Steamworld Build

FAQ

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 7900X posts an average benchmark score of 53,288, placing it 0.2% ahead of the AMD EPYC 7313P (53,206) and 0.6% ahead of the Intel Xeon 634 (52,974). Conversely, it trails the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 by 0.3% (53,469) and the Intel Core i7-14700F by 0.6% (53,620). These deltas are minuscule, indicating performance parity within a 1% band.

Q: What is the Intel Arc B570's standing relative to GPUs with similar average scores?

A: The Arc B570 achieves an average benchmark score of 20,556, which sits 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20,534) and 0.4% above the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20,480). It is 0.1% below the Intel Arc A750 (20,582) and 0.5% below the AMD Radeon R9 M390X (20,662). The GPU holds a 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs.

Q: Which resolution and settings combination yields the highest average frame rate for this combo?

A: The highest measured average is 162 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is followed by 124 FPS at 1920x1080 with Medium settings, then 103 FPS at 2560x1440 with Low settings. The lowest average is 21 FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.

Q: Does the Arc B570 provide a playable frame rate at 4K with High settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with High settings, the measured average FPS is 31. This is below the 40 FPS threshold typically associated with smooth gameplay, suggesting that 4K High is not ideal for this setup. The 4K Low preset achieves 55 FPS, which is more viable.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 7900X perform in multithreaded versus single-threaded workloads?

A: In Cinebench R23, the CPU scores 29,300 in multicore and 2,016.5 in singlecore. The multicore result is roughly 14.5 times higher than the singlecore score, reflecting the benefit of 12 cores and 24 threads. In Geekbench, the multicore score is 19,267 versus 2,617 singlecore, a ratio of about 7.4 times.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among all tested combinations for Steamworld Build?

A: This specific pairing of AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Intel Arc B570 ranks 2,320 out of 2,924 total tested combos in the game. This places it in the lower-middle portion of the performance distribution, indicating that many other CPU-GPU pairings deliver better results.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data reveals a clear hierarchy across presets and resolutions. For 1920x1080, the jump from Low to Medium reduces average FPS from 162 to 124, a 23% drop, but the visual quality gain is typically substantial. High at 1080p delivers 93 FPS, while Ultra drops to 63 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p offers the best balance, with an average of 124 FPS and a minimum of 106 FPS, ensuring consistent smoothness without the steep cost of High or Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low yields 103 FPS, Medium 79 FPS (with a minimum of 67), and High 59 FPS. Ultra falls to 40 FPS. Here, Medium is again the sweet spot: 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS floor provides a comfortable margin for a city builder where frame pacing matters during zoom and pan. High at 59 FPS is playable but closer to the edge for demanding scenes.

For 3840x2160, the data suggests a different approach. Low produces 55 FPS, Medium 42 FPS (35 minimum), High 31 FPS, and Ultra 21 FPS. Only Low achieves a stable 55 FPS average; Medium dips to 35 FPS minimum, which can feel choppy. Given the genre's reliance on readability, the 4K Low preset is the only sensible choice for 4K displays, as it maintains playability while sacrificing some visual fidelity. Alternatively, the 1440p Medium preset is recommended for most users, as it provides a high-quality image with robust performance.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its 64 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth (Dual-channel DDR5) equip it for heavy multithreaded workloads. In synthetic tests, the CPU scores 29,300 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 19,267 in Geekbench multicore, showing strong scaling from its core count.

In Steamworld Build, a city builder that simulates many entities, the CPU's role is critical. The game's logic—resource management, citizen pathfinding, and production chains—often bottlenecks on processor throughput. The Ryzen 9 7900X's 12 cores provide ample headroom for such tasks, as indicated by its 3DMark 16-thread score of 10,972 versus 7,798 for 8 threads. This scaling suggests that additional threads beyond 8 still yield meaningful gains, which is beneficial for complex simulations.

However, the measured FPS data shows a notable dependence on GPU settings, not just CPU power. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 162 FPS, but at 1080p Ultra, it drops to 63 FPS. This 61% decrease is primarily driven by GPU load, not CPU limits. The CPU's single-thread performance (2,016.5 in Cinebench R23 singlecore) is sufficient to feed the Arc B570 at high frame rates, as evidenced by the 162 FPS Low result. The data implies that the CPU is not the primary limiter in most scenarios; instead, the GPU becomes the binding constraint at higher settings and resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

This pairing of Ryzen 9 7900X and Intel Arc B570 ranks 2,320 out of 2,924 tested combos in Steamworld Build, placing it in the 21st percentile of all configurations. This is a low standing, suggesting that the combo struggles relative to the broader field. Given the CPU's high percentile ranking (91st among all CPUs), the bottleneck is almost certainly the GPU, which sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs.

The rank implies that many other CPUs paired with stronger GPUs outperform this setup. For instance, a CPU like the Intel Core i7-14700F (which scores 0.6% higher than the Ryzen 9 7900X in average benchmarks) would likely rank better if paired with a more powerful GPU. The data indicates that this combo's performance is limited by the Arc B570's capabilities, especially at higher resolutions where the GPU's 10 GB VRAM and 160-bit bus become limiting factors.

In practical terms, the combo's rank of 2,320/2,924 means that users are likely to experience suboptimal frame rates in demanding scenarios. The 4K Ultra result of 21 FPS and 4K High of 31 FPS are below playable thresholds for most users. Even at 1440p Ultra, the 40 FPS average is marginal. This rank signals that the combo is better suited for 1080p or 1440p Medium/Low settings, where it can achieve playable frame rates, but it cannot compete with higher-tier GPU pairings.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570, based on the Xe2-HPG architecture (Battlemage), features 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, delivering 380.0 GB/s bandwidth. Its boost clock is 2500 MHz, and it has 2304 shading units. The GPU's synthetic scores include a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,649 and a Passmark G3D score of 14,195, placing it at the 65th percentile among all GPUs.

In Steamworld Build, the GPU's role becomes dominant at higher settings and resolutions. The data shows a clear progression: at 1080p Low, the Arc B570 delivers 162 FPS, but at 1080p Ultra, it drops to 63 FPS—a 61% reduction. This indicates that the GPU's shading units (2304) and texture units (144) are heavily taxed by Ultra settings, which likely increase draw calls, shadow quality, and post-processing effects.

The GPU's memory subsystem also plays a role. With 10 GB VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth, the Arc B570 can handle 1080p and 1440p textures without issue, but 4K Ultra may exceed its capacity, causing the 21 FPS result. The 160-bit bus is narrower than many competitors, which can limit performance in memory-intensive scenes. The data suggests that the GPU is the primary bottleneck for this combo, as the CPU's strong multithreaded performance cannot compensate for the GPU's limits at high settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo achieves:

• Low: 162 FPS average
• Medium: 124 FPS average (106 minimum, 143 maximum)
• High: 93 FPS average
• Ultra: 63 FPS average

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 103 FPS average
• Medium: 79 FPS average (67 minimum, 91 maximum)
• High: 59 FPS average
• Ultra: 40 FPS average

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 55 FPS average
• Medium: 42 FPS average (35 minimum, 48 maximum)
• High: 31 FPS average
• Ultra: 21 FPS average

These numbers reveal a consistent pattern: each step up in settings costs roughly 20-30% of the previous frame rate. For example, at 1440p, moving from Low to Medium drops from 103 to 79 FPS (23% decrease), Medium to High from 79 to 59 (25% decrease), and High to Ultra from 59 to 40 (32% decrease). At 4K, the decreases are steeper in relative terms: Low to Medium is a 24% drop (55 to 42), Medium to High is 26% (42 to 31), and High to Ultra is 32% (31 to 21).

The minimum and maximum FPS data for Medium settings show a range of 37 FPS at 1080p (106 to 143), 24 FPS at 1440p (67 to 91), and 13 FPS at 4K (35 to 48). This indicates that the game's frame pacing becomes more stable at lower resolutions, while 4K introduces more variance, likely due to GPU load spikes.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is stark and nonlinear. At Low settings, 1080p yields 162 FPS, 1440p yields 103 FPS (36% drop), and 4K yields 55 FPS (66% drop from 1080p). At Medium, the progression is 124 → 79 → 42 FPS, a 36% drop to 1440p and a 66% drop to 4K. At High, it's 93 → 59 → 31 FPS, with a 37% drop to 1440p and a 67% drop to 4K. At Ultra, it's 63 → 40 → 21 FPS, a 37% drop to 1440p and a 67% drop to 4K.

The consistent ~36% drop from 1080p to 1440p and ~66% drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings suggests that the scaling is resolution-bound rather than settings-bound. This is a classic sign of GPU limitation: as pixel count increases (2.25x from 1080p to 1440p, 4x from 1080p to 4K), the GPU's fill rate and shading throughput become the limiting factor. The Arc B570's pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s are insufficient to maintain frame rates at higher resolutions.

The data implies that the CPU is not the primary limiter in resolution scaling. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p to be smaller than the drop from 1440p to 4K, as the CPU load would saturate at lower resolutions. Instead, the uniform ~36% and ~66% drops indicate that the GPU is consistently the constraining component, regardless of settings. This aligns with the combo's low rank (2,320/2,924): the Ryzen 9 7900X has ample headroom, but the Arc B570 cannot keep pace at higher resolutions, making this combo best suited for 1080p or 1440p Medium/Low gameplay.