Evolve

The Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti delivers a remarkably wide performance envelope in Evolve, spanning from 308.3 FPS at 1080p Low to 46.5 FPS at 4K Ultra. The data reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at higher resolutions, yet capable of extreme frame rates that suggest CPU headroom at lower settings. The measured FPS rows indicate that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, maintaining playable frame rates even at 4K while avoiding the steep performance penalty of Ultra settings.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data points to High as the optimal settings preset for this combination. At 3840x2160, High produces an average of 68.5 FPS, which is a 47.3% improvement over Ultra’s 46.5 FPS. This gap suggests that Ultra settings impose a rendering load that significantly outweighs the visual fidelity gain, particularly at 4K where pixel count already stresses the GPU. The Medium preset at 4K yields 92.8 FPS, but High provides a better balance of image quality and performance for demanding scenarios.

At 2560x1440, High delivers 124.9 FPS, comfortably above the 90 FPS threshold for Ultra, while Medium reaches 158.3 FPS. The 1080p results reinforce this pattern: High achieves 185.7 FPS, which is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays, while Ultra drops to 130.4 FPS. The data implies that High is the sweet spot—it consistently outperforms Ultra by a substantial margin across all resolutions while offering superior visual quality over Medium. For players prioritizing maximum frame rates, Low settings at 1440p (204.2 FPS) or 1080p (308.3 FPS) are viable, but the visual compromises are significant.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 221st out of 1695 tested combos in Evolve, placing it in the top 13% of all configurations. The rank reflects the RTX 4070 Ti’s strong position within the GPU hierarchy—it sits at the 85th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44900. The GPU’s nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile (avg score 45152, delta -0.6%) and the Intel Arc A730M (avg score 45592, delta -1.5%), indicating that the desktop 4070 Ti is competitive even against newer mobile parts.

The CPU contributes to this ranking as well. The Core i5-12600KF holds the 84th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 27827. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-10900K, scores 27829 (delta 0%), meaning the two are virtually identical in synthetic benchmarks. The i5-12600K scores 27851 (delta -0.1%), while the Core Ultra 5 125H scores 27872 (delta -0.2%). This tight clustering suggests that the 12600KF is well-matched to its peers, and the combo rank is likely driven more by GPU performance than CPU headroom.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 185.7 FPS at 1080p to 124.9 FPS at 1440p (a 32.7% decrease), then to 68.5 FPS at 4K (a further 45.2% decrease from 1440p). The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 63.1%, which is substantial but not catastrophic, indicating that the RTX 4070 Ti has enough bandwidth and compute power to handle 4K at playable frame rates.

Low settings show an even steeper drop: 308.3 FPS at 1080p falls to 204.2 FPS at 1440p (33.8% decrease), then to 114.6 FPS at 4K (43.9% decrease from 1440p). The fact that Low settings still incur a significant penalty at higher resolutions confirms that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as CPU load does not scale with resolution. Ultra settings exhibit the most severe scaling, dropping from 130.4 FPS at 1080p to 90 FPS at 1440p (31% decrease), then to 46.5 FPS at 4K (48.3% decrease). This pattern suggests that Ultra’s additional effects, such as advanced shading or post-processing, disproportionately tax the GPU at higher pixel counts.

FAQ

*Q: Is this combination capable of 4K gaming in Evolve?*

A: Yes, but only at Medium or High settings. The data shows 68.5 FPS at 4K High and 92.8 FPS at 4K Medium, while Ultra drops to 46.5 FPS, which may be below playable thresholds for many users.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rivals?

A: The Core i5-12600KF scores 27827 on average, which is statistically tied with the Intel Core i9-10900K at 27829 (delta 0%). It is also within 0.2% of the Core i5-12600K (27851) and Core Ultra 5 125H (27872).

Q: What is the highest frame rate achievable with this combo?

A: The maximum measured average is 308.3 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. Even at High settings, 1080p yields 185.7 FPS, which exceeds most high-refresh-rate displays.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1440p to 4K?

A: At High settings, the drop is from 124.9 FPS to 68.5 FPS, a decrease of 45.2%. At Low settings, it falls from 204.2 FPS to 114.6 FPS, a 43.9% reduction.

Q: Does Ultra settings provide a worthwhile improvement over High?

A: The data suggests not. Ultra is significantly slower at every resolution: 130.4 vs 185.7 FPS at 1080p, 90 vs 124.9 FPS at 1440p, and 46.5 vs 68.5 FPS at 4K. The visual gains are unlikely to justify these losses.

Q: What is the GPU’s benchmark percentile ranking?

A: The RTX 4070 Ti sits at the 85th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44900. Its closest competitor, the RTX 5090 Mobile, scores 45152 (delta -0.6%).

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 Ti’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for Evolve even at 4K. The memory clock runs at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective), and the GPU’s base clock of 2310 MHz boosts to 2610 MHz. These clocks, combined with 7680 shading units and 240 TMUs, yield a texture rate of 626.4 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 208.8 GPixel/s. The FP32 performance of 40.09 TFLOPS indicates substantial compute headroom for the game’s rendering workloads.

The benchmark data strongly suggests the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K are consistent across all settings, with percentage decreases ranging from 63.1% (High) to 62.8% (Low). This uniformity implies that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints, not CPU-bound logic or draw calls. The GPU’s 85th percentile ranking, alongside its 31624 Passmark G3D score, places it well above average, yet the 4K Ultra result of 46.5 FPS shows that even this capable card struggles with maximum settings at 2160p.

CPU Role

The Core i5-12600KF features 10 cores (16 threads) with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. This Alder Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process, includes 20 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4/DDR5 memory. The CPU’s synthetic benchmarks show strong multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 23444, while 3DMark max threads reaches 7952. Single-thread performance is equally solid, with Cinebench R23 singlecore at 3309 and Geekbench singlecore at 2529.

In Evolve, the CPU’s role appears secondary to the GPU at higher resolutions, but it enables the extreme frame rates seen at 1080p. The jump from 1440p High (124.9 FPS) to 1080p High (185.7 FPS) suggests the CPU can feed the GPU with enough data to push past 180 FPS. At Low settings, the 1080p result of 308.3 FPS indicates that the CPU is not a bottleneck even at very high frame rates. The 84th percentile CPU ranking, with a Passmark multithread score of 27575, confirms that this processor has ample headroom for this game, likely leaving most of the performance variance to the GPU’s capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS table shows the following averages:

1920x1080: Low 308.3 FPS, Medium 240.6 FPS, High 185.7 FPS, Ultra 130.4 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 177.9 FPS, a 57.7% reduction, showing that settings have a massive impact at this resolution.

2560x1440: Low 204.2 FPS, Medium 158.3 FPS, High 124.9 FPS, Ultra 90 FPS. The relative drop from Low to Ultra is 55.9%, slightly less than at 1080p, indicating the GPU is becoming more dominant.

3840x2160: Low 114.6 FPS, Medium 92.8 FPS, High 68.5 FPS, Ultra 46.5 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread narrows to 59.4%, and the absolute values show that 4K gaming requires compromising on settings.

The data also reveals that the performance gap between Medium and High is consistent across resolutions: 55 FPS at 1080p, 33.4 FPS at 1440p, and 24.3 FPS at 4K. This diminishing absolute difference suggests that the GPU’s rendering overhead scales with pixel count, while the relative cost of High over Medium remains around 22-26% at each resolution. These figures provide a clear roadmap for users seeking to balance visual quality with frame rate targets.