPS at 4K. This represents a 31.1% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 43.2% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 60.9%, which is consistent with the pixel count increase: 4K has 4 times the pixels of 1080p, but the frame rate does not drop by a factor of 4, indicating that the GPU has some headroom and the CPU is not the limiting factor at lower settings.

At Medium settings, the frame rates are 113.7 FPS at 1080p, 78.3 FPS at 1440p, and 44.6 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 31.1%, and from 1440p to 4K is 43.0%. At High settings, the rates are 97.1, 66.4, and 39.3 FPS, with corresponding drops of 31.6% and 40.8%. At Ultra settings, the rates are 73, 51.3, and 28 FPS, with drops of 29.7% and 45.4%.

The consistency of these percentage drops across settings—roughly 30% from 1080p to 1440p and 40-45% from 1440p to 4K—strongly suggests that the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the frame rates to converge at higher resolutions, with the CPU's maximum throughput capping the FPS regardless of pixel count. Instead, the scaling follows the GPU's rendering workload, confirming that the RX 6750 XT is the primary determinant of performance in this Rust configuration. The CPU's role is to feed the GPU, and its 6-core/12-thread design with a 4.40 GHz boost clock appears sufficient to avoid throttling at even the highest frame rates measured (173 FPS at 1080p Low).

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the settings yield the following average FPS: Low 173, Medium 113.7, High 97.1, and Ultra 73. The spread between Low and Ultra is 100 FPS, or 137% higher performance on Low. This is the largest absolute gap across all resolutions, indicating that 1080p offers the most flexibility for tuning visual quality versus frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low 119.2, Medium 78.3, High 66.4, and Ultra 51.3. Here, the Low-to-Ultra gap narrows to 67.9 FPS, or 132% higher on Low. Notably, Medium at 1440p (78.3 FPS) is only slightly slower than Ultra at 1080p (73 FPS), suggesting that players can trade resolution for settings to achieve similar frame rates.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low 67.7, Medium 44.6, High 39.3, and Ultra 28. The gap between Low and Ultra is 39.7 FPS, or 142% higher on Low. At this resolution, even the fastest setting barely reaches 68 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls below 30 FPS, which is generally considered unplayable for smooth action.

The data shows a consistent hierarchy: Low is always fastest, followed by Medium, then High, with Ultra slowest. The relative differences between presets are similar across resolutions, with Medium typically being about 50% faster than Ultra (e.g., 113.7 vs 73 at 1080p, 78.3 vs 51.3 at 1440p, 44.6 vs 28 at 4K). This consistency suggests that the preset scaling affects GPU workload in a predictable manner, and no single preset is disproportionately expensive or cheap relative to the others. For players with high-refresh 1080p monitors, Low offers the only path to 144+ FPS, while Medium provides 113.7 FPS, which is still above 100. For 1440p, Low is the only preset that exceeds 100 FPS, while Medium stays above 60. For 4K, only Low reaches 60 FPS, and all other presets are below 45 FPS, making the choice clear for anyone targeting that resolution.