The Long Drive

# The Long Drive with Intel Core i5-14400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

The pairing of Intel's Core i5-14400F with NVIDIA's flagship RTX 5090 creates an interesting asymmetry in The Long Drive: a 10-core, 16-thread mid-range CPU driving a 32 GB GDDR7 monster of a GPU. The measured FPS data reveals that this combination is hugely sensitive to settings presets, with results ranging from a barely playable 54.3 FPS at 4K Ultra to a blistering 337.3 FPS at 1080p Low. The data suggests that The Long Drive's rendering load scales aggressively with both resolution and quality settings, and the bottleneck shifts depending on where you point this hardware.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows paint a clear picture: the Low preset is the only tier that consistently delivers triple-digit frame rates across all three resolutions. At 4K, Low yields 152.1 FPS, while Medium drops to 121.4 FPS, High falls to 77 FPS, and Ultra collapses to 54.3 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 4K is particularly steep — a 44.4 FPS drop — suggesting that High enables rendering features that disproportionately tax the GPU.

For players prioritizing smoothness over visual fidelity, Low at 1440p delivers 272.1 FPS, which is more than enough headroom for high-refresh displays. The Medium preset at 1440p (222.6 FPS) provides a reasonable middle ground, but the data shows that Ultra at any resolution imposes a severe penalty. At 1080p, Low (337.3 FPS) and Medium (318.5 FPS) are nearly indistinguishable in performance, which implies that at this resolution the CPU may be approaching its limit, as the frame rate stops scaling with GPU load. The best experience per the measured rows is the Low preset at 1440p or 1080p, where frame rates exceed 270 FPS and the GPU's massive compute resources are not left idle. Ultra should be avoided entirely, as even at 1080p it only reaches 148.4 FPS — a 56% reduction from Low at the same resolution.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 brings 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU's base clock is 2017 MHz with a boost of 2407 MHz, and it carries 21,760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. These specifications suggest a card built for extreme throughput, and the benchmark data confirms that the GPU is the dominant factor in The Long Drive's frame rate at higher settings.

The 4K results demonstrate the GPU's central role. Moving from Low to Ultra at 4K cuts performance by 64.3%, from 152.1 FPS to 54.3 FPS. This massive drop indicates that Ultra settings likely enable heavy post-processing, volumetric effects, or shadow techniques that saturate the GPU's pixel and texture pipelines. The RTX 5090's pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s are formidable, yet The Long Drive at 4K Ultra still brings this card to its knees, implying the game's Ultra preset is exceptionally demanding.

At 1080p, the GPU's role diminishes relative to the CPU. The difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is only 18.8 FPS (337.3 vs 318.5 FPS), whereas at 4K the same settings gap is 30.7 FPS. This pattern suggests that at 1080p, the RTX 5090 is so far ahead of the game's requirements that the CPU's 4.70 GHz boost clock becomes the limiting factor. The GPU's 94th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84,306, places it near the top of the hardware hierarchy, and its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 D, is essentially tied at a 0.1% delta.

CPU Role

The Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on Raptor Lake Refresh, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. It has 20 MB of shared L3 cache and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. In synthetic benchmarks, the chip scores 21,914 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 3,093 in single-core, placing it in the 88th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 32,508.

In The Long Drive, the CPU's role becomes evident at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the frame rates across Low, Medium, and High (337.3, 318.5, and 213.9 FPS respectively) show a compressible range that suggests the CPU is handling a significant portion of the game logic and physics. The Long Drive is a driving simulation, and such games often have substantial CPU overhead for vehicle dynamics and world streaming. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combination reaches 337.3 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's practical limit for this game.

When compared to its nearest CPU rivals, the i5-14400F sits within a tight cluster. The Intel Core i7-12800H has an average score of 32,513 (0% delta), the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 scores 32,446 (0.2% delta), and the AMD Ryzen 7 250 scores 32,584 (-0.2% delta). This indicates that the i5-14400F is performance-competitive with those processors in general compute, but the game's specific threading model will determine whether all 16 threads are effectively utilized. The 65W TDP and lack of an unlocked multiplier suggest this is a power-efficient part, but the boost clock of 4.70 GHz on its performance cores provides the single-thread headroom that driving simulations often need.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for the highest frame rate?

A: The data shows the 1920x1080 Low preset achieves the highest measured average at 337.3 FPS, followed closely by 1080p Medium at 318.5 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when switching from Low to Ultra at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS drops from 152.1 on Low to 54.3 on Ultra, a reduction of 97.8 FPS or approximately 64% of the Low preset's performance.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any resolution?

A: At 1080p, the frame rate differences between Low and Medium are small (337.3 vs 318.5 FPS), which suggests the CPU's 4.70 GHz boost clock may be limiting the GPU's output, as the GPU should be capable of much higher rates at such a low resolution.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested hardware combinations?

A: The Intel Core i5-14400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination ranks 27th out of 1,734 tested combos in The Long Drive.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090 has an average benchmark score of 84,306, while its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 D, scores 84,241, a delta of just 0.1%.

Q: Is the 1440p Medium preset a viable option for high-refresh monitors?

A: Yes, the 2560x1440 Medium preset delivers 222.6 FPS, which exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, though the Low preset at 272.1 FPS offers additional headroom.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU's workload dominates at higher resolutions, while the CPU holds sway at lower ones. At the Low preset, the data shows a progression from 337.3 FPS at 1080p to 272.1 FPS at 1440p and finally 152.1 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 120 FPS (44.1% reduction), while the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 65.2 FPS (19.3% reduction). This non-linear scaling indicates that pixel count becomes increasingly punishing as resolution rises.

At the Ultra preset, the scaling is even more dramatic. The FPS values are 148.4 at 1080p, 97.2 at 1440p, and 54.3 at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 42.9 FPS (44.1% reduction), which is nearly identical in percentage terms to the Low preset's drop. This suggests that the game's rendering pipeline scales resolution in a consistent manner, regardless of quality settings. The limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU at 4K, with the crossover point appearing somewhere between 1440p and 4K, where the GPU's 32 GB frame buffer and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth can no longer compensate for the increased pixel workload.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 337.3 FPS, Medium 318.5 FPS, High 213.9 FPS, and Ultra 148.4 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 104.6 FPS, indicating that High enables effects that cost more than half the Medium preset's performance. The difference between High and Ultra is 65.5 FPS, showing that Ultra adds yet another layer of expensive rendering.

At 2560x1440, the averages shift to: Low 272.1 FPS, Medium 222.6 FPS, High 136.6 FPS, and Ultra 97.2 FPS. The Medium to High drop here is 86 FPS, slightly smaller in absolute terms than at 1080p but similar in percentage. At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 152.1 FPS, Medium 121.4 FPS, High 77 FPS, and Ultra 54.3 FPS. The High preset at 4K barely maintains 77 FPS, while Ultra dips below 60 FPS, which is generally considered the minimum for smooth gameplay. Across all resolutions, the Low preset provides the most consistent high-frame-rate experience, while Ultra consistently delivers the lowest performance, with the 4K Ultra result of 54.3 FPS being the worst measured value in the entire dataset.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a rank of 27 out of 1,734 tested combos in The Long Drive, placing it in the top 1.6% of all configurations. This high ranking is primarily driven by the RTX 5090's exceptional performance, as the GPU sits in the 94th percentile of all GPUs. The CPU's 88th percentile ranking is also strong, but the data suggests that the GPU contributes more to this game's frame rates at higher resolutions.

The rank of 27 implies that there are 26 other combinations that outperform this pairing, likely featuring more powerful CPUs such as flagship Core i9 or Ryzen 9 parts. The i5-14400F's nearest rivals — the Core i7-12800H, Ryzen 5 PRO 7645, and Ryzen 7 250 — all have nearly identical average scores, with deltas of 0% to -0.2%. This clustering suggests that in general compute, the i5-14400F is well-positioned, but in a game like The Long Drive that appears to scale with resolution, the GPU is the primary driver of the high rank. The fact that this combo reaches 337.3 FPS at 1080p Low while still managing 152.1 FPS at 4K Low indicates a well-balanced pairing for most use cases, though the Ultra preset at 4K exposes the CPU's limitations in feeding the GPU's immense processing power.