Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build is a city builder that scales surprisingly hard with resolution and settings, and this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-12400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 produces a wide spread of frame rates. The measured data shows that at 1080p, the combo is capable of pushing well past 300 FPS on Low settings, but at 4K Ultra, the average drops to just 57 FPS. This indicates a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s 6 cores and 12 threads are more than sufficient to feed the graphics card at lower resolutions. For a genre that often involves zooming out and managing dense populations, the performance headroom here is substantial, though the 4K Ultra results suggest that even a top-tier GPU like the RTX 5080 can be brought to its knees by this title’s most demanding preset.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate deltas across resolutions tell a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. Moving from 1080p High to 1440p High, the average FPS drops from 241.6 to 150.4, a reduction of roughly 38%. Scaling further to 4K High, the average falls to 81.4, which is another 46% drop from the 1440p figure. This steep decline as resolution increases points directly at the GPU as the primary limiting factor; the RTX 5080’s 16 GB of GDDR7 memory and 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth are being taxed heavily by the higher pixel counts. The pattern is consistent across all settings presets. On Low settings, the drop from 1080p to 4K is from 307.6 FPS down to 143 FPS, still a massive 54% reduction. The data suggests that at 1080p and even 1440p, the CPU is able to keep up with the GPU’s output, but at 4K, the sheer pixel workload overwhelms the graphics card, making resolution scaling the dominant factor in performance degradation. The 165.6 FPS at 1080p Ultra versus 57 FPS at 4K Ultra shows a 65% performance loss, confirming that this game’s Ultra preset combined with 4K is an extremely heavy load.

GPU Role

The RTX 5080 is the star of this show, and its specifications directly explain the measured results. With a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz, the card has substantial raw compute power, evidenced by its 56.28 TFLOPS FP32 performance. The 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is crucial for a city builder that likely needs to stream in large amounts of texture data as the player pans across a sprawling metropolis. The benchmark results show that the GPU’s performance scales predictably with settings. At 1440p, the jump from Low to Medium yields an increase from 263.5 to 202.6 FPS, but moving to High drops it to 150.4 FPS, and Ultra cuts it down to 101.1 FPS. This non-linear scaling suggests that the Ultra preset introduces effects that are particularly taxing, likely related to shadow quality or draw distance. The GPU’s 89th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59188, places it well above the Intel Arc A580, which scores 57756 with a deltaPct of 2.5%. This indicates that the RTX 5080 is a high-end part, but even its power is not enough to brute-force 4K Ultra in this game.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the ideal settings depend heavily on the target resolution and refresh rate. For 4K displays, the High preset at 81.4 FPS is the sweet spot, providing a playable experience that is above the 60 FPS threshold, while the Ultra preset at 57 FPS dips below it, making High the better choice for smooth gameplay. The Medium preset at 109.7 FPS is also viable, but the visual fidelity loss may not be worth the extra frames. At 1440p, the High preset at 150.4 FPS is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors, and even Ultra at 101.1 FPS is perfectly playable. However, the data suggests that Medium at 202.6 FPS offers a massive frame rate advantage over High with only a moderate visual downgrade, making it the best choice for competitive or extremely smooth play. At 1080p, the situation is reversed; the CPU becomes more of a factor, and the Low preset at 307.6 FPS shows that the i5-12400F can push the GPU to its limits. For most users at 1080p, the High preset at 241.6 FPS is more than enough, and Ultra at 165.6 FPS still offers a high frame rate. The recommendation is to prioritize High settings at 4K, Medium or High at 1440p, and High at 1080p, as these presets offer the best balance of visual quality and performance based on the measured data.

How This Combo Ranks

In the grand scheme of tested hardware combinations, this pairing of the i5-12400F and RTX 5080 holds a combo rank of 86 out of 1730 tested combos for Steamworld Build. This places it in the top 5% of all configurations, which is a strong showing. The rank reflects that while the CPU is a mid-range part, the GPU’s sheer power compensates for any potential CPU limitations. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 19221 places it at the 77th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rival being the Intel Core i7-8700K, which scores 19210 with a deltaPct of 0.1%. This means the i5-12400F is essentially on par with that older i7 in synthetic benchmarks, despite having fewer threads. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 59188 puts it at the 89th percentile, and its nearest rival is the Intel Arc Pro A60, which scores 60326 with a deltaPct of -1.9%, meaning the RTX 5080 is slightly below that workstation card in raw compute, but the gaming performance in this title is clearly strong. The combination of a 77th percentile CPU and an 89th percentile GPU yields a top-5% combo rank, indicating that the system is well-balanced for this game, with the GPU being the dominant contributor to the high ranking.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its 18 MB of shared L3 cache and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory make it a flexible choice. In Steamworld Build, the CPU’s role is to handle the game’s simulation logic, including population dynamics, resource management, and pathfinding. The measured FPS data suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the average FPS of 307.6 is likely near the maximum that the game engine can produce, indicating that the CPU can keep up with the GPU’s output. However, at 4K Ultra, the FPS drops to 57, which is almost certainly a GPU limitation, not a CPU one. The CPU’s benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16518 and a single-core score of 2332, show that it has solid multi-threaded performance for its class. The data implies that while the i5-12400F is not the fastest CPU on the market, it has enough headroom to feed the RTX 5080 in this game, particularly at 1440p and below. The fact that the combo rank is 86 out of 1730 suggests that the CPU is not holding the GPU back significantly, as many higher-ranked combos likely feature more powerful CPUs, but the i5-12400F still delivers excellent results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Examining the exact measured FPS values provides a complete picture of performance. At 1920x1080, the average FPS across settings is as follows: Low produces 307.6 FPS, Medium produces 282.5 FPS, High produces 241.6 FPS, and Ultra produces 165.6 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 142 FPS, showing the significant cost of the highest preset. At 2560x1440, the numbers are 263.5 FPS for Low, 202.6 FPS for Medium, 150.4 FPS for High, and 101.1 FPS for Ultra. The drop from 1080p High to 1440p High is 91.2 FPS, which is a substantial 38% loss, highlighting the resolution’s impact. At 3840x2160, the performance takes a major hit: Low yields 143 FPS, Medium yields 109.7 FPS, High yields 81.4 FPS, and Ultra yields 57 FPS. The difference between 1440p Ultra and 4K Ultra is 44.1 FPS, a 44% drop. Across all resolutions, the data shows a consistent pattern: the Medium preset offers a significant jump over Low, but the High and Ultra presets incur increasingly heavy penalties. The 4K Ultra result of 57 FPS is the only measured point below 60 FPS, making it the only truly demanding scenario for this hardware. The 1080p Low result of 307.6 FPS is the highest recorded, indicating that the game is capable of extremely high frame rates when the GPU is not the limiting factor.