Evolve

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Evolve shows a clear and consistent drop as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At the Low preset, the combo delivers 123.2 FPS at 1080p, which falls to 85.5 FPS at 1440p and further to 46.9 FPS at 4K. This represents a 31% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 62% reduction from 1080p to 4K. The pattern is similar across all presets, indicating that the rendering load scales heavily with pixel count.

At Medium settings, the frame rate drops from 96.3 FPS at 1080p to 66.7 FPS at 1440p, then to 37.4 FPS at 4K. The High preset follows suit: 76.5 FPS at 1080p, 48.3 FPS at 1440p, and 29.4 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows the steepest absolute decline, starting at 54.5 FPS at 1080p, falling to 34.4 FPS at 1440p, and reaching just 18.3 FPS at 4K. These numbers reveal that the GPU is the primary limiting component at higher resolutions, as the CPU's substantial compute capability cannot offset the pixel throughput demands.

The scaling behavior suggests that at 1080p, the combination still has headroom, particularly at Low and Medium settings where frame rates exceed 96 FPS. However, at 4K, even the Low preset struggles to maintain 47 FPS, indicating that the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER's 6 GB GDDR6 memory and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for Evolve's 4K rendering requirements. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is particularly telling: 46.9 FPS versus 18.3 FPS, a 28.6 FPS difference that underscores how quality settings amplify the GPU bottleneck at high pixel densities.

How This Combo Ranks

In Evolve, this CPU-GPU pairing achieves a combo rank of 1488 out of 1695 tested combinations. This places it in the lower 12th percentile of all tested combos, meaning roughly 88% of configurations deliver higher average frame rates in this game. The ranking reflects the GPU's modest standing relative to modern hardware. The GTX 1660 SUPER sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs in general benchmarks, with an average benchmark score of 14286. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (score 14314, deltaPct -0.2), Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (score 14315, deltaPct -0.2), AMD Radeon Vega 11 (score 14352, deltaPct -0.5), and AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (score 14389, deltaPct -0.7). These deltas are all within 1%, indicating that the GTX 1660 SUPER performs nearly identically to its closest competitors in synthetic tests.

However, the CPU is a different story. The Ryzen 9 5950X ranks at the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 49062. Its nearest rivals — the Intel Core i5-14600K (score 49166, deltaPct -0.2), Intel Core i5-14600KF (score 49367, deltaPct -0.6), Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (score 48698, deltaPct 0.7), and AMD EPYC 4345P (score 49595, deltaPct -1.1) — all fall within a narrow band of roughly 1% performance difference. This suggests the processor is far more capable than what the GPU can utilize in Evolve, creating a significant bottleneck that drags the combo ranking down. The data indicates that pairing this CPU with a stronger GPU would dramatically improve the combo's position in the rankings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using a 12 nm process from TSMC, with 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die. It features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective. The GPU's base clock is 1530 MHz with a boost clock of 1785 MHz, and it offers 1,408 shading units, 88 texture mapping units, and 48 render output units. Its pixel rate is 85.68 GPixel/s and texture rate is 157.1 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance of 5.027 TFLOPS.

In Evolve's measured results, the GPU's memory configuration appears to be a critical factor. At 4K resolution, the frame rates across all presets remain below 47 FPS, even at Low settings. This suggests that the 6 GB VRAM capacity is being taxed heavily at 3840x2160, as Evolve's textures and geometry at that resolution likely require more memory than available. The bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s also becomes a constraint at higher resolutions, where the GPU must fetch larger amounts of texture and geometry data per frame.

The GPU's overall standing at the 55th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 14286, correlates with its in-game behavior. The DirectX 11 score of 104 and DirectX 12 score of 50 in PassMark indicate that the card handles older APIs reasonably well but struggles with more modern rendering paths. Evolve, released in 2015, likely relies on DirectX 11, which aligns with the card's relative strengths. The GPU's boost clock of 1785 MHz provides adequate single-threaded performance, but the 12 nm process and 125 W TDP limit its ability to sustain high clocks under sustained load, which is evident in the 4K Ultra result of 18.3 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance on which preset delivers the best balance of visual quality and playability. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 76.5 FPS, which is more than sufficient for smooth gameplay in this FPS title. The Medium preset offers 96.3 FPS, and Low reaches 123.2 FPS. However, the jump from High to Ultra at 1080p costs 22 FPS (76.5 to 54.5), which is a substantial penalty for diminishing visual returns. Given that High maintains above 60 FPS at 1080p, it represents the optimal choice for this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the situation changes. The Low preset delivers 85.5 FPS, which is playable, but Medium drops to 66.7 FPS — still above 60 FPS but with noticeably reduced headroom. High falls to 48.3 FPS, which may introduce stutter in fast-paced combat scenarios. For 1440p, Medium is the recommended preset, as it stays above 60 FPS while providing better visual fidelity than Low. The Ultra preset at 34.4 FPS is not viable for competitive play.

For 4K resolution, no preset achieves a playable frame rate. The best result is Low at 46.9 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold typically desired for FPS games. Medium at 37.4 FPS and High at 29.4 FPS are both too low for smooth gameplay, and Ultra at 18.3 FPS is essentially unplayable. Users targeting 4K should consider lowering the resolution or upgrading the GPU. Across all resolutions, the data shows that the Low and Medium presets offer the most consistent frame rates relative to the Ultra preset's steep performance cost.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces the following average frame rates: Low preset 123.2 FPS, Medium preset 96.3 FPS, High preset 76.5 FPS, and Ultra preset 54.5 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 68.7 FPS, indicating that quality settings have a large impact at this resolution. The 1080p results show that the GPU can still deliver high refresh rates when the pixel load is manageable, with Low exceeding 120 FPS for competitive play.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 85.5 FPS, Medium 66.7 FPS, High 48.3 FPS, and Ultra 34.4 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across presets: Low loses 37.7 FPS, Medium loses 29.6 FPS, High loses 28.2 FPS, and Ultra loses 20.1 FPS. The diminishing absolute losses at higher presets suggest that the GPU's shading units become the bottleneck rather than memory bandwidth at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low 46.9 FPS, Medium 37.4 FPS, High 29.4 FPS, and Ultra 18.3 FPS. The 4K results show a compressed range of 28.6 FPS between Low and Ultra, compared to 68.7 FPS at 1080p. This compression indicates that the GPU is saturated even at Low settings in 4K, leaving little room for quality improvements without further frame rate losses. The 1440p Medium result of 66.7 FPS remains the highest playable frame rate across all non-1080p resolutions, reinforcing the recommendation for 1080p High or 1440p Medium as the sweet spots.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, built on TSMC's 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, with a TDP of 105 W. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 64 MB of L3 cache. It supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth. The processor's transistor count is 8,300 million across two 74 mm² dies.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5950X demonstrates exceptional multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 38607, Geekbench multicore scores 12084, and PassMark multithread scores 45424. Single-threaded performance is also strong, with Cinebench R23 singlecore at 5450 and PassMark singlethread at 3470. These scores place the CPU at the 93rd percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 49062, just 0.2% behind the Intel Core i5-14600K in average score.

In Evolve, however, the CPU's massive compute resources are largely underutilized due to the GPU bottleneck. The measured frame rates at 1080p Low (123.2 FPS) suggest that the CPU can feed the GPU sufficiently at lower resolutions, but the GPU's 5.027 TFLOPS of FP32 performance limits overall throughput. The 16 cores and 32 threads provide ample headroom for the game's physics and AI calculations, but Evolve's rendering pipeline is primarily GPU-bound. The CPU's 4.90 GHz boost clock ensures that even single-threaded game logic runs without constraint, but this does not translate to higher frame rates when the GPU is the limiting factor. The data shows that the 5950X is not the constraining component in this configuration; rather, its capabilities far exceed what the GTX 1660 SUPER can render, making the GPU the definitive bottleneck in Evolve across all tested resolutions and settings.