Evolve

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for the Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 in Evolve show a predictable but telling downward curve as resolution climbs. At 1080p with High settings, the combo delivers 123 FPS average. Moving to 1440p drops that to 83 FPS, a reduction of roughly one-third. At 4K, the average falls further to 47 FPS. This scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 5060 becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the frame rate penalty between each step is substantial and consistent with GPU-bound rendering.

The Low preset tells a similar story with higher absolute numbers. At 1080p Low, the system produces 203 FPS average, which drops to 136 FPS at 1440p and 77 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is approximately 62%, which is slightly steeper than the High preset's 62% decline from 123 to 47 FPS. This consistency across presets reinforces the notion that resolution scaling in Evolve is heavily dependent on the graphics card's fill rate and memory bandwidth rather than CPU throughput.

Medium settings offer the only rows with min and max FPS data. At 1080p Medium, the average is 157 FPS with a minimum of 134 and maximum of 181. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 105 FPS with a minimum of 90 and maximum of 121. At 4K Medium, the average is 60 FPS with a minimum of 51 and maximum of 69. The spread between min and max FPS is relatively tight at each resolution, suggesting stable frame pacing without severe hitches.

The Ultra preset reveals the steepest scaling curve. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 85 FPS. At 1440p, it falls to 57 FPS. At 4K, it plummets to 33 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K at Ultra is particularly harsh, representing a 42% reduction. This indicates that Ultra settings at 4K push the RTX 5060's 8 GB GDDR7 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth to their limits, as the higher texture and shading demands overwhelm the card's 19.18 TFLOPS FP32 throughput.

Analyzing the data across all resolutions and presets, the limiting component shifts based on workload. At 1080p Low, the high 203 FPS average suggests the CPU is keeping pace adequately, but the ceiling is likely set by the GPU's geometry and pixel processing capabilities. At 4K Ultra, the 33 FPS result is clearly GPU-bound, as the i5-10400F has ample headroom with its 6 cores and 12 threads. The data shows that Evolve scales almost entirely with GPU load, and the RTX 5060's 128-bit memory bus becomes a bottleneck at extreme settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide clear guidance on which preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance. At 1080p, Medium settings deliver 157 FPS average with a minimum of 134 FPS, which is well above the threshold for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate monitors. High settings at 1080p still produce 123 FPS average, but the jump from Medium to High costs about 22% performance. Ultra at 1080p drops to 85 FPS, which is playable but begins to approach the lower end of competitive viability.

For 1440p users, Medium settings stand out as the sweet spot. The 105 FPS average with a 90 FPS minimum ensures consistent frame delivery, while High at 83 FPS is also acceptable for most scenarios. Ultra at 1440p at 57 FPS is marginal for fast-paced FPS gameplay, as the frame rate dips below 60 FPS on average. The data suggests that players with 1440p displays should favor Medium or High, with Medium offering the most headroom for demanding scenes.

At 4K, the picture changes dramatically. Medium settings produce 60 FPS average with a 51 FPS minimum, which is technically playable but not ideal for a genre where responsiveness matters. High at 4K drops to 47 FPS, and Ultra falls to 33 FPS. Low at 4K reaches 77 FPS, but the visual compromise is substantial. The recommendation for 4K is to stick with Medium as the highest acceptable preset, accepting that the RTX 5060 cannot maintain 60+ FPS at higher quality levels.

The Ultra preset consistently underperforms relative to the visual gains it provides. Across all three resolutions, Ultra averages are 85 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 33 FPS at 4K. Compared to Medium, Ultra costs roughly 46%, 46%, and 45% performance respectively. Given that Evolve is a FPS title where frame rate directly impacts gameplay feel, the measured data supports choosing Medium as the default recommendation. High remains a viable alternative for those prioritizing image quality, but the 20-30% performance penalty over Medium is significant.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB206 chip fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. The GPU contains 21,900 million transistors on a 181 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 121.0 million per square millimeter. The card operates with a base clock of 2280 MHz and a boost clock of 2497 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz for 28 Gbps effective speed. These specifications position the RTX 5060 as a capable mid-range card, and the benchmark data confirms this in Evolve.

The 8 GB GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In Evolve, this bandwidth appears to be a limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. The 4K Ultra result of 33 FPS and the 4K High result of 47 FPS suggest that the memory subsystem struggles to feed the GPU's 3840 shading units and 120 texture mapping units under heavy load. The 48 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 119.9 GPixel/s, which is adequate for 1080p and 1440p but insufficient for sustained 4K Ultra performance.

The GPU's compute capabilities include 19.18 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 (1:1 ratio), along with 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores. The texture rate of 299.6 GTexel/s is moderate, and in Evolve, this likely contributes to the performance drop when moving from Medium to High or Ultra presets, as these settings typically increase texture sampling and shading complexity. The 145 W TDP with a suggested 300 W PSU indicates the card is power-efficient for its performance class.

The RTX 5060's benchmark scores reflect its capabilities. Its passmark G3D score of 20891 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3628 place it in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 112787 and Vulkan score of 113321 show balanced compute performance across different APIs. The passmark GPU compute score of 10899 is notably lower than the G3D score, suggesting that Evolve's rendering workload is more representative of the card's gaming strengths rather than its compute throughput.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the AMD Radeon 860M with an average score of 26401 and a delta of -0.3%, the NVIDIA GeForce MX550 at 26421 with -0.3%, the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary at 26553 with -0.8%, and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT at 26011 with +1.2%. These comparisons show that the RTX 5060 sits in a tight competitive cluster, with all rivals within roughly 1.2% of its average score of 26331. In Evolve specifically, the measured FPS data indicates the card performs as expected for its tier, with no anomalous outliers relative to its synthetic benchmark standing.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 ranks 1641 out of 3700 tested combos in Evolve. This places the system in the 55th percentile of all combinations tested, meaning it outperforms a slight majority of setups but sits firmly in the middle of the pack. The rank of 1641 out of 3700 suggests that while the RTX 5060 provides solid graphics performance, the i5-10400F is not a top-tier CPU, and this combo reflects the mid-range positioning of both components.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 14185 places it in the 68th percentile of all CPUs, which is respectable for a 10th Gen Core i5. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon 6756E with an average score of 14163 and a delta of 0.2%, the Intel Core 7 160UL at 14232 with -0.3%, the AMD EPYC 7552 at 14115 with +0.5%, and the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C at 14277 with -0.6%. These margins are extremely tight, with the i5-10400F sitting within 0.6% of its closest competitors, indicating that CPU choice in this performance band has minimal impact on synthetic scores.

In Evolve, the combo's rank of 1641 out of 3700 indicates that the pairing is not bottlenecked by either component in a way that dramatically skews results. The measured FPS data shows the system achieving playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p across most presets, which is consistent with a mid-pack ranking. The 4K results, while lower, are still within the range of what a 145 W GPU with 8 GB VRAM can deliver in a 2015-era game.

The percentile rankings provide context. The GPU's 72nd percentile standing is higher than the CPU's 68th percentile, suggesting that the RTX 5060 is the stronger component in this pairing. This asymmetry means that in CPU-light games like Evolve at lower resolutions, the GPU can stretch its legs, but at higher resolutions where both components are stressed, the combo's overall ranking reflects the CPU's relative weakness in multi-threaded workloads.

The combo's position in the database can be interpreted as follows: systems ranked above 1641 likely feature newer or higher-tier CPUs paired with similar or better GPUs, while those ranked below may have older CPUs or less capable graphics cards. The tight clustering of the CPU's rivals and the GPU's rivals in their respective benchmarks suggests that small performance differences in synthetic tests translate to meaningful FPS variations in real-world gaming, and the 1641 rank captures this nuance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Comet Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 14 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 256 KB of L2 cache per core, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support is DDR4 in dual-channel configuration with 42.7 GB/s of bandwidth, and the chip uses PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes. This specification set is modest by modern standards but adequate for gaming workloads.

In Evolve, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the resolution scaling data. At 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work, the system achieves 203 FPS, which approaches the practical limit for many displays. The CPU's single-thread performance, measured at 688 in 3DMark single-thread and 2541 in passmark single-thread, is sufficient to feed the GPU at these frame rates. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz provides adequate responsiveness for the game's physics and AI calculations.

Multi-threaded performance is where the i5-10400F shows its age. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 4748 and max-thread score of 4735 are close, indicating that the 12 threads are being utilized reasonably well. However, the Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10283 and Geekbench multicore score of 6257 are modest compared to newer processors. In Evolve, which is not heavily threaded for a 2015 title, this limitation is unlikely to be a major factor, but it does cap the system's ability to handle background tasks or streaming while gaming.

The CPU's passmark multithread score of 12115 and integer math score of 41471 show acceptable computational throughput. The floating-point math score of 25956 and extended instructions score of 12500 indicate that the CPU can handle physics calculations and game logic without becoming a bottleneck in most scenarios. The data compression score of 185944 is notably high, suggesting that the CPU's memory subsystem is efficient for its generation.

The CPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database are all within a narrow performance band. The Intel Xeon 6756E, Intel Core 7 160UL, AMD EPYC 7552, and AMD Ryzen 3 7320C all have average scores within 0.6% of the i5-10400F. This clustering indicates that in synthetic benchmarks, the differences between these CPUs are negligible, and in Evolve, the measured FPS is more dependent on the GPU than on CPU choice. The CPU's 68th percentile standing versus the GPU's 72nd percentile reinforces that the RTX 5060 is the stronger link in this combo.

For Evolve specifically, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are more than adequate for the game's requirements. The 1080p Low result of 203 FPS demonstrates that the CPU can drive high frame rates when the GPU is not the limiting factor. The lack of min FPS data for most presets makes it difficult to assess CPU-related frame drops, but the Medium preset's min FPS numbers (134 at 1080p, 90 at 1440p, 51 at 4K) suggest stable performance without severe CPU stalls.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p with High settings for this combo?

A: The measured average FPS is 123 at 1920x1080 with High settings, with no min or max values recorded for that configuration.

Q: How does the RTX 5060 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5060's average benchmark score is 26331, which is 0.3% below the AMD Radeon 860M (26401) and 1.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT (26011).

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested systems in Evolve?

A: The Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 combo ranks 1641 out of 3700 total tested combos, placing it in the middle of the database.

Q: Which preset gives the best FPS at 4K without dropping below 60 FPS?

A: None of the 4K presets achieve a 60 FPS average. Medium settings come closest with 60 FPS average and a 51 FPS minimum, while Low reaches 77 FPS.

Q: How much faster is the CPU's boost clock compared to its base clock?

A: The Intel Core i5-10400F has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, representing a 1.40 GHz difference.

Q: What is the RTX 5060's memory bandwidth and how does it affect 4K performance?

A: The RTX 5060 has 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth from 8 GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit bus. This bandwidth contributes to the 4K Ultra result of 33 FPS, indicating memory constraints at high resolutions.