Steamworld Build

Steamworld Build is a city builder that stresses both CPU simulation and GPU rendering, and the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 with the Intel Arc B390 produces a very specific performance envelope. The data shows a system that is heavily bottlenecked by the integrated graphics solution, making settings and resolution choices critical for a playable experience. This analysis focuses strictly on the measured results to guide your configuration decisions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Steamworld Build reveals a clear hierarchy of playability across the three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 106 FPS, which is exceptionally smooth for a city builder. The Medium preset still provides a very playable 81 FPS average, with a minimum of 69 FPS, ensuring that even busy scenes with many buildings and citizens remain fluid. High settings drop to 60 FPS average, which is acceptable, but the Ultra preset falls to 41 FPS, which can feel stuttery during intense simulation moments.

For 2560x1440, the situation changes dramatically. The Low preset maintains a solid 67 FPS average, making it the only setting at this resolution that offers a consistently smooth experience. Medium drops to 51 FPS with a minimum of 44 FPS, which is borderline for a game that requires frequent camera panning and zooming. High settings at 1440p produce 38 FPS, and Ultra falls to 26 FPS, both of which are below the threshold for comfortable play.

At 3840x2160, none of the presets achieve a fully playable frame rate. The Low preset reaches 35 FPS average, which is technically playable but lacks the smoothness expected for managing complex layouts. Medium averages 27 FPS with a minimum of 23 FPS, and High drops to 20 FPS. Ultra is essentially unplayable at 14 FPS average.

The optimal experience for this combo is the Medium preset at 1920x1080. It provides a strong balance between visual fidelity and performance, offering an 81 FPS average that leaves headroom for the simulation to cause dips without falling below the playable threshold. If you prioritize maximum smoothness, the Low preset at 1080p is the safest choice, but Medium represents the best overall experience per the measured rows. At 1440p, you should stick to Low settings to maintain a consistent frame rate, and 4K is not a viable option for this hardware combination.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and Intel Arc B390 ranks 2573 out of 2924 tested combos in Steamworld Build. This places it in the bottom 12% of all systems tested for this game, which clearly indicates that the graphics solution is the limiting factor. The CPU is a high-end desktop processor, but the GPU is an integrated solution that is not designed for demanding gaming workloads.

The ranking context is important. A rank of 2573 out of 2924 means that the vast majority of tested systems deliver better performance in Steamworld Build. This is not a reflection of the CPU's capability, as the Core Ultra 7 265 is a powerful processor, but rather a consequence of pairing it with an integrated GPU that sits at the 9th percentile of all GPUs. The data suggests that this combo is suitable for low-resolution or low-settings play, but it will struggle to compete with systems that use discrete graphics cards.

When looking at the percentile data, the GPU's 9th percentile ranking is a stark indicator of its performance class. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking shows that it is more than capable of handling the game's simulation logic. This massive disparity between the CPU and GPU performance tiers explains why the combo rank is so low despite the strong processor. The benchmark results indicate that the system is severely unbalanced for gaming purposes, with the GPU acting as a bottleneck that prevents the CPU from demonstrating its full potential.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) based on the Xe3-LPG architecture. Its memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning it uses a portion of the system's DDR5 memory instead of dedicated VRAM. This is a critical factor in Steamworld Build, a game that can be memory-intensive as the city grows and more assets need to be rendered.

The GPU's clock speeds are listed as a base of 300 MHz and a boost of 2500 MHz. While the boost clock is high, the shared memory architecture limits effective bandwidth to "System Dependent" levels. This means the GPU's performance is directly tied to the system's memory speed and the amount of memory allocated to graphics tasks. In a city builder, where large portions of the screen are filled with buildings and terrain, the shared memory can become a bottleneck, especially at higher resolutions.

The GPU's raw compute specifications include 1536 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 24 ROPs. The pixel rate is 60.00 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 120.0 GTexel/s. These figures are modest for a modern game, particularly at resolutions above 1080p. The FP32 performance of 7.680 TFLOPS is low, which explains the significant frame rate drops when moving from Low to Ultra settings.

The measured 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1482 places the B390 in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX and GT 710, which are older entry-level discrete cards. This comparison confirms that the Arc B390 performs at a level far below what most desktop gamers would consider acceptable. In Steamworld Build, this translates to the GPU being the primary limiter, causing the frame rate to scale poorly with resolution and settings. The data shows that the GPU's capabilities are best suited for low-resolution or low-detail gaming, and it will struggle to maintain smooth performance in more demanding scenarios.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive look at how this combo performs across different resolutions and quality presets.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 106 FPS, making it the only configuration that offers triple-digit frame rates. The Medium preset delivers an 81 FPS average, with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 93 FPS, showing that there is some frame time variance but the experience remains fluid. High settings drop to a 60 FPS average, which is exactly at the threshold for a smooth experience, but it may dip below that during heavy simulation loads. The Ultra preset falls to 41 FPS average, which is a significant step down and may feel choppy during large-scale construction or when the camera is moved quickly.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset maintains a 67 FPS average, which is still playable but noticeably less smooth than 1080p. Medium settings produce 51 FPS average, with a minimum of 44 FPS, indicating that the frame rate can dip below the level needed for a consistently fluid experience. High settings drop to 38 FPS, which is barely playable for a slow-paced game like Steamworld Build, but the responsiveness will be compromised. The Ultra preset averages 26 FPS, which is below the playable threshold for most users.

At 3840x2160, the performance is uniformly poor. The Low preset reaches 35 FPS average, which is the best result at this resolution but still falls short of a smooth experience. Medium settings average 27 FPS, with a minimum of 23 FPS, meaning the game will feel sluggish. High settings produce 20 FPS, and Ultra drops to 14 FPS, making these settings effectively unplayable for anything beyond a static screenshot.

The data shows a clear linear scaling pattern: as resolution increases, the frame rate drops proportionally. The difference between Low and Ultra at any given resolution is substantial, with Ultra often delivering less than half the frame rate of Low. This indicates that the GPU is heavily taxed by the game's rendering demands, and the shared memory architecture cannot keep up with the higher data throughput required at higher resolutions and settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 with the Intel Arc B390 in Steamworld Build?

A: The best measured experience is at 1920x1080 with the Medium preset, which delivers an average of 81 FPS. This provides a good balance between visual quality and performance. If you need the absolute smoothest experience, the Low preset at 1080p achieves 106 FPS average.

Q: Can this combo handle 1440p or 4K gaming in Steamworld Build?

A: At 2560x1440, only the Low preset achieves a playable frame rate of 67 FPS average. The Medium preset drops to 51 FPS, which may be acceptable for some, but High and Ultra settings are too slow. At 3840x2160, even the Low preset only reaches 35 FPS average, which is not a smooth experience.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to other GPUs in terms of performance?

A: The Arc B390 is in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX and GT 710, which are older, low-end cards. This places it far below the performance level of modern discrete GPUs.

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 CPU powerful enough for this game?

A: The CPU is more than capable, sitting in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. However, the system's overall performance is limited by the integrated GPU. The CPU's strong benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42216, indicate that it is not the bottleneck in this game.

Q: Why does the frame rate drop so significantly when increasing the resolution?

A: The Arc B390 uses system-shared memory, which has "System Dependent" bandwidth. At higher resolutions, the GPU requires more memory bandwidth and capacity to render the larger frame. The shared memory architecture cannot provide this efficiently, leading to the substantial frame rate drops seen at 1440p and 4K.

Q: What is the expected frame rate difference between the Low and Ultra presets at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 106 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 41 FPS. This represents a 65 FPS difference, meaning the Ultra preset delivers roughly 61% lower performance compared to Low. This is a significant drop that suggests the Ultra preset is too demanding for this GPU.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread desktop processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a 65W TDP. This is a high-end CPU that ranks in the 93rd percentile of all processors, indicating it has substantial compute power.

In Steamworld Build, the CPU is responsible for the game's simulation logic, including citizen AI, resource management, and pathfinding. The 20 cores and 20 threads provide ample parallel processing capability for these tasks. The CPU's benchmark results confirm its strength: Cinebench R23 multicore score is 42216, and PassMark multithread score is 49682. These are strong numbers that indicate the CPU can handle complex simulations without breaking a sweat.

The L3 cache is 30 MB shared, which helps reduce memory latency when accessing frequently used game data. The 3 nm process node and 17,800 million transistors suggest a highly efficient design. However, the CPU's power is largely untapped in this system because the integrated GPU cannot keep up with the rendering demands of the game at higher settings.

The data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor in any of the measured configurations. For example, at 1080p Low, the system achieves 106 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 14 FPS. This massive performance difference is entirely attributable to the GPU, as the CPU's workload does not change significantly with resolution. The CPU is more than capable of feeding the GPU with data, but the GPU cannot process it quickly enough to generate high frame rates at demanding settings.

This processor is a solid foundation for a gaming system, but it is wasted when paired with an integrated GPU for a game like Steamworld Build. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU would perform exceptionally well in a system with a discrete graphics card, but in this configuration, it is held back by the Intel Arc B390. The CPU's high single-thread score of 5960 in Cinebench R23 ensures that even single-threaded game logic will be handled efficiently, but the overall gaming experience is limited by the graphics solution.