Steamworld Build

FAQ

Q: What is the combo rank for the Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 in Steamworld Build?

A: This combination ranks 49th out of 3,706 tested combos for this game, placing it in the top 1.3% of all configurations measured.

Q: How does the RTX 5090's overall benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 79,842, which is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, 0.6% higher than the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB, and 1.1% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT. It trails the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X by 1.4%.

Q: What is the best average FPS achievable at 4K resolution with this combo?

A: At 3840x2160, the highest average FPS recorded is 151, achieved with Low settings. The Medium preset delivers 116 FPS, High delivers 87 FPS, and Ultra drops to 58 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU's multi-core performance stand out relative to its competitors?

A: The i7-14700KF scores 44,167 in Cinebench R23 multi-core. Its average benchmark score of 70,163 is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (0.2% faster), Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.4% faster), and Ryzen 9 7950X (0.9% faster), while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is 1% ahead.

Q: What is the only measured FPS data point that includes minimum and maximum values?

A: The Medium preset includes min/max data at all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, FPS ranges from 293 to 396; at 1440p Medium, it ranges from 186 to 252; and at 4K Medium, it ranges from 98 to 133.

Q: What is the launch MSRP for the CPU in this combo?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700KF has a launch MSRP of $384. The GPU's launch MSRP is 1,999 USD, though that figure is noted separately.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across four presets at each resolution. For players prioritizing smooth frame rates, the Low preset delivers exceptional headroom: 397 FPS at 1080p, 286 FPS at 1440p, and 151 FPS at 4K. These numbers suggest that even at 4K, the Low preset saturates typical high-refresh displays with substantial margin.

Medium represents the balanced choice. At 1080p, it sustains 344 FPS with a minimum of 293 FPS, ensuring no perceptible dips even in dense city-building scenes. At 1440p, Medium produces 219 FPS with a floor of 186 FPS, which remains far above the 144 Hz threshold. At 4K, Medium achieves 116 FPS with a minimum of 98 FPS, making it the only preset at this resolution that stays comfortably above the 60 FPS baseline while offering improved visuals over Low.

The High preset shows diminishing returns. It delivers 258 FPS at 1080p and 164 FPS at 1440p, but drops to 87 FPS at 4K. While still playable, the 4K figure is 25% lower than Medium's average. The Ultra preset is the most demanding: 174 FPS at 1080p, 111 FPS at 1440p, and only 58 FPS at 4K. At 4K Ultra, the average falls below the 60 FPS target, which may introduce noticeable stutter in a genre where population counts and simulation tick rates continually stress the system.

Based on the measured rows, Medium offers the best overall experience. It maintains high frame rates at all resolutions, and the presence of min/max data for this preset indicates stable frame pacing. For 4K users specifically, Medium is the recommended starting point — it provides 116 FPS average with a 98 FPS minimum, which is the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance headroom. Players seeking maximum visual quality at 1440p could consider Ultra, as its 111 FPS average remains well within acceptable bounds.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination ranks 49th out of 3,706 tested combos in Steamworld Build. This places it in the 98.7th percentile of all configurations, a strong showing for a city builder that typically scales with both CPU simulation and GPU rendering.

The ranking reflects the synergy between the CPU's multi-core capabilities and the GPU's raw throughput. The i7-14700KF's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44,167 indicates strong parallel processing for game logic, while the RTX 5090's Passmark G3D score of 39,650 provides ample pixel-pushing power. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355 further confirms its ability to handle modern rendering workloads.

However, the 49th position suggests that several other combos outperform this pairing in Steamworld Build specifically. The GPU's nearest rivals include enterprise-class Tesla P100 variants and mobile Radeon parts, which may indicate that the game is less dependent on the RTX 5090's extreme memory bandwidth (1.79 TB/s) than on other factors. The CPU's nearest rivals — AMD Ryzen 7 9700F, Ryzen 9 7940HX, and Ryzen 9 7950X — all have comparable average scores, suggesting that the game does not disproportionately favor Intel's architecture.

The gap between this combo and the top-ranked configurations is not quantifiable from the provided data, but the rank percentile indicates that most users will find this pairing more than sufficient for Steamworld Build. The data shows that at 1080p Medium, the combo produces 344 FPS, which is far beyond what any display can show, confirming that the system is not the bottleneck in typical gameplay scenarios.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080: The Low preset delivers the highest average at 397 FPS. Medium follows at 344 FPS with a range of 293 to 396 FPS. High produces 258 FPS, and Ultra drops to 174 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 56% reduction in average FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes substantial rendering costs even at 1080p.

2560x1440: Low achieves 286 FPS, which is 28% lower than the 1080p Low figure. Medium reaches 219 FPS, with a min/max range of 186 to 252 FPS. High produces 164 FPS, and Ultra drops to 111 FPS. The transition from 1080p to 1440p reduces FPS by approximately 27-36% across presets, showing a consistent resolution scaling penalty.

3840x2160: Low maintains 151 FPS, which is still highly playable. Medium averages 116 FPS with a minimum of 98 FPS and maximum of 133 FPS. High drops to 87 FPS, and Ultra falls to 58 FPS. The 4K Ultra figure is the only measured data point below 60 FPS, confirming that this preset is too demanding for this combo at the highest resolution.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset shows the most consistent frame pacing, as evidenced by the available min/max data. The gap between Medium and High at 4K is 29 FPS (116 to 87), while the gap between High and Ultra is also 29 FPS (87 to 58), suggesting linear scaling in the upper preset range at 4K. At 1080p, the scaling from Medium to High is 86 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 84 FPS, showing a different performance profile at lower resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB202 chip manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2017 MHz and boosts to 2407 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective).

In Steamworld Build, the GPU's role is primarily rendering the isometric city views and handling the visual effects as the population grows. The benchmark results show that the RTX 5090 is not the limiting factor at 1080p or 1440p, where even Ultra settings produce 174 FPS and 111 FPS respectively. At 4K, however, the GPU's workload becomes more significant, with Ultra dropping to 58 FPS. This suggests that the game's pixel throughput requirements at 4K Ultra exceed what the RTX 5090 can sustain alongside the CPU's simulation load.

The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 39,650 and 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 18,355 indicate it is among the top 8% of all GPUs (92nd percentile). Yet in this game, the 4K Ultra result shows that even top-tier hardware faces challenges. The 32 GB VRAM capacity is far beyond what Steamworld Build likely requires, given that even at 4K Ultra, the game's memory footprint would not approach this limit. The GPU's compute capabilities — 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 and 680 tensor cores — are unlikely to be fully utilized in a city builder that does not rely heavily on AI-enhanced rendering.

The GPU's nearest rivals in overall benchmark scores are Tesla P100 variants and the Radeon RX 6850M XT, which are not typical gaming parts. This suggests that the RTX 5090's raw compute power is well above the requirements for this game, and the measured FPS differences across settings are more likely due to the game's engine optimization than GPU limits.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake-R architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a 33 MB shared L3 cache and 2 MB L2 per core. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration and connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes.

Steamworld Build is a city builder where simulation logic — resource management, worker pathfinding, and building construction — can heavily tax CPU multi-core performance. The i7-14700KF's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44,167 and Passmark multi-thread score of 52,425 indicate strong parallel processing capabilities. Its Geekbench multi-core score of 21,462 further confirms this.

The CPU's benchmark performance places it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70,163. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (0.2% faster), Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.4% faster), and Ryzen 9 7950X (0.9% faster), while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is 1% ahead. These differences are within 1%, meaning the i7-14700KF is essentially at parity with its closest competitors in general benchmarks.

In this game, the CPU's role becomes more pronounced at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 397 FPS, which is far beyond what the GPU alone would sustain — this indicates that the CPU is feeding frames quickly enough to avoid bottlenecking. The 20 cores and 28 threads provide ample headroom for the game's simulation thread, while the 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures strong single-thread performance for the main game loop. The CPU's 125 W TDP and support for DDR5 memory (though memory speed is not specified in the data) contribute to its ability to maintain high frame rates in simulation-heavy scenes.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data shows how the system's performance scales across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. Moving from 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by approximately 27-36% depending on the preset. From 1440p to 4K, the drop is more severe: Low falls from 286 to 151 FPS (47% reduction), Medium from 219 to 116 (47% reduction), High from 164 to 87 (47% reduction), and Ultra from 111 to 58 (48% reduction).

This consistent ~47% reduction from 1440p to 4K across all presets indicates that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The pixel count increases by 2.25x from 1440p to 4K, but the FPS drops by roughly half, suggesting that the game's rendering workload scales sub-linearly with pixel count — likely due to geometry and draw call overhead that remains constant regardless of resolution.

At 1080p, the system is likely CPU-limited in some scenarios. The jump from 1080p Low (397 FPS) to 1080p Ultra (174 FPS) shows a 56% reduction, which is more than the scaling at higher resolutions. This suggests that at 1080p, the GPU has enough headroom to render frames faster than the CPU can update the simulation, making the CPU the primary constraint. At 4K, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, as evidenced by the 58 FPS Ultra result.

The medium preset shows the most balanced scaling: 344 FPS at 1080p, 219 FPS at 1440p, and 116 FPS at 4K. The consistent halving of FPS with each resolution step (approximately 36% from 1080p to 1440p, then 47% from 1440p to 4K) indicates a well-behaved scaling curve where neither component fully dominates. For users targeting a specific refresh rate, the data suggests: 4K users should stick to Medium or Low for 60+ FPS, 1440p users can comfortably use Ultra at 111 FPS, and 1080p users have headroom for any preset.