Steamworld Build

Settings Recommendations

For Steamworld Build, the measured data clearly indicates that the Medium preset delivers the most balanced experience across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, Medium produces an average of 172 FPS, which is 43 FPS higher than High and 85 FPS higher than Ultra, while remaining playable at 4K with 58 FPS. The Medium preset also offers the only complete FPS range data in the pack, with a minimum of 49 FPS at 4K and a maximum of 198 FPS at 1080p, suggesting consistent frame delivery.

The High preset is a strong alternative for users prioritizing visual fidelity over raw frame rate. It achieves 129 FPS at 1080p and 82 FPS at 1440p, both comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. However, at 4K, High drops to 43 FPS, which may feel sluggish for a city builder where camera panning and zooming are frequent. The Ultra preset is difficult to recommend: it yields only 87 FPS at 1080p, 55 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K — the latter being below standard playability.

The Low preset offers the highest frame rates — 225 FPS at 1080p, 143 FPS at 1440p, and 76 FPS at 4K — but for a game centered on visual management of a bustling town, the graphical compromise is likely too steep. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot: it provides 58 FPS at 4K (nearly matching High's 1440p performance) while delivering 110 FPS at 1440p and 172 FPS at 1080p. Given the genre's reliance on reading small UI elements and building details, Medium's balance of clarity and speed makes it the optimal choice for this hardware combination.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Steamworld Build with this CPU-GPU combo?

A: Based on the measured data, 1440p with Medium settings offers the best experience. It delivers 110 FPS average with a minimum of 93 FPS, providing a smooth and visually detailed experience. 4K is playable only on Low (76 FPS) or Medium (58 FPS), while 1080p is overkill for this hardware, exceeding 172 FPS on Medium.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K?

A: The frame rate drop varies by setting. On Medium, the average drops from 172 FPS at 1080p to 110 FPS at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 58 FPS at 4K (a 47% reduction from 1440p). On High, the drop is from 129 FPS to 82 FPS to 43 FPS, with the 4K figure being only 33% of the 1080p value.

Q: Is the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM sufficient for this game?

A: The data shows no VRAM-related failures or crashes at any settings or resolution. The GPU's 8 GB GDDR6 memory with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth appears adequate for Steamworld Build's demands, as even Ultra at 4K produces measurable results (29 FPS), indicating the game loads and runs rather than hitting a memory ceiling.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: No. The Intel Core i5-13400F with 10 cores and 16 threads, boosting to 4.60 GHz, provides ample headroom. The 3DMark max-thread score of 7307 and PassMark multithread score of 25032 indicate strong multi-core performance that city builders often require. The GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the FPS scaling with resolution changes.

Q: What FPS can I expect at 1080p Ultra settings?

A: The measured average is 87 FPS. This is well above the 60 FPS target, but notably lower than the 129 FPS on High and 172 FPS on Medium. The jump from High to Ultra costs 42 FPS (a 33% reduction), suggesting Ultra applies expensive effects without proportional visual gains.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combination ranks 1992 out of 3706 tested combos, placing it in the upper-mid tier. This ranking aligns with the CPU's 77th percentile and GPU's 61st percentile, indicating that the processor is relatively stronger than the graphics card for this title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is the primary performance driver in Steamworld Build, particularly at higher resolutions. The GPU's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game's asset streaming at 4K. The boost clock of 2460 MHz, built on the 5 nm Ada Lovelace architecture with 3072 shading units, produces 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The measured PassMark G3D score of 19545 places this GPU at the 61st percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Radeon 780M (delta +0.3%) and AMD Radeon Pro 560 (delta +0.5%).

The GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the RTX 4060 delivers 225 FPS on Low but drops to 87 FPS on Ultra — a 61% reduction. At 4K, the spread narrows: 76 FPS on Low versus 29 FPS on Ultra, a 62% reduction. The data indicates that Ultra settings impose a consistent performance penalty of roughly 60% relative to Low, regardless of resolution. This suggests the Ultra preset introduces compute-heavy effects (likely advanced shadows or post-processing) that scale with pixel count, taxing the GPU's 15.11 TFLOPS capability.

The GPU's 48 ROPs and 96 TMUs provide a pixel rate of 118.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 236.2 GTexel/s. For a city builder with dense on-screen geometry and numerous small objects, the texture rate is more critical than pixel throughput. The 236.2 GTexel/s handles the game's detailed building textures well, as evidenced by the playable 4K Medium result of 58 FPS. The GPU's 24 RT cores are present but Steamworld Build does not appear to leverage ray tracing significantly, as the performance gaps between settings are consistent with traditional rasterization loads.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the RTX 4060 paired with the Core i5-13400F produces a wide range of results. The Low preset achieves 225 FPS average — the highest figure in the entire dataset. The Medium preset delivers 172 FPS with a minimum of 147 FPS and maximum of 198 FPS, showing excellent frame consistency with only a 51 FPS spread. The High preset drops to 129 FPS, while Ultra falls to 87 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 138 FPS reduction (61%), which is substantial but leaves even Ultra well above the 60 FPS threshold.

At 1440p, the results scale predictably. Low averages 143 FPS, Medium 110 FPS (min 93, max 126), High 82 FPS, and Ultra 55 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 93 FPS is noteworthy — it stays above 90 FPS even during demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 55 FPS dips below 60, which is marginal for a genre where camera movement can cause noticeable stutter. The data shows a 88 FPS spread from Low to Ultra at this resolution, a slightly smaller absolute difference than at 1080p.

At 4K, the performance envelope tightens considerably. Low averages 76 FPS, Medium 58 FPS (min 49, max 67), High 43 FPS, and Ultra 29 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 49 FPS is concerning for fast camera pans, but the 58 FPS average is playable. High and Ultra fall below the 60 FPS target, with Ultra at 29 FPS being effectively unplayable. The Low preset at 76 FPS is the only 4K option that maintains comfortable headroom. The 47 FPS spread from Low to Ultra at 4K is narrower in absolute terms than at lower resolutions, but the percentage reduction (62%) remains consistent.

The data reveals an interesting pattern: the gap between Medium and High is consistent across resolutions. At 1080p, Medium is 43 FPS faster than High (172 vs 129); at 1440p, the gap is 28 FPS (110 vs 82); at 4K, it is 15 FPS (58 vs 43). This suggests that the High preset's additional graphical features impose a roughly 25-33% performance cost over Medium, regardless of resolution. The jump from High to Ultra is even steeper: 42 FPS at 1080p, 27 FPS at 1440p, and 14 FPS at 4K, representing a 33-35% reduction.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals that Steamworld Build is primarily GPU-limited at higher resolutions for this hardware combination. On the Medium preset, the average FPS progression is 172 (1080p) → 110 (1440p) → 58 (4K). This represents a 36% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 47% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 66%, which is close to the theoretical pixel count increase (4x), indicating that the GPU is scaling with resolution as expected.

On the Low preset, the scaling is 225 → 143 → 76 FPS. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 36%, identical to Medium, but the 1440p to 4K drop is 47%, also matching Medium. This consistency across presets suggests that the limiting factor transitions smoothly from CPU-bound at low resolutions to GPU-bound at high resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 225 FPS figure is likely near the CPU's maximum frame delivery capability, given the Core i5-13400F's single-thread score of 960 in 3DMark and 3634 in PassMark.

The High preset shows a similar pattern: 129 → 82 → 43 FPS. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 36%, and the 1440p to 4K drop is 48%. The Ultra preset scales as 87 → 55 → 29 FPS, with a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 47% drop to 4K. The uniform 36-37% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings is notable — it aligns with the pixel count increase of 1.78x, suggesting the GPU is the bottleneck even at 1080p. If the CPU were the limiter, lower resolutions would show flatter scaling.

The 1440p to 4K drop of 47-48% across all presets is slightly less than the 2.25x pixel increase, indicating that other factors (CPU draw call overhead, memory bandwidth) begin to mitigate the GPU load at 4K. The RTX 4060's 272.0 GB/s bandwidth is likely the secondary constraint at 4K, as the 8 GB VRAM capacity is not exceeded (no data indicates memory pressure). The data suggests that for this game, the RTX 4060 is the primary bottleneck at all resolutions above 1080p, with the CPU only becoming relevant at very high frame rates (above 200 FPS).

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F plays a supportive but crucial role in Steamworld Build, a genre that demands consistent simulation updates alongside rendering. This 10-core, 16-thread processor from the Raptor Lake generation operates at a base clock of 2.50 GHz and boosts to 4.60 GHz. Its architecture features an 80 KB L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache, providing ample fast storage for game logic. The CPU's benchmark scores confirm its capability: Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 22604, while single-core hits 3191. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7314 closely matches the max-thread score of 7307, indicating that the 10-core configuration scales well without significant thread contention.

In Steamworld Build, the CPU's role is most evident at lower resolutions where the GPU is not saturated. At 1080p Low, the 225 FPS result likely approaches the CPU's frame generation limit. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1880 suggests that the game may not heavily utilize all 16 threads, as city builders often rely on a few primary simulation threads. The PassMark physics score of 1437 and single-thread score of 3634 indicate strong per-core performance, which is more important for game simulation than raw multi-thread throughput.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 77th among all CPUs places it above the GPU's 61st percentile, confirming that the processor is not the performance bottleneck in this system. The nearest CPU rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (delta 0%), Intel Core 5 120 (delta -0.3%), and AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (delta 0.4%). These comparisons show that the i5-13400F performs essentially at parity with these mobile and desktop parts, with a maximum delta of 0.4%. This tight grouping reinforces that the CPU delivers consistent, predictable performance for this game.

At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes. The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K are consistent across all settings (36-37% for the first step, 47-48% for the second), indicating that the GPU is the limiting factor. If the CPU were the constraint, we would expect smaller FPS differences at 4K, where the GPU takes longer to render each frame. The data shows the opposite: the RTX 4060's performance scales almost linearly with pixel count, confirming the CPU keeps up with the GPU's demands even at 4K Ultra (29 FPS), where frame times are over 34 milliseconds.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory (dual-channel) provide flexibility for system builders, though the measured FPS data does not distinguish between memory types. The 20 MB L3 cache is particularly beneficial for the game's simulation data, which may involve frequent access to building states and pathfinding information. The processor's 16 PCIe Gen 5 lanes (CPU only) ensure the RTX 4060 (which uses PCIe 4.0 x8) has sufficient bandwidth, though the GPU's bus interface does not saturate the available lanes in this game context. In summary, the Core i5-13400F provides a strong foundation that allows the RTX 4060 to perform at its full potential, with no evidence of CPU-induced framerate limitations in the measured data.