Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build, a city builder released in late 2023, presents a distinct workload that diverges sharply from typical first-person shooters or action titles. The benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-14600K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 reveals a configuration that is heavily influenced by simulation logic and object count, rather than raw polygon pushing. This analysis examines the measured FPS across resolutions and settings to delineate the roles of the CPU and GPU, and to contextualize the combo's performance against other tested systems.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate for this combo at 1080p with High settings?

A: The Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 combination delivers an average of 136.1 FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings.

Q: How does the RTX 5060's synthetic benchmark score compare to its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT?

A: The RTX 5060 has an average benchmark score of 30109, which is effectively identical to the RX 7700 XT's score of 30097, showing a delta of 0%.

Q: What is the performance delta between the i5-14600K and its closest competitor, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X?

A: The i5-14600K's average benchmark score is 49166, which is 0.2% higher than the Ryzen 9 5950X's score of 49062.

Q: At what resolution and settings does this combo fail to maintain a 60 FPS average?

A: The combination drops below the 60 FPS threshold at 3840x2160 (4K) with Ultra settings, producing an average of 31.9 FPS. It also falls short at 4K High settings, yielding 48.4 FPS.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the average frame rate drops from 149.3 FPS on Low settings to 60.6 FPS on Ultra settings, a significant reduction driven by increased graphical load.

Q: Where does this specific CPU and GPU pairing rank among all tested combinations in this game?

A: The combo ranks 831st out of 1730 tested combinations, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture and features 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its compute capabilities are defined by 3840 shading units and a boost clock of 2497 MHz, yielding a FP32 performance of 19.18 TFLOPS. In Steamworld Build, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution and graphical fidelity rise. The data shows a clear progression: at 1080p Low, the system produces 237.3 FPS, but this falls to 94.0 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This pattern indicates that even at lower resolutions, the GPU is not entirely idle, but its load scales considerably with settings.

The RTX 5060's performance relative to its peers is notable. Its average benchmark score of 30109 places it in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs, and it is precisely matched with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, which scores 30097. This indicates that the two cards offer nearly identical raw compute potential. However, the game's behavior at 4K resolution underscores the GPU's limitations. At 3840x2160, the average FPS drops to 48.4 on High settings and plummets to 31.9 on Ultra. This steep decline suggests that the 8 GB VRAM capacity and the memory bandwidth become constraining factors at this resolution, as the GPU struggles to manage the increased texture and geometry data required by the city-building simulation's dense scenes. The transition from Medium (64.1 FPS) to Ultra (31.9 FPS) at 4K represents a halving of performance, highlighting the exponential cost of the highest visual fidelity settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core processor with 20 threads, utilizing a hybrid architecture with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. It features 24 MB of shared L3 cache and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. In the context of Steamworld Build, a genre that often relies on single-threaded simulation logic, the CPU's high boost clock is a critical asset. The benchmark results show that at 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 237.3 FPS, a figure that is unlikely to be limited by the GPU. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with sufficient draw calls and simulation updates to maintain a very high level of performance.

The CPU's synthetic benchmarks reinforce its strength. With a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32881 and a single-core score of 4642, the i5-14600K demonstrates robust performance in both heavily threaded and lightly threaded workloads. Its average benchmark score of 49166 places it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, and it holds a marginal 0.2% lead over the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which scores 49062. This indicates that the i5-14600K is a top-tier processor that can handle the complex calculations inherent in a city builder. The high frame rates at 1080p Low (237.3 FPS) versus 4K Ultra (31.9 FPS) demonstrate that while the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, it is more than adequate to support high-refresh-rate gameplay at lower graphical settings, where its clock speed and cache are fully utilized.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the extensive database of 1730 tested combinations, the Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 pairing holds the 831st position. This mid-table ranking is a result of the balance between its strong CPU and mid-range GPU. The CPU's high percentile ranking (93rd) is offset by the GPU's more modest standing (73rd percentile), leading to a combined score that places it in the center of the distribution. This is not a top-tier enthusiast combination, but rather a well-matched pairing that delivers solid performance without a clear bottleneck.

The ranking suggests that this combo is not intended for maximum 4K Ultra settings, as evidenced by the 31.9 FPS result in that specific scenario. Instead, its performance sweet spot appears to be at 1440p, where it achieves 86.5 FPS on High settings and a respectable 60.6 FPS on Ultra. The data indicates that this setup is better suited for high-refresh-rate 1080p or smooth 1440p gaming, rather than pushing the boundaries of 4K. The combo's position at rank 831 out of 1730 implies that while it outperforms a majority of systems, it is clearly surpassed by configurations featuring higher-tier GPUs, which are likely to achieve much higher scores in GPU-bound scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling across resolutions provides a clear picture of the system's bottleneck. Moving from 1080p High (136.1 FPS) to 1440p High (86.5 FPS) represents a 36.4% drop in frame rate. Further scaling to 4K High (48.4 FPS) results in an additional 44.0% decrease from the 1440p figure. This consistent and steep decline with increasing resolution indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component in this configuration. The CPU has sufficient headroom to support the higher graphical loads, but the RTX 5060's compute and memory resources are exhausted as pixel count increases.

The pattern is even more pronounced at Ultra settings. The frame rate falls from 94.0 FPS at 1080p to 60.6 FPS at 1440p, and then sharply to 31.9 FPS at 4K. The severe drop at 4K, where the frame rate is less than half of the 1440p value, points to a critical VRAM or bandwidth limitation. The 8 GB frame buffer is likely being saturated, causing the GPU to swap data to slower system memory. In contrast, the scaling from 1080p Low (237.3 FPS) to 1440p Low (149.3 FPS) shows a 37.1% decrease, which is similar to the High settings trend. This consistency across settings confirms that resolution scaling is the dominant factor, and the GPU's performance ceiling is the definitive constraint for this combo in Steamworld Build.