Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the most demanding titles in the Action RPG genre, and the measured results for the Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the Intel Arc B370 place this combo in a very specific performance tier. The data shows a system that is fundamentally GPU-limited at every resolution and settings level tested, with the Arc B370 acting as the primary constraint. This combination ranks 2685 out of 2920 tested combos in this game, placing it in the 8th percentile of all tested systems, which is a low position driven almost entirely by the graphics processor rather than the CPU. The Core i5-12600KF, with its 10 cores and 16 threads, is a 79th-percentile CPU overall, yet the Arc B370 sits at the 5th percentile among all GPUs, creating a massive imbalance that defines every frame rate in the measured data.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is severe and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 45 FPS at 1920x1080 to 33 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 12 FPS, and then to 22 FPS at 3840x2160, another 11 FPS drop. This progression means that moving from 1080p to 4K at Low settings cuts performance by more than half, from 45 FPS to 22 FPS, a 51% decline. The scaling is nearly linear with pixel count, which is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rate would remain relatively flat as resolution increases, because the same number of draw calls and game logic threads would be processed regardless of pixel count. Instead, each doubling of resolution nearly halves the frame rate, indicating that the Arc B370's rendering pipeline is saturated.

At Medium settings, the same pattern emerges but with lower absolute numbers. The average FPS at 1080p is 33, dropping to 24 at 1440p and then to 16 at 4K. The delta between 1080p and 1440p is 9 FPS, while the delta between 1440p and 4K is 8 FPS, showing a consistent decline that tracks resolution scaling. The minimum frame rates also reflect this, with the Medium preset at 4K showing a minimum of 14 FPS and a maximum of 19 FPS, which is a narrow range that suggests the GPU is consistently pegged at its limit. At High settings, the averages are 24 FPS at 1080p, 18 FPS at 1440p, and 12 FPS at 4K, with each step down representing roughly a 25% reduction in performance. Ultra settings show the lowest absolute numbers: 23 FPS at 1080p, 17 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K.

The resolution scaling data strongly indicates that the Intel Arc B370 is the sole limiting component. The Core i5-12600KF, even with its 10 cores and 16 threads, is not being challenged by Cyberpunk 2077's CPU demands at these frame rates. The CPU's 3DMark scores, including 7956 in the 16-thread test and 1016 in single-thread, are far above what would be needed to drive 45 FPS or even 22 FPS. The bottleneck is clearly the GPU's pixel throughput, texture rate, and shading power. The Arc B370's pixel rate is rated at 48.00 GPixel/s and its texture rate at 96.00 GTexel/s, but these figures are meaningless when the actual measured performance in this game is this low. The 4K results, where even Low settings only achieve 22 FPS, confirm that the GPU cannot handle the pixel load at that resolution.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured frame rates, the optimal settings preset is clearly Low at every resolution, but the experience varies dramatically by resolution. At 1920x1080, Low settings deliver an average of 45 FPS, which is the only measured configuration that approaches playable smoothness. Medium at 1080p yields 33 FPS, which is borderline, while High and Ultra drop to 24 and 23 FPS respectively, both of which are below the threshold for comfortable gameplay. The data shows that the jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 12 FPS, a 27% reduction, while the jump from Medium to High costs another 9 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs just 1 FPS more. This last result is notable: Ultra provides no meaningful benefit over High in terms of performance cost, but both are too slow to recommend.

At 2560x1440, the situation worsens. Low settings average 33 FPS, which is the only preset that reaches the 30 FPS mark, and even that is marginal for a fast-paced Action RPG. Medium at 1440p averages 24 FPS, High drops to 18 FPS, and Ultra falls to 17 FPS. None of these are playable for most users, but if forced to choose, Low is the only viable option. The measured minimum frame rate at 1440p Medium is 21 FPS, which means even the best-case scenario for Medium is below 30 FPS. At 3840x2160, all presets are effectively unplayable, with Low averaging 22 FPS, Medium 16 FPS, High 12 FPS, and Ultra 11 FPS. The frame rate at 4K Low is barely half of what the same preset achieves at 1080p, and the minimum at 4K Medium is 14 FPS.

The recommendation is straightforward: play at 1920x1080 with Low settings if you want the best measured experience. This configuration yields 45 FPS average, which is the only result above 40 FPS in the entire dataset. If you must use a higher preset, Medium at 1080p at 33 FPS is the next best option, but the 12 FPS penalty over Low is steep for the visual improvement. At 1440p or 4K, no preset achieves a consistently playable frame rate, and the data suggests that users should avoid these resolutions entirely with this combo. The Ultra preset offers no advantage over High in terms of frame rate at any resolution, with differences of only 1 FPS at 1080p and 4K, and 1 FPS at 1440p, so there is no reason to select Ultra over High for performance reasons.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12600KF and the Intel Arc B370 ranks 2685 out of 2920 tested combos in Cyberpunk 2077, placing it in the bottom 8% of all systems measured. This is a very low ranking, and the data shows why: the average frame rates across all resolutions and settings are consistently below 45 FPS, with most configurations falling into the teens or low twenties. The rank is driven by the GPU's position in the overall hierarchy. The Arc B370 has a percentile rank of 5 among all GPUs, meaning it outperforms only 5% of all graphics processors ever benchmarked. Its average benchmark score is 1184 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, which is nearly identical to the scores of its nearest rivals: the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 at 1186, the ATI Radeon HD 5770 at 1190, and the AMD Radeon HD 7650M at 1192. These rivals are all over a decade old, which puts the Arc B370's performance in historical context.

The CPU, by contrast, is much stronger. The Core i5-12600KF holds a percentile rank of 79 among all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 27799 is within 0.3% of the Intel Core i9-10900K, which scores 27872. It also sits near the AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE at 27712 and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D at 27896, with deltas of 0.3% and -0.3% respectively. This means the CPU is competitive with high-end processors from previous generations, yet the combo ranks poorly because the GPU is holding it back. The delta between the CPU's 79th percentile and the GPU's 5th percentile is the largest imbalance possible in this dataset. If the Arc B370 were replaced with a GPU in the 50th percentile, this combo would likely rank in the top half of all tested systems, but as measured, the 2685th rank is a direct consequence of the GPU's limitations.

The combo rank of 2685 out of 2920 means that only 235 tested combos perform worse, and those are likely systems with even older or weaker GPUs. The nearest GPU rivals to the Arc B370 all have similar scores, but the Core i5-12600KF is far more capable than the CPUs that would have been paired with those legacy graphics cards. This creates a situation where the combo's rank is artificially depressed by the GPU while the CPU sits idle. The data indicates that this pairing is fundamentally mismatched for Cyberpunk 2077, and the rank reflects that mismatch rather than any deficiency in the CPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates span from 45 FPS at Low settings to 23 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset averages 33 FPS with a minimum of 28 FPS and a maximum of 38 FPS, which is the only preset at this resolution with a recorded minimum above 25 FPS. High averages 24 FPS, and Ultra averages 23 FPS, showing that the step from High to Ultra costs only 1 FPS. The Low preset at 45 FPS is the single best result in the entire dataset, and it is the only configuration that reaches a playable 45 FPS. The minimum and maximum for Low are not recorded, but the average is 12 FPS higher than Medium, which is a significant gap.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 33 FPS at Low, 24 FPS at Medium, 18 FPS at High, and 17 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 21 FPS and a maximum of 28 FPS, which means even the peak frame rate at 1440p Medium is below the average at 1080p Low. The gap between Low and Medium at 1440p is 9 FPS, and between Medium and High it is 6 FPS, while High to Ultra is only 1 FPS. None of these averages reach 30 FPS except for Low, and even that is only 3 FPS above the 30 FPS threshold. The data suggests that 1440p is not a viable resolution for this combo in Cyberpunk 2077, as the best-case scenario is a 33 FPS average with no recorded minimum.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 22 FPS at Low, 16 FPS at Medium, 12 FPS at High, and 11 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum values, showing a minimum of 14 FPS and a maximum of 19 FPS. This means that even at 4K Medium, the frame rate never exceeds 19 FPS, and the average of 16 FPS is well below any playable threshold. The Low preset at 22 FPS is the highest average at 4K, but it is still below 25 FPS. The drop from 1080p Low (45 FPS) to 4K Low (22 FPS) is a 23 FPS reduction, which is the largest absolute decline across all settings when moving from the lowest to highest resolution. The data shows a consistent pattern: every settings preset loses roughly half its frame rate when moving from 1080p to 4K, confirming that the GPU is the sole constraint.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is an integrated graphics processor based on the Xe3-LPG architecture, built on a 3 nm process node. It has 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 raster output units, along with 10 ray tracing cores. Its base clock is 300 MHz with a boost clock of 2400 MHz, and its FP32 performance is rated at 6.144 TFLOPS. The memory configuration is entirely system-shared, meaning there is no dedicated VRAM, and the memory type, bus width, and bandwidth are all listed as "System Shared" or "System Dependent." This is a critical limitation for Cyberpunk 2077, a game that is known to be memory-intensive, and the lack of dedicated VRAM means the GPU must compete with the CPU for system memory bandwidth.

The GPU's benchmark score of 1184 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 places it at the 5th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570, the ATI Radeon HD 5770, and the AMD Radeon HD 7650M, all of which are over a decade old. The deltaPct values are -0.2%, -0.5%, and -0.7% respectively, meaning the Arc B370 is statistically tied with these legacy parts. The AMD FirePro M2000 scores 1168, which is 1.4% lower than the Arc B370, so the Arc B370 is slightly faster than that workstation GPU. The pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s are theoretical maximums that the measured frame rates show are never approached in practice.

The GPU's role in this combo is to be the definitive bottleneck. At every resolution and settings level, the frame rates are consistent with a GPU that is overwhelmed by the rendering load. The 6.144 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is far below what modern discrete GPUs offer, and the shared memory system adds latency and bandwidth limitations. The fact that the GPU's best measured result is 45 FPS at 1080p Low, and that it drops to 22 FPS at 4K Low, shows that the GPU has no headroom for higher resolutions or more demanding presets. The ray tracing cores are present, but the overall performance is so low that enabling any ray-traced effects would likely halve the already low frame rates, though no such measurements are in the data.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12600KF is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it uses the Intel Socket 1700. The CPU's benchmark scores are strong: Cinebench R23 multicore is 23391, singlecore is 3302, Geekbench multicore is 12137, and singlecore is 2157. The 3DMark scores show scaling from 1995 in the 2-thread test to 7956 in the 16-thread test, which is near-linear scaling and indicates excellent multi-threaded performance.

The CPU's percentile rank of 79 among all CPUs and its average benchmark score of 27799 place it in the same tier as the Intel Core i9-10900K, which scores 27872, and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which scores 27896. The deltas are -0.3% for the i9-10900K and -0.3% for the 5800X3D, meaning the i5-12600KF is statistically equivalent to those higher-tier processors in average benchmark performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE scores 27712, which is 0.3% lower, so the i5-12600KF is also comparable to that part. This CPU is clearly capable of driving Cyberpunk 2077 at high frame rates, as its single-thread performance of 3302 in Cinebench R23 is more than sufficient for the game's main thread.

In this combo, the CPU's role is minimal because the GPU is so weak. The measured frame rates never exceed 45 FPS, and at those frame rates, the CPU is likely idle most of the time. Cyberpunk 2077 is a heavily threaded game, but the i5-12600KF's 16 threads are more than capable of handling the game's logic and draw calls at 45 FPS or lower. The CPU's 3DMark 16-thread score of 7956 and max-thread score of 7952 show that it can sustain high multi-threaded workloads, but those workloads are not present in this game at these frame rates. The bottleneck is entirely on the GPU, and the CPU's performance is essentially irrelevant to the final frame rates. If the GPU were replaced with a faster part, the CPU could likely push frame rates well above 100 FPS in many scenarios, but as measured, the CPU is never the limiting factor.