Minimum

Minimum is a third-person shooter released in mid-2014, which places it firmly in the "older title, modern hardware" category. Pairing a current AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with an end-of-life NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 creates a lopsided combination: the processor sits in the 86th percentile of all CPUs in the database, while the GPU occupies the 58th percentile. The recorded frame-rate data confirms that the graphics card is the component setting the ceiling here, and that the game runs comfortably at most resolutions as a result.

FAQ

Q: Can the Ryzen 7 9700X + RTX 2060 run Minimum at 1080p?

A: Yes, at every preset tested. The combination clears the 60 FPS threshold at 1920x1080 on Low (157.3 avg), Medium (116.8 avg), High (102.5 avg), and Ultra (77.4 avg).

Q: Can this combo run Minimum at 4K?

A: No. At 3840x2160 no preset reaches 60 FPS: Low averages 54.2, Medium 41, High 37.3, and Ultra 24.8. The verdict data lists zero playable settings at that resolution.

Q: What is the best-looking setting that stays playable at 1440p?

A: High, at 2560x1440, which averages 61.8 FPS. Ultra at the same resolution drops to 49.1 FPS and misses the threshold.

Q: How does this hardware pairing rank against other tested combinations in this game?

A: It ranks 2881 out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the lower portion of the database's results for Minimum despite the strong CPU.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck?

A: The GPU. Frame rates scale sharply with resolution (157.3 avg at 1080p Low versus 54.2 at 4K Low), which indicates the RTX 2060 is the limiting factor while the 9700X has headroom to spare.

Q: Are the numbers measured or estimated?

A: All frame rates in this analysis are measured results recorded in the database, not synthetic projections.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling pattern across resolutions tells the story clearly. At 1920x1080 on Low, the pairing averages 157.3 FPS. Move to 2560x1440 on Low and that figure falls to 97.6 FPS, a drop of roughly 38 percent. Push to 3840x2160 on Low and it falls again to 54.2 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, increasing the pixel count would have little effect on frame rate, because the processor workload stays largely the same across resolutions. Instead, the frame rate collapses as the resolution climbs, which is the classic signature of GPU limitation.

The preset scaling reinforces the point. At 1080p, going from Low to Ultra cuts the average from 157.3 to 77.4 FPS. At 4K, the same jump cuts it from 54.2 to 24.8 FPS. Both drops are driven by rendering load, not simulation or draw-call logic, so the RTX 2060 with its 6 GB of GDDR6 and 336.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth is the component doing the heavy lifting, and the one running out of capacity first.

The Ryzen 7 9700X, by contrast, is effectively idle in this workload. It is an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 5 processor on the 4 nm node, with a 5.50 GHz boost clock, and it sits in the 86th percentile of all CPUs in the database. Its single-thread score of 3023 in Geekbench and 2211 in Cinebench R23 single-core indicate far more CPU capability than a 2014 third-person shooter can exploit. A title from June 2014 simply does not demand this class of processor, and the recorded data shows the 9700X never becoming the constraint: if it were, the 1080p Low result would plateau rather than reaching 157.3 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database's results for Minimum specifically, this pairing ranks 2881 out of 3712 tested combinations. That position reflects the GPU more than the CPU. The RTX 2060 occupies the 58th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 15290, which is respectable but not high-end, and its production status is end-of-life. The 9700X, with an average benchmark score of 37943 and an 86th percentile standing, would rank far higher on its own merit.

The ranking therefore reads as an imbalance: a top-tier modern CPU tethered to a mid-range, discontinued graphics card. In a game like Minimum, which is a decade old, that imbalance still produces playable results at two of the three tested resolutions, but the combo's overall rank of 2881 shows that many tested pairings deliver more frame rate in this title. Anyone comparing combinations in the database should read this entry as "GPU-limited but comfortably playable at 1080p and 1440p."

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run Minimum, with one important qualification about 4K.

At 1920x1080, the verdict is unqualified: all four presets clear the 60 FPS playability threshold. Low averages 157.3, Medium 116.8, High 102.5, and even Ultra exceeds the bar at 77.4 FPS. A 1080p player can simply max out the settings and enjoy frame rates well beyond the threshold.

At 2560x1440, the verdict is positive but with a ceiling. Low (97.6), Medium (79), and High (61.8) all clear 60 FPS, while Ultra at 49.1 FPS does not. The 1440p player should stop at the High preset, which still clears the threshold, but only barely, so anyone sensitive to dips below 60 may prefer Medium for its larger margin.

At 3840x2160, the verdict is negative. No preset reaches the threshold: Low comes closest at 54.2 FPS, and everything below that setting is progressively worse, bottoming out at 24.8 FPS on Ultra. Native 4K is not a playable option for this pairing in Minimum.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full set of measured results, all average frame rates, is as follows.

At 1920x1080:

• Low: 157.3 avg
• Medium: 116.8 avg
• High: 102.5 avg
• Ultra: 77.4 avg

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 97.6 avg
• Medium: 79 avg
• High: 61.8 avg
• Ultra: 49.1 avg

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 54.2 avg
• Medium: 41 avg
• High: 37.3 avg
• Ultra: 24.8 avg

Reading down each column shows a consistent gradient. The step from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly a third of the frame rate at every preset: 157.3 becomes 97.6 on Low, 116.8 becomes 79 on Medium, 102.5 becomes 61.8 on High, and 77.4 becomes 49.1 on Ultra. The step from 1440p to 4K costs another large share: 97.6 becomes 54.2 on Low, and 49.1 becomes 24.8 on Ultra, meaning 4K Ultra delivers less than a third of the 1080p Low figure.

Another way to read the data: the 4K Low result (54.2) is almost identical to the 1440p Ultra result (49.1), and both sit below the threshold. Meanwhile 1080p Ultra (77.4) outperforms 1440p Medium (79) almost exactly, showing that a resolution step down buys a full preset tier up with room to spare. Minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded for these runs, so the analysis rests on averages.

Best Settings per Resolution

Based on the measured data, the most demanding preset that stays at or above the 60 FPS threshold at each resolution is:

• 1920x1080: Ultra, 77.4 FPS average. The full preset stack is available at 1080p, and even the top tier clears the threshold by a comfortable margin of over 17 frames.
• 2560x1440: High, 61.8 FPS average. High is the ceiling at 1440p. It clears 60 FPS, but only narrowly, so the margin is thin. Medium at 79 FPS offers a safer cushion if consistency matters more than visual fidelity.
• 3840x2160: none. No preset at 4K reaches 60 FPS. Low is the closest at 54.2 FPS, which is below the threshold, so there is no recommended 4K setting under the database's playability standard.

In short, the practical answer for this hardware is 1080p Ultra for maximum image quality, or 1440p High for a larger display, with an eye on the tight 61.8 FPS margin at that setting.

Similar Performance Alternatives

Looking at the nearest rivals in the database gives a sense of which nearby hardware would behave similarly in this game.

On the CPU side, the Ryzen 7 9700X's average score of 37943 puts it within a fraction of a percent of several processors: the Intel Core i9-14901E (37911, a 0.1 percent gap), the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (37904, 0.1 percent), the Intel Core 5 211E (37829, 0.3 percent), and the AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P132 (37804, 0.4 percent). Any of these CPUs would be effectively interchangeable in Minimum, since the game's frame rate is GPU-bound here anyway. The processor choice barely matters for this title; even substantially weaker chips would keep pace with the RTX 2060's output.

On the GPU side, the RTX 2060's average score of 15290 has its own set of near neighbors: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (15283, 0 percent gap), the AMD Radeon 680M (15270, 0.1 percent), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (15199, 0.6 percent), and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 (15171, 0.8 percent). Swapping the RTX 2060 for any of these cards would produce broadly similar frame rates in Minimum, though the 6 GB of GDDR6, hardware ray tracing via 30 RT cores, and 240 tensor cores are specific to the RTX 2060 among parts with comparable database scores. A system built around the Radeon RX 7600 or the RTX 3050 OEM paired with the same or a rival CPU would land within a rounding error of the results recorded here.

The broader takeaway: since the GPU defines performance in Minimum for this combo, the alternatives that matter most are the graphics-side rivals, all of which sit within one percent of the 9700X + RTX 2060 pairing's effective gaming output. The CPU alternatives, clustered within half a percent of each other in aggregate score, would change nothing observable in this particular game.