Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build is a city builder that does not behave like a typical GPU-bound title. The benchmark data for the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination reveals a unique performance profile where the CPU and GPU trade dominance depending on the resolution and quality preset. This analysis examines the measured frame rates to determine exactly where the bottleneck lies and how this flagship pairing ranks among 1,730 tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that this game is exceptionally sensitive to resolution only under certain conditions. At Low settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 results in a drop from 417.2 FPS to 149.6 FPS, a 64% reduction. This indicates that at 1080p Low, the system is heavily CPU-limited, as the GPU has massive headroom to render frames far faster than the processor can feed it. The 280.2 FPS at 1440p Low confirms that the scaling is not linear; the CPU begins to become a limiting factor even at 1440p.

At High settings, the scaling is more predictable. The system delivers 254.9 FPS at 1080p, 162 FPS at 1440p, and 85.8 FPS at 4K. This represents a 66% drop from 1080p to 4K, which is closer to what one would expect from a GPU-bound scenario. The 4K High result of 85.8 FPS is notably lower than the 110.3 FPS at 4K Medium, suggesting that the High preset introduces significant GPU workload that the RTX 4090 handles, but not without a substantial cost.

The Ultra preset reveals the most extreme scaling. At 1080p Ultra, the system produces 172.4 FPS, but this plummets to 110.9 FPS at 1440p and 58.4 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra figure is the lowest measured result across all configurations, showing that the combination of high resolution and maximum quality settings creates a heavy GPU bottleneck. Interestingly, the gap between 1080p and 1440p Ultra is only 36%, while the gap between 1440p and 4K Ultra is 47%, indicating that the GPU workload scales super-linearly with pixel count at the highest settings.

The data suggests that Steamworld Build's rendering engine is heavily dependent on draw calls and CPU logic at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the CPU is the clear limiting component, as evidenced by the 417.2 FPS ceiling. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes more relevant, but even at 4K High, the system maintains a playable 85.8 FPS, which is impressive for a city builder with potentially hundreds of simulated entities. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that drops below 60 FPS, making it the sole scenario where the RTX 4090's capabilities are truly stretched.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a 24-core, 32-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz. Its benchmark results place it in the 97th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79,824. The nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 7413, scores slightly higher at 80,041, a 0.3% difference. The Intel Core i9-14900KF is 0.7% behind, and the Core Ultra 7 265KF and 265K are also 0.7% and 0.9% behind, respectively.

In Steamworld Build, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p Low, where the system achieves 417.2 FPS. This high frame rate is only possible because the i9-14900K has exceptional single-thread performance, as demonstrated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7,040 and Geekbench single-core score of 3,064. City builders often rely heavily on single-threaded game logic for simulation updates, and this processor's 6.00 GHz boost clock provides the necessary headroom.

The multi-core performance is also relevant, as the processor's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 49,872 suggests that background tasks like pathfinding and resource management can be distributed across its 32 threads. The L3 cache of 36 MB shared across the cores helps maintain low latency when accessing frequently used game data. The processor's 125W TDP is modest for a flagship, but the benchmark results show it does not throttle under sustained loads in this title.

The data indicates that the CPU is the primary bottleneck at 1080p Low and Medium settings. At 1080p Medium, the system produces 339.2 FPS, which is still exceptionally high but shows a clear ceiling imposed by the CPU. The fact that the RTX 4090 can render frames faster than 339 FPS at Medium settings is evident from the 4K Medium result of 110.3 FPS, which is not proportionally lower given the 4x pixel count difference. This confirms that the CPU's single-thread performance is the limiting factor at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a 5 nm Ada Lovelace chip with 16,384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. It features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. The GPU's boost clock is 2520 MHz, and it delivers 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. Its benchmark scores place it in the 91st percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66,473. The nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla T4, scores 66,733, a 0.4% difference, while the Tesla P40 is 0.5% behind.

In Steamworld Build, the GPU's role becomes dominant at 4K and at Ultra settings. At 4K Ultra, the system produces 58.4 FPS, which is the lowest result across all tested configurations. This is a clear indication that the RTX 4090's rendering capabilities are being fully utilized. The 24 GB of VRAM is likely not a limiting factor even at 4K Ultra, as city builders typically do not require massive texture memory, but the sheer pixel count and effects complexity at Ultra settings create a substantial GPU workload.

The GPU's performance at 1440p High (162 FPS) and 1440p Medium (214.4 FPS) shows that it has ample headroom at lower resolutions. The 1.01 TB/s memory bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and geometry processing are not memory-bound, which is crucial for a game where the camera can zoom out to show an entire city. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are more than sufficient for this title's demands.

The scaling from 4K Medium (110.3 FPS) to 4K High (85.8 FPS) and 4K Ultra (58.4 FPS) shows a clear progression of GPU load. The RTX 4090 is capable of delivering playable frame rates at 4K High, but the Ultra preset pushes it to the edge. This suggests that the GPU's performance is the primary factor determining frame rates at 4K, and any upgrades would require a faster GPU than the RTX 4090, which is already the flagship of its generation.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 9th out of 1,730 tested combos in Steamworld Build. This top-1% placement is expected given the hardware's flagship status, but the ranking reveals interesting nuances. The CPU's 97th percentile and GPU's 91st percentile scores suggest that both components are near the top of their respective fields, but the combination does not achieve the absolute highest ranking possible.

The rank of 9 indicates that there are eight other combinations that perform better in this specific game. This could be due to the fact that Steamworld Build favors CPUs with exceptionally high single-thread performance, and the i9-14900K, while excellent, may not be the absolute best for this workload. The 0.7% deltaPct between the i9-14900K and the i9-14900KF suggests that the KF variant, which lacks integrated graphics, may provide slightly higher frame rates due to lower power consumption and thermal overhead.

The GPU's rank of 91st percentile is notably lower than its raw performance would suggest, indicating that the RTX 4090's massive compute capabilities are not fully utilized in this game. The 4K Ultra result of 58.4 FPS is the only configuration that falls below 60 FPS, which is a critical threshold for smooth gameplay. This means that the combo ranking is likely influenced by the Ultra preset's performance, where the GPU becomes the limiting factor.

Overall, the 9th place ranking out of 1,730 combos places this system in the top 0.5% of all tested configurations. The combination excels at 1080p and 1440p, where the CPU's single-thread performance allows for frame rates exceeding 250 FPS at High settings. At 4K, the GPU takes over, and the system remains competitive but not dominant, as the 58.4 FPS at Ultra is below the 60 FPS threshold that many users consider the minimum for a smooth experience.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combination?

A: The highest average frame rate is 417.2 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 have enough VRAM for Steamworld Build at 4K?

A: The RTX 4090 features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory with a 384-bit bus. The benchmark data shows that at 4K Ultra, the system produces 58.4 FPS, indicating that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor for this game.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival in overall benchmark scores?

A: The Intel Core i9-14900K has an average benchmark score of 79,824, which is 0.3% lower than the AMD EPYC 7413's score of 80,041. It is 0.7% higher than the Intel Core i9-14900KF and Core Ultra 7 265KF.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the system produces 254.9 FPS at 1080p and 85.8 FPS at 4K, representing a 66% reduction in frame rate when moving from 1080p to 4K.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the system fail to reach 60 FPS?

A: The only configuration that falls below 60 FPS is 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings, where the average frame rate is 58.4 FPS.

Q: How does this combination rank among all tested combos in Steamworld Build?

A: This combination ranks 9th out of 1,730 tested combos, placing it in the top 0.5% of all configurations tested for this game.