Minecraft: Java Edition

Minecraft: Java Edition with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER delivers a highly playable experience across most settings, with the data showing that the "High" preset is the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance for this specific combination. The measured FPS indicates that the system is capable of exceeding 60 frames per second at 4K, but it is at 1440p and 1080p where this combo truly shines, offering refresh-rate-tier performance that makes the lower presets largely unnecessary for competitive play.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data clearly points to the High preset as the best experience for this hardware pairing. At 1920x1080, High settings produce an average of 188.8 FPS, which is more than sufficient for a smooth experience on standard 60Hz monitors and leaves ample headroom for higher refresh rate displays. Moving up to 2560x1440, the High preset still achieves a robust 120.7 FPS average, making it the sweet spot for players who prioritize both visual quality and frame rate at this resolution. The jump from Medium to High is significant; at 1440p, High is 28.7 FPS faster than Medium (120.7 vs 149.4), which is counterintuitive but highlights that this game's performance scaling is not strictly linear with detail levels.

At 3840x2160, High drops to 59.8 FPS, which is just below the 60 FPS target. For 4K users, the Medium preset is the recommended choice, as it delivers 80.4 FPS and provides a much more comfortable margin above the playability threshold. The Ultra preset is not recommended for this combo; at 4K it yields only 36.6 FPS, and even at 1080p it drops to 118.2 FPS, which is a substantial 70.6 FPS penalty compared to High. The data suggests that Ultra's additional graphical demands are not justified by the performance cost on this GPU. The Low preset, while achieving the highest frame rates (297.6 FPS at 1080p), sacrifices too much visual quality for a system that already performs well at higher settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary driver of the performance differences between presets. With 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, the card provides a memory bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s, which is ample for this game's texture and geometry loads at the tested settings. The GPU's boost clock of 1785 MHz and its Turing architecture (12 nm process) with 1408 shading units allow it to handle the rendering workload efficiently. The data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, where the frame rate drops from 99.7 FPS on Low to 36.6 FPS on Ultra, a 63.1 FPS swing. This indicates that at high resolutions, the GPU's raw throughput (5.027 TFLOPS FP32) becomes the bottleneck.

The GTX 1660 SUPER's performance profile is notable when compared to its nearest rivals. Its average benchmark score of 14286 places it within a narrow band of competitors: it is 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 and 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon Vega 11, while being 0.7% slower than the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. This tight grouping suggests that the GTX 1660 SUPER is a mid-tier performer, and the in-game results reflect this positioning—it is not a card that can brute-force Ultra settings at high resolutions, but it handles the High preset with authority at mainstream resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to use with this CPU/GPU combo for a 144Hz monitor?

A: The 1920x1080 resolution with High settings provides an average of 188.8 FPS, making it the only resolution that comfortably exceeds 144Hz. At 2560x1440, the High preset's 120.7 FPS average falls short of that target, so 1080p is recommended for high refresh rate displays.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Minecraft?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset achieves 80.4 FPS, and Low achieves 99.7 FPS. The High preset just misses the 60 FPS mark at 59.8 FPS, while Ultra is not playable at 36.6 FPS.

Q: How much performance is gained by dropping from High to Low settings at 1440p?

A: The gain is substantial. The Low preset at 2560x1440 produces 189.2 FPS, which is 68.5 FPS higher than the High preset's 120.7 FPS. This represents a 56.8% increase in frame rate.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever worth using with the GTX 1660 SUPER?

A: Based on the data, no. Even at 1080p, Ultra drops to 118.2 FPS, which is 70.6 FPS below the High preset. The visual improvement from Ultra is not worth the significant performance penalty.

Q: How does this combo's performance at 1080p Medium compare to 4K Low?

A: The difference is stark. At 1080p Medium, the system delivers 238.9 FPS, while at 4K Low it drops to 99.7 FPS. This shows that resolution has a much larger impact on performance than the Low-to-Medium settings change.

Q: What frame rate can be expected at 1440p on the most demanding settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 76.3. This is playable, but it is notably lower than the 120.7 FPS achieved on High, making High the more sensible choice for this resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of this combo's capabilities across three resolutions and four settings presets.

1920x1080:

• Low: 297.6 FPS
• Medium: 238.9 FPS
• High: 188.8 FPS
• Ultra: 118.2 FPS

At 1080p, the system is exceptionally fast. The gap between Low and High is 108.8 FPS, showing that even the highest reasonable setting (High) maintains a frame rate well above 144Hz. The Ultra preset is the only one that falls below 200 FPS, and it still delivers over 100 FPS.

2560x1440:

• Low: 189.2 FPS
• Medium: 149.4 FPS
• High: 120.7 FPS
• Ultra: 76.3 FPS

1440p results remain strong. The Low preset nearly matches the 1080p High result (189.2 vs 188.8), indicating that resolution scaling is efficient at this level. The drop from High to Ultra is 44.4 FPS, which is the largest single-step penalty at this resolution.

3840x2160:

• Low: 99.7 FPS
• Medium: 80.4 FPS
• High: 59.8 FPS
• Ultra: 36.6 FPS

4K is where the GTX 1660 SUPER's limits become apparent. The difference between Low and Medium is 19.3 FPS, and between Medium and High is 20.6 FPS. The Ultra preset is the only one that becomes unplayable, falling below 40 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER ranks at 1520 out of 1727 tested combos for Minecraft: Java Edition. This places it in the lower 12% of all system configurations, which is a surprisingly low ranking given the absolute frame rates achieved. The rank reflects the fact that the database includes many higher-end GPU and CPU pairings that can achieve even higher frame rates, particularly at 1080p where the data shows this combo is already hitting nearly 300 FPS on Low.

The CPU's own ranking provides context. The Ryzen 5 5600G sits in the 78th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19983. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-11600H, scores 19949 (0.2% higher), while the Intel Core i7-11800H and AMD EPYC 7713P both score 20024 (0.2% lower). This indicates the CPU is not the limiting factor in this combo's low game rank; rather, the GTX 1660 SUPER's 55th percentile GPU ranking (average score 14286) is what holds back the overall position. The GPU's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT, is only 0.7% faster, so there is no substantial performance headroom to be gained from a similar-tier GPU swap.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G plays a supporting role in this game's performance, but its specifications are more than adequate. With 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne codename) running at a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, the CPU provides strong single-thread performance that is critical for Minecraft's Java-based engine. The CPU's single-core Cinebench R23 score of 2365 and Geekbench single-core score of 1933 demonstrate its capability. The 16 MB of L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth (dual-channel DDR4) ensure that the CPU can feed the GPU without becoming a bottleneck.

The benchmark results support this assessment. The CPU's multithreaded Passmark score of 19717 and Cinebench R23 multicore score of 16758 show that even under heavy load, the CPU has ample headroom. When comparing to its nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 5600G is essentially tied with the Intel Core i7-11600H (0.2% faster), Intel Core i7-11800H (0.2% slower), and AMD EPYC 7713P (0.2% slower). This means that in Minecraft, where the render thread is often the limiting factor, the 5600G's strong single-core performance (3dmark single-thread score of 872) ensures that the GPU is the primary determinant of frame rates, especially at lower resolutions where the CPU could theoretically become a bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a clear trend in how frame rates scale from 1080p to 4K. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 297.6 at 1080p to 189.2 at 1440p (a 108.4 FPS decrease) and then to 99.7 at 4K (an additional 89.5 FPS decrease). This represents a 66.5% reduction from 1080p to 4K on Low. At High settings, the drop is from 188.8 FPS at 1080p to 120.7 FPS at 1440p (68.1 FPS decrease) and then to 59.8 FPS at 4K (60.9 FPS decrease), a total 68.3% reduction.

The scaling pattern indicates that the GPU becomes more of a limiting factor at higher resolutions. The largest relative drop occurs between 1080p and 1440p, where the pixel count increases by 78%, and the FPS drops by approximately 36-46% depending on settings. The transition from 1440p to 4K (a 225% pixel increase) results in a further FPS drop of approximately 50-51% on all presets. This non-linear relationship suggests that while the GTX 1660 SUPER is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, it hits a performance cliff at 4K where the rendering load outpaces the GPU's 5.027 TFLOPS compute capability. The CPU's consistent performance across resolutions—its 3dmark max-threads score of 5455 and single-thread score of 872—means that the frame rate variance is almost entirely attributable to the GPU's pixel throughput limits.