Evolve

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX presents an interesting case study in Evolve, a 2015 FPS. The data shows a combination that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet capable of extreme frame rates at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the measured performance, the role of each component, and how this specific pairing ranks against thousands of other tested combinations.

Resolution Scaling

The most immediate observation from the measured FPS data is how dramatically performance scales with resolution. At 1080p with Low settings, this combo produces an average of 306 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 205 FPS, a reduction of roughly one-third. At 4K Low, the average falls further to 117 FPS. This scaling pattern is classic behavior for a system where the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck as pixel count increases. The RX 7900 XTX, with its 24 GB of GDDR6 memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth, is clearly the dominant factor in these results.

The scaling becomes even more pronounced when looking at High settings. At 1080p High, the average is 186 FPS. At 1440p High, it drops to 125 FPS. At 4K High, the average falls to 71 FPS. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is about 33%, and from 1440p to 4K is another 43%. This non-linear degradation is typical of a GPU that is being pushed closer to its limits at each successive resolution.

For Medium settings, the pattern holds. The 1080p Medium average is 237 FPS, with a minimum of 201 FPS and a maximum of 272 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average is 159 FPS, with a minimum of 135 FPS and a maximum of 183 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average is 90 FPS, with a minimum of 77 FPS and a maximum of 104 FPS. The fact that minimum FPS values are recorded at Medium settings but not at Low or High suggests that the data collection captured more variance in the mid-range preset.

Ultra settings tell a similar story but with more severe penalties. The 1080p Ultra average is 129 FPS, which is still highly playable. At 1440p Ultra, the average drops to 86 FPS. At 4K Ultra, the average collapses to 49 FPS. This last figure is the only sub-60 FPS result in the entire dataset, indicating that 4K Ultra is the one configuration where this combo struggles to maintain smooth gameplay.

The interpretation here is straightforward: the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. The Intel Core Ultra 5 235, with its 14 cores and 14 threads, has a boost clock of 5.00 GHz and a base clock of 3.40 GHz. In a game like Evolve, which is not known for extreme multi-threading demands, this processor provides ample headroom. The evidence for this is that FPS scales consistently with resolution, which is a GPU-bound behavior. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar FPS figures across all resolutions, or at least a plateau at higher frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process at TSMC. It has a 24 MB shared L3 cache and 3 MB of L2 cache per core. Its base clock is 3.40 GHz, and it boosts to 5.00 GHz. This is a desktop part with a 65 W TDP, designed for the Intel Socket 1851 platform. It supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and a memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s.

In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU posts a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769 and a single-core score of 2085. Its Passmark single-thread score is 4516, and its Passmark multi-thread score is 37816. The percentile ranking versus all CPUs is 89, meaning it outperforms 89% of processors in the database. Its nearest rivals in terms of average benchmark score include the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (0.1% faster), the Intel Core i9-13900HX (0.1% slower), the AMD EPYC 4364P (0.2% faster), and the AMD EPYC 7303 (0.2% faster). This places the Ultra 5 235 in a very tight performance cluster where differences are negligible.

For Evolve specifically, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with enough data to keep it busy. The measured FPS at 1080p Low reaches 306, which is well above what most displays can handle. This suggests that the CPU is capable of pushing frame rates high enough to fully utilize the RX 7900 XTX at lower resolutions. The fact that 1080p Low produces more than double the FPS of 4K Low (306 vs 117) reinforces that the GPU's rendering workload is the limiting factor, not the CPU's processing speed.

The CPU's single-thread performance is particularly relevant for a game from 2015. Evolve was released in early 2015, and games from that era often rely heavily on one or two cores. The Ultra 5 235's Cinebench R15 single-core score of 210 and R20 single-core score of 875 indicate strong per-core performance. This is likely why the system can achieve such high frame rates at 1080p, as the CPU can process game logic and draw calls quickly enough to not bottleneck the GPU.

Another consideration is the lack of hyper-threading or SMT. The 235 has 14 cores and 14 threads, meaning each core handles one thread. For a game like Evolve, which may not utilize all cores effectively, this is not a significant drawback. The high boost clock of 5.00 GHz compensates for any potential multi-threading inefficiencies. The Passmark physics score of 2570 further suggests that the CPU handles game physics calculations adequately.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a high-end GPU based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture, with the Navi 31 chip. It has 6144 shading units, 384 texture mapping units, and 192 raster operations processors. It also features 96 ray tracing cores. The GPU has a base clock of 1929 MHz, a boost clock of 2498 MHz, and a game clock of 2365 MHz. Its memory runs at 2500 MHz, which translates to 20 Gbps effective, across a 384-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s.

The 24 GB of GDDR6 memory is a standout feature. For a game from 2015, this is far more than necessary. Even at 4K Ultra settings, Evolve is unlikely to use more than a fraction of this capacity. The excess VRAM means there is no risk of texture thrashing or memory-related stuttering, allowing the GPU to focus purely on rendering. The GPU's FP32 performance is 61.39 TFLOPS, and its FP16 is 122.8 TFLOPS. Its pixel rate is 479.6 GPixel/s, and its texture rate is 959.2 GTexel/s.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 7900 XTX scores 31238 in Passmark G3D and 17689 in Passmark GPU compute. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 6841, its Geekbench OpenCL score is 50465, and its Geekbench Vulkan score is 85612. The percentile ranking versus all GPUs is 64, which is notably lower than the CPU's 89th percentile. This is an important point: the GPU is a strong performer, but it is not as exceptional relative to its peers as the CPU is. Its nearest rivals in terms of average benchmark score include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB (0.4% faster), the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 (1% slower), the AMD FirePro D300 (1.2% slower), and the NVIDIA TITAN Xp (1.2% faster). This is a peculiar grouping, as these rivals span very different performance tiers, but the average scores place them close together.

For Evolve, the GPU's role is paramount. The measured FPS data shows that this card can handle the game at high frame rates across all tested settings except 4K Ultra. The 49 FPS average at 4K Ultra is the only result below 60 FPS, which suggests that Evolve's Ultra preset imposes a heavy load that even this GPU cannot overcome at that resolution. The gap between 4K High (71 FPS) and 4K Ultra (49 FPS) is substantial, indicating that the Ultra preset adds significant graphical effects that tax the GPU heavily.

The GPU's boost clock of 2498 MHz and game clock of 2365 MHz are high for a card of this class, and they contribute to its ability to maintain high frame rates. The 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is also critical for feeding the 6144 shading units at high resolutions. The data shows that at 1440p Low, the system achieves 205 FPS, which is a clear indication that the GPU is not being held back by the CPU at that setting.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides a clear picture of performance across all combinations of resolution and settings. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low settings produce an average of 306 FPS, Medium produces 237 FPS (minimum 201, maximum 272), High produces 186 FPS, and Ultra produces 129 FPS. This shows a steady decline as settings increase, with the drop from Low to Medium being 69 FPS, from Medium to High being 51 FPS, and from High to Ultra being 57 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 205 FPS for Low, 159 FPS for Medium (minimum 135, maximum 183), 125 FPS for High, and 86 FPS for Ultra. The relative scaling is similar to 1080p, but the absolute values are lower. The drop from Low to Medium is 46 FPS, from Medium to High is 34 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 39 FPS. It is noteworthy that the percentage drop from High to Ultra is larger than from Medium to High, suggesting that the Ultra preset has a disproportionately heavy impact.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 117 FPS for Low, 90 FPS for Medium (minimum 77, maximum 104), 71 FPS for High, and 49 FPS for Ultra. The drop from Low to Medium is 27 FPS, from Medium to High is 19 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 22 FPS. Here, the minimum FPS at Medium is 77, which is still above 60, but the Ultra average of 49 FPS means that gameplay will experience noticeable frame pacing issues.

Comparing the same settings across resolutions provides insight into scaling efficiency. For Low settings, 1080p to 1440p sees a drop from 306 to 205 FPS, a reduction of 101 FPS. From 1440p to 4K, the drop is from 205 to 117 FPS, a reduction of 88 FPS. For High settings, the drops are 61 FPS (186 to 125) and 54 FPS (125 to 71). For Medium settings, the drops are 78 FPS (237 to 159) and 69 FPS (159 to 90). For Ultra settings, the drops are 43 FPS (129 to 86) and 37 FPS (86 to 49). The consistency of these drops indicates that the GPU's workload scales predictably with resolution, further confirming that the GPU is the limiting factor.

The minimum and maximum FPS values are only recorded for Medium settings across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the range is 201 to 272 FPS, a spread of 71 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the range is 135 to 183 FPS, a spread of 48 FPS. At 4K Medium, the range is 77 to 104 FPS, a spread of 27 FPS. This narrowing of the range at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU becomes more consistently loaded, reducing frame time variance.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Evolve, this specific pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX ranks 351st out of 2872 combos. This places it in the top 12.2% of all tested systems for this game. Given that the GPU is in the 64th percentile versus all GPUs and the CPU is in the 89th percentile versus all CPUs, this ranking makes sense. The combo performs better than the GPU's percentile would suggest, likely due to the CPU's strong single-thread performance, which benefits this older game.

The rank of 351 indicates that there are 350 other combos that achieve higher average FPS in Evolve. These are likely systems with even more powerful GPUs, possibly from the same Radeon RX 7000 series or higher-tier NVIDIA cards. However, the rank also shows that this combo outperforms the vast majority of systems, including many that might have newer or more expensive components. The data confirms that for a game like Evolve, the combination of a high-boost CPU and a high-bandwidth GPU is effective.

The gap between this combo's rank and the top ranks is not specified, but the percentile data suggests that improvements would come primarily from a faster GPU. The CPU is already near the top of the performance curve, with its nearest rivals all within 0.2% of its average benchmark score. Upgrading the CPU would yield minimal gains, whereas upgrading the GPU could push the combo into a higher tier.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS this combo achieves in Evolve?

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 306, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Can this combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: No. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 49, which is below 60. At High settings, it averages 71 FPS, which is above 60.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the main bottleneck in this system for Evolve?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the main bottleneck. FPS scales consistently with resolution, dropping from 306 FPS at 1080p Low to 117 FPS at 4K Low, which is a classic GPU-bound pattern.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: It ranks 351st out of 2872 tested combos for Evolve, placing it in the top 12.2% of all systems tested.

Q: What is the FPS range at 1440p with Medium settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the average FPS is 159, with a minimum of 135 and a maximum of 183.

Q: How much faster is the CPU compared to its nearest rival?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 has an average benchmark score that is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 and 0.1% lower than the Intel Core i9-13900HX, indicating essentially negligible differences.