Minimum

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for this Intel Core i5-14600K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination in Minimum shows a system that scales cleanly across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptionally high across the board. The Low preset delivers an average of 430 FPS, while Medium drops to 329 FPS with a recorded minimum of 280 FPS and a maximum of 379 FPS. High settings average 276 FPS, and the Ultra preset still maintains an average of 210 FPS. This resolution is clearly far beyond what the game needs, with even the most demanding preset producing triple-digit averages.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains extremely strong but shows the expected scaling pressure. The Low preset averages 277 FPS, which is a 36% reduction from the 1080p Low result. Medium comes in at 212 FPS average, with minimum and maximum figures of 180 and 244 FPS respectively. High settings deliver 178 FPS on average, while Ultra drops to 136 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is roughly 2x, indicating that the GPU is still the primary driver of performance differences between presets.

At 3840x2160, the system begins to show more meaningful strain, though it remains comfortably playable. The Low preset averages 149 FPS, which is a substantial drop from the 277 FPS seen at 1440p. Medium averages 114 FPS with a minimum of 97 FPS and a maximum of 131 FPS. High settings produce an average of 96 FPS, while Ultra falls to 73 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows roughly a 46% reduction in average FPS for the Low preset, and a similar proportional drop for other settings. Notably, the minimum FPS at 4K Medium is 97, which stays well above the 60 FPS playability threshold.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data indicates that this game at these settings is heavily GPU-bound, particularly at higher resolutions. The RTX 5090 D’s specifications — with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth — are far in excess of what Minimum requires. The GPU’s 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture rate suggest that the card is never the limiting factor at 1080p or 1440p, where frame rates are likely constrained by CPU draw-call overhead or game engine limits.

At 1920x1080, the difference between Low and Ultra is 220 FPS (430 vs 210), which is a 51% reduction. This large spread indicates that the GPU still has headroom to render more frames at lower settings, but the CPU (Intel Core i5-14600K with 14 cores, 20 threads, and a 5.30 GHz boost clock) is capable of feeding the GPU sufficiently to reach those very high frame rates. The CPU’s single-thread performance, evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2064 and Passmark single-thread score of 4270, is more than adequate for this title.

As resolution increases to 2560x1440 and then 3840x2160, the GPU becomes progressively more dominant in determining performance. The frame rate drops between 1440p and 4K are proportionally larger than the drops between 1080p and 1440p, which is consistent with a GPU-limited scenario. For example, at Medium settings, the average FPS goes from 329 at 1080p to 212 at 1440p (a 36% drop) and then to 114 at 4K (a 46% drop from 1440p). This accelerating decline with resolution is the classic signature of GPU-bound rendering. The CPU’s role diminishes further at 4K, where even the Ultra preset’s 73 FPS average suggests the GPU is doing the heavy lifting.

How This Combo Ranks

In the benchmark database, this combination ranks 5th out of 3,712 tested combos for Minimum. That places it in the top 0.1% of all tested hardware pairings, which is consistent with the extremely high frame rates observed. The CPU alone sits at the 90th percentile among all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48,618. The GPU is at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 77,712.

The combo rank of 5 is notable because it suggests that even though the individual components are near the top of their respective charts, there are a few other combinations that achieve higher overall performance in this specific game. This could be due to CPU-GPU pairing efficiency, memory configuration, or other factors not captured in the component-level benchmarks. The fact that the GPU’s nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (which scores 78,940, a 1.6% delta above the RTX 5090 D) and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants (scoring 79,396 and 79,605) indicates that the RTX 5090 D’s raw benchmark score is actually slightly below some other GPUs in the database, despite its modern architecture and massive memory pool.

The CPU’s nearest rivals are all within a 1% margin: the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (48,698, -0.2% delta), AMD EPYC 4345P (48,470, +0.3%), Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX (48,287, +0.7%), and Intel Core Ultra 5 245 (48,995, -0.8%). This clustering means that swapping the i5-14600K for any of these would produce nearly identical CPU-bound performance in Minimum.

Similar Performance Alternatives

Based on the nearest rivals data, several hardware combinations would behave similarly to this i5-14600K + RTX 5090 D pairing. For the CPU, the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H has an average score of 48,698, which is 0.2% lower than the i5-14600K’s 48,618 — essentially a wash. The AMD EPYC 4345P scores 48,470 (0.3% higher), and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX scores 48,287 (0.7% higher). The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 scores 48,995 (0.8% lower). Any of these CPUs paired with the RTX 5090 D would deliver near-identical frame rates in Minimum, since the game is GPU-bound at most settings and resolutions.

For the GPU, the nearest rivals are more interesting. The AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT has an average score of 76,904, which is 1.1% higher than the RTX 5090 D’s 77,712 (the delta is listed as 1.1, meaning the rival is slightly ahead). The AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT scores 78,940 (1.6% higher), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB scores 79,396 (2.1% higher), and the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scores 79,605 (2.4% higher). Note that these are all mobile or data-center parts, so they would not be drop-in replacements for a desktop system, but their benchmark scores indicate that the RTX 5090 D is not dramatically ahead of these alternatives in synthetic tests.

In practical terms for Minimum, a system with the i5-14600K and any of these rival GPUs would likely produce frame rates within a few percent of the measured values. The differences would be imperceptible at 1080p, where all configurations would exceed 200 FPS on Ultra, and would become slightly more noticeable at 4K Ultra, where the 73 FPS average could shift by a few frames depending on the GPU chosen.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS is Ultra, which delivers an average of 210 FPS. This is far above the playable threshold, and all four presets (Low 430, Medium 329, High 276, Ultra 210) clear 60 FPS by a wide margin. The data shows no reason to reduce settings at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the best settings are also Ultra, with an average of 136 FPS. The minimum recorded FPS at Medium is 180, and while no minimum is listed for Ultra, the average of 136 suggests that even the lowest dips would remain well above 60. High settings at 178 FPS and Medium at 212 FPS are also perfectly playable, but Ultra offers the best visual fidelity without sacrificing smoothness.

At 3840x2160, Ultra remains the best playable preset, achieving an average of 73 FPS. This is above the 60 FPS threshold, though with less headroom than lower resolutions. Medium at 114 FPS (with a minimum of 97) and High at 96 FPS are also excellent options if higher frame rates are desired. The Low preset at 149 FPS is the fastest, but given that Ultra clears the threshold, there is no need to drop below High or Medium unless targeting higher refresh rates.

The Verdict

This PC can run Minimum at every resolution and preset combination tested. The verdict by resolution confirms that all four settings — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — are playable at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160. The best settings, meaning the most demanding preset that still holds 60+ FPS, is Ultra at all three resolutions. The average FPS at Ultra is 210 at 1080p, 136 at 1440p, and 73 at 4K.

The data shows a system with enormous headroom. Even at 4K Ultra, the minimum frame rate is not listed, but the average of 73 FPS implies that the game will rarely dip below 60. At 1080p and 1440p, the frame rates are so high that the limiting factor is likely the display refresh rate or game engine physics, not the hardware. The RTX 5090 D’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth are wildly over-provisioned for a 2014 title like Minimum, and the i5-14600K’s 24 MB of L3 cache and 5.30 GHz boost clock provide ample CPU throughput.

For players seeking the highest visual quality, Ultra settings at 4K are fully playable. For competitive play at high refresh rates, the 1080p Low preset at 430 FPS or the 1440p Low preset at 277 FPS would be excellent choices. The system ranks 5th out of 3,712 tested combos, and its performance in this game is unlikely to be a bottleneck in any scenario. This is a top-tier combination for Minimum by every measure in the data.