Evolve

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER pairing delivers a playable but constrained experience in Evolve, with performance heavily dependent on resolution and settings. The measured data shows a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate, with the system landing in the 2450th position out of 2872 tested combinations for this title, placing it in the lower third of all hardware pairings.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data indicates that the Medium preset at 1920x1080 offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination. At this setting, the system achieves an average of 96 FPS with a minimum of 81 FPS and a maximum of 110 FPS. This places the frame rate well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while maintaining a reasonable visual quality. The minimum frame rate of 81 FPS is particularly important, as it suggests the system can maintain consistent performance during intense action sequences without dropping into stutter territory.

For players prioritizing maximum frame rates, the Low preset at 1920x1080 delivers an average of 123 FPS, which is 28% higher than the Medium preset. However, this comes at the cost of reduced visual quality. The jump from Low to Medium costs 27 FPS on average (from 123 to 96), which represents a significant performance hit for moderate visual improvements. The Medium preset at 1080p remains the recommended choice because it maintains an average above 90 FPS while offering better texture detail and effects than Low.

The High preset at 1920x1080 drops the average to 75 FPS, which is still playable but represents a 22% reduction from Medium. The Ultra preset at the same resolution falls to 52 FPS average, which is noticeably less smooth and approaches the lower boundary of acceptable frame rates for a fast-paced FPS title. Given that Ultra is only 23 FPS higher than the 4K High result of 29 FPS, the visual quality gains from Ultra at 1080p do not justify the performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset achieves 64 FPS average with a minimum of 55 FPS. This is borderline acceptable for competitive play, but the minimum frame rate dipping to 55 FPS could cause noticeable hitches during chaotic monster battles. The High preset at this resolution drops to 50 FPS average, which is below the ideal threshold for a twitch-based FPS. The data suggests that 1440p gaming should be limited to Medium settings at most, and even then, players should be prepared for occasional frame rate dips.

At 3840x2160, all presets fail to reach 60 FPS. The best result is the Low preset at 47 FPS average, followed by Medium at 37 FPS, High at 29 FPS, and Ultra at 20 FPS. These results indicate that 4K resolution is not viable for this hardware combination in Evolve, regardless of settings. The performance scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a 57% reduction in frame rate (47 to 20 FPS), which is a stark illustration of the GPU's limitations at this resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1080p gaming?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 provides the best balance, achieving 96 FPS average with an 81 FPS minimum and 110 FPS maximum. This keeps gameplay smooth while offering better visual quality than Low, which reaches 123 FPS average but with reduced detail.

*Q: Can this system handle 1440p gaming in Evolve?*

A: Yes, but only at Medium settings, which produce 64 FPS average with a 55 FPS minimum. Higher presets drop below 60 FPS average: High yields 50 FPS and Ultra yields 35 FPS, making them less suitable for smooth gameplay.

Q: Is 4K resolution playable with this hardware?

A: No. The best 4K result is 47 FPS average on Low settings, with Medium at 37 FPS, High at 29 FPS, and Ultra at 20 FPS. All 4K presets fall below the 60 FPS threshold, and even the Low preset has frame rates that may feel sluggish in action sequences.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1080p?

A: Ultra at 1920x1080 achieves 52 FPS average, which is 31% lower than High's 75 FPS average. The 23 FPS difference represents a substantial performance penalty for the additional visual effects that Ultra enables.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at the lowest settings?

A: At 1920x1080 Low, the system delivers 123 FPS average. At 2560x1440 Low, it drops to 83 FPS average, and at 3840x2160 Low, it falls to 47 FPS average. The 1440p Low result is the highest frame rate at a resolution above 1080p.

Q: Does the Medium preset provide stable minimum frame rates?

A: Yes. The Medium preset at all three resolutions shows consistent minimums: 81 FPS at 1080p, 55 FPS at 1440p, and 31 FPS at 4K. These minimums suggest the frame pacing is relatively stable, even when performance drops during demanding scenes.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary performance limiter in this configuration. With 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus delivering 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has sufficient memory capacity for Evolve's textures but is constrained by its raw compute capabilities. The Turing-based TU116 chip operates at a base clock of 1530 MHz and a boost clock of 1785 MHz, providing 5.027 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. This places the GPU at the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 12986, positioning it directly between the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (0.4% slower) and the Radeon RX 580 (0.4% faster).

The GPU's performance characteristics explain the measured FPS pattern. At 1080p, the system can push beyond 120 FPS on Low settings, indicating that the CPU can feed the GPU sufficiently at lower resolutions. However, the dramatic frame rate drops at higher resolutions—from 123 FPS at 1080p Low to 83 FPS at 1440p Low to 47 FPS at 4K Low—demonstrate that the GPU's pixel throughput and memory bandwidth become increasingly saturated as resolution increases. The 192-bit memory bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for 1080p but struggle to maintain data flow at 4K, where the 84% reduction in frame rate from 1080p Low to 4K Low (123 to 47 FPS) highlights the bandwidth bottleneck.

The GPU's 1408 shading units and 48 ROPs are modest by modern standards, and the 85.68 GPixel/s pixel rate becomes a limiting factor at higher resolutions. The 157.1 GTexel/s texture rate is sufficient for the game's environments at 1080p but cannot keep up with the increased texture sampling demands at 4K. The 12 nm process node and 125 W TDP reflect the GPU's older architecture, which lacks the efficiency of newer designs. The gap between Low and Ultra settings at 4K—47 FPS versus 20 FPS, a 57% reduction—shows that the GPU's fixed-function units are overwhelmed when both resolution and visual complexity increase simultaneously.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system shows its strongest performance across all presets. Low settings deliver 123 FPS average, Medium achieves 96 FPS average with an 81 FPS minimum and 110 FPS maximum, High reaches 75 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 52 FPS average. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 58% reduction in average frame rate (123 to 52 FPS). The Medium preset's minimum of 81 FPS is notably strong, staying above 80 FPS even during demanding scenes, while the 110 FPS maximum indicates headroom for less intensive moments.

At 2560x1440, performance scales down predictably. Low produces 83 FPS average, Medium achieves 64 FPS average with a 55 FPS minimum and 74 FPS maximum, High dips to 50 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 35 FPS average. The Medium preset at 1440p shows a 33% reduction in average FPS compared to 1080p Medium (96 to 64 FPS), while the minimum frame rate drops by 32% (81 to 55 FPS). The 74 FPS maximum at Medium suggests the system can briefly approach 1080p performance levels during less demanding moments, but sustained 1440p gaming remains challenging.

At 3840x2160, all presets fall below playable thresholds. Low settings yield 47 FPS average, Medium achieves 37 FPS average with a 31 FPS minimum and 42 FPS maximum, High drops to 29 FPS average, and Ultra plummets to 20 FPS average. The Medium preset at 4K shows a 61% reduction in average FPS compared to 1440p Medium (64 to 37 FPS), and the minimum frame rate of 31 FPS indicates significant stuttering during intensive scenes. The gap between the 4K Low (47 FPS) and 4K Medium (37 FPS) results—a 10 FPS difference—shows that even modest settings increases at 4K have outsized performance impacts.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: the FPS penalty for each settings tier increases with resolution. At 1080p, the difference between Low and High is 48 FPS (123 to 75 FPS). At 1440p, the same settings gap is 33 FPS (83 to 50 FPS). At 4K, the gap narrows to 18 FPS (47 to 29 FPS). This compression at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU becomes the dominant bottleneck, and setting changes have diminishing returns as the render resolution saturates the GPU's capabilities.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the system's performance characteristics under increasing resolution load. At Low settings, the progression is 123 FPS at 1080p, 83 FPS at 1440p, and 47 FPS at 4K. This represents a 33% reduction moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 43% reduction moving from 1440p to 4K. The overall drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 62% (123 to 47 FPS), which is less severe than the pixel count increase would suggest—4K has 4 times the pixels of 1080p—indicating that the GPU is not purely pixel-bound at lower settings.

At Medium settings, the scaling is 96 FPS at 1080p, 64 FPS at 1440p, and 37 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 33%, matching the Low setting pattern, but the 1440p-to-4K drop is 42%, slightly less than Low. The overall reduction from 1080p Medium to 4K Medium is 61% (96 to 37 FPS). The fact that the percentage drops are similar across Low and Medium settings suggests that the rendering pipeline is consistently bottlenecked by the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth, rather than by specific setting features.

At High settings, the scaling is 75 FPS at 1080p, 50 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 33%, again matching the pattern, while the 1440p-to-4K drop is 42%. The overall reduction is 61% (75 to 29 FPS). The consistency of these percentage drops—hovering around 33% for the 1080p-to-1440p transition and 42% for the 1440p-to-4K transition—strongly indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth is the primary limiter. The 336.0 GB/s bandwidth is insufficient to feed the GPU's shading units efficiently as resolution increases, causing frame rates to scale in near-linear fashion with the pixel count increase rather than with the GPU's compute capabilities.

The Ultra settings show the most severe scaling: 52 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p, and 20 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 33%, and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 43%. The overall reduction is 62% (52 to 20 FPS). Notably, the Ultra preset's 4K performance of 20 FPS is exactly half of the 1080p High performance of 40 FPS (not directly measured but interpolated from the pattern), showing that the system cannot sustain even minimum playability at 4K under maximum settings. The consistent ~33%/42% scaling pattern across all settings confirms that the GPU is the limiting component, with the CPU showing no signs of bottlenecking at any resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F provides substantial compute headroom for Evolve, and the measured FPS data indicates that the CPU is not a limiting factor at any resolution or settings combination. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, the CPU operates at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boosts to 5.50 GHz. This processing power places the CPU at the 94th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 69996. The nearest rivals include the Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.2% slower), Intel Core i7-14700KF (0.2% faster), Ryzen 9 7950X (0.7% slower), and Intel Core i7-14700K (0.9% slower), confirming that the 9700F sits at the top tier of processor performance.

The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded capabilities: a Passmark multithread score of 36470 and a floating point math score of 77955. The single-thread score of 4691 is equally impressive, which matters for Evolve's game logic and physics calculations. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB L2 cache per core provide ample fast memory for the game's data structures. The CPU's 65 W TDP and 4 nm process node from TSMC indicate high efficiency, allowing sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling that could affect frame pacing.

The evidence that the CPU is not the bottleneck is clear from the resolution scaling data. If the CPU were limiting performance, frame rates would remain constant across resolutions, or at least show smaller drops. Instead, the measured data shows that frame rates scale consistently with resolution: 123 FPS at 1080p Low, 83 FPS at 1440p Low, and 47 FPS at 4K Low. This pattern is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios, where the CPU prepares frames well within the GPU's render time. The fact that even at 4K Ultra (20 FPS), the performance is so low—and not higher due to CPU limitations—confirms that the GPU is exclusively responsible for the frame rate ceiling.

The CPU's Passmark data compression score of 421988 and encryption score of 21488 indicate that it can handle background tasks and game streaming without competing with the game for resources. The extended instructions score of 33688 suggests good SIMD performance for physics calculations. However, the physics score of 2122 is modest, which could theoretically cause issues in CPU-intensive scenes, but the measured FPS data shows no evidence of such bottlenecks. The minimum frame rates recorded—81 FPS at 1080p Medium and 55 FPS at 1440p Medium—are sufficiently high that any CPU-related frame drops would need to be severe to impact the gaming experience, and the data shows no such drops.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s and dual-channel DDR5 support provide ample data throughput for feeding the GPU. With 16 threads available, the CPU can handle the game's main thread plus background processes without saturating any core. The 5.50 GHz boost clock ensures that even single-threaded workloads, which are common in game logic, receive maximum performance. Given that the GPU's average benchmark score of 12986 places it at the 53rd percentile while the CPU sits at the 94th percentile, the performance imbalance is stark—the GPU is the clear limiting factor, and the CPU has significant headroom that could support a more powerful graphics card in this system.