Is the Core i7-10700K good for ARC Raiders?
ARC Raiders (Unreal Engine 5) is CPU-bound at competitive framerates — simulation, player updates, and draw-call submission land on a few fast threads, so single-thread speed matters more than core count. The Core i7-10700K (8C/16T, 2020) caps your framerate well before the GPU does. Settings can claw some of it back, but the honest fix at high refresh rates is the CPU.
Keep GPU spend proportionate: with the Core i7-10700K, an entry/mid GPU is the right partner — and your next upgrade dollar should go to the CPU side in CPU-bound titles like this one.
Settings that actually help a Core i7-10700K in ARC Raiders
An uncapped, wildly-swinging framerate costs frametime consistency. A cap a touch below your CPU ceiling gives flatter frametimes and better input feel.
These run on the CPU. Shadow and texture quality mostly do not — cutting the wrong settings does nothing for a CPU bottleneck.
Upscalers cut GPU load — useless for CPU limits — BUT their frame-generation modes can double perceived FPS on CPU-bound rigs where base latency is already low.
Browser tabs with video, overlays, and RGB software steal exactly the single-thread time this game needs. Windows Game Mode helps schedule around them.
Looking for GPU-specific numbers instead? ARC Raiders settings by GPU · measured ARC Raiders benchmarks