Evolve

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Evolve shows a steep and predictable decline as resolution increases, which strongly indicates that the GPU is the dominant limiting factor in this pairing. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combination achieves 59.7 FPS, but moving to 2560x1440 drops that to 43 FPS, a reduction of roughly 28%. Pushing further to 3840x2160 yields only 24.6 FPS at Low settings, which is a 59% drop from the 1080p result. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a graphics card that is saturated by pixel count long before the CPU becomes a bottleneck.

The same trend holds across all quality presets. At High settings, the frame rate falls from 35.5 FPS at 1080p to 23.6 FPS at 1440p, then to 11.5 FPS at 4K. At Medium, the numbers are 48.7, 30.8, and 15.4 FPS respectively. Ultra settings are the most punishing, with 23.9 FPS at 1080p, 14.4 FPS at 1440p, and a barely playable 8.9 FPS at 4K. The consistent halving of performance between 1080p and 4K across presets suggests that the rendering pipeline is memory-bandwidth and fill-rate bound, not compute-bound.

The data also reveals that resolution scaling is not linear. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is smaller than the gap between 1440p and 4K in absolute terms, but the relative drop is comparable. For instance, Low settings lose 16.7 FPS going from 1080p to 1440p, then lose another 18.4 FPS going to 4K. This pattern implies that the GTX 1050 Ti's 128-bit memory bus and 112.1 GB/s bandwidth are overwhelmed by the pixel throughput required at 4K, and the card's 32 ROPs cannot keep up with the fill rate demands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the clear performance ceiling in this configuration. Its specifications — 768 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs — are modest by modern standards, and the benchmark data confirms its position. The GPU's percentile ranking sits at 30, meaning it outperforms only 30% of all GPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 5316 places it in close competition with the NVIDIA GeForce 930A (deltaPct 0), the NVIDIA GeForce 940M (deltaPct 0.4), and the AMD Radeon R7 240 (deltaPct 0.7), all of which are entry-level or mobile parts. The AMD Radeon R7 M445 trails by -0.8 deltaPct, but the differences are negligible.

The GTX 1050 Ti's clock behavior is relevant to the results. With a base clock of 1291 MHz and a boost clock of 1392 MHz, the card runs at relatively low frequencies for its generation, which limits its FP32 throughput to 2.138 TFLOPS. The memory clock of 1752 MHz (7 Gbps effective) combined with the 128-bit bus yields 112.1 GB/s, which is exactly the kind of bandwidth that struggles at high resolutions. The 4 GB GDDR5 frame buffer is also a constraint: at 4K Ultra, the game likely exceeds this capacity, causing the 8.9 FPS result.

The GPU's DirectX 12 (12_1) support and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility are present, but Evolve, being a 2015 title, likely relies on older rendering paths that favor the card's DirectX 11 strength (passmark_directx_11 score of 45 versus 26 for DirectX 12). This explains why the card behaves more like a mid-range 2016 part rather than a modern entry-level GPU.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear picture of which settings offer the best experience for this combination. At 1920x1080, Low settings deliver 59.7 FPS, which is the only preset that approaches a smooth 60 FPS target. Medium settings drop to 48.7 FPS, which is still playable but shows a 18% performance penalty over Low. High settings fall to 35.5 FPS, and Ultra is nearly halved again at 23.9 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the situation deteriorates. Low settings yield 43 FPS, which is borderline acceptable for a slower-paced FPS, but Medium (30.8) and High (23.6) are marginal. Ultra at 1440p produces 14.4 FPS, which is not viable for gameplay. At 3840x2160, every preset is below 25 FPS, with Low reaching 24.6 and Ultra dropping to 8.9 — none of these are recommended.

The data suggests that the optimal experience is 1080p with Medium or Low settings. Medium at 1080p gives 48.7 FPS, which is a reasonable compromise between visual quality and smoothness, while Low at 1080p maximizes frame rate. For users prioritizing responsiveness over visuals, Low at 1080p is the clear choice. At 1440p, only Low settings are worth considering, and 4K should be avoided entirely given the sub-25 FPS results across the board.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti ranks at 1695 out of 1695 tested combos in Evolve. It sits at the very bottom of the database, which is a striking result given that the CPU is a capable modern processor. The rank of 1695 out of 1695 means there is no tested combination that performs worse in this game, which underscores how dramatically the GPU limits the overall experience.

The CPU's benchmark data shows that the Ryzen 5 5500 is far from a weak link. Its average benchmark score of 20875 places it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, with nearest rivals like the Intel Core i5-12500 (deltaPct -0.1), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (deltaPct -0.1), and AMD EPYC 7J13 (deltaPct 0.1) all within a fraction of a percent. The CPU's multi-core performance in Cinebench R23 (16429) and PassMark (19330) demonstrates significant headroom that the GTX 1050 Ti cannot exploit.

The combination's bottom-tier ranking is a direct consequence of the GPU's 30th percentile standing. When paired with a 79th percentile CPU, the system is massively unbalanced, and the measured FPS reflects this: even at the lowest settings and resolution, the frame rate barely crosses 60 FPS, while the CPU could likely push far higher with a more capable graphics card.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 brings six cores and twelve threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. Its 16 MB of L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are more than sufficient for a game like Evolve, which launched in 2015 and does not demand high core counts. The CPU's single-thread performance, as measured by Cinebench R23 single-core (2319) and PassMark single-thread (3058), is robust and should not bottleneck a GTX 1050 Ti.

In this pairing, the CPU's role is mostly passive. The measured FPS values are so low at 4K and even 1440p that the Ryzen 5 5500 is never stressed. The 3DMark scores — 836 for single-thread, 5386 for 16 threads, and 5411 for max threads — indicate that even the CPU's weakest metric (single-thread) is far above what Evolve requires at 1080p Low. The PassMark physics score of 896 and the 3DMark 2-thread score of 1645 suggest that the CPU can handle the game's physics and AI workloads without issue.

The CPU's 7 nm process node and 65 W TDP are efficiency-focused, but these characteristics do not influence the game's performance. Instead, the data shows that the Ryzen 5 5500 is effectively idle in this configuration, waiting on the GPU to deliver frames. The 79th percentile CPU ranking versus the 30th percentile GPU ranking creates a situation where the system's performance is entirely GPU-bound, and the CPU's capabilities are largely wasted.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combination produces its best results. Low settings achieve 59.7 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. Medium settings deliver 48.7 FPS, High drops to 35.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 23.9 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 60% reduction in frame rate, indicating that the GTX 1050 Ti's shading units and texture units are overwhelmed by higher-quality effects.

At 2560x1440, performance degrades further. Low settings yield 43 FPS, which is still playable but a 28% drop from the 1080p Low result. Medium produces 30.8 FPS, High gives 23.6 FPS, and Ultra drops to 14.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 66%, slightly worse than at 1080p, suggesting that the card struggles more with resolution scaling than with settings scaling.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor. Low settings achieve 24.6 FPS, Medium drops to 15.4 FPS, High falls to 11.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 8.9 FPS. The drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 59%, and the drop from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra is 63%. These percentages confirm that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the CPU's performance would not cause such dramatic scaling.

The data also shows that the delta between settings shrinks as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 35.8 FPS; at 1440p, it is 28.6 FPS; at 4K, it is 15.7 FPS. This narrowing indicates that at higher resolutions, pixel throughput dominates over shading complexity, and the card's limited bandwidth becomes the primary constraint. For any user of this combination, the measured FPS breakdown makes it clear that 1080p Low is the only configuration that approaches a standard 60 FPS target, and all other settings require substantial compromises in visual fidelity or resolution.