Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build, a city builder from late 2023, presents an interesting scaling profile when paired with the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The measured data reveals a configuration that is massively overqualified for this title, delivering playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra, while also exposing where the performance ceiling truly lies. The benchmark results show a system that transitions from being entirely GPU-bound at high resolutions to potentially CPU-limited at 1080p, making the choice of settings and resolution critical for the optimal experience.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression across resolutions is the clearest indicator of this system's behavior in Steamworld Build. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combination produces an average of 254.4 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 drops this to 158 FPS, a reduction of approximately 38%. Continuing to 3840x2160 yields 83.5 FPS, which is another 47% drop from the 1440p figure. This steep decline as resolution increases strongly suggests that the rendering pipeline is the primary bottleneck at higher pixel counts.

The scaling pattern becomes even more pronounced when examining the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 384.6 FPS, which drops to 277.4 FPS at 1440p and further to 145.3 FPS at 4K. The fact that the 4K Low figure (145.3 FPS) is still higher than the 1080p Ultra figure (168.8 FPS) but lower than the 1080p High figure (254.4 FPS) indicates that the GPU's workload is heavily influenced by both resolution and graphical complexity. The data shows that at 4K, even the Low preset demands significant GPU resources, while at 1080p, the Ultra preset is the only one that brings the frame rate below the 200 FPS threshold.

The performance delta between 1080p and 4K for each preset is substantial. For High settings, the drop from 254.4 FPS to 83.5 FPS represents a 67% reduction. For Medium, the fall from 338.6 FPS to 113.1 FPS is a 67% decline as well. This consistency across presets suggests that the game's rendering load scales almost linearly with pixel count, which is characteristic of a title that is not heavily optimized for multi-core processors and instead relies on raw GPU throughput. The relatively modest gains from lowering settings at 1080p, where Low (384.6 FPS) is only 13% faster than Medium (338.6 FPS), further indicate that the CPU is beginning to limit performance at lower resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K brings 16 cores and 24 threads to this configuration, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. In synthetic benchmarks, this processor achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 39000 and a single-core score of 5505, placing it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. However, Steamworld Build's performance data shows that this CPU is rarely the limiting factor in this pairing, except at the lowest resolutions and settings.

The evidence for CPU involvement is most visible in the 1080p results. The gap between the Low preset (384.6 FPS) and the Medium preset (338.6 FPS) is only 46 FPS, which is a smaller relative difference than what is seen at higher resolutions. At 1440p, the same two presets show a larger absolute gap (277.4 FPS versus 211.6 FPS, a difference of 65.8 FPS). This pattern suggests that at 1080p, the CPU's ability to feed the GPU becomes a constraint, preventing the GPU from fully utilizing its potential even with lighter settings.

The processor's memory support for DDR4 and DDR5, combined with a dual-channel memory bus, likely contributes to its ability to maintain high frame rates in a city builder where simulation logic and asset streaming are common. The large L3 cache of 30 MB shared helps with data locality, which is beneficial for the game's building and resource management systems. The 3DMark scores show strong multi-threaded performance, with a max threads score of 12412, indicating that the CPU has ample headroom for the game's background simulation tasks, but the measured FPS data shows that this headroom is rarely exercised, as the GPU is the bottleneck in most scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal balance of visual quality and performance is achieved with the High preset at 2560x1440, yielding 158 FPS. This provides a significantly smoother experience than the 4K High setting (83.5 FPS) while still offering a substantial visual upgrade over Medium. For players prioritizing frame rate above all else, the Low preset at 1440p delivers 277.4 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any display, but the visual compromise is noticeable in a genre where readability of the game world matters.

At 4K, the High preset at 83.5 FPS is the recommended choice for a balance of fidelity and smoothness, as it stays above the 60 FPS threshold. The Ultra preset at 55.9 FPS is the only measured configuration that falls below 60 FPS, making it suitable only for players who prioritize maximum visual fidelity over frame rate consistency. The Medium preset at 113.1 FPS is a strong alternative at 4K for those who want higher frame rates without dropping to Low.

The data shows that the Ultra preset imposes a heavy penalty across all resolutions, with the 1080p Ultra (168.8 FPS) being slower than the 1440p High (158 FPS) only by a small margin. This suggests that Ultra settings introduce effects that are disproportionately expensive relative to their visual impact, and the High preset offers better performance per unit of visual quality. For most users, the High preset is the sweet spot, providing a 43% performance increase over Ultra at 1080p (254.4 FPS versus 168.8 FPS) while maintaining a high level of detail.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 21st out of 1730 tested combos in Steamworld Build. This places it in the top 1.2% of all configurations, which is expected given the high-end nature of both components. The ranking indicates that while there are 20 other combinations that achieve higher average frame rates, this system is firmly in the upper echelon of performance for this game.

The CPU's nearest rivals in overall benchmark scores provide context for its contribution. The Intel Core i7-13700KF scores 47334, which is 0.1% higher than the i7-13700K's 47282, while the AMD EPYC 4364P scores 47131, a 0.3% deficit. These negligible differences suggest that the CPU choice has minimal impact on the final ranking, as the GPU is the dominant factor. The GPU's nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA Tesla T4 with an average score of 66733 (0.4% higher) and the NVIDIA Tesla P40 with 66127 (0.5% lower), are professional workstation cards that do not directly compete in gaming scenarios, reinforcing the RTX 4090's position as a top-tier consumer option.

The 91st percentile ranking for the GPU and 93rd for the CPU indicate that both components are among the best available, but the combo's 21st position out of 1730 suggests that a few other pairings, likely with even more extreme CPUs or overclocked variants, edge it out. The data shows that this combo is not the absolute fastest, but it is exceptionally well-suited for high-refresh-rate gaming at 1440p and solid 4K performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the clear workhorse in this configuration for Steamworld Build. With 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus providing 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, it has more than enough resources for a city builder that may load extensive textures and assets. The GPU's boost clock of 2520 MHz and architecture based on Ada Lovelace with 16384 shading units deliver a theoretical FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS, which explains its dominance in this game's rendering workload.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 4K, where even the Low preset (145.3 FPS) requires substantial pixel throughput. The drop from 4K High (83.5 FPS) to 4K Medium (113.1 FPS) represents a 35% performance gain, indicating that the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading capacity are being taxed by higher quality settings. The 24 GB VRAM is never likely to be exhausted in this game, but the memory bandwidth is a critical factor at 4K, where the 384-bit interface ensures that texture reads do not become a limitation.

The GPU's passmark G3D score of 38194 and 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 9223 place it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. At 1080p, the GPU is often idle waiting for the CPU, as evidenced by the small frame rate differences between Low (384.6 FPS) and Medium (338.6 FPS) settings, which are only 46 FPS apart. However, at 4K, the GPU's workload increases dramatically, and the differences between presets become more pronounced, confirming that the RTX 4090's raw compute and memory bandwidth are the defining factors for performance at higher resolutions. The GPU's end-of-life production status does not diminish its current performance, as it remains one of the most capable consumer graphics cards available for this title.