Evolve

Evolve, a 2015 FPS title, presents a demanding workload for this pairing of an Intel Core i7-13700K and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. The recorded measurements show that the system is fully playable at 1080p and 1440p with High settings, but 4K remains out of reach at every preset. The RTX 2060, which sits in the 58th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 15290, is the primary constraint; the i7-13700K, at the 89th percentile of CPUs with an average score of 46881, provides ample headroom. The CPU carries a launch MSRP of $409, while the GPU carries a launch MSRP of 349 USD, but the performance relationship between them is what matters here.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The database contains average frame rate measurements for twelve combinations of resolution and quality preset. Minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded in the data, so the analysis relies on average FPS values.

At 3840x2160, the results are consistently below the 60 FPS playability threshold. Ultra averages 21 frames per second, which is effectively a slideshow. High improves to 35.1. Medium reaches 41.9. Low tops out at 55.9, still short of 60. The spread from Ultra to Low is 34.9 frames per second, showing that settings have a massive impact at this resolution, but even the lowest settings cannot push the system over the threshold. The GPU's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth is simply not enough to feed a 4K frame buffer at playable rates.

At 2560x1440, the picture improves considerably. Low averages 100.5 FPS, Medium 76.9, and High 60.2. Ultra, however, drops to 38.8. The jump from 4K to 1440p at High settings is substantial: 35.1 to 60.2. At this resolution, the most demanding preset that clears 60 FPS is High, with a margin of only 0.2 frames per second. That is a razor-thin buffer, and any scene heavier than the average would likely dip below the threshold. Medium at 76.9 offers a more comfortable margin while still looking good.

At 1920x1080, the system shows its strongest performance. Low averages 143.4 FPS, Medium 115.1, and High 90.5. Ultra is the outlier at 59.5, which is 0.5 frames below the 60 FPS threshold. This is a notable result: Ultra at 1080p is technically unplayable by the database's standard, while High at 1080p has a comfortable 30.5 FPS margin above the threshold. The gap between High and Ultra at 1080p, from 90.5 to 59.5, indicates that the Ultra preset imposes a heavy rendering cost that the RTX 2060 cannot consistently absorb.

The overall pattern across resolutions is clear. At 4K, the GPU is overwhelmed. At 1440p, High is the ceiling. At 1080p, High is still the recommended ceiling because Ultra misses the threshold by a hair. The data indicates that the RTX 2060's memory subsystem, with its 192-bit bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth, is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at High, but the 4K workload exceeds what the card can deliver. The card's compute resources, 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs, with a pixel rate of 80.64 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 201.6 GTexel/s, scale predictably with resolution.

Best Settings per Resolution

For each resolution, the database identifies the most demanding preset that maintains an average of at least 60 FPS.

At 3840x2160, no preset qualifies. Low is the closest at 55.9, but it falls short. The verdict list for 4K contains no playable settings, so there is no best setting. Users targeting 4K would need to lower the resolution or accept sub-60 frame rates.

At 2560x1440, the best setting is High, with an average of 60.2 FPS. Medium and Low also clear the threshold, at 76.9 and 100.5 respectively, but High is more demanding and still delivers a playable result. Ultra at 38.8 is not playable. The 0.2 FPS margin at High means this is a borderline configuration; the database's playability threshold is exactly 60 FPS, and this combination just clears it.

At 1920x1080, the best setting is High, with an average of 90.5 FPS. Ultra at 59.5 misses the 60 FPS threshold by a narrow margin, so High is the highest quality preset that remains playable. Low and Medium are also playable at 143.4 and 115.1 respectively. The 30.5 FPS margin at High gives users real headroom for demanding scenes, making 1080p the most comfortable resolution for this system.

In practical terms, a user at 1080p should select High rather than Ultra, because the 0.5 FPS deficit at Ultra is not worth the visual gain. At 1440p, High is the ceiling, and the 60.2 average leaves almost no headroom. At 4K, the system cannot deliver a playable experience at any setting.

FAQ

Q: Can this PC run Evolve at 4K resolution?

A: No. At 3840x2160, the highest average frame rate is 55.9 FPS on Low settings, which is below the 60 FPS playability threshold. Ultra averages 21 FPS, High 35.1, and Medium 41.9. The verdict list for 4K contains no playable settings.

Q: What is the best setting at 2560x1440?

A: High, with an average of 60.2 FPS. Medium at 76.9 and Low at 100.5 are also playable, but High is the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS. Ultra at 38.8 is not playable.

Q: Is Ultra playable at 1920x1080?

A: No. Ultra averages 59.5 FPS, which is 0.5 frames below the 60 FPS threshold. High at 90.5 FPS is the best playable setting at 1080p. The margin at Ultra is so small that even minor scene variation would push it below 60.

Q: How does this system rank among all tested combos for Evolve?

A: The combination of the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 2942 out of 3700 tested combos for this game. That places it in the lower portion of the field, which is consistent with the GPU being a mid-range part relative to the full database.

Q: What are the GPU's synthetic benchmark results?

A: The RTX 2060 scores 14111 in Passmark G3D, 65014 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 65846 in Geekbench Vulkan. Its Passmark DirectX 12 score is 53, DirectX 11 is 110, and DirectX 9 is 190. The average benchmark score across all tests is 15290, and the GPU sits at the 58th percentile of all GPUs.

Q: What are the CPU's synthetic benchmark results?

A: The i7-13700K scores 30745 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2116 in single-core. In Geekbench it scores 19429 multi-core and 2529 single-core. Passmark multithread is 45887 and single thread is 4333. The average benchmark score is 46881, and the CPU sits at the 89th percentile of all CPUs.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The nearest rivals for the i7-13700K, based on average benchmark score, are all within half a percent. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900 scores 46971, which is 0.2 percent lower. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 scores 47022, 0.3 percent lower. The AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX scores 46654, 0.5 percent higher. The Intel Xeon w3-2535 scores 46653, 0.5 percent higher. In practical terms, any of these CPUs would produce nearly identical frame rates in Evolve, since the game is GPU-bound at the tested settings. The differences are so small that they fall within run-to-run variance.

The nearest rivals for the RTX 2060 are also extremely close. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 scores 15283, exactly 0 percent different. The AMD Radeon 680M scores 15270, 0.1 percent higher. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM scores 15199, 0.6 percent higher. The AMD Radeon RX 7600 scores 15171, 0.8 percent higher. All four GPUs sit within 0.8 percent of the RTX 2060's average score of 15290, meaning a system with any of these graphics cards would deliver nearly the same frame rates in Evolve at the same CPU and settings.

The GPU percentile of 58 indicates that the RTX 2060 is a mid-range part. The CPU percentile of 89 indicates that the i7-13700K is a high-end part. This asymmetry matters: swapping the CPU for a Ryzen 9 5900 would change nothing measurable, while swapping the GPU for an RX 7600 would also change almost nothing, because all of these parts are within a narrow band of performance. Users looking for a meaningful upgrade path would need to move well beyond this cluster of GPUs, not within it.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data shows that the GPU is the limiting component in this pairing. The CPU is far more powerful than the game requires, given that it ranks at the 89th percentile of all CPUs and has a multithreaded Passmark score of 45887, while the GPU ranks at the 58th percentile with a G3D score of 14111.

Evidence for GPU-bound behavior comes from the resolution scaling. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 90.5 at 1920x1080 to 60.2 at 2560x1440, and then to 35.1 at 3840x2160. This steep decline with resolution is characteristic of a GPU-limited workload. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rate would stay roughly constant across resolutions, because the CPU work per frame does not change with resolution; only the GPU's pixel workload scales.

The settings scaling also points to the GPU. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra reduces the average from 143.4 to 59.5, a drop of 83.9 frames per second. At 1440p, the same move reduces from 100.5 to 38.8, a drop of 61.7. At 4K, from Low to Ultra is 55.9 to 21, a drop of 34.9. The fact that higher resolutions compress the spread between Low and Ultra is typical of GPU-bound rendering: at 4K, even Low settings saturate the GPU's pixel throughput.

The CPU's 16 cores and 24 threads, with a boost clock of 5.40 GHz and a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 30745, are far beyond what a 2015 FPS title would demand. Even the single-thread performance, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2116 and a Passmark single-thread score of 4333, is strong. Evolve's engine would have been designed for the CPUs of its era, which are much weaker. The i7-13700K's L3 cache of 30 MB shared and its dual-channel memory support for DDR4 and DDR5 further reduce any chance of a CPU-side stall.

At 1440p High, the system averages 60.2 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the 4K High result of 35.1 would not be so much lower. The GPU's 6 GB of memory and 192-bit bus are the practical constraints at higher resolutions, where the frame buffer demands exceed what the card can efficiently deliver. The card's FP32 throughput of 6.451 TFLOPS and its 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores are not relevant to this older title, which predates hardware ray tracing, but the raw rasterization throughput is what matters, and it is insufficient for 4K.

The conclusion is straightforward: the i7-13700K provides more than enough compute headroom, and the RTX 2060 is the component that determines playability. Users who want higher frame rates at 4K would need a stronger GPU, not a stronger CPU.

The Verdict

The database's verdict is clear. At 3840x2160, there are no playable settings; the best average is 55.9 FPS on Low, which is below the 60 FPS threshold. At 2560x1440, the playable settings are High, Medium, and Low, with High being the best at 60.2 FPS. At 1920x1080, the playable settings are High, Medium, and Low, with High being the best at 90.5 FPS.

So the answer is: yes, this PC can run Evolve, but only up to 1440p. At 1080p, High settings deliver 90.5 FPS, which is a smooth experience with real headroom. At 1440p, High settings deliver 60.2 FPS, which just clears the threshold and should be treated as a borderline configuration. At 4K, no setting is playable, with the closest being Low at 55.9 FPS.

The system's overall rank of 2942 out of 3700 combos reflects the GPU's mid-range position. The CPU is a top-tier part, but it is not the deciding factor in this game. Users targeting 1080p or 1440p will find this configuration adequate, provided they avoid Ultra settings, which miss the threshold at both resolutions. Users targeting 4K will need a more powerful GPU.