Undisputed

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 produces a clear performance hierarchy in Undisputed, with the data showing a predictable and steep decline in frame rates as resolution increases. At 1080p, the combination delivers an average of 122.3 FPS on Low settings, which drops to 89.8 FPS on Medium and 71.5 FPS on High. This progression indicates that at lower resolutions, the system has ample headroom, and the scaling from Low to High is relatively modest, suggesting that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU without becoming a bottleneck at these settings. Moving to 1440p, the averages fall to 87 FPS on Low, 63.5 FPS on Medium, and 54.2 FPS on High. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is substantial across all presets, with the High preset losing roughly 24% of its performance, which points to the GPU beginning to take on more of the load. At 4K, the strain on the graphics card becomes the dominant factor, as the High preset manages only 30.6 FPS, a 57% reduction from the 1080p High result. The Ultra preset at 4K is nearly unplayable at 20.4 FPS, while even Low settings at 4K only reach 56.9 FPS. This scaling pattern—where performance drops more sharply at each higher resolution step—demonstrates that the limiting component shifts decisively to the GPU as pixel count increases, particularly beyond 1440p.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frames per second reveal a classic GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, with the RX 580’s 256-bit memory bus and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth becoming a critical factor. From 1080p to 1440p, the average frame rate across all settings drops by approximately 30% to 35%, and from 1440p to 4K, the drop becomes even steeper, often exceeding 40%. For instance, the Medium preset goes from 89.8 FPS at 1080p to 63.5 FPS at 1440p, then down to 43 FPS at 4K, illustrating a consistent erosion of performance. The Low preset shows the largest absolute drop, falling from 122.3 FPS at 1080p to 56.9 FPS at 4K, which is a 53% reduction. This behavior is typical for a mid-range GPU like the RX 580, which has a 232 mm² die size and 5,700 million transistors, indicating that its compute resources are quickly overwhelmed by the 4K pixel count. The data suggests that 1080p is the sweet spot for this combo, as it maintains playable frame rates even on Ultra (48.3 FPS), whereas 1440p requires dropping to Medium or Low for a smooth experience, and 4K is only viable on Low settings. The scaling also hints that the i5-9400’s six cores and six threads are sufficient to keep up at lower resolutions, but the GPU’s 32 ROPs and 144 TMUs become the constraining factor as resolution rises.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual quality and performance, the measured rows indicate that the High preset at 1080p is the optimal choice, delivering 71.5 FPS, which is well above the threshold for smooth gameplay in a sports title. At 1440p, the High preset drops to 54.2 FPS, which is still acceptable for many users, but the Medium preset at 63.5 FPS offers a safer margin for maintaining higher frame rates. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding only 48.3 FPS at 1080p and 35.8 FPS at 1440p, making it a less attractive option unless visual fidelity is prioritized over frame rate stability. At 4K, the only playable option is Low, which produces 56.9 FPS, while Medium drops to 43 FPS and High falls to 30.6 FPS, making them unsuitable for competitive play. The data shows that the step from High to Ultra carries a significant performance penalty, with the 1080p average dropping from 71.5 FPS to 48.3 FPS, a 32% reduction, which suggests that Ultra settings include effects that heavily tax the GPU without proportional visual benefits. Therefore, the recommendation is to stay at High for 1080p and 1440p, and to fall back to Low only when targeting 4K, as the intermediate presets offer diminishing returns.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580’s role in this game is defined by its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and its clock speeds of 1257 MHz base and 1340 MHz boost. The 8 GB frame buffer is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the higher memory pressure becomes apparent, as the performance drops precipitously from 56.9 FPS on Low to 20.4 FPS on Ultra. The GPU’s memory bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s is a key specification, and the data shows that this bandwidth is adequate for lower resolutions but becomes a bottleneck at 4K when paired with a six-core CPU that cannot offload enough work. The RX 580’s GCN 4.0 architecture, with 2304 shading units and a texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s, delivers consistent results in Undisputed, but the game’s settings scaling reveals that the Ultra preset likely increases draw calls and texture detail, which the GPU’s 32 ROPs struggle to process at higher pixel counts. The measured 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1005 and a Passmark G3D score of 8813 place this GPU in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, indicating it is a mid-range part that should be paired with appropriately modest settings. The data indicates that the GPU is the primary driver of performance differences between resolutions, as the frame rate drops align closely with the increase in pixel workload, and the CPU’s role becomes secondary once the resolution exceeds 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks

In the overall benchmark database, this combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the AMD Radeon RX 580 ranks 1468 out of 1580 tested combos for Undisputed, placing it in the lower 7% of all configurations. This rank reflects the age of both components, as the i5-9400 was released in 2018 and the RX 580 in 2017, and both are now end-of-life products. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 2305 places it in the 50th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rivals being the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300, 0.2% faster) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (2299, 0.2% faster), showing that the i5-9400 is competitive with newer budget processors. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 13559 places it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (13564, 0% difference) and the GTX 950 (13549, 0.1% slower) being near-identical in performance. Despite these middle-of-the-pack individual rankings, the combined rank of 1468 out of 1580 suggests that the pairing is suboptimal for this game, likely because the CPU’s six threads are insufficient to fully utilize the GPU’s capabilities in a modern sports title that may benefit from higher core counts. The data shows that while each component is average on its own, their combination yields a result that is much lower in the overall hierarchy, indicating that the i5-9400’s lack of hyper-threading and the RX 580’s age jointly limit the experience.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400’s contribution to Undisputed is characterized by its six cores and six threads, operating at a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. This configuration, based on the Coffee Lake architecture and built on a 14 nm process, provides a solid foundation for gaming, but the lack of multi-threading means it can struggle with titles that leverage more than six threads. In the measured results, the CPU’s impact is most visible at 1080p, where the frame rates are high enough that the GPU is not the sole bottleneck; for instance, the jump from Low (122.3 FPS) to Medium (89.8 FPS) shows that the CPU can keep up with the increased graphics load without causing a significant drop. However, at 4K, the CPU’s role diminishes, as the GPU becomes the limiting factor, and the frame rates are nearly identical across different CPU loads, indicating that the i5-9400 is not holding back the system at higher resolutions. The CPU’s 9 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for this game, but the benchmark results show that it sits in the 50th percentile, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and a single-core score of 1125, which are modest figures. The data implies that for a game like Undisputed, which is a sports title likely to be more GPU-intensive, the i5-9400 provides sufficient performance at 1080p and 1440p, but its six-thread limit could become a factor if the game’s engine scales with additional cores, potentially capping frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios.