The Long Drive

The Long Drive pairs an AMD Ryzen 5 7500F with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, a combination that delivers a wide spread of frame rates depending on how you balance resolution and quality. The measured data shows this system is capable of smooth play at 1080p and 1440p, but struggles to maintain playable performance at 4K on higher presets. The results indicate a system where the GPU’s 6 GB frame buffer and Turing architecture become the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s modern Zen 4 architecture provides ample headroom for the game’s simulation logic.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals a clear performance hierarchy across the three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 154.2 FPS, which is more than enough for a driving simulation that benefits from high frame rates. The Medium preset still provides excellent fluidity at 128.1 FPS, while High drops to 80.4 FPS, which remains smooth for most displays. The Ultra preset at 55.5 FPS is the first point where the experience becomes less ideal for fast-paced driving, as frame pacing may feel inconsistent despite the playable average.

For 2560x1440, the scaling is more demanding. The Low preset produces 102 FPS, which is excellent, and Medium holds at 82.8 FPS, still very good. High falls to 51.1 FPS, which is borderline for a simulator where precision matters, and Ultra drops to 39.6 FPS, which is below the threshold for comfortable play. At 3840x2160, the situation inverts: Low yields 57.3 FPS, Medium drops to 44.4 FPS, High sinks to 28.6 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 22.1 FPS, all of which are suboptimal for a driving title.

The optimal experience per the measured rows is the Medium preset at 1920x1080, which offers 128.1 FPS and a significant visual upgrade over Low without the steep cost of High. For users with 1440p displays, the Medium preset at 82.8 FPS is the best compromise, as it maintains smoothness while avoiding the steep drop seen at High. The data suggests that Ultra is only viable at 1080p, and even then, the 55.5 FPS average may not justify the visual gains over Medium. At 4K, the Low preset is the only reasonable choice, but the 57.3 FPS result indicates that this resolution is not the intended target for this hardware pairing.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 1440p monitor?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 delivers 82.8 FPS, which is the highest frame rate above the 60 FPS threshold while still offering a visual upgrade over Low. High at 51.1 FPS is playable but below the ideal smoothness target, and Ultra at 39.6 FPS is not recommended.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in The Long Drive?

A: Yes, but only at the Low preset, which produces 57.3 FPS. The Medium preset drops to 44.4 FPS, High falls to 28.6 FPS, and Ultra is unplayable at 22.1 FPS. The data shows that 4K requires significant settings compromises.

Q: How does the GPU’s memory capacity affect performance?

A: The RTX 2060 has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s bandwidth. The steep performance drop from Medium to High at 1440p (82.8 to 51.1 FPS) and from Low to Medium at 4K (57.3 to 44.4 FPS) suggests that the frame buffer is a limiting factor at higher presets, likely due to texture data exceeding capacity.

Q: Is the CPU a limiting factor in this game?

A: No, the data indicates the opposite. The Ryzen 5 7500F’s benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22799 and a single-core score of 3218, are far in excess of what a driving simulation requires. The FPS scaling across resolutions tracks almost entirely with GPU load, not CPU load.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: The Low preset produces 154.2 FPS, while Ultra produces 55.5 FPS. This represents a reduction of approximately 64% in average frame rate, or a slowdown to roughly one-third of the Low preset’s speed, for the maximum visual quality settings.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested systems?

A: The combination ranks 1437 out of 1734 tested combos for The Long Drive, placing it in the lower percentile of all tested configurations. This ranking reflects the GPU’s age and position in the market, not the CPU, which ranks at the 82nd percentile among all CPUs.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases. At 1080p, the system is clearly GPU-bound at higher presets, with the RTX 2060 producing 80.4 FPS at High. Moving to 1440p at the same High preset yields 51.1 FPS, a drop of 36.4%. At 4K High, the frame rate falls to 28.6 FPS, another 44% reduction from 1440p. This scaling is non-linear, indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and fill rate are being saturated at each step.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p Low, the system produces 154.2 FPS, which suggests that the CPU can feed the GPU much faster than the GPU can render. At 1440p Low, the frame rate is 102 FPS, a 33.8% drop, and at 4K Low, it reaches 57.3 FPS, a 43.8% drop from 1440p. The fact that Low at 4K still achieves over 57 FPS while High at 1440p only reaches 51.1 FPS reveals that the limiting component is the GPU’s shading capacity and memory subsystem, not the CPU.

The gap between Low and Ultra widens dramatically with resolution. At 1080p, the difference is 98.7 FPS (154.2 vs 55.5). At 1440p, the gap is 62.4 FPS (102 vs 39.6). At 4K, the gap narrows to 35.2 FPS (57.3 vs 22.1). This narrowing suggests that at 4K, both Low and Ultra are constrained by the same hardware limits, whereas at lower resolutions, the Ultra preset’s additional shading load is the primary factor. The data supports the conclusion that the RTX 2060 is the bottleneck across all resolutions, with the CPU’s 3DMark single-thread score of 974 and multi-thread score of 6379 providing ample processing headroom.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 combination ranks 1437 out of 1734 tested combos for The Long Drive. This places the pairing in the bottom 17% of all tested configurations, indicating that the GPU is the primary reason for the low ranking. The RTX 2060’s average benchmark score is 16074, and it sits at the 58th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600S, which is 0.5% faster, and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500, which is 1.8% slower, showing that the GPU is competitive with mid-range mobile and workstation parts.

In contrast, the Ryzen 5 7500F is a much stronger component. It ranks at the 82nd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 24993. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Core i7-11850H at 0.1% faster and the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX at 0.4% faster, placing the CPU in a tight pack of high-end processors. The disparity between the CPU’s high percentile and the combo’s low rank confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor for in-game performance.

The combo rank of 1437 means that there are 297 tested combinations that perform worse, but the vast majority of systems outperform this pairing in The Long Drive. This is not surprising given that the GPU is from 2019 and the game, while released in 2019, has been updated to be more demanding. The CPU’s performance is effectively wasted in this configuration at higher resolutions, as the GPU cannot keep pace. At 1080p Low, the system does achieve 154.2 FPS, which is competitive, but at 4K Ultra, the 22.1 FPS result places it firmly in the lower tier of tested systems.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, codenamed Raphael. It has a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU is built on a 5 nm process at TSMC and supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus and 83.2 GB/s bandwidth. Its 3DMark single-thread score is 974, and its multi-thread score peaks at 6379 with max threads, indicating strong single-core performance that is critical for simulation logic.

In The Long Drive, the CPU’s role is to handle the game’s physics and AI calculations, which are typically single-threaded. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3218 is exceptionally high, and its Geekbench single-core score of 2759 reinforces this strength. The data from the measured FPS suggests that the CPU is never the bottleneck, even at 1080p Low where the system reaches 154.2 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p and 4K shows a consistent drop that aligns with GPU workload, not CPU workload.

The 65W TDP and unlocked multiplier indicate that the CPU has headroom for overclocking, but the game does not appear to need it. The Passmark multi-thread score of 26825 and single-thread score of 3841 further demonstrate that the CPU is overqualified for this title. The only scenario where the CPU might matter is at very high frame rates with a faster GPU, but with the RTX 2060, the CPU’s capabilities are largely untapped. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1902 and 4-thread score of 3621 show that the CPU scales well with moderate thread counts, which is sufficient for a driving simulator that rarely utilizes more than a few cores.