Rust

Rust presents an unusual challenge for high-end hardware because its performance profile does not follow the typical patterns seen in most modern games. This analysis uses measured data from the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 to examine how this combination handles the game across resolutions and settings. The data set includes twelve distinct measurement points, combining four quality presets with three common resolutions, providing a comprehensive view of the system's behavior.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a significant dependency on the resolution, but with an interesting caveat. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 269 FPS, which drops to 219 FPS at 1440p and further to 129 FPS at 4K. This represents a 52% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is a substantial drop but not as severe as what would be observed in a purely GPU-bound scenario where the pixel count quadruples.

The Medium preset tells a similar story, with 214 FPS at 1080p, 147 FPS at 1440p, and 87 FPS at 4K. The scaling here shows a 59% reduction from the lowest to highest resolution. Interestingly, the High preset shows the most dramatic scaling, going from 180 FPS at 1080p to 124 FPS at 1440p and finally to 73 FPS at 4K, representing a 59% drop as well. The Ultra preset shows the smallest absolute numbers, with 137 FPS at 1080p, 94 FPS at 1440p, and 56 FPS at 4K, a 59% reduction.

The consistency of these scaling patterns across presets suggests that Rust's rendering engine scales predictably with resolution, but the limiting component shifts depending on the settings. At Low settings, the system is clearly capable of producing extremely high frame rates, indicating that neither the CPU nor the GPU is being fully taxed at 1080p. The 269 FPS at Low 1080p suggests the CPU is still able to feed the GPU efficiently, but the scaling to 129 FPS at 4K Low shows the GPU beginning to take on more of the load.

The data indicates that at 4K resolution, the RTX 4090 becomes the primary limiting factor, particularly at higher quality presets where the average FPS drops below 60. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is substantial, with 129 FPS versus 56 FPS, a 73 FPS gap that highlights how much the quality settings affect the GPU workload. At 1080p, the same comparison shows a 132 FPS gap between Low and Ultra, suggesting that the CPU is able to maintain high frame rates even with the increased GPU load from higher settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate achievable with this hardware combination?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 269, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This indicates the system has substantial headroom at lower resolutions and settings.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to the 1080p Low performance?

A: The 4K Ultra setting produces an average of 56 FPS, while 1080p Low produces 269 FPS. This represents a 213 FPS difference, showing the extreme range of performance depending on configuration.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 capable of maintaining 60 FPS at 4K in Rust?

A: The data shows that at 4K with Medium settings, the average FPS is 87, which exceeds 60. However, at 4K Ultra, the average drops to 56 FPS, falling below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at 1440p Medium?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the system averages 147 FPS with a minimum of 125 FPS and a maximum of 169 FPS. This relatively narrow range suggests stable performance.

Q: How much performance is gained by lowering settings from Ultra to Low at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the average FPS increases from 137 at Ultra to 269 at Low, representing a 132 FPS improvement, which nearly doubles the frame rate.

Q: Does the system show better scaling from 1080p to 1440p or from 1440p to 4K?

A: From 1080p to 1440p at High settings, the FPS drops from 180 to 124, a 56 FPS reduction. From 1440p to 4K, it drops from 124 to 73, a 51 FPS reduction, showing similar scaling steps between resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured data, the optimal experience depends heavily on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For players using a 1080p display, the High preset at 180 FPS provides an excellent balance between visual quality and performance, while the Medium preset at 214 FPS offers additional headroom for competitive play. The Ultra preset at 137 FPS is still highly playable and provides the best visual fidelity, but the performance difference between High and Ultra may not justify the visual upgrade for all users.

At 1440p, the Medium preset stands out as the recommended choice, delivering 147 FPS with a minimum of 125 FPS. This provides smooth gameplay with good visual quality. The High preset at 124 FPS is also viable, but the Medium preset's higher average and better minimum frame rate make it the safer option for maintaining consistent performance. The Ultra preset at 94 FPS is acceptable for those prioritizing visuals, but the 53 FPS gap between Medium and Ultra is substantial.

For 4K gaming, the Medium preset at 87 FPS is the clear recommendation, as it maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS while providing decent visual quality. The High preset at 73 FPS is still playable and offers improved visuals, but the Ultra preset at 56 FPS falls below the 60 FPS threshold and may result in noticeable stuttering on displays with high refresh rates. The Low preset at 129 FPS is excessive for most 4K displays and sacrifices too much visual quality.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination ranks 61st out of 2953 tested combinations in Rust. This places the combo in the top 2% of all tested systems, indicating exceptional overall performance. The CPU's percentile ranking of 90 out of 100 versus all CPUs suggests it outperforms the vast majority of processors, while the GPU's percentile ranking of 88 shows similar dominance among graphics cards.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for its performance level. The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G scores 0.4% lower, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 scores 0.5% lower, the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H scores 0.6% higher, and the Intel Core i5-14600K scores 0.8% higher. These very small deltas indicate that the Core Ultra 5 245 is positioned in a tightly contested performance band, with differences of less than 1% among its closest competitors.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a wider variance. The Intel Arc Pro A60 matches the RTX 4090's score exactly, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 scores 0.3% higher, the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M scores 2.5% higher, and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 scores 2.9% higher. These comparisons are based on average benchmark scores rather than Rust-specific performance, so the actual in-game results may differ from these synthetic benchmarks.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 brings substantial specifications to this test, featuring 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing 1.01 TB/s of memory bandwidth. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz, and the memory runs at 1313 MHz with 21 Gbps effective speed. These specifications establish the RTX 4090 as an extremely capable graphics processor, with its 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate.

The 24 GB VRAM capacity is far beyond what Rust requires, as the game's system requirements do not approach this memory usage level. The measured frame rates show that the GPU is not VRAM-limited at any resolution or setting, as even the highest quality presets at 4K maintain playable frame rates. The GPU's role as the primary limiting factor becomes evident at 4K resolution, where the average FPS drops from 129 at Low to 56 at Ultra, demonstrating the GPU's workload scaling with quality settings.

The RTX 4090's performance in Rust appears to be constrained by the game's engine rather than the GPU's raw capabilities. The fact that 4K Ultra produces only 56 FPS despite the GPU's massive compute resources suggests that Rust may not fully utilize the GPU's architectural features. The GPU's 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are likely underutilized in this game, as Rust does not heavily implement ray tracing or DLSS features that would leverage these components.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates. The Low preset achieves an average of 269 FPS, the Medium preset reaches 214 FPS with a minimum of 182 and maximum of 246, the High preset produces 180 FPS, and the Ultra preset yields 137 FPS. These numbers show that at 1080p, even the most demanding preset maintains a frame rate well above typical display refresh rates.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows clear scaling. The Low preset averages 219 FPS, the Medium preset averages 147 FPS with a minimum of 125 and maximum of 169, the High preset averages 124 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 94 FPS. The 1440p Medium settings provide the best balance of the measured points, with a minimum frame rate that stays above 120 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the GPU workload becomes more significant. The Low preset averages 129 FPS, the Medium preset averages 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 and maximum of 100, the High preset averages 73 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 56 FPS. The 4K results show that the High and Ultra presets fall below the 90 FPS threshold that many high-refresh-rate 4K displays target, while the Medium preset maintains a playable experience.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 features 14 cores and 14 threads, operating at a base clock of 3.50 GHz with a boost clock of 5.10 GHz. This Arrow Lake architecture processor is built on a 3 nm process node and supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration, providing 102.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The CPU's 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB per-core L2 cache contribute to its processing capabilities.

In Rust, the CPU's role is particularly important due to the game's simulation and entity processing requirements. The measured frame rates at 1080p Low (269 FPS) demonstrate that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough data to achieve very high frame rates. The CPU's single-core performance, indicated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4648, is crucial for Rust's main thread operations, which often become the bottleneck in survival games with complex world interactions.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities, shown by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32924, provide headroom for the game's background processing tasks. The PassMark multithread score of 38706 and single-thread score of 4394 further confirm the processor's balanced performance profile. The CPU's 90th percentile ranking versus all CPUs suggests it outperforms the vast majority of processors in general benchmarks, which translates to strong performance in Rust's CPU-dependent scenarios.

The fact that frame rates at 1080p Low (269 FPS) are nearly double those at 4K Low (129 FPS) indicates that the CPU is not the primary limiting factor at lower resolutions, as the GPU's workload increases with resolution. However, the CPU's performance does cap the maximum achievable frame rate, as evidenced by the relatively modest scaling from 1440p to 1080p at Low settings (219 to 269 FPS, a 23% increase despite a 56% pixel reduction).