Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build is a city builder with a release date of 2023-11-30. The measured pair of the Intel Core i5-12400F and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is one of the strongest tested combinations in the database: it ranks 298th out of 3,706 tested combos. That high rank is not simply a product of two equally elite components, because the CPU sits in the 73rd percentile while the GPU sits in the 86th percentile. The measured frames reinforce this split: the same combo produces 310 FPS average at 1920x1080 Low and only 52 FPS average at 3840x2160 Ultra. This entry is a measured dataset rather than an estimated one, and the behavior across resolutions and presets tells a clean story about which part shoulders which load.

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

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on Alder Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 2.50 and a boost clock of 4.40, with 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3. It is built on Intel's 10 nm process and uses an LGA 1700 socket. The chip supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and the PCIe connectivity is Gen 5 with 20 lanes available from the CPU. The TDP is 65 W, and the multiplier is not unlocked.

In city builders, the CPU often has to keep track of many concurrent entities, so thread count and single-thread performance both matter. This chip shows tempered multi-thread strength in synthetic tests: 3DMark with 16 threads reaches 5,895, while the max-threads test scores 5,912. That small difference between 16-thread and max-thread results suggests only modest performance gains beyond that many threads. Single-threaded 3DMark is 909, which is high enough to drive the measured Steamworld Build results with strong frame rates. The same pattern appears in Cinebench: multi-core R23 is 8,116 and single-core R23 is 1,880. For context, the averaged synthetic benchmark score is 19,039, and the CPU is placed against CPUs such as the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS with an average score of 19,047, and the Intel Core 3 201E with 19,056. Those scores are essentially identical within the benchmark data.

In Steamworld Build specifically, the CPU never appears to be the bottleneck at 1080p. The 1920x1080 Low average is 310 FPS, which is an extremely CPU-friendly result if the simulation logic is there to support it. Even with High settings at 1080p, the average is 228 FPS, which still has plenty of CPU headroom. The CPU's 12 threads are enough to sustain these frame rates without the simulation causing a sudden collapse. The evidence from this measured dataset is that the i5-12400F is a fully competent game-leading CPU for this game even though its broader synthetic rank is only around the 73rd percentile. The 1080p Low and Medium runs are particularly telling because they leave relatively little work for the GPU and therefore expose the CPU's upper capacity.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank in Steamworld Build is 298th out of 3,706 measured combinations. That is a high placement, far ahead of where the CPU's own 73rd percentile would imply. The reason for that disparity is also visible in the measured FPS: at 1440p Medium the average is 194 FPS, at 1440p High it is 145 FPS, and at 4Kp High it is still 77 FPS. These frame rates are not the result of a steadily high CPU benchmark core; they reflect how well the CPU and GPU frames are balanced for this game.

The CPU's nearest rivals in the synthetic database are all close to each other. The AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS averages 19,087, the Intel Core i5-1335U averages 18,112, and the AMD EPYC 7773X averages 18,979. The delta for these rivals when notes are 0.0% for the Ryzen, -0.1% for the Core 7, and 0.3% for the 1335U and 7773X. Meanwhile, the RTX 4080's nearest GPU rivals are also close. The RTX 4080 SUPER has an average score of 54,209, which is only 0.1% apart from the base 4080. The AMD Radeon Pro W5700X is at 54,828 (-1.1%), and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB is at 55,698 (-2.6%). This means both CPU and GPU are surrounded by near-static close peers in the synthetic department.

What pushes the combined rank so high in Steamworld Build is the GPU's enormous raw throughput, not the CPU's average. The CPU is mid-pack at broader benchmarks, yet the measured game data put this combo in the top-10 percent of the tested 3,706 combos. That shows that Steamworld Build is playable-centered around the GPU's ability to produce higher resolution output without requiring a top-tier CPU at high frame rates.

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

Reading the measured rows from 1080p to 4Kp shows a consistent pattern. At Low settings, the average goes from 310 FPS at 1920x1080 to 253 at 2560x1440, then to 134 at 3840x2160. That is a very large drop in absolute terms, especially from 1440p to 4K. The GPU is clearly being pushed much harder at the highest resolution, and the frame rate sacrifices almost half the 1440p value when moving to 4K.

The Medium preset follows the same shape. 1920p Medium is 281 FPS, 1440p Medium is 193 FPS, and 4Kp Medium is 102 FPS. The in-game Medium data also includes min and max values: 1080p has min 239 and max 323, 1440p has min 165 and max 223, and 4Kp has min 87 and max 118. The 4Kp minimum of 87 is still above the 60 FPS threshold, but it is much closer to that threshold than the 1080p minimum.

On High settings, the same step exists: 1080p averages 228, 1440p averages 145, and 4Kp averages 77. The Ultra preset at 1080p is 154 FPS, 1440p drops to 98 FPS, and 4Kp Ultra is 52 FPS. So the only setting-and-resolution where the measured average falls below 60 is 4Kp Ultra at 52 FPS. Everything else, including 4Kp Medium, stays above 87 FPS.

The resolution scaling points directly at the GPU limiting behavior. At 1080p, the CPU is likely more involved, and the GPU has so much overhead that even Low at 1080 can produce 310 FPS. As resolution rises, the frame count elementary scales with pixel count, and the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth become the deciding factor. The 16 GB frame buffer, 225-bit bus, and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth in the RTX 4080 clearly feed such a demanding view. The CPU still has to deliver world state updates, but the measured pattern is the classic GPU-side scaling pattern for a city builder with high detail settings.

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

The following table lists every measured FPS row in the pack. For the Medium preset, the dataset also records minimum and maximum observed frames; the other rows report only the average.

| Resolution | Preset | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|---|---|---|---|---|

| 3840x2160 | High | 77 | | |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 134 | | |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 102 | 87 | 118 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 52 | | |

| 2560x1440 | High | 145 | | |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 253 | | |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 194 | 165 | 223 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 98 | | |

| 1920x1200 | High | 228 | | |

| 1920x1200 | Low | 310 | | |

| 1920x1200 | Medium | 281 | 239 | 323 |

| 1920x1200 | Ultra | 154 | | |

Notice that the 2Kp data has no recorded medium row, but the table above includes it. The ultra at 1080p shows 154 FPS, which is still much more than enough for smooth graphics, while the 4Kp Ultra averages 52 FPS. The gap between 4K Medium and 4K High is small: 102 FPS versus 77 FPS, and the ultra is even lower at 52 FPS. With 4K Low at 134 FPS, there is a viable path to 4K play if visual quality is reduced.

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

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is an Ada Lovelace GPU with 16 GB of GDDR6X memory, 256-bit bus, and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth. Its base clock is 2205 MHz and the boost clock is 2505 MHz. The shader count is 9,728, along with 304 TMUs and 112 ROPs. The Tensor Core count is 304 and RT Core count is 76. The chip's FP32 throughput is 48.74 TFLOPS, on a 5nm process from TSMC, using 45,900 million transistors on a 379 mm² die. The GPU's passmark 3D score is 34,457, and its 3D benchmark Steel Nomad result is 6,567. It ranks in the 86th percentile of all GPUs.

This level of hardware explains why even 4K Medium stays above 100 FPS in Steamworld Build. The 16 GB frame buffer is plenty for a city-building game, and the large shading engine is what decides the raw raster throughput. The 4080's measured data shows that it nearly always holds the GPU side high enough that only the Ultra 4K preset sinks below 60. The GPU’s passmark G3D score of 34,457 is in line with a card that can also sit on the RTX 4080 SUPER and a series of AMD cards, with delta values between 0.1% and -2.7%. At 4K, the 4080 is at the edge of the curve: its 4K Medium minimum is 87 FPS, 4K High average is 77, and 4K Ultra average is only 52.

The GPU-side measured numbers also explain why the 4Kp Medium setting looks extraordinarily comfortable. With 4K Medium at an average of 102 FPS and a measured min of 87, the card has headroom for a typical city builder. The same card at 1440p shoots to 98 FPS on Ultra, meaning only 4Kp combined