Evolve

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for this Evolve configuration show a steep, predictable decline as resolution increases, but the shape of that curve reveals a system that is heavily GPU-limited at every step. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 80.1 FPS, which drops to 50.8 FPS at 1440p and then to 28.9 FPS at 4K. That translates to a 37% loss moving from 1080p to 1440p, and another 43% loss moving from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is roughly linear with pixel count, which is the signature of a graphics-card-bound workload.

The Medium preset tells the same story: 59.8 FPS at 1080p, 39.5 FPS at 1440p (a 34% drop), and 26.2 FPS at 4K (a 34% drop from 1440p). High settings follow suit: 47 FPS at 1080p, 30.2 FPS at 1440p, and 15.7 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most punishing: 31.2 FPS at 1080p, 25.1 FPS at 1440p, and a nearly unplayable 9.5 FPS at 4K. The gap between Low and Ultra widens dramatically as resolution climbs, confirming that the GPU's limited shading throughput and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints.

A key observation is that the CPU is not the limiting factor here. The Ryzen 5 2600 has 6 cores and 12 threads, which is ample for a 2015 FPS title like Evolve. The frame-rate collapse from 80 FPS at 1080p Low to 29 FPS at 4K Low cannot be explained by processor overhead; it is entirely consistent with the GTX 1650's modest 896 shading units and 128-bit memory bus. The data indicates that users targeting higher resolutions will need to make substantial preset sacrifices, but even at Low settings, 4K remains below the 30 FPS threshold for smooth play.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear hierarchy for playability. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers 59.8 FPS, which is within the acceptable range for a competitive FPS, while High offers 47 FPS and Low reaches 80.1 FPS. For a 60 Hz display, Medium is the sweet spot: it provides a solid frame rate without dropping to the visual compromises of Low. Ultra at 1080p drops to 31.2 FPS, which is too low for fast-paced action, so it should be avoided unless the user prioritizes image quality over responsiveness.

At 1440p, the situation becomes more restrictive. Medium yields 39.5 FPS, which is playable but not smooth for a shooter. Low at 50.8 FPS is the only preset that approaches a comfortable experience at this resolution. High drops to 30.2 FPS, and Ultra falls to 25.1 FPS. Users with a 1440p monitor should stick to Low, as the jump from Low to Medium costs nearly 11 FPS (from 50.8 to 39.5), a 22% penalty that is hard to justify for incremental visual gains.

At 4K, no preset is truly playable. Low peaks at 28.9 FPS, Medium at 26.2 FPS, High at 15.7 FPS, and Ultra at 9.5 FPS. Even the lowest settings fail to reach 30 FPS, indicating that this resolution is beyond the hardware's capability for Evolve. The recommendation is clear: if 4K is the target, the user must accept sub-30 FPS performance or consider lowering the resolution to 1440p, where Low at 50.8 FPS provides a much better experience.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this pairing of AMD Ryzen 5 2600 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ranks 1635 out of 1695 combos for Evolve. That places it in the bottom 4% of all tested systems, which is a strong indicator of how demanding this game can be on low-end hardware. The rank is driven primarily by the GPU's limitations, as the CPU is far more capable relative to its peers.

The CPU itself sits at the 77th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 19616. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-1345U (avg score 19691, delta -0.4%) and the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U (avg score 19508, delta +0.6%). This shows the Ryzen 5 2600 is competitive with modern mid-range mobile and desktop chips in synthetic workloads, offering performance within 1% of those alternatives. The GPU, however, is far weaker: it sits at the 43rd percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 8713. Its nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Mobile (avg 8746, delta -0.4%) and AMD Radeon 550X (avg 8749, delta -0.4%), are also low-end parts, confirming that the graphics card is the bottleneck.

The rank of 1635 out of 1695 means that 60 other tested combos perform worse in Evolve, but the overwhelming majority of systems deliver better frame rates. For a game released in 2015, this result is underwhelming; it suggests that the GTX 1650 is simply not equipped for modern settings at high resolutions, even in a slightly older title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset of measured average FPS is as follows. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 80.1 FPS, Medium produces 59.8 FPS, High produces 47 FPS, and Ultra produces 31.2 FPS. At 2560x1440, Low produces 50.8 FPS, Medium produces 39.5 FPS, High produces 30.2 FPS, and Ultra produces 25.1 FPS. At 3840x2160, Low produces 28.9 FPS, Medium produces 26.2 FPS, High produces 15.7 FPS, and Ultra produces 9.5 FPS.

The spread between Low and Ultra is largest at 1080p, where the difference is 48.9 FPS (from 80.1 down to 31.2). At 1440p, the spread narrows to 25.7 FPS (from 50.8 to 25.1). At 4K, the spread is only 19.4 FPS (from 28.9 to 9.5). This narrowing indicates that at higher resolutions, the GPU is so saturated that preset changes have diminishing returns—the card is already at its limit, and reducing settings cannot recover enough headroom.

The jump from Medium to High at 1080p costs 12.8 FPS (from 59.8 to 47), while the jump from High to Ultra costs 15.8 FPS (from 47 to 31.2). The steepest single drop is from Low to Medium at 1080p, which loses 20.3 FPS (from 80.1 to 59.8). This suggests that Medium introduces significant rendering overhead that the GTX 1650 struggles to sustain.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is built on the TU117 chip using a 12 nm process at TSMC, with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus providing 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 1485 MHz with a boost of 1665 MHz, and it has 896 shading units, 56 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The card's pixel rate is 53.28 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 93.24 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance of 2.984 TFLOPS.

These specifications explain the measured results. The 128-bit memory bus and 4 GB VRAM are modest for 2019, let alone for 4K workloads. At 4K, the card is forced to shuffle textures across a narrow bus, and the 128.1 GB/s bandwidth becomes a severe bottleneck. The FP32 throughput of 2.984 TFLOPS is also low by modern standards, which directly impacts the shading work required by Evolve's High and Ultra presets.

The GPU's percentile rank of 43 places it in the lower half of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 8713 is slightly below its nearest rival, the Quadro P2200 (delta +0.5%). The card's DirectX 12 benchmark score of 35 and Vulkan score of 35966 (from Geekbench) suggest it can handle modern APIs, but the raw compute power is insufficient for demanding scenes. The 4 GB VRAM is particularly limiting at 4K, where texture-heavy scenes can exceed this capacity, causing stutters and frame drops beyond what the average FPS numbers capture.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen+ architecture (Pinnacle Ridge), manufactured on a 12 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz, with 96 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 46.9 GB/s and connects via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 2600 achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11186 and a single-core score of 1579. Its Passmark multithread score is 13160, with a single-thread score of 2239. These numbers place it at the 77th percentile among all CPUs, and its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-11600KF (avg 19740, delta -0.6%) and Intel Core i7-10700F (avg 19485, delta +0.7%). The CPU is clearly not the weak link in this combo.

For Evolve, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. With 6 cores and 12 threads, the Ryzen 5 2600 provides ample parallelism for a game from 2015, which was designed for quad-core processors of that era. The boost clock of 3.90 GHz is sufficient for single-threaded game logic, and the 16 MB L3 cache helps reduce memory latency. The data shows that as resolution increases, the CPU's influence on frame rate diminishes, and the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the CPU can push 80.1 FPS, but at 4K Low, it is waiting on the GPU to render each frame, resulting in just 28.9 FPS. This confirms that the Ryzen 5 2600 has headroom to spare; a stronger GPU would yield significantly higher frame rates across all settings.