Minecraft

Minecraft with the Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a performance profile that is heavily dictated by resolution and settings, with the measured data showing extreme frame rates that shift the bottleneck between the CPU and GPU depending on the configuration. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces an average of 429 FPS, which drops to 270 FPS at High settings and 169 FPS at Ultra, indicating that even at lower resolutions, the graphical load significantly impacts output. The data reveals a system capable of triple-digit frame rates across nearly all tested scenarios, but the scaling pattern suggests that the CPU is the primary limiter at lower resolutions while the GPU takes over as the resolution increases.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K in Minecraft shows a clear and consistent pattern of decline across all settings presets, with the magnitude of the drop varying significantly based on the quality level. At Low settings, the average FPS decreases from 429 at 1920x1080 to 271 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 158 FPS, and then further to 141 at 3840x2160, representing a total drop of 288 FPS from the baseline. This translates to a 67% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which is the steepest relative decline among all presets, suggesting that the GPU becomes increasingly stressed as pixel count rises even with minimal graphical features enabled.

For Medium settings, the measured data shows average FPS of 340 at 1080p, 214 at 1440p, and 112 at 4K, with the 4K result also reporting a minimum of 95 FPS and a maximum of 129 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 126 FPS (37% reduction), while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 102 FPS (48% reduction), showing that the scaling remains relatively consistent but accelerates at higher resolutions. At High settings, the frame rates are 270 FPS at 1080p, 170 FPS at 1440p, and 89 FPS at 4K, with the 1080p to 1440p drop being 100 FPS (37%) and the 1440p to 4K drop being 81 FPS (48%), mirroring the Medium preset's proportional scaling.

Ultra settings produce the lowest absolute frame rates, with 169 FPS at 1080p, 106 FPS at 1440p, and 56 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 63 FPS (37%), and from 1440p to 4K is 50 FPS (47%), which follows the same proportional pattern as Medium and High. This consistent scaling behavior across presets indicates that the rendering load in Minecraft scales nearly linearly with pixel count when the settings are held constant, and the fact that the relative drops are similar at every quality level suggests that both the CPU and GPU are being pushed proportionally harder as resolution increases.

The data implies that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting component, as the frame rates exceed 270 FPS even at High settings, which is far beyond what the RTX 2070 SUPER would typically bottleneck at. At 4K, however, the GPU becomes the primary constraint, as evidenced by the significant frame rate drops and the fact that Ultra settings at 4K produce only 56 FPS, which is barely playable. The scaling curve shows that the transition point where the GPU takes over as the bottleneck occurs somewhere between 1440p and 4K, with the 1440p results still showing very high frame rates that indicate CPU limitation is still partially present.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, and its benchmark results provide context for its performance in Minecraft. The CPU scores 909 in 3dmark_single_thread and 1699 in 3dmark_2_threads, while the multi-threaded scores are 5895 in 3dmark_16_threads and 5912 in 3dmark_max_threads, showing that the processor scales well with additional threads but has a relatively strong single-core performance. In Cinebench R23, the CPU achieves 1680 points in single-core and 12380 points in multi-core, with the multi-core score being roughly 7.4 times the single-core score, which is typical for a 6-core processor with hyperthreading.

Minecraft is known to be a game that relies heavily on single-threaded performance, and the measured frame rates at lower resolutions reflect this CPU dependency. At 1080p Low settings, the combo produces 429 FPS, which is an extraordinarily high frame rate that likely exceeds the monitor's refresh rate in most cases, and this figure is constrained by the CPU's ability to process game logic and render commands. The fact that the frame rate at 1080p Low is nearly identical to what would be expected from the CPU's single-thread capabilities suggests that the i5-12400F is the limiting factor in this scenario, as the GPU is not being fully utilized at such low graphical loads.

The CPU's benchmark scores place it in the 73rd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19039, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS with a score of 19047 (0% delta), the Intel Core 3 201E with 19056 (-0.1% delta), the Intel Core i5-1335U with 18982 (0.3% delta), and the AMD EPYC 7773X with 18979 (0.3% delta). These rivals have nearly identical average scores, indicating that the i5-12400F is positioned in a tight performance bracket where small differences in synthetic benchmarks do not translate to meaningful gaming performance differences. The CPU's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache provide sufficient memory hierarchy for Minecraft's world generation and chunk loading, though the game's performance is more dependent on clock speed and IPC than cache size.

The data shows that at 1440p Low settings, the frame rate drops to 271 FPS, which is still very high and indicates that the CPU remains a significant factor at this resolution. However, the 58% reduction from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings shows that the GPU is starting to become more involved, and the fact that the CPU's boost clock of 4.40 GHz is sustained during gaming workloads likely contributes to the high frame rates observed. The CPU's TDP of 65 W suggests it can maintain high clocks without thermal throttling, which is beneficial for sustained gaming sessions in Minecraft where the CPU is constantly processing world data.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 2136 out of 3710 tested combos in Minecraft, placing it in the 42nd percentile of all system configurations tested for this game. This ranking indicates that while the combo is capable of producing very high frame rates, there are many other system configurations that achieve even higher performance in Minecraft, likely due to more powerful CPUs or GPUs that can push the frame rate even higher. The rank of 2136 out of 3710 means that approximately 57% of tested combos perform better than this specific pairing in Minecraft, which is notable given the high absolute frame rates produced.

The combo's ranking is likely influenced by the fact that Minecraft's performance is heavily dependent on single-threaded CPU performance, and while the i5-12400F has strong single-core scores (909 in 3dmark_single_thread, 1680 in Cinebench R23 single-core), there are CPUs with even higher single-thread performance that would rank higher. Additionally, the RTX 2070 SUPER, while capable, is not the fastest GPU available, and at 4K Ultra settings the combo produces only 56 FPS, which would be a poor experience for competitive or high-refresh-rate play. The ranking of 2136 suggests that this combo is mid-pack in the overall distribution, which is consistent with the CPU being in the 73rd percentile and the GPU being in the 65th percentile of their respective categories.

The data shows that the combo's performance is strongest at lower resolutions and settings, where the CPU is the primary bottleneck, and weaker at higher resolutions and settings, where the GPU becomes the limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 429 FPS, which is likely near the top of what any system can achieve in Minecraft, but at 4K Ultra, the 56 FPS result is significantly below what higher-end GPUs could deliver. This performance profile means the combo is better suited for high-refresh-rate 1080p or 1440p gaming rather than 4K gaming, and its ranking reflects this strength at lower resolutions.

The fact that the combo ranks 2136 out of 3710 means it is in the lower half of all tested configurations, but this ranking is likely skewed by the inclusion of very high-end systems with top-tier CPUs and GPUs that can achieve even higher frame rates in Minecraft. When compared to the CPU's and GPU's individual percentile rankings (73rd and 65th respectively), the combo's 42nd percentile ranking in Minecraft suggests that the game's specific performance characteristics do not favor this particular pairing as much as synthetic benchmarks would indicate. This could be due to Minecraft's reliance on Java-based rendering, which may not scale well with the RTX 2070 SUPER's architecture, or the fact that the CPU's single-thread performance, while strong, is not exceptional enough to dominate in this game.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured data shows an average of 270 FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings, with no minimum or maximum FPS reported for this configuration.

Q: How does the frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 340 at 1080p to 214 at 1440p, and then to 112 at 4K, representing a total reduction of 228 FPS from the baseline.

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

A: The minimum FPS at 2560x1440 with Medium settings is 182 FPS, with a maximum of 247 FPS and an average of 214 FPS.

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

A: The CPU scores 1680 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 12380 in multi-core, with the multi-core score being approximately 7.4 times the single-core score.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested system configurations in Minecraft?

A: The combo ranks 2136 out of 3710 tested combos, placing it in the lower half of all configurations tested for this game.

Q: What is the lowest average frame rate recorded in the measured data?

A: The lowest average frame rate is 56 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, with no minimum or maximum FPS reported for this configuration.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is based on the Turing architecture with the TU104 chip, manufactured on a 12 nm process at TSMC, and its specifications provide context for its role in Minecraft's performance. The GPU has 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units, with 40 RT cores and 320 tensor cores, and it operates at a base clock of 1605 MHz and a boost clock of 1770 MHz. The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for Minecraft's texture and chunk data at 1080p and 1440p but becomes a factor at 4K with high-resolution texture packs.

The GPU's benchmark results show a 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12 score of 1651, a geekbench_opencl score of 83358, and a geekbench_vulkan score of 90637, with a passmark_g3d score of 18169 and a passmark_gpu_compute score of 7557. These scores place the GPU in the 65th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20282, and its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M with a score of 20480 (-1% delta), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile with 20534 (-1.2% delta), the Intel Arc B570 with 20556 (-1.3% delta), and the Intel Arc A750 with 20582 (-1.5% delta). The GPU's performance is slightly below these rivals in synthetic benchmarks, but the differences are minimal and unlikely to produce noticeable gaming performance variations.

In Minecraft, the GPU's role becomes more prominent as resolution and settings increase, with the measured data showing that the GPU is the bottleneck at 4K Ultra settings, where the average FPS drops to 56. The GPU's 8 GB of VRAM is sufficient for Minecraft at all tested settings, as the game does not require large texture buffers, but the compute performance of the GPU is utilized for rendering the game's blocky geometry and lighting effects. The GPU's FP32 performance of 9.062 TFLOPS and texture rate of 283.2 GTexel/s are more than adequate for Minecraft's rendering demands, but the game's Java-based engine may not fully leverage the GPU's capabilities.

The scaling from High to Ultra settings at each resolution shows the GPU's performance ceiling, with Ultra settings at 1080p producing 169 FPS, at 1440p producing 106 FPS, and at 4K producing 56 FPS. The drop from High to Ultra at 1080p is 101 FPS (37% reduction), at 1440p is 64 FPS (38% reduction), and at 4K is 33 FPS (37% reduction), showing consistent scaling across resolutions. This indicates that the Ultra preset likely enables additional graphical features such as anti-aliasing, shadows, and render distance that significantly increase the GPU load, and the GPU's performance at Ultra settings is the limiting factor for high-refresh-rate 4K gaming.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance on which settings preset offers the best experience for this combo, depending on the target resolution and frame rate. At 1080p, the Low preset produces 429 FPS, which is excessive for most displays, while the Medium preset produces 340 FPS with a minimum of 289 FPS and a maximum of 391 FPS, and the High preset produces 270 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p produces 169 FPS, which is still very playable but represents a 37% reduction from High, suggesting that the Ultra preset's visual improvements may not justify the performance cost for most users.

For 1440p gaming, the Low preset produces 271 FPS, the Medium preset produces 214 FPS with a minimum of 182 FPS, and the High preset produces 170 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p produces 106 FPS, which is playable but may not be smooth enough for competitive play on high-refresh-rate monitors. The best balance between visual quality and performance at 1440p appears to be the High preset, which offers 170 FPS and should be smooth on most 144Hz or 165Hz monitors, while the Medium preset provides a comfortable margin at 214 FPS for those who prioritize frame rate over visual fidelity.

At 4K, the Low preset produces 141 FPS, the Medium preset produces 112 FPS with a minimum of 95 FPS, and the High preset produces 89 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K produces only 56 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay on most displays. The recommended preset for 4K is the Medium setting, which provides 112 FPS with a minimum of 95 FPS, ensuring that the frame rate stays above 90 FPS even during demanding scenes, while the High preset at 89 FPS is also viable for players who prefer higher visual quality and can tolerate slightly lower frame rates.

The data indicates that the Low preset is unnecessary for this combo at any resolution, as even the Medium preset provides frame rates well above 100 FPS at 1080p and 1440p, and 112 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset, while visually superior, produces frame rates that are 37-38% lower than High across all resolutions, and at 4K it drops below 60 FPS, which is not recommended. For the best overall experience, the High preset at 1080p or 1440p offers a strong balance of visual quality and performance, while the Medium preset at 4K provides the smoothest gameplay at that resolution.