The Long Drive

# The Long Drive with AMD Ryzen 7 7700 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a broad range of frame rates in The Long Drive, spanning from 36.7 FPS at 4K Ultra to 279.5 FPS at 1080p Low. This combination ranks 408th out of 1,734 tested combos for this title, placing it in the top quarter of all tested configurations. The data reveals a system that is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions and settings, while the CPU's strong multi-threaded performance becomes more relevant only when frame rates climb toward the upper limits.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, with the severity of the drop varying dramatically by quality setting. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 reduces average FPS from 144.5 to 94.3, a 34.7% decrease; moving to 3840x2160 further drops the average to 51.8, representing a 64.2% reduction from the 1080p figure. This steep decline indicates that the RTX 4070's rendering pipeline becomes the primary bottleneck as pixel count grows.

Low settings exhibit the most extreme scaling behavior. At 1080p Low, the system produces 279.5 FPS, which falls to 185.3 at 1440p (a 33.7% drop) and then to 101.9 at 4K (a 63.5% drop from 1080p). The fact that even at 4K Low the frame rate remains above 100 FPS suggests that the GPU still has substantial headroom, and the CPU is not constraining performance at this resolution. The near-identical percentage drops between Low and High settings across resolution steps point to a consistent GPU-bound scenario.

Medium settings follow the same trajectory: 232.9 FPS at 1080p, 151.3 at 1440p, and 84.7 at 4K. The Ultra preset, however, shows the most dramatic scaling sensitivity. At 1080p Ultra, the system manages 99.5 FPS, which drops to 68.5 at 1440p (a 31.2% reduction) and then to 36.7 at 4K (a 63.1% reduction from 1080p). The 4K Ultra result of 36.7 FPS is the only measured configuration that falls below the 40 FPS threshold, indicating that this setting combination pushes the GPU to its absolute limit.

The consistent pattern across all four quality presets—where 1440p typically retains 65-70% of 1080p performance and 4K retains roughly 36-40%—strongly suggests that the limiting component is the GPU's fill rate and shading capacity rather than any CPU-related factor. The RTX 4070's 158.4 GPixel/s pixel rate and 455.4 GTexel/s texture rate are directly taxed by the increasing pixel counts, and the benchmark results reflect this hardware constraint precisely.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 4 Raphael architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. Its base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz provide strong single-thread performance, as evidenced by a 3DMark single-thread score of 1,049 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,136. In The Long Drive, a driving simulation that typically relies on modest thread counts, this single-thread capability is what matters most for maintaining high frame rates.

The CPU's multi-threaded prowess is substantial: Cinebench R23 multi-core reaches 29,302, and PassMark multi-thread scores 34,470. However, the game's frame rate data shows that at 1080p Low, where the CPU would theoretically have the most influence, the system reaches 279.5 FPS. This figure is well below what the CPU's raw compute capability could theoretically support, suggesting that even at this resolution, the GPU is still the primary limiter. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 8,484 and 8-thread score of 6,933 indicate that the processor scales well with thread count, but the game appears not to demand that level of parallel throughput.

Compared to its nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark database, the Ryzen 7 7700 sits within 1.2% of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235T and 0.1% of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H. This tight clustering means that swapping to any of these processors would likely produce nearly identical frame rates in The Long Drive, given the same GPU. The CPU's 91st percentile ranking among all tested processors further confirms that it is not a weak link in this configuration; rather, it provides ample headroom for the GPU to operate without constraint.

The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB per-core L2 cache offer low-latency access to game data, which is beneficial for a simulation that may involve physics calculations and world streaming. The DDR5 memory support with 83.2 GB/s bandwidth ensures that data can flow to the CPU without becoming a secondary bottleneck, though the game's measured FPS patterns do not show any signs of memory-related stalling.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in The Long Drive?

A: The maximum measured average FPS is 279.5, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 232.9 at Medium and 144.5 at High for the same resolution.

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K resolution?

A: At 4K with Low settings, the average FPS is 101.9, and at Medium it is 84.7, both comfortably above 60. However, at 4K High the average falls to 51.8, and at Ultra it drops to 36.7, both below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance compare to its multi-thread performance?

A: The CPU scores 1,049 in 3DMark single-thread and 8,484 in 3DMark 16-thread. In Cinebench R23, single-core scores 4,136 while multi-core reaches 29,302, showing strong scaling across its 8 cores and 16 threads.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 1440p at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 144.5 at 1920x1080 to 94.3 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 50.2 FPS or approximately 34.7%.

Q: Where does this combo rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The combination of AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 408th out of 1,734 tested combos, placing it in the top 23.5% of all configurations tested.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the limiting factor at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 36.7, and the pattern of resolution scaling across all settings indicates the RTX 4070 is the limiting component. The CPU's strong benchmark scores do not translate into higher frame rates at this resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 408 out of 1,734 tested configurations places it well within the top quartile of all test results for The Long Drive. This positioning is notable because it shows that the Ryzen 7 7700 and RTX 4070 combination delivers above-average performance for this title, despite the GPU being end-of-life in production status. The GPU's 81st percentile ranking among all GPUs and the CPU's 91st percentile ranking among all CPUs both contribute to this solid overall placement.

The rank of 408 means that 407 other combinations tested faster, and 1,326 combinations tested slower. Given the GPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (with an average score just 0.6% higher) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (2.2% higher), the performance gap to many competing GPUs is narrow. This suggests that the RTX 4070's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth provides a balanced performance profile for this game.

The CPU's nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H and Ryzen AI 9 365, all score within 1.2% of the Ryzen 7 7700's average benchmark score. This clustering implies that the 408th rank is primarily determined by the GPU's capabilities rather than CPU differences, as any of these closely matched processors would likely yield nearly identical in-game results. The 1,734 total combos tested represent a wide range of hardware, and achieving 408th place demonstrates that this pairing is competitive without being top-tier.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD104 chip, serves as the primary performance driver in this configuration. Its boost clock of 2,475 MHz and base clock of 1,920 MHz, combined with 5,888 shading units, deliver 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The benchmark data confirms that this GPU is the limiting factor in The Long Drive across most resolution and setting combinations, as evidenced by the consistent FPS drops when pixel count increases.

The 12 GB of GDDR6X memory running at 21 Gbps effective on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is sufficient for the game's demands, as there are no signs of texture streaming or memory capacity issues in the FPS data. The 64 ROPs and 184 TMUs support the measured pixel and texture rates of 158.4 GPixel/s and 455.4 GTexel/s respectively, which are directly proportional to the frame rates achieved at each resolution.

In benchmark tests, the GPU scores 26,927 in PassMark G3D and 168,006 in Geekbench OpenCL, with a Vulkan score of 157,352. The PassMark DirectX 12 score of 103 and DirectX 11 score of 244 indicate that the GPU's API-specific performance varies, but the game's results suggest it utilizes the GPU's capabilities effectively. The RTX 4070's 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores are present but do not appear to be heavily utilized in this title, given the frame rate patterns follow traditional rasterization scaling.

Compared to its nearest GPU rivals, the RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37,283 sits 0.6% below the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 and 2.2% below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile. The performance parity with these competing GPUs in synthetic benchmarks translates to the observed in-game frame rates, which are competitive but not class-leading. The GPU's 81st percentile ranking among all GPUs indicates that it outperforms the majority of graphics cards tested, making it a capable choice for The Long Drive at 1080p and 1440p, with playable 4K results only at lower quality settings.