Evolve

Evolve, the 2015 cooperative FPS, presents an unusual pairing with the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The benchmark data shows a system where the GPU’s immense power is frequently restrained by the six-core CPU from 2018. The measured frame rates reveal that this combination is best experienced at 1440p with High settings, where the balance between visual fidelity and the CPU’s limits produces the most consistent performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data strongly suggests that High settings at 2560x1440 provide the optimal experience for this combo. At this configuration, the system delivers an average of 150.6 FPS, which is a significant jump from the 107 FPS at Ultra settings, representing a 40.7% performance increase. While 1080p High yields a higher 175.9 FPS, the jump to 1440p offers substantially more detail with only a 14.4% drop in frame rate, making it the superior trade-off for most users.

Ultra settings are not advisable for this pairing. At 4K Ultra, the system drops to 57.7 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. Even at 1440p Ultra, the 107 FPS average is only 18.9% higher than the 4K High result, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes a heavy load that does not scale efficiently with this hardware. The data indicates that the CPU becomes a limiting factor at Ultra settings, particularly at lower resolutions where the GPU is less burdened.

For competitive play, Low settings at 1080p deliver the highest frame rate in the dataset at 214.8 FPS. This comes at the cost of visual quality, but the 11.3% improvement over Medium settings at the same resolution makes it the clear choice for players prioritizing responsiveness over aesthetics. The RTX 4090’s raw power ensures that even at Low settings, the game remains visually acceptable, while the frame rate headroom provides a buffer for demanding moments.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant component in this system, featuring 24 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 384-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. This memory configuration is far beyond what Evolve requires, ensuring that texture streaming and high-resolution assets are never bottlenecked by the GPU’s memory subsystem. The GPU’s boost clock of 2520 MHz and its 16,384 shading units provide the raw compute power that drives the high frame rates seen in the 1080p and 1440p measurements.

The RTX 4090’s performance percentile of 91 versus all GPUs places it in the top tier of graphics hardware. Its average benchmark score of 66,473 is closely matched by its nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla T4, which scores 66,733, a delta of -0.4%. This indicates that while the RTX 4090 is exceptionally fast, the data does not show it being overwhelmingly superior to the professional-grade Tesla T4 in synthetic tests. However, the gaming-focused architecture of the RTX 4090, with its 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores, makes it far more suited to the demands of modern game rendering.

In Evolve specifically, the GPU’s role is to push frame rates to extremes at 1080p, but the CPU's limitations become apparent as the resolution drops. At 4K Ultra, the GPU is fully utilized, resulting in 57.7 FPS, while at 1080p Low, the frame rate rises to 214.8 FPS, showing that the GPU has ample headroom to render far more frames than the CPU can process.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 262nd out of 1,695 tested combos in Evolve, placing it in the 84.5th percentile of all configurations. This rank is respectable, but it does not reflect the full potential of the RTX 4090, as the i5-9400 holds the system back from achieving the top-tier status its GPU alone could reach.

The ranking suggests that the combo outperforms the majority of systems tested, but it is far from the best. The data implies that pairing the RTX 4090 with a more modern, higher-core-count CPU would yield significantly better results, as the GPU is capable of much higher frame rates than the CPU can feed it. The i5-9400, with its 6 cores and 6 threads, is the limiting factor in this pairing, preventing the system from reaching the upper echelons of the performance charts.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates a clear scaling pattern. Low settings produce an average of 214.8 FPS, Medium follows at 193.0 FPS, High drops to 175.9 FPS, and Ultra brings up the rear at 156.3 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 58.5 FPS, a 27.2% drop, indicating that the CPU is the primary constraint at this resolution, as the GPU is not being fully stressed.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a more pronounced difference between settings. Low yields 183.5 FPS, Medium 170.2 FPS, High 150.6 FPS, and Ultra 107.0 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 76.5 FPS, a 41.7% drop, showing that the GPU is beginning to take on more of the workload as the resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the dominant factor. Low settings produce 141.9 FPS, Medium 107.3 FPS, High 86.2 FPS, and Ultra 57.7 FPS. The Ultra result is the only sub-60 FPS measurement in the entire dataset, highlighting the extreme demands of 4K Ultra on even the most powerful GPU. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a 84.2 FPS drop, a 59.3% reduction, demonstrating that the RTX 4090’s limits are finally reached at this resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain over 144 FPS?

A: The data shows that 1440p Low achieves 183.5 FPS, and 1080p High achieves 175.9 FPS, making 1440p Low the highest resolution that stays comfortably above the 144 FPS threshold.

Q: How significant is the performance drop from High to Ultra settings at 4K?

A: The drop from High to Ultra at 3840x2160 is 28.5 FPS, from 86.2 FPS to 57.7 FPS, a 33.0% reduction that pushes the system below the 60 FPS mark.

Q: Does the RTX 4090’s 24 GB VRAM make a difference in Evolve?

A: The 24 GB capacity and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are more than sufficient for Evolve, ensuring no memory-related bottlenecks at any settings, as the GPU’s compute power is the limiting factor at 4K.

Q: How does the i5-9400 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-9400 scores 2,305 on average, which is 0.2% higher than the Core i3-10305 and i3-1125G4, and 0.4% higher than the Xeon E-2134, but 0.6% lower than the Core i7-8809G.

Q: Is this combo suitable for 4K gaming in Evolve?

A: Yes, but only at Low or Medium settings, which yield 141.9 FPS and 107.3 FPS respectively. High settings at 86.2 FPS are playable, but Ultra at 57.7 FPS is below the ideal threshold.

Q: Why is the 1080p Ultra score lower than the 1440p High score?

A: The 1080p Ultra score of 156.3 FPS is lower than the 1440p High score of 150.6 FPS, which is an anomaly in the data. This suggests that the CPU is the bottleneck at 1080p Ultra, limiting the frame rate despite the lower resolution.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. Its 9 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support provide adequate bandwidth for most games, but its 65W TDP and lack of hyper-threading limit its ability to keep pace with the RTX 4090.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-9400 achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7,969 and a single-core score of 1,125. Its average benchmark score of 2,305 places it in the 50th percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is a mid-range processor. The nearest rival, the Core i7-8809G, scores 2,319, which is 0.6% higher, showing that the i5-9400 is competitive with other processors of its era.

In Evolve, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The data shows that at 1080p, the CPU becomes the limiting factor, as the frame rates do not scale proportionally with the GPU’s power. The 214.8 FPS at 1080p Low is the maximum the CPU can deliver, and further increases in resolution do not significantly reduce the CPU load, as the GPU takes over the bottleneck role at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the shifting bottleneck between CPU and GPU. At High settings, the system delivers 175.9 FPS at 1080p, 150.6 FPS at 1440p, and 86.2 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 14.4%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 42.8%, indicating that the GPU becomes the primary constraint as resolution increases.

At Low settings, the scaling is less steep. The system achieves 214.8 FPS at 1080p, 183.5 FPS at 1440p, and 141.9 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 14.6%, and from 1440p to 4K is 22.7%. The smaller drop at 4K Low suggests that the CPU is still a significant factor, as the GPU is not fully utilized at these lower settings.

The data indicates that the i5-9400 is the limiting component at 1080p, as the frame rates are capped by the CPU’s processing power. As the resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU’s workload increases, and the RTX 4090 gradually becomes the limiting factor. This is most evident at Ultra settings, where the 4K result of 57.7 FPS is a 63.1% drop from the 1080p result of 156.3 FPS, showing that the GPU is fully saturated at the highest settings.