Minecraft

Resolution Scaling

Minecraft’s performance scaling across resolutions reveals a system that is heavily CPU-bound at lower settings, with the GPU only becoming a limiting factor at 4K with higher presets. The data shows a dramatic FPS drop when moving from 1080p to 4K, but the magnitude of that drop depends almost entirely on the graphics preset selected.

At the Low preset, the transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a steep decline from 694 FPS to 267 FPS — a 61.5% reduction in frame rate. This is a massive drop that indicates the CPU’s rendering thread is being relieved of work as resolution increases, allowing the GPU to take over. However, even at 4K Low, the system still produces 267 FPS, which is far beyond what any display can typically refresh, suggesting the CPU is still delivering frames at a pace that keeps the GPU well-fed.

The Medium preset tells a similar story with a less extreme slope. At 1080p Medium, the system hits 638 FPS, dropping to 405 FPS at 1440p, and finally 212 FPS at 4K. The 4K figure here includes a measured minimum of 180 FPS and a maximum of 243 FPS, showing that even at the lowest frame rates, the experience remains smooth. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is a 36.5% drop, while the 1440p to 4K step is a 47.7% drop, indicating that the GPU is beginning to assert itself more strongly at higher resolutions.

High settings produce the most interesting scaling curve. At 1080p High, the system delivers 509 FPS, which falls to 321 FPS at 1440p (a 36.9% drop) and then to 168 FPS at 4K (a 47.7% drop from 1440p). These percentages are nearly identical to the Medium preset’s scaling, suggesting that the performance ceiling is consistent across these two presets, with the CPU limiting performance at 1080p and the GPU taking over as resolution climbs.

The Ultra preset shows the most pronounced GPU dependency. Starting at 318 FPS at 1080p, it falls to 201 FPS at 1440p and then to 105 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 36.8%, but the 1440p-to-4K drop is 47.8%, again matching the pattern seen in Medium and High. Interestingly, the absolute frame rates at Ultra are roughly half of what Medium and High achieve at each resolution, indicating that the Ultra preset is doubling the graphical workload per frame.

What this scaling data reveals is a system that is primarily CPU-limited at 1080p across all presets, with the Ryzen 5 8400F’s six Zen 4 cores providing enough single-thread performance to push frame rates into the hundreds. The GPU, an RTX 4080 SUPER with 16 GB of GDDR6X memory, only becomes the bottleneck at 4K, and even then it maintains frame rates above 100 FPS at the most demanding settings. The consistent percentage drops between 1440p and 4K across Medium, High, and Ultra presets suggest that the GPU’s rendering pipeline is being saturated in a predictable manner, independent of the specific settings applied.

For players targeting high refresh rates, the data shows that 1080p and 1440p are entirely CPU-bound territories, meaning that no amount of GPU overclocking would yield meaningful gains. At 4K, however, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, and the difference between Low and Ultra settings represents a 2.5x performance range, from 267 FPS down to 105 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimizing the Minecraft experience with this hardware combination. The primary consideration is whether the user prioritizes maximum frame rates for competitive play or visual fidelity for exploration and building.

For 1080p displays, the Low preset delivers 694 FPS, which is excessive for any current display technology. The Medium preset at 638 FPS offers a better balance, providing improved visuals while still maintaining frame rates far beyond what any monitor can display. The measured minimum of 542 FPS at 1080p Medium confirms that there are no significant frame dips, making this the recommended preset for 1080p users who want a visual upgrade without sacrificing performance.

At 1440p, the Medium preset achieves 405 FPS with a minimum of 344 FPS and maximum of 466 FPS. This represents the sweet spot for this resolution, as it provides a substantial visual improvement over Low (511 FPS) while still maintaining frame rates suitable for 240 Hz or even 360 Hz displays. High settings at 1440p drop to 321 FPS, which is still excellent but represents a 20.7% performance penalty for marginal visual gains. Ultra at 1440p delivers 201 FPS, which would be suitable for high-refresh displays but at a significant cost to visual fidelity relative to the performance investment.

For 4K resolution, the situation changes dramatically. The Ultra preset delivers 105 FPS, which is playable but below the threshold for the smoothest experience on high-refresh 4K panels. Medium settings at 4K produce 212 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any display, while High settings achieve 168 FPS. The data suggests that 4K users should select Medium settings as the default, as it provides the best balance between visual quality and frame rate stability. The measured minimum of 180 FPS at 4K Medium indicates that even during demanding scenes, the frame rate never drops below the refresh rate of most 4K monitors.

The Low preset at any resolution is difficult to recommend, as it sacrifices significant visual quality for frame rates that exceed what any display can show. The sole exception might be competitive multiplayer scenarios where maximum frame rates can reduce input latency, but even then, the Medium preset’s minimum frame rates are high enough to avoid perceptible stutter.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a six-core, twelve-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, built on TSMC’s 4 nm process node. Its base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz, combined with 16 MB of shared L3 cache, position it as a strong performer for gaming workloads. Minecraft is notoriously single-thread-bound, and the CPU’s benchmark results confirm its capability in this regard.

The 3DMark single-thread score of 951 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2943 indicate strong per-core performance. More importantly for Minecraft, the PassMark single-thread score of 3685 places this CPU in the 77th percentile of all CPUs, meaning it outperforms the majority of processors in single-threaded tasks. The multithreaded PassMark score of 24389 and Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20851 show that the CPU also has substantial multi-threaded capability, though this is less relevant for Minecraft’s primary rendering thread.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F with an average score of 24964 (a 0.2% delta), the Intel Core i7-11850H at 24935 (0.3% delta), and the Intel Core i7-13620H at 24911 (0.4% delta). The AMD EPYC 9474F sits slightly above at 25103 (-0.4% delta). These tight deltas indicate that the 8400F performs essentially identically to its closest competitors, with all four processors falling within a 0.8% performance band.

In the context of Minecraft’s measured frame rates, the CPU’s role is clearly dominant at 1080p and 1440p. The fact that the system achieves 694 FPS at 1080p Low and 511 FPS at 1440p Low suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with frames faster than the GPU can render them, even at these resolutions. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1874 and 4-thread score of 3563 demonstrate that the CPU maintains strong performance when only a few threads are active, which is typical for Minecraft’s rendering workload.

The CPU’s 65 W TDP and 4 nm process node indicate efficient operation, though these figures do not directly translate to gaming performance. The L3 cache of 16 MB shared across six cores is modest by modern standards, but Minecraft’s world data tends to be scattered rather than cache-resident, so the cache size has limited impact on frame rates.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run Minecraft at 4K with all settings maxed?

A: Yes, the Ultra preset at 3840x2160 achieves an average of 105 FPS. This is playable, though it may not saturate a 120 Hz or higher refresh rate display.

Q: What is the highest frame rate this combination can achieve?

A: The maximum measured average is 694 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all consumer displays.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data indicates the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p. At Low settings, the system produces 694 FPS, and even at Ultra it maintains 318 FPS, suggesting the GPU is not fully utilized until resolution increases.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 8400F compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 8400F has an average benchmark score of 25005, placing it within 0.4% of the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F (24964), Intel Core i7-11850H (24935), and Intel Core i7-13620H (24911). It trails the AMD EPYC 9474F (25103) by only 0.4%.

Q: What is the recommended preset for 1440p gaming?

A: Medium settings at 2560x1440 deliver 405 FPS average with a minimum of 344 FPS. This provides sufficient performance for high-refresh displays while offering better visuals than Low settings.

Q: Does the RTX 4080 SUPER’s 16 GB of VRAM matter for Minecraft?

A: The GPU’s 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is far more than Minecraft requires, even with high-resolution texture packs. The data shows that GPU limitations at 4K are related to rendering throughput rather than memory capacity.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using TSMC’s 5 nm process node, with a transistor count of 45,900 million on a 379 mm² die. Its 10240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 render output units provide substantial raw compute capability. The GPU’s boost clock of 2550 MHz and base clock of 2295 MHz, combined with 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, deliver 736.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

In the benchmark database, the RTX 4080 SUPER ranks in the 86th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 54209. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 with a score of 54247 (a -0.1% delta), the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X at 54828 (-1.1% delta), and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB at 55698 (-2.7% delta). These tight deltas indicate that the 4080 SUPER performs nearly identically to the non-SUPER 4080, with the differences being within measurement noise.

The GPU’s role in Minecraft becomes apparent only at 4K resolution. At 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is the limiting factor, as evidenced by the frame rates exceeding 500 FPS at Low settings. At 4K, however, the GPU’s rendering throughput becomes the constraint. The difference between 4K Low (267 FPS) and 4K Ultra (105 FPS) represents a 2.5x performance range, showing that the GPU’s workload scales dramatically with settings at this resolution.

The GPU’s measured performance in synthetic benchmarks supports its gaming capability. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6600 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 260075 indicate strong modern API performance. The PassMark G3D score of 34245 and GPU compute score of 19822 further confirm the GPU’s substantial compute resources, though these figures are less directly relevant to Minecraft’s rendering workload.

The RTX 4080 SUPER’s 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores provide hardware support for ray tracing and DLSS, though Minecraft’s measured FPS data does not include ray tracing or upscaling scenarios. The GPU’s 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 816.0 GTexel/s texture rate indicate that it has ample headroom for even the most demanding graphics workloads.

At 4K Ultra, the GPU produces 105 FPS, which is a respectable result for a game that is not typically GPU-bound. The fact that the system can achieve over 200 FPS at 4K Medium (212 FPS) demonstrates that the GPU has significant performance reserves, and users who prioritize frame rates over visual fidelity can easily exceed the refresh rate of most 4K displays.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for Minecraft with the AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a comprehensive picture of performance scaling.

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce 694 FPS average, while Medium settings achieve 638 FPS with a measured minimum of 542 FPS and maximum of 733 FPS. High settings drop to 509 FPS, and Ultra settings deliver 318 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 54.2% performance reduction, with the largest single-step drop occurring between High and Ultra (37.5%).

At 2560x1440, frame rates remain exceptionally high. Low settings produce 511 FPS, Medium settings achieve 405 FPS with a minimum of 344 FPS and maximum of 466 FPS, High settings deliver 321 FPS, and Ultra settings maintain 201 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra span is 60.7%, showing that the GPU becomes slightly more influential at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the GPU takes over as the primary limiting factor. Low settings deliver 267 FPS, Medium settings achieve 212 FPS with a minimum of 180 FPS and maximum of 243 FPS, High settings produce 168 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 105 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra range of 60.7% is consistent with the 1440p scaling, indicating that the GPU’s performance curve is predictable across these resolutions.

The system’s overall ranking in the database is 273 out of 3710 combinations, placing it in the top 7.4% of tested configurations for this game. This ranking reflects the combination’s ability to deliver very high frame rates across all tested scenarios, with the lowest measured average being 105 FPS at 4K Ultra.

The measured data includes minimum and maximum FPS only for the Medium preset at each resolution. At 1080p Medium, the range spans from 542 to 733 FPS, a variance of 191 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the range is 344 to 466 FPS, a variance of 122 FPS. At 4K Medium, the range narrows to 180 to 243 FPS, a variance of 63 FPS. This narrowing variance at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU is providing more consistent frame delivery as it becomes the bottleneck, while at lower resolutions, CPU-side variations in game logic create larger frame time fluctuations.