Evolve

Evolve, a 2015 FPS built around asymmetric multiplayer hunting, is heavily dependent on consistent frame pacing and GPU throughput. The pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 produces a measurable performance profile that shifts dramatically with resolution and quality settings. The data indicates that this combo ranks 2247th out of 2872 tested combinations for this title, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. The RTX 2060, with its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, becomes the primary constraint at higher resolutions, while the Core Ultra 5 235’s strong single-thread and multi-thread scores ensure the CPU is rarely the limiting factor at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS, scaling behavior, and component roles using only the provided benchmark data.

FAQ

Q: What is the overall ranking of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 + RTX 2060 combo in Evolve?

A: The combo ranks 2247th out of 2872 tested combinations, which places it in the 78th percentile of all tested setups for this game. This indicates a mid-to-low tier position, meaning many other combinations deliver higher average frame rates.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 compare to its nearest rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 2060 has an average benchmark score of 15290, placing it just ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (15283, 0% delta) and the AMD Radeon 680M (15270, 0.1% delta). It is also slightly ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (15199, 0.6% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 (15171, 0.8% delta), showing that its raw compute performance is very close to these alternatives.

Q: What is the best measured average FPS for this combo at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 146 FPS. This is the highest average frame rate recorded across all tested resolutions and settings, indicating that the CPU and GPU can deliver high refresh rate gameplay when graphical load is minimal.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the combo drop below 30 FPS?

A: The only instance where the average FPS falls below 30 is at 3840x2160 (4K) with Ultra settings, where the average is 23 FPS. This is a significant drop, suggesting that the RTX 2060’s 6 GB memory and bandwidth are insufficient for maximum quality at 4K in Evolve.

Q: How does the Core Ultra 5 235 perform in single-threaded tasks relative to its rivals?

A: The Core Ultra 5 235 has a Passmark single-thread score of 4516 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2085. Its overall average benchmark score of 46062 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (46030, 0.1% delta) and the Intel Core i9-13900HX (46098, -0.1% delta), showing that its per-core performance is competitive with these high-end processors.

Q: Does the combo provide a playable experience at 1440p with medium settings?

A: Yes, at 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo delivers an average of 76 FPS, with a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 87 FPS. This is well within a playable range for a fast-paced FPS, indicating that the RTX 2060 can handle 1440p if settings are moderated.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s position in the database, rank 2247 out of 2872, places it in the lower 22% of tested configurations for Evolve. This ranking is a holistic measure that considers the average FPS across all tested scenarios. The data shows that this is not a high-end pairing for this specific title, and users should temper expectations for maximum quality at high resolutions. The RTX 2060’s age and memory capacity are the likely culprits, as the CPU component is relatively strong. The Core Ultra 5 235 alone sits in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 46062, while the RTX 2060 sits in the 58th percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 15290. This discrepancy suggests that the GPU is the bottleneck in most scenarios, pulling the overall combo rank down.

Looking at the CPU’s nearest rivals, the Core Ultra 5 235’s average score of 46062 is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (46030, 0.1% ahead) and the Intel Core i9-13900HX (46098, 0.1% behind). This means that swapping the CPU for these alternatives would result in negligible FPS changes in Evolve, as the GPU would still be the limiting factor. Similarly, the RTX 2060’s average score of 15290 is nearly identical to the GTX 580 (15283) and the Radeon 680M (15270), which are much older or integrated solutions. This indicates that the RTX 2060 is performing at a level that has been matched by other products, but its feature set and driver support may offer advantages not captured by raw scores.

In practice, the combo rank means that for Evolve, this system will handle 1080p gaming well, particularly at Medium and High settings, but will struggle to maintain smooth frame rates at 4K. The measured FPS data supports this, showing a clear decline as resolution increases. For users targeting 1440p, the Medium setting provides a balanced experience, while Low settings offer a high refresh rate option. The Ultra setting is only viable at 1080p, where it still achieves an average of 62 FPS, but the drop from Medium to Ultra at 1440p is steep, from 76 FPS to 41 FPS, highlighting the GPU’s limitations.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the TU106 chip using a 12 nm process, featuring 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units. Its base clock is 1365 MHz with a boost clock of 1680 MHz, and it has 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, though these are not heavily utilized in a 2015 title like Evolve. The memory configuration is 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, providing 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory capacity and bandwidth are the primary factors that limit performance at higher resolutions, as the game’s textures and geometry data exceed what the GPU can efficiently handle at 4K.

The GPU’s FP32 performance is 6.451 TFLOPS, which is modest by modern standards but sufficient for older games. The texture rate is 201.6 GTexel/s, and the pixel rate is 80.64 GPixel/s, both of which are adequate for 1080p and 1440p rendering. The measured FPS data shows that the RTX 2060 can deliver an average of 146 FPS at 1080p Low, but this drops to 23 FPS at 4K Ultra. This trend indicates that the GPU’s raw compute power is not the sole constraint; the memory bandwidth and capacity play a significant role. At 4K, the 6 GB VRAM is likely being saturated, causing the GPU to fall back on slower memory operations, which results in the severe frame rate drop.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 15290 places it in the 58th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the GTX 580 (15283, 0% delta), the Radeon 680M (15270, 0.1% delta), the RTX 3050 OEM (15199, 0.6% delta), and the RX 7600 (15171, 0.8% delta). The fact that the RTX 2060 is only 0.8% faster than the RX 7600 in average score, despite being an older product, shows that its Turing architecture still holds up well in synthetic benchmarks. However, in Evolve, the specific demands of the game engine, particularly its VRAM usage, mean that the RTX 2060’s 6 GB limit is a real bottleneck at 4K, whereas a card with more memory would likely perform better.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a detailed view of how the combo performs across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the results are generally strong. With Low settings, the average FPS is 146, which is excellent for competitive play. Medium settings yield an average of 113 FPS, with a minimum of 96 FPS and a maximum of 130 FPS, indicating consistent frame pacing. High settings drop the average to 89 FPS, which is still smooth. Ultra settings reduce the average to 62 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a fast-paced FPS where higher frame rates are preferred.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance drops noticeably. Low settings still deliver an average of 98 FPS, which is good for 1440p. Medium settings provide an average of 76 FPS, with a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 87 FPS, which is a solid experience. High settings reduce the average to 60 FPS, which is borderline for a smooth experience, but it matches the standard 60 Hz refresh rate. Ultra settings fall to an average of 41 FPS, which is noticeably less smooth and indicates that the GPU is struggling with the higher pixel count and quality settings.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly overburdened. Low settings produce an average of 56 FPS, which is just about playable. Medium settings yield an average of 43 FPS, with a minimum of 37 FPS and a maximum of 50 FPS, which is on the edge of playability. High settings drop to an average of 34 FPS, which is below the ideal threshold for a smooth experience. Ultra settings bring the average down to 23 FPS, which is not playable for a competitive FPS. This breakdown shows that the RTX 2060 is only suitable for 4K at low settings, and even then, the frame rate is not high.

The data also reveals that the difference between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution is substantial. At 1080p, the gap is 84 FPS (from 146 to 62), at 1440p, the gap is 57 FPS (from 98 to 41), and at 4K, the gap is 33 FPS (from 56 to 23). This diminishing gap at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU becomes more resolution-bound than quality-bound, meaning that the pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary limits, rather than the shading units.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the limiting component. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 113 at 1080p to 76 at 1440p, and then to 43 at 4K. This represents a 33% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 62% drop from 1080p to 4K. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat as resolution increases, since the CPU workload does not change significantly with resolution. Instead, the significant drops indicate that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, especially at 4K.

At Low settings, the scaling is slightly different. The FPS drops from 146 at 1080p to 98 at 1440p (a 33% drop) and then to 56 at 4K (a 62% drop from 1080p). This pattern is consistent with a GPU that is heavily dependent on resolution. The RTX 2060’s memory bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s is a likely constraint, as the amount of data that needs to be processed per frame increases quadratically with resolution. The 6 GB VRAM also becomes a factor at 4K, as the game may need to stream textures from system memory, which would cause stuttering and lower average FPS.

The scaling also shows that the combo is more efficient at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra settings is 84 FPS, but at 4K, the difference is only 33 FPS. This indicates that at 4K, the GPU is so heavily loaded that the quality settings have less impact on the frame rate, as the GPU is already at its limits. For users with this combo, the data suggests that 1080p is the sweet spot for high refresh rates, while 1440p is viable for medium settings, and 4K should be avoided except for low-quality, non-competitive play.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It is built on the Arrow Lake architecture using a 3 nm process, and it has 24 MB of shared L3 cache. Its Passmark multi-thread score is 37816, and its single-thread score is 4516. In Cinebench R23, it scores 14769 multi-core and 2085 single-core. These scores place the CPU in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, indicating that it is a high-performance part that is more than capable of handling the CPU demands of Evolve.

The CPU’s average benchmark score of 46062 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (46030, 0.1% faster) and the Intel Core i9-13900HX (46098, 0.1% slower). This means that in Evolve, the choice between these CPUs would have a negligible impact on FPS, as the game is not heavily CPU-bound at most settings. The CPU’s boost clock of 5.00 GHz and strong single-thread performance ensure that it can feed the GPU with enough frames at 1080p, where the CPU is more likely to be a factor. However, the measured FPS data shows that even at 1080p Low, the GPU is still the limiting factor, as the average of 146 FPS is below what a high-end CPU might achieve in a less GPU-bound game.

The CPU’s 14 cores and 14 threads are more than sufficient for Evolve, which is a game from 2015 and does not utilize many threads. The lack of hyperthreading (14 threads for 14 cores) is not a penalty here, as the game’s engine is unlikely to use more than a few cores effectively. The CPU’s memory support for DDR5 with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s also ensures that the CPU has fast access to data, which helps with frame timing. Overall, the data indicates that the Core Ultra 5 235 is not the bottleneck in this combo; the RTX 2060 is responsible for the performance limitations, particularly at higher resolutions and quality settings.