Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build, a city builder from late 2023, presents an interesting stress profile for the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination. The benchmark data shows a system that scales predictably with resolution, but with notable performance cliffs at the highest settings. This pairing of an 8-core Zen 4 processor with a Blackwell GPU produces a wide performance envelope, from extremely high refresh rates at 1080p to a playable but taxed experience at 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data reveals a clear and consistent pattern of scaling from 1080p to 4K. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 194 FPS at 1920x1080 to 119.8 FPS at 2560x1440, and finally to 65 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 38% reduction when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 46% reduction when moving from 1440p to 4K. The overall drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings is 66%, indicating that the GPU becomes increasingly the limiting component as pixel count rises.

The scaling behavior changes dramatically when examining Low settings. At 1920x1080 Low, the system produces 333.5 FPS, which is an exceptionally high figure that suggests the CPU is doing heavy lifting to feed the GPU. Moving to 2560x1440 Low yields 215.9 FPS, a 35% decrease, while 3840x2160 Low produces 110 FPS, another 49% drop. The fact that 4K Low still achieves triple-digit frame rates indicates that even at high pixel counts, this combo has ample headroom when visual effects are minimal.

At Ultra settings, the scaling pattern shows the steepest penalties. The jump from 131.9 FPS at 1080p to 81.3 FPS at 1440p is a 38% reduction, consistent with the High settings trend. However, the move to 4K Ultra produces just 40.7 FPS, a 50% drop from 1440p. This suggests that the Ultra preset introduces effects that are particularly demanding on the RTX 5070's 12 GB VRAM and memory subsystem, creating a bottleneck that is more severe than the simple pixel count increase would predict.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 provides the computational foundation for this combo. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, this processor has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. The CPU's benchmark results show strong multithreaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29302 and a single-core score of 4136. These figures place the processor in the 91st percentile of all CPUs tested.

For Steamworld Build, a city builder genre that typically involves simulation logic and entity management, the processor's thread handling is relevant. The 3DMark scores show a progression from 2043 with 2 threads to 8479 with max threads, indicating good scaling up to 8 threads (6933) before plateauing. This suggests that the game can utilize multiple cores but does not require extreme thread counts, making the 7700's 16 threads more than sufficient.

The data supports the interpretation that at lower resolutions, the CPU is the primary driver of performance. The 333.5 FPS result at 1080p Low is nearly double the 4K Low result, and the gap between 1080p High (194 FPS) and 1080p Ultra (131.9 FPS) is smaller than the resolution-based gaps. This indicates that at 1080p, the Ryzen 7 7700 is capable of feeding the RTX 5070 with enough data to reach very high frame rates, and the GPU becomes the limiting factor primarily as resolution increases.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB205 chip, brings substantial graphics horsepower to this pairing. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock of 2512 MHz and 6144 shading units deliver a FP32 throughput of 30.87 TFLOPS. The card's benchmark scores include a Passmark G3D score of 29137 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5077, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs.

The VRAM capacity and bandwidth appear to play a significant role in the Ultra settings results. The drop from 85.2 FPS at 4K Medium to 40.7 FPS at 4K Ultra represents a 52% reduction, which is a much steeper penalty than the 23% reduction seen when moving from 4K High to 4K Medium. This cliff-like behavior at Ultra settings suggests that the RTX 5070's 12 GB frame buffer is being saturated by the highest quality textures and effects, forcing the memory system to work harder and reducing overall throughput.

The GPU's role becomes more dominant at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the scaling patterns. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 201.6 FPS (from 333.5 to 131.9), while at 4K the same settings gap is only 69.3 FPS (from 110 to 40.7). This compression of performance at 4K indicates that the GPU is hitting its limits regardless of settings, whereas at 1080p the CPU is more able to compensate for reduced graphics loads.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 achieves a rank of 329 out of 1730 tested combos for Steamworld Build. This places the pairing in the top 19% of all configurations tested, which is a strong showing for a mid-range processor paired with a high-end GPU.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for its contribution to this ranking. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940H scores 0.1% higher on average, while the Intel Core i9-13905H is 0.6% ahead. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is 0.5% behind, and the Intel Core Ultra 5 235T trails by 1.2%. These small deltas indicate that the Ryzen 7 7700 is performing at a level consistent with other strong processors, and that its relative position in the combo ranking is not being dragged down by CPU limitations.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a similar tight grouping. The NVIDIA Tesla M40 is 0.5% ahead on average, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580X is 0.7% ahead. The AMD Radeon Pro 5300 is 0.2% behind, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is 0.6% behind. This clustering suggests that the RTX 5070's performance in this game is well within the expected range for its class, and the combo's rank of 329 reflects a balanced pairing rather than one component significantly outperforming the other.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 333.5 FPS, which is an excellent result for competitive or high-refresh-rate play. Medium settings reduce this to 255.6 FPS, still far above typical display refresh rates. High settings yield 194 FPS, and Ultra settings produce 131.9 FPS. All 1080p results remain above 130 FPS, indicating that this resolution is well within the comfortable operating range for this combo.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows the expected scaling. Low settings achieve 215.9 FPS, Medium produces 161.2 FPS, and High delivers 119.8 FPS. Ultra settings drop to 81.3 FPS, which is still playable but represents a significant step down from the 1080p Ultra result. The gap between High and Ultra at 1440p (38.5 FPS) is larger than the gap between Medium and High (41.4 FPS), showing that the Ultra preset has a consistent performance cost.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals the most demanding scenario. Low settings maintain 110 FPS, which is impressive for 4K. Medium settings produce 85.2 FPS, and High settings yield 65 FPS. Ultra settings drop to 40.7 FPS, which is the only result below 60 FPS in the entire dataset. This 4K Ultra figure suggests that while the combo can handle 4K at lower settings, the highest quality preset requires compromises. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a 63% performance reduction, highlighting the significant cost of maximum visual fidelity at this resolution.