Evolve

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i7-12700KF compare to its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13700T?

A: The i7-12700KF's average benchmark score of 35,365 is just 0.1% lower than the i7-13700T's 35,403, placing the two effectively at parity. In contrast, the i5-13600T scores 35,305, which is 0.2% behind the i7-12700KF, indicating the performance gap between these mid-range and upper-mid-range Alder Lake and Raptor Lake parts is negligible in synthetic workloads.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all tested graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 sits in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 40,377. Its closest competitor, the AMD Radeon Pro 580, scores 40,318, a mere 0.1% difference, while the RTX A500 Mobile trails by 2.0% with a score of 39,568.

Q: What is the best average FPS this combo achieves at 1080p, and at what settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo reaches an average of 280 FPS. Moving to Medium drops that to 217 FPS, High yields 170 FPS, and Ultra produces 118 FPS, showing a clear progression of performance cost as visual fidelity increases.

Q: What is the only settings level at 4K that provides a minimum FPS reading?

A: At 3840x2160 with Medium settings, the measured minimum FPS is 70, with a maximum of 95. All other 4K settings levels—Low, High, and Ultra—have no reported min or max FPS values in the data, only averages.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance in Cinebench R23 compare to its single-threaded score?

A: The i7-12700KF scores 28,838 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4,071 in single-core, a ratio of roughly 7.1:1. This indicates strong scaling across its 12 cores and 20 threads, though the single-thread score remains robust for gaming workloads that rely on fewer threads.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among all tested combinations for this game?

A: The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 ranks 758th out of 3,700 total combos tested in Evolve, placing it in the top 20.5% of all configurations. This rank reflects the balance between the CPU's 85th percentile standing and the GPU's 82nd percentile position.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB205 chip, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process with 31,100 million transistors. Its 12 GB of GDDR7 memory runs at 1750 MHz with an effective 28 Gbps transfer rate, delivering 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth across a 192-bit bus. These specifications directly influence Evolve's performance, particularly at higher resolutions where texture streaming and memory bandwidth become critical.

The GPU's clock behavior shows a base of 2325 MHz and a boost of 2512 MHz, which translates into a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s. For a fast-paced FPS like Evolve, these rates determine how quickly the GPU can fill frames and apply texture detail to moving characters and environments. The FP32 throughput of 30.87 TFLOPS provides the raw compute headroom needed for the game's physics and particle effects, while the 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores indicate the GPU is prepared for future titles that leverage ray tracing and DLSS, even if Evolve's 2015 release predates those features.

The measured data shows the GPU's influence scaling with resolution. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 280 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it falls to 45 FPS—a 83.9% drop. This pattern demonstrates that the RTX 5070's memory subsystem and compute resources are increasingly taxed as pixel count rises. The 12 GB VRAM capacity proves sufficient across all settings at 4K, as the game still renders at 65 FPS on High, but the bandwidth constraints become apparent in the 4K Ultra result, where the GPU's 192-bit bus and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth struggle to maintain fluid frame rates.

The GPU's 82nd percentile ranking among all graphics cards, with an average benchmark score of 40,377, contextualizes its performance. It outpaces the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 by 1.2% and the Radeon Pro WX 7100 by 0.8%, while the Radeon Pro 580 is virtually tied at 0.1% difference. These rival comparisons suggest the RTX 5070 occupies a specific performance tier that, while not at the absolute top, delivers consistent frame rates in Evolve across most settings and resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data reveals that Medium settings offer the most balanced experience across all three resolutions, primarily because it is the only settings level that includes both minimum and maximum FPS readings. At 1080p Medium, the combo averages 217 FPS with a minimum of 184 and maximum of 249, providing a stable experience well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on modern monitors. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 145 FPS with a minimum of 124 and maximum of 167, still maintaining smooth gameplay for high-refresh displays. Even at 4K Medium, the 83 FPS average with a 70 FPS minimum keeps the experience playable on standard 60 Hz displays without dips below the refresh threshold.

High settings present a viable alternative for those prioritizing visual quality over raw frame rates. At 1080p High, the combo delivers 170 FPS average, which remains excellent, while 1440p High yields 114 FPS and 4K High produces 65 FPS. However, the absence of min/max data for High settings means frame-time consistency is unknown, making Medium the safer recommendation for competitive play.

Low settings are unnecessary for this combo on standard displays, as even 4K Low achieves 107 FPS average, and 1080p Low reaches 280 FPS. These numbers suggest the GPU is far from a bottleneck at lower settings, and the performance headroom could be better invested in higher visual fidelity. Conversely, Ultra settings should be avoided at 4K, where the 45 FPS average falls below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, though 1080p Ultra at 118 FPS and 1440p Ultra at 79 FPS remain playable.

For the best experience per the measured rows, Medium at 1440p offers the strongest combination of visual quality and performance margin, with the 124 FPS minimum ensuring no stutter during intense firefights. If 4K is the target resolution, Medium is the only settings level that provides both a playable average (83 FPS) and a documented minimum (70 FPS) that avoids the worst frame drops.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo demonstrates exceptional performance across all settings. Low settings produce 280 FPS average, Medium drops to 217 FPS with a minimum of 184 and maximum of 249, High yields 170 FPS, and Ultra manages 118 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 57.9% reduction in frame rate, indicating that each settings tier imposes a significant but manageable performance cost. The Medium settings data, with its 184 FPS minimum, suggests that even in the most demanding scenes, the frame rate stays well above the 144 Hz threshold.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably. Low settings achieve 188 FPS average, Medium produces 145 FPS with a minimum of 124 and maximum of 167, High delivers 114 FPS, and Ultra drops to 79 FPS. The 1080p to 1440p transition reduces frame rates by approximately 32.9% across settings, consistent with the 1.78x increase in pixel count. The Medium settings minimum of 124 FPS remains above the 120 Hz refresh rate, making this resolution and settings combination particularly attractive for high-refresh 1440p monitors.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens considerably. Low settings still deliver 107 FPS average, but Medium falls to 83 FPS with a minimum of 70 and maximum of 95, High drops to 65 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 45 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the only measured configuration that falls below 60 FPS, indicating that the GPU's 12 GB VRAM and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for maxed-out settings at this resolution. The Medium settings minimum of 70 FPS provides a buffer above the 60 FPS threshold, but just barely, suggesting that players seeking a guaranteed smooth experience at 4K should consider Medium or lower.

The data also reveals that the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens with resolution. At 1080p, the difference is 162 FPS (280 vs 118), at 1440p it grows to 109 FPS (188 vs 79), and at 4K it shrinks to 62 FPS (107 vs 45). This non-linear relationship indicates that at lower resolutions, the CPU and GPU have ample headroom to express settings differences, while at 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, compressing the performance range across settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination ranks 758th out of 3,700 tested combos in Evolve, placing it in the top 20.5% of all configurations. This rank is notable given that both components individually sit in the 80th percentile or higher—the CPU at 85th and the GPU at 82nd—suggesting that the combination is well-matched for this game's requirements.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for its contribution to this rank. The i7-13700T scores 35,403, a 0.1% advantage over the i7-12700KF's 35,365, while the i5-13600T scores 35,305, a 0.2% deficit. The i7-12700K scores 35,287, another 0.2% gap. These narrow margins—all within 0.4% of each other—indicate that the CPU is not the differentiating factor in this combo's rank. Instead, the GPU's performance tier, where the RTX 5070's closest rival (Radeon Pro 580) is only 0.1% ahead, likely plays a larger role in determining the final position.

The rank of 758 out of 3,700 means 2,942 other combos perform better in Evolve, but it also places this configuration ahead of roughly 79.5% of all tested systems. For a game released in 2015, this combo's rank reflects modern hardware's ability to handle the title with ease, even at higher resolutions and settings. The data suggests that the combo's position is not limited by either component individually but rather by the overall ecosystem of faster GPUs and CPUs that occupy the upper percentile brackets.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF features 12 cores and 20 threads, a configuration that provides substantial parallel processing capability for Evolve's multi-threaded engine. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz boosts to 5.00 GHz, and the 25 MB shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency during gameplay. The CPU's Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, delivers a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28,838 and a single-core score of 4,071, indicating strong performance in both highly threaded and lightly threaded workloads.

In Evolve, the CPU's role is evident in the 1080p Low result of 280 FPS, where the GPU is not the limiting factor. At this resolution and settings level, the CPU's 5.00 GHz boost clock and strong single-thread performance allow it to feed the GPU with enough frames to reach near-300 FPS. The 3dmark single-thread score of 1,043 and the geekbench single-core score of 2,255 further corroborate this capability, showing that the i7-12700KF can handle the game's simulation and AI workloads without bottlenecking.

However, the CPU's influence diminishes at higher resolutions. The transition from 1080p to 1440p results in a 32.9% FPS drop across settings, and from 1440p to 4K, the drop is even steeper. At 4K Ultra, the 45 FPS result is clearly GPU-limited, as the CPU's performance headroom at lower resolutions (280 FPS at 1080p Low) far exceeds what the GPU can render at 4K. This suggests that in Evolve, the i7-12700KF is more than sufficient for the GPU's capabilities, and the combo's performance ceiling is determined by the RTX 5070.

The CPU's nearest rival comparisons—with the i7-13700T at 0.1% ahead and the i5-13600T at 0.2% behind—indicate that the i7-12700KF's performance is competitive with newer generation parts. This parity means that for Evolve specifically, upgrading to a newer CPU would not yield meaningful FPS gains, as the GPU remains the bottleneck at most settings and resolutions. The 12-core, 20-thread configuration provides ample headroom for the game's multi-threaded workloads, and the 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures responsive single-threaded performance.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals distinct scaling patterns as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 280 FPS at 1080p to 188 FPS at 1440p (a 32.9% decrease) and then to 107 FPS at 4K (a 43.1% decrease from 1440p). This progressive decline indicates that the GPU is becoming increasingly constrained by pixel throughput, even at the lowest settings, where the CPU has ample headroom.

At Medium settings, the scaling follows a similar pattern: 217 FPS at 1080p, 145 FPS at 1440p (33.2% decrease), and 83 FPS at 4K (42.8% decrease). The minimum FPS values at Medium—184 at 1080p, 124 at 1440p, and 70 at 4K—show that the worst-case frame rates scale proportionally with the averages, suggesting consistent performance characteristics rather than sudden spikes or drops.

High settings exhibit a steeper decline: 170 FPS at 1080p, 114 FPS at 1440p (32.9% decrease), and 65 FPS at 4K (43.0% decrease). Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling: 118 FPS at 1080p, 79 FPS at 1440p (33.1% decrease), and 45 FPS at 4K (43.0% decrease). The consistency of these percentage drops—hovering around 33% for the 1080p to 1440p transition and 43% for the 1440p to 4K transition—across all settings levels is striking.

This uniform scaling pattern reveals that the limiting component shifts from CPU-bound at low resolutions to GPU-bound at high resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 280 FPS result suggests the CPU is approaching its limit in feeding frames to the GPU, as the RTX 5070's raw compute capabilities would likely allow even higher frame rates if the CPU could keep up. However, the 4K results, particularly the 45 FPS at Ultra, indicate the GPU is the definitive bottleneck, as the CPU's performance headroom at lower resolutions cannot compensate for the GPU's inability to render 8.3 million pixels at high settings.

The scaling behavior also highlights the GPU's memory bandwidth constraints. The 672.0 GB/s bandwidth, while substantial, becomes a limiting factor at 4K where the 12 GB of GDDR7 memory must constantly stream data for high-resolution textures. The 70 FPS minimum at 4K Medium versus the 45 FPS average at 4K Ultra suggests that the bandwidth and compute demands of Ultra settings exceed what the GPU can consistently deliver, resulting in a 45.8% performance drop between these two settings at the same resolution.