Rust

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data for Rust with the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 9060 reveals a steep performance curve as resolution climbs. At 1080p High settings, the combo produces 86 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops that to 59 FPS, a 31% reduction. At 4K High, the average falls to 35 FPS, which is just 41% of the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is consistent across all four settings presets, indicating a clear trend.

The Low preset tells a similar story with higher absolute numbers. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 151 FPS. At 1440p Low, it still holds 104 FPS. But 4K Low drops to 62 FPS. The gap between 1080p and 4K Low is 89 FPS, or roughly 59% of the 1080p value. This is a larger proportional loss than the High preset's 59% drop, which suggests the GPU is being pushed harder at lower settings where the CPU has more headroom.

What does this imply about the limiting component? The data shows that at 1080p, even the Low preset only reaches 151 FPS, which is far from what a high-end GPU could achieve if the CPU were not a factor. The i5-13400F has 10 cores and 16 threads with a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, and its benchmark scores are solid — a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22604 and a single-core score of 3191 place it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs. Yet Rust's engine appears to strain this processor, particularly at lower resolutions where the GPU is less burdened.

At 4K, the GPU becomes the dominant constraint. The RX 9060, with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and a 128-bit bus delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, shows its limits. The 4K Ultra result of 27 FPS is barely playable, and even 4K Medium only reaches 41 FPS. The scaling from Medium to High at 4K is modest — 41 to 35 FPS — while the jump from Low to Medium is more pronounced at 62 to 41 FPS. This suggests that the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute resources are saturated early at 4K, and further quality increases yield diminishing returns.

The data also reveals that the CPU's influence wanes as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 86 FPS (151 to 65), a 57% spread. At 4K, that same Low-to-Ultra gap narrows to 35 FPS (62 to 27), a 56% spread but with far lower absolute values. This compression indicates that the GPU's rendering workload at 4K dominates the frame time budget, leaving the CPU idle more often. The i5-13400F's 3DMark scores — 7314 for 16 threads and 960 for single thread — suggest it has enough compute headroom to feed the GPU at 1080p, but the game's engine may not fully utilize all 10 cores efficiently.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 1440p offers the best balance. At 1440p Medium, the system averages 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. 1080p is faster (102 FPS at Medium) but the visual quality improvement at 1440p may justify the 31% FPS drop.

Q: How does the RX 9060 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RX 9060 has an average benchmark score of 16014, which places it in the 59th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, scores 16129, a delta of -0.7%. The AMD Radeon RX 7700 scores 15852, just 1% lower. This indicates the RX 9060 performs nearly identically to the RTX 3060 Ti in synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Is the i5-13400F a bottleneck at 1080p in Rust?

A: The data suggests CPU limitation at 1080p Low, where the combo reaches 151 FPS. This is respectable, but the i5-13400F's single-thread score of 960 in 3DMark and its PassMark single-thread score of 3634 indicate moderate per-core performance. The fact that 1080p Ultra only reaches 65 FPS — a 57% drop from Low — implies the CPU's thread scheduling and game engine physics calculations limit frame rates when the GPU is not fully loaded.

Q: What are the measured minimum FPS values for Medium settings?

A: The data includes minimum FPS only for Medium settings. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 86 FPS with a maximum of 117 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the minimum drops to 59 FPS with a maximum of 80 FPS. At 4K Medium, the minimum is 35 FPS with a maximum of 47 FPS. No minimum values are recorded for Low, High, or Ultra presets.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 1665 out of 2953 tested combinations in Rust, placing it in the 44th percentile. This means roughly 56% of tested combos perform better, but the ranking reflects the entire pool of CPU-GPU pairs, not just similar-tier hardware. Given the i5-13400F's 77th percentile CPU ranking and the RX 9060's 59th percentile GPU ranking, the combo's game-specific rank is lower than either component's synthetic percentile.

Q: Does the RX 9060's 8 GB VRAM limit 4K performance?

A: The data shows 4K performance is poor, with 35 FPS at High and 27 FPS at Ultra. The 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth is likely insufficient for Rust's texture-heavy environments at 4K, where memory pressure increases significantly. The 4K Low result of 62 FPS suggests that reducing texture quality alleviates some pressure, but the GPU's compute resources (21.43 TFLOPS FP32) still struggle with the pixel workload.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 44 chip on a 4 nm process from TSMC. It packs 29,700 million transistors on a 199 mm² die, which gives it a transistor density of 149.2 million per mm². The GPU's base clock is 1700 MHz, with a game clock of 2400 MHz and a boost clock of 2990 MHz. These clocks, combined with 1792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units, produce a pixel rate of 191.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 334.9 GTexel/s.

The memory subsystem is the most likely culprit for the game's 4K struggles. With 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, the bandwidth tops out at 288.0 GB/s. This is a modest figure for a GPU aiming at high-resolution gaming, and Rust's large, persistent open-world environments — which require streaming in terrain, building structures, and player-modified geometry — place heavy demands on memory bandwidth. The data supports this: at 4K, the FPS drops more steeply from Low to Medium (62 to 41, a 34% reduction) than from Medium to High (41 to 35, a 15% reduction), suggesting that texture and shading complexity at Medium settings saturate the memory bus.

The GPU's compute capabilities are respectable for rasterization. The FP32 throughput of 21.43 TFLOPS places it in the mid-range tier, and its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3322 reflects solid DirectX 12 performance. However, Rust's engine may not fully exploit RDNA 4.0's features. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, but the game's renderer — which has evolved from a legacy codebase — may rely more on draw calls and CPU-side culling than modern GPU-driven rendering.

The 28 ray tracing cores are present but likely unused in Rust, which does not prominently feature ray-traced effects. The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 17631 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 88183 indicate healthy compute potential, but the game's frame rates suggest that memory bandwidth, not raw compute, is the binding constraint at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the GPU can push 151 FPS on Low, demonstrating that its shading units are capable when memory traffic is manageable. The drop to 65 FPS at 1080p Ultra — a 57% reduction — shows that increasing settings multiplies memory fetches and texture lookups, quickly overwhelming the 128-bit bus.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

The measured data provides four presets — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — across three resolutions. For a 60 FPS target, the choices are constrained. At 1080p, Medium delivers 102 FPS with a minimum of 86 FPS, which is comfortably above 60. High at 1080p drops to 86 FPS, still smooth. Ultra at 1080p falls to 65 FPS, which is playable but with less headroom for dips. The minimum FPS for Ultra is not recorded, so the worst-case frame time is unknown.

At 1440p, the picture changes. Medium averages 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS, which means the system occasionally dips just below 60. High at 1440p averages 59 FPS, which is borderline. Low at 1440p hits 104 FPS, providing ample margin. For a consistent experience at 1440p, Medium is the safest choice — it offers the highest quality that still maintains a minimum above 55 FPS.

At 4K, no preset achieves a 60 FPS average. Low reaches 62 FPS, which is just above the threshold, but the lack of a recorded minimum makes this risky. Medium and High fall to 41 and 35 FPS respectively, and Ultra bottoms out at 27 FPS. For 4K gaming with this combo, the data suggests Low is the only viable preset, and even then, players must accept the possibility of sub-60 FPS dips.

The best experience per the measured rows is 1080p Medium. It offers 102 FPS average with a recorded minimum of 86 FPS, which provides a smooth, stable experience without the visual degradation of Low. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p is substantial — from 151 to 102 FPS — but the visual quality gains in a survival game like Rust, where spotting distant players and reading environmental details matter, justify the 33% FPS cost. For players with 144Hz monitors, 1080p Low at 151 FPS is also a strong option, though the rendering quality may be too sparse for competitive play.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The combo of Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 9060 ranks 1665 out of 2953 tested combinations in Rust. This places it at the 44th percentile, meaning 1288 combos perform worse and 1665 perform better. This rank is notable when compared to the components' individual synthetic percentiles. The i5-13400F sits in the 77th percentile of all CPUs based on its average benchmark score of 25292. The RX 9060 is in the 59th percentile of all GPUs with an average score of 16014.

The gap between the CPU's high percentile and the combo's middling rank suggests that Rust's performance is not purely CPU-bound. The GPU's 59th percentile ranking is closer to the combo's 44th percentile, indicating that the graphics card is the more significant limiting factor in this game. The nearest GPU rivals — the RTX 3060 Ti at -0.7% delta, the R9 370X at +1%, and the RX 7700 at +1% — all have similar synthetic scores, yet their in-game performance could differ based on driver optimization and architecture-specific features.

The combo rank of 1665 out of 2953 also implies that many combos with lower-spec GPUs or CPUs outperform this pairing in Rust specifically. This could be due to the game's engine favoring certain architectures, or it could reflect the RX 9060's relatively recent release (August 2025) meaning driver maturity is still developing. The i5-13400F's nearest rivals — the Ryzen 9 6900HS at 0% delta, Core 5 120 at -0.3%, Ryzen 5 5600X3D at -0.3%, and Ryzen 7 6800H at +0.4% — have nearly identical synthetic scores, suggesting the CPU is well-matched to its peers. The ranking's percentile position indicates that this is a mid-pack performer for Rust, not a top-tier combo despite the CPU's strong synthetic showing.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured FPS data is organized by resolution and settings preset. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 151 FPS. Medium drops to 102 FPS with a minimum of 86 and maximum of 117. High averages 86 FPS. Ultra falls to 65 FPS. No minimum or maximum values are recorded for Low, High, or Ultra at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 104 FPS. Medium averages 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 and maximum of 80. High drops to 59 FPS. Ultra averages 45 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded min/max values at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 62 FPS. Medium averages 41 FPS with a minimum of 35 and maximum of 47. High falls to 35 FPS. Ultra bottoms out at 27 FPS. Again, only Medium has recorded min/max values.

The pattern across all resolutions is consistent: the Medium preset provides the only documented frame time variance. The gap between Low and Medium is significant at every resolution: 49 FPS at 1080p (151 to 102), 34 FPS at 1440p (104 to 70), and 21 FPS at 4K (62 to 41). The gap between High and Ultra is smaller: 21 FPS at 1080p (86 to 65), 14 FPS at 1440p (59 to 45), and 8 FPS at 4K (35 to 27). This suggests that the Medium preset is where the most impactful settings changes occur, likely involving shadow quality, draw distance, or texture filtering that heavily affects the GPU's memory and shader load.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture on a 10 nm Intel process. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration, and it connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes.

In Rust, the CPU's role is critical because the game simulates a persistent world with complex physics, entity interactions, and building integrity checks. The 3DMark scores show a 16-thread score of 7314 and a max-thread score of 7307, indicating that the processor scales well up to its full thread count. However, the single-thread score of 960 and the 2-thread score of 1880 reveal that per-core performance is moderate. The PassMark single-thread score of 3634 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3191 confirm this — the i5-13400F is not a top-tier single-thread performer, which matters for Rust's game thread that handles player input, network updates, and world logic.

The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 151 FPS, which is likely close to the CPU's limit for this game. The CPU's PassMark multi-thread score of 25032 and Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22604 indicate strong overall throughput, but Rust's engine may not distribute all tasks across all 10 cores efficiently. The fact that 1080p Ultra only reaches 65 FPS — a 57% drop from Low — suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck at Ultra settings; rather, the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading units are overwhelmed by the increased visual complexity.

The CPU's 20 MB of shared L3 cache is relevant for Rust's large world data. The game frequently accesses terrain heightmaps, building block states, and entity positions, which can fit in the L3 cache if the working set is manageable. The i5-13400F's L3 size is adequate for this purpose, and the 10-core configuration provides enough parallel threads for the game's background systems, such as AI, item sorting, and environmental simulation. The benchmark data shows the CPU performs well in multi-threaded tests, but the game-specific FPS at 1080p Low (151 FPS) suggests that the per-core performance ceiling is reached before the GPU becomes limiting.

The CPU's percentile rank of 77% and its nearest rivals — all within 0.4% of its average score — indicate that it is a solid, well-rounded processor. Yet the combo's in-game rank of 1665 out of 2953 suggests that Rust's engine does not fully leverage the CPU's strengths. The gap between the CPU's synthetic performance and its game-specific contribution points to either a game engine that is not optimized for Raptor Lake's hybrid architecture or a driver overhead that hampers the RX 9060's ability to communicate with the CPU efficiently. The data cannot definitively separate these factors, but it is clear that this combo, while capable of 1440p Medium gaming at 70 FPS, does not achieve the high frame rates that the CPU's benchmark scores might predict.