The Long Drive

Settings Recommendations

The measured data strongly favors the Medium preset as the optimal balance for this combination in The Long Drive. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 335.5 FPS, which is nearly double the High preset's 213 FPS and 2.3x the Ultra preset's 146.9 FPS. The jump from Medium to Ultra at 1080p costs 188.6 FPS, a 56% reduction, while the jump from Medium to High costs 122.5 FPS, a 37% reduction. The Low preset at 391.7 FPS offers only a 16.7% improvement over Medium, making the visual fidelity loss difficult to justify.

At 2560x1440, the pattern holds. Medium produces 220.6 FPS, which remains well above the 144Hz refresh rate common to high-refresh monitors. High at 139.8 FPS and Ultra at 98.2 FPS both fall below that threshold. At 3840x2160, Medium drops to 123.9 FPS, still playable, but High at 79.3 FPS and Ultra at 54.1 FPS show the GPU struggling with the higher settings. Low at 4K reaches 149.8 FPS, but the visual compromise is substantial.

The verdict is clear: Medium provides the highest settings tier that maintains triple-digit FPS at every resolution tested. Ultra is only viable at 1080p where 146.9 FPS remains smooth, but the 71.6 FPS drop from Medium to Ultra at 1080p suggests diminishing returns that most users will find unacceptable.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF brings 14 cores and 20 threads on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. This is a desktop CPU on Intel Socket 1700, built on a 10 nm process. Its benchmark results place it in the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32889 and a single-core score of 4643.

In The Long Drive, a driving simulation, the CPU's single-thread performance is the primary driver of physics and game logic. The 5.30 GHz boost clock provides exceptional single-core throughput, which is evidenced by the Cinebench R15 single-core score of 468 and Geekbench single-core score of 2778. The multi-core capability, while less critical for this genre, still delivers a PassMark multithread score of 38697, ensuring no bottleneck from background tasks or complex simulation elements.

The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14600K, scores 49166 in average benchmark terms, a mere 0.4% behind. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X trails by 0.6% with a score of 49062. This places the 14600KF in a tight performance cluster where the 5.30 GHz boost clock and 24 MB of shared L3 cache provide the responsiveness that driving simulations demand.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a flagship GPU with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, packs 92,200 million transistors across a 750 mm² die. The boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz drive 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14411 and PassMark G3D score of 39650 place it in the 94th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 D, scores 84241 on average, a 0.1% delta. Interestingly, the RTX 5050 Mobile matches within 0.2% at 84171, suggesting the desktop 5090's performance advantage is narrower than the generational naming implies.

In The Long Drive, the GPU's role becomes dominant at higher resolutions and settings. The 32 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for any texture load the game presents, and the 1.79 TB/s bandwidth ensures no memory starvation even at 4K Ultra. The 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 compute enables the pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s, which directly translate to the high frame rates observed.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14600KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 9th out of 1,734 tested combos in The Long Drive. This top 0.5% placement reflects the synergy between a 93rd percentile CPU and a 94th percentile GPU. The rank of 9 indicates that only eight other configurations achieve higher average frame rates in this specific title.

This ranking is notable because the CPU is not the absolute fastest available, yet the combination outperforms the vast majority of setups. The data suggests that the RTX 5090's raw throughput is the dominant factor, with the 14600KF's 5.30 GHz boost clock providing sufficient single-thread headroom to avoid becoming a limiting factor. The delta between this combo and the top-ranked configurations is not captured in the FACT PACK, but the rank itself demonstrates that this pairing extracts near-maximum performance from the GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals the GPU-bound nature of this combination at higher resolutions. At Medium settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 114.9 FPS (335.5 to 220.6, a 34% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 96.7 FPS (220.6 to 123.9, a 44% reduction). The total drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium is 211.6 FPS, a 63% reduction.

At High settings, the scaling is even steeper: 213 FPS at 1080p drops to 139.8 FPS at 1440p (34% reduction) and further to 79.3 FPS at 4K (43% reduction from 1440p). The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic falloff, from 146.9 FPS at 1080p to 98.2 FPS at 1440p (33% reduction) to 54.1 FPS at 4K (45% reduction from 1440p).

These patterns indicate that the RTX 5090's pixel throughput becomes the binding constraint as resolution increases. The CPU's role diminishes at 4K, where even the Low preset at 149.8 FPS suggests the GPU is still the primary driver. The consistent 33-34% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings points to a linear resolution scaling effect, while the 43-45% drop from 1440p to 4K reflects the 2.25x pixel count increase.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are: Low at 391.7, Medium at 335.5, High at 213, and Ultra at 146.9. The spread from Low to Ultra is 244.8 FPS, with the largest single drop occurring between Medium and High at 122.5 FPS.

At 2560x1440: Low delivers 271.8 FPS, Medium 220.6 FPS, High 139.8 FPS, and Ultra 98.2 FPS. The Medium to High drop here is 80.8 FPS, while the High to Ultra drop is 41.6 FPS.

At 3840x2160: Low reaches 149.8 FPS, Medium 123.9 FPS, High 79.3 FPS, and Ultra 54.1 FPS. The Medium to High drop is 44.6 FPS, and the High to Ultra drop is 25.2 FPS.

Notably, the Low preset at 4K (149.8 FPS) outperforms the Ultra preset at 1080p (146.9 FPS) by 2.9 FPS. This inverse relationship demonstrates that the game's settings have a more substantial impact on frame rate than resolution alone. The data also shows that the Medium preset at 1440p (220.6 FPS) exceeds the High preset at 1080p (213 FPS), suggesting that users prioritizing frame rate should reduce settings before reducing resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming with this combo?

A: Medium at 2560x1440 delivers 220.6 FPS, which is the highest settings tier that remains well above 144Hz. High at 139.8 FPS and Ultra at 98.2 FPS both fall below that threshold.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations in The Long Drive?

A: It ranks 9th out of 1,734 tested combos, placing it in the top 0.5% of all configurations.

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

A: The data indicates the GPU is the limiting factor at 3840x2160. The FPS drops from 1440p to 4K range from 43% to 45% across settings, consistent with pixel-count scaling, while the CPU's 5.30 GHz boost clock prevents a CPU bottleneck.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to Medium in terms of FPS at 1080p?

A: Ultra delivers 146.9 FPS at 1920x1080, which is 188.6 FPS lower than Medium's 335.5 FPS. This represents a 56% reduction in frame rate for the Ultra visual upgrade.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and High settings at 1440p?

A: Low delivers 271.8 FPS while High delivers 139.8 FPS at 2560x1440, a difference of 132 FPS. The Low preset is 94% faster than High at this resolution.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's nearest rival show a significant performance gap?

A: No. The RTX 5090 D scores 84241 on average, a 0.1% delta from the RTX 5090's 84306. The RTX 5050 Mobile is also within 0.2% at 84171, indicating marginal differences among these GPUs in synthetic benchmarks.