Evolve

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers exceptional frame rates in Evolve, positioning this combination in the 95.5th percentile of tested systems (rank 167 out of 3700 combos). The measured data reveals a system that obliterates the 60 FPS threshold at every resolution and nearly every preset, making it a formidable platform for this 2015 FPS title. The analysis below dissects the settings, component roles, and scaling characteristics to understand where this combo excels and where its limits appear.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data across all four presets and three resolutions paints a clear picture: the Ultra preset is the only setting that brings this hardware combination near its knees, while High and Medium offer a compelling balance of visual fidelity and staggering performance headroom. At 1920x1080, the jump from Medium (263 FPS average) to High (225 FPS average) costs only 38 FPS, while the leap from High to Ultra (156 FPS average) sacrifices 69 FPS—a much steeper penalty for what is likely a marginal visual gain in a game from this era. The data suggests that High is the optimal preset for 1080p, as it maintains over 220 FPS while presumably retaining most of the graphical enhancements.

For 2560x1440, the story shifts slightly. The High preset delivers a 151 FPS average, which is still far above any high-refresh-rate monitor's capability. The Medium preset at 1440p (193 FPS) offers a 42 FPS advantage over High, but the gap narrows considerably when considering the Ultra preset's 105 FPS average. Since the 1440p High setting stays comfortably above 144 FPS, it remains the recommended choice for users wanting both visual quality and future-proofing headroom. The Ultra preset at this resolution, while playable at 105 FPS, represents a significant 30% drop from High, suggesting diminishing returns.

At 3840x2160, the recommendation becomes more nuanced. The High preset produces an 86 FPS average, which is just above the 60 FPS target but leaves little room for demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 4K (110 FPS average, with a 93 FPS minimum) provides a much safer margin, while the Low preset (141 FPS) pushes well beyond what most 4K displays can show. Given that the Medium preset shows a recorded minimum of 93 FPS—ensuring no drops below the 60 FPS v-sync threshold—it emerges as the best 4K option for consistent, tear-free gameplay. The Ultra preset at 4K (60 FPS average) is technically playable but leaves zero headroom, making it a risky choice for anyone sensitive to frame-time spikes.

The overall recommendation across the board is the High preset for 1080p and 1440p, and Medium for 4K. This approach leverages the RTX 4090's massive computational headroom without wasting performance on settings that yield negligible visual improvements in a title from 2015.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 serves as the dominant force in this pairing, and its specifications explain why the measured FPS numbers are so staggering. With 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, the card has virtually no memory constraints in Evolve. This is a game from 2015, which means its texture sizes and memory footprints are modest by modern standards; the 24 GB frame buffer likely never exceeds even 20% utilization. The 16384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs provide raw fill rates of 443.5 GPixel/s and 1,290.2 GTexel/s, which are astronomically higher than what this game requires.

Clock speeds play a notable role in the observed scaling. The GPU's base clock of 2235 MHz and boost clock of 2520 MHz are high for any generation, and the Ada Lovelace architecture's efficiency at these frequencies allows the card to maintain sustained performance without thermal throttling (the triple-slot cooler and 450 W TDP suggest a robust thermal solution). The 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is overkill for a DirectX 12 Ultimate title, but it ensures that even the most complex shader effects in Evolve are trivial for this chip.

The benchmark data shows the RTX 4090 achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9223 and a Passmark G3D score of 38194, placing it in the 88th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the database—the Intel Arc Pro A60 and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48—show essentially identical average scores (60326 and 60140, respectively, with deltaPct values of 0 and 0.3), but those are professional-grade cards with different driver optimizations. The RTX 4090's 21 Gbps effective memory clock and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are the key differentiators for high-resolution gaming, and the measured FPS data confirms that even at 4K Ultra, the card never falls below 60 FPS in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 167 out of 3700 tested configurations in Evolve. That places it in the top 4.5% of all systems, which is remarkable given that the CPU is a mid-range 2022 part while the GPU is the flagship of its generation. The rank suggests that the RTX 4090 is doing the heavy lifting, pulling the entire system toward the top of the leaderboard despite the CPU's more modest standing.

The CPU's individual percentile is 78th among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 25517. Its nearest rivals—the Intel Xeon D-2752TER, AMD Ryzen 5 7640U, AMD Ryzen 5 6600H, and AMD Ryzen 7 5825U—all sit within 0.3% of its average score. This tight clustering indicates that the 5700 is firmly in the mid-range tier for general compute, but its 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 4.60 GHz boost are sufficient to feed the RTX 4090 in a game like Evolve, which is not known for being CPU-intensive. The fact that this combo still ranks 167rd overall proves that the GPU's dominance can compensate for a CPU that sits below the top decile.

The GPU's own percentile is 88th, slightly higher than the CPU's 78th, which aligns with the observed performance: the system performs better than either component's individual percentile might suggest, indicating that Evolve is heavily GPU-bound and the CPU is not a bottleneck in this specific title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4090 produces almost absurd frame rates. The Low preset averages 288 FPS, which is beyond the refresh rate of virtually all gaming monitors. Medium averages 263 FPS with a minimum of 223 and maximum of 302, showing tight frame pacing. High drops to 225 FPS average, still far above any practical display limit. Ultra is the only preset that brings the frame rate down to a "mere" 156 FPS average—still excellent, but a 30% reduction from High, suggesting that Ultra enables effects that disproportionately tax the GPU.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably. Low delivers 248 FPS, Medium 193 FPS (with 164 minimum and 221 maximum), High 151 FPS, and Ultra 105 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is roughly 14-20% across presets, which is moderate and indicates that the GPU still has substantial headroom. The Medium preset's minimum of 164 FPS is particularly noteworthy—it shows that even in demanding scenes, the system stays well above 144 Hz, making this an excellent setup for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens. Low averages 141 FPS, Medium 110 FPS (93 minimum, 126 maximum), High 86 FPS, and Ultra 60 FPS. The transition from High to Ultra at 4K represents a 30% drop, mirroring the 1080p pattern. The Ultra preset's 60 FPS average is exactly at the v-sync threshold, but with no minimum recorded, there is a risk of dips below 60 FPS in heavy combat scenarios. The Medium preset at 4K offers the best balance, with a 93 FPS minimum ensuring smooth gameplay.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Evolve at 4K with maximum settings?*

A: Yes, the Ultra preset at 3840x2160 averages 60 FPS, which is technically playable. However, the lack of a recorded minimum FPS suggests potential dips below 60, making the Medium preset (110 FPS average, 93 FPS minimum) a safer choice for consistent performance.

Q: What is the biggest performance gap between presets at 1440p?

A: The largest gap at 2560x1440 is between High (151 FPS) and Ultra (105 FPS), a 46 FPS difference. This indicates that Ultra enables effects that are disproportionately expensive on the GPU.

Q: How does the RTX 4090's memory bandwidth influence these results?

A: The 1.01 TB/s bandwidth from 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus ensures that memory is never a bottleneck in Evolve. Even at 4K, the game's texture streaming demands are easily satisfied, allowing the GPU's compute units to operate at full capacity.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 5700 a bottleneck for the RTX 4090?

A: In this title, no. The combo ranks 167th out of 3700, and the CPU's 8-core/16-thread configuration with a 4.60 GHz boost is sufficient to feed the GPU. The system performs better than the CPU's 78th percentile would suggest, indicating Evolve is not CPU-limited here.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average is 225 FPS. This is far beyond any standard 60 Hz or 144 Hz display's capability, so the system will be limited by your monitor's refresh rate rather than the hardware.

Q: How does the system's ranking compare to its individual component percentiles?

A: The combo ranks in the 95.5th percentile (167/3700), which is higher than both the CPU's 78th percentile and the GPU's 88th percentile. This suggests the pairing is well-balanced for this specific game, with the GPU's strengths compensating for the CPU's mid-range positioning.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 provides the computational foundation for this system, and while its role in Evolve is secondary to the GPU, it must not be underestimated. This is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne codename), fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz give it strong single-thread performance, which is critical for games that rely on a few heavily loaded threads. The 16 MB of L3 cache and 512 KB of L2 per core provide low-latency access to frequently used data, helping to maintain consistent frame pacing.

In terms of raw compute, the 5700 produces a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20655 and a single-core score of 2916. Its Geekbench scores are 9959 multi-core and 1907 single-core. These numbers place it in the 78th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25517. The nearest rivals—the Intel Xeon D-2752TER, AMD Ryzen 5 7640U, AMD Ryzen 5 6600H, and AMD Ryzen 7 5825U—all have average scores within 0.3% of this figure, confirming that the 5700 is a solidly mid-range processor. Its 65 W TDP and 7 nm process make it power-efficient, which is beneficial in a system with a 450 W GPU.

For Evolve, a 2015 FPS, the CPU's 16 threads are more than adequate. The game was designed for the multi-core processors of its era, and the 5700's Zen 3 architecture provides far more instruction-level parallelism and branch prediction capability than the CPUs available at the game's launch. The Passmark physics score of 984 and the 3DMark 16-thread score of 6628 indicate that the CPU can handle complex game logic and physics calculations without becoming a limiting factor, even when feeding the RTX 4090 at 4K resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how the system's performance scales as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K, providing insight into which component is the primary limiting factor at each tier. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves 288 FPS, which drops to 248 FPS at 1440p and 141 FPS at 4K. This represents a 14% drop from 1080p to 1440p, but a 43% drop from 1440p to 4K. The steeper decline at 4K indicates that the GPU is becoming the bottleneck, as the number of pixels quadruples from 1440p to 4K, demanding significantly more fill rate and memory bandwidth.

The High preset shows a similar pattern: 225 FPS at 1080p, 151 FPS at 1440p, and 86 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 33% and 43%, respectively. The Medium preset follows with 263, 193, and 110 FPS, showing drops of 27% and 43%. The Ultra preset—the most demanding—shows 156 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p, and 60 FPS at 4K, with drops of 33% and 43%. The consistency of the 43% drop from 1440p to 4K across all presets strongly suggests that the GPU's pixel processing capabilities are the limiting factor at 4K, regardless of the visual settings.

Interestingly, the drop from 1080p to 1440p varies more significantly by preset: 14% for Low, 27% for Medium, 33% for High, and 33% for Ultra. This variance indicates that at 1080p, the CPU may be providing a slight bottleneck for the lower presets—the Low preset's 288 FPS at 1080p might be limited by the CPU's ability to issue draw calls, not the GPU's rendering speed. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes more dominant, and the CPU's influence diminishes.

The data implies that for this combination, 1440p is the sweet spot where the CPU and GPU are best balanced. At 1080p, the CPU holds the system back from reaching its theoretical maximum (the Low preset's 288 FPS is likely near the CPU's ceiling). At 4K, the GPU is fully utilized, and the system's ranking of 167th out of 3700 is likely driven by the GPU's performance at this resolution. The 60 FPS at 4K Ultra is a hard limit imposed by the GPU's fill rate and shader throughput, not by any software or driver inefficiency.