Evolve

The Intel Core i5-12400F and AMD Radeon RX 6600 combination sits at rank 1360 out of 1695 tested combos in Evolve, placing it in the bottom 20% of all possible pairings for this title. That ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU's position in the broader market; the RX 6600 sits at the 69th percentile among all GPUs, which is respectable, but Evolve clearly demands more than this mid-range card can deliver at higher settings. The combo's standing is not a reflection of a weak CPU, as the i5-12400F ranks in the 77th percentile among all CPUs, but rather a signal that the graphics card becomes the primary bottleneck in nearly every configuration tested. The data indicates this pairing is adequate for 1080p play but falls short of the performance needed for a consistently smooth experience at higher resolutions or with maximum quality settings.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a Navi 23 chip, and its memory configuration is a defining factor in Evolve. The GPU comes equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. This memory subsystem is modest by modern standards, and the benchmark results suggest it struggles when the game's asset streaming demands increase at higher resolutions. The GPU's base clock is 1626 MHz, with a boost clock of 2491 MHz and a game clock of 2044 MHz. The boost clock is the theoretical maximum, but sustained performance in Evolve will likely hover closer to the game clock under load, which still provides a solid foundation for 1080p gaming.

The card's compute capabilities include 1792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation units. Those specs translate to a texture rate of 279.0 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 159.4 GPixel/s. In practice, these figures mean the RX 6600 can push a substantial number of pixels, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity is the more critical constraint in Evolve. At 4K Ultra settings, the game demands so much memory bandwidth and capacity that the GPU's fill rate is insufficient, resulting in an average of 22.6 FPS. The card's 28 ray tracing cores are present, but their impact on this 2015 title is negligible; the game predates widespread RT adoption, so the rasterization performance is what matters here.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, with the frame rate dropping by roughly half to two-thirds as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 147.8 FPS, but at 4K Low, that figure falls to 57.2 FPS, a 61% reduction. This steep decline indicates the RX 6600 is the limiting component; the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at lower resolutions, but the graphics card's rendering throughput cannot keep pace as pixel count quadruples. The pattern persists across all settings, with the drop from 1440p to 4K being particularly harsh. For example, at High settings, the system delivers 89.1 FPS at 1080p, 61.8 FPS at 1440p, and only 32.8 FPS at 4K. This is a clear sign that the GPU's 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth becomes a severe bottleneck at 4K, as the data transfer requirements outstrip what the card can provide.

The scaling also shows that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this game. The i5-12400F, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, maintains sufficient headroom even at 1080p Low where the frame rate reaches 147.8 FPS. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat as resolution increases, but instead we see a consistent decline, confirming that the RX 6600 is the sole constraint. The only exception is at 4K Ultra, where the frame rate falls to 22.6 FPS, a level that is unplayable regardless of the CPU's capabilities. This behavior is typical for a mid-range GPU paired with a strong modern processor; the CPU has ample single-thread performance, evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 909, but the GPU cannot translate that into high frame rates at demanding resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the combo shows its best performance, but the results are uneven across settings. Low settings produce an average of 147.8 FPS, which is excellent for fast-paced FPS action. Medium settings drop to 115.8 FPS, still a very playable level. High settings yield 89.1 FPS, which is smooth for most players. However, Ultra settings bring the frame rate down to 60.4 FPS, which is playable but shows the GPU is beginning to strain. The delta between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 87.4 FPS, demonstrating that the RX 6600 has a wide performance envelope, but the higher settings introduce effects that tax the card's 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus.

Moving to 1440p, the system remains viable but with clear compromises. Low settings produce 99.3 FPS, which is still competitive. Medium settings drop to 77.9 FPS, and High settings yield 61.8 FPS. Ultra settings fall to 43.3 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold that most gamers consider the minimum for smooth play. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings shows a 32.6% performance loss, which is expected given the increased pixel count. At High settings, the loss is 30.6%, indicating that the GPU is handling the resolution increase relatively consistently, but the absolute numbers are getting low.

At 4K, the combo is largely out of its depth. Low settings produce 57.2 FPS, which is borderline playable, but Medium settings drop to 42.9 FPS, and High settings fall to 32.8 FPS. Ultra settings are essentially unplayable at 22.6 FPS. The jump from 1440p to 4K at Low settings represents a 42.4% drop, which is steeper than the drop from 1080p to 1440p, indicating that the GPU's memory bandwidth is a hard limit. The 4K results are consistent with a card that is designed for 1080p gaming; any attempt to push it to 4K requires substantial settings reductions to achieve acceptable frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F plays a supporting role in this combo, but it is a capable one. With 6 cores and 12 threads, base clock of 2.50 GHz, and boost clock of 4.40 GHz, the CPU provides enough processing power to avoid bottlenecking the RX 6600 in Evolve. The architecture is Alder Lake, built on a 10 nm process with an 18 MB shared L3 cache. The benchmark scores confirm its strength; the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16518 and single-core score of 2332 indicate that the CPU can handle both heavily threaded tasks and the single-threaded workloads that many game engines rely on. The 3DMark max threads score of 5912 is particularly relevant, as it shows the CPU can maintain high throughput when all cores are active.

In Evolve, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The game was released in 2015, a time when quad-core CPUs were the norm, so the i5-12400F's 6 cores are more than sufficient. The data supports this; at 1080p Low, the frame rate of 147.8 FPS is high enough that any CPU limitation would likely manifest as frame stuttering or inconsistent frame times, which is not evident in the average FPS figures. The CPU's percentile ranking of 77% among all CPUs further reinforces that it is a strong performer, but in this specific game, its power is largely untapped because the GPU is the constraining factor at all settings above 1080p Low.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i7-8700K, which scores 0.1% higher, and the AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS, which scores 0.7% higher. These small deltas indicate that the i5-12400F is in a performance tier with older high-end chips and newer mid-range mobile parts. However, these synthetic benchmarks do not translate directly to Evolve performance because the game is not CPU-intensive by modern standards. The combination of the CPU's high single-thread performance, evidenced by the Passmark single-thread score of 3481, and its ample multi-threading capabilities ensures that it will not hold back the RX 6600 in this title. The bottleneck is firmly on the GPU side, and any frame rate improvements in Evolve would require a more powerful graphics card, not a faster processor.