Minecraft

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT delivers a measured result in Minecraft that paints a clear picture of where the bottleneck shifts between resolutions. Across twelve measured configurations spanning 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, the combo achieves a rank of 2619 out of 3710 tested combinations in this game. The data shows a processor that holds its own at high frame rates but a GPU that must work harder as pixel count climbs, with average FPS varying from 389 to as low as 50 depending on the settings preset and resolution chosen.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination lands at rank 2619 out of 3710 tested combos for Minecraft, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the total pool. The CPU sits at the 47th percentile against all tested CPUs, while the GPU claims a notably higher position at the 70th percentile against all tested GPUs. That discrepancy hints that the processor is the stronger weakening link in lower-resolution scenarios, while the graphics card retains more headroom.

In synthetic averages, the i5-9400 scores 2254 across its benchmark suite, putting it nearly dead-even with its nearest measured rivals. It sits 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (score 2259), 0.3% ahead of the Intel Core i7-10710U (score 2248), 0.4% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (score 2246), and 0.4% behind the Intel Core i3-10305 (score 2264). The grouping of rivals within a 0.8% band shows how evenly matched this older six-core performs against newer low-power or entry desktop parts.

For the graphics card, the RX 6600 XT has an average benchmark score of 24442, placing it just 0.7% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 (score 24277) and 1.1% over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER (score 24170), while being 0.8% behind the Intel Arc A350M (score 24647) and 0.8% ahead of the GTX 780 Ti (score 24236). The fact that a modern 60-class card trades blows with a 2013 flagship and a 2020 flagship RTX 2080 SUPER highlights how far entry-level design has shifted. Yet in this game, the combo's rank is driven far more by the CPU's strength than the GPU's raw average.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 provides 6 physical cores and 6 threads on a Coffee Lake architecture, base clocked at 2.90 GHz and boosting to 4.10 GHz. It has 9 MB of shared L3 cache, 256 KB per core L2, and 64 KB per core L1. It uses DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration, with a theoretical bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s, and carries an integrated UHD 630 graphics unit that is not used for this gaming test. This is a fixed-frequency part with no name that is end-of-life and released back in 2018-10-18, yet the benchmark data shows it still competes with modern mobile i7s like the i7-10710U.

In Cinebench R23, the chip scores 6629 in multi-core and 935 in single-core, while R20 scores are 2784 multi and 392 single. Geekbench scores are 5141 multi-core and 1389 single-core. In Minecraft, the practical CPU influence emerges when comparing FPS at 1080p positions. For example, at 1080p Low the system grows to 389 FPS average, then drops to 308 when moving to Medium, 244 at High, and finally 153 at Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra suggests the engine is cycling up the CPU for visibility and churn that Ultra settings impose. Yet when you move to 4K, the Ultra — the highest world gen settings — only produces 50 FPS avg, while Med stays robust at 102. At 1080 Ultra vs 1440p Ultra, we see a 63 FPS drop (153 to 96), which implicates CPU plus GPU scaling.

FAQ

Q: What is the strongest bottleneck in this combo for Minecraft?

A: At 1080p, the CPU works hardest, evidenced by the large delta between presets (e.g., 389 FPS on Low up against 153 on Ultra at the same resolution). The GPU becomes have more limiting at 4K, where the Ultra preset drops to 50 FPS despite the CPU's headroom seen at lower pixels.

Q: How does the high ground compare to its immediate benchmark rivals?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 sits nearly equal to the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (0.2% slower), Core i7 (0.3% higher), and i3-10305 (0.4% slower). This shows negligible CPU chip-level differences in their respective benchmark averages, making presets and resolutions the main differentiators in Minecraft.

Q: What marks does 1080p Medium sustainability?

A: At 1920x1080 Medium the machine gets 308 FPS average, with minimum 262 and maximum 354 FPS. This is the only resolution where there is min/max data available, suggesting these are all given in full to show consistent pacing.

Q: Is the RX 6600 XT’s average score closer to which rival GPU?

A: The RX 6600 XT benchmarks (average score 24442) is 0.7% ahead of the GTX 1630 (24277) and 1.1% ahead of the RTX 2080 SUPER (24170), but 0.8% behind the Arc A350M (24647). The three-way race is extremely tight, all within a 1.9% span.

Q: What does the 3DMark Steel mediator show?

A: In 3DMark Steel Nomad, the GPU registers 18,04 score. While the passmark G3D lands at 16,461, showing that DirectX 12 performance is much wider than legacy DX11 (163) or DX9 (194).

Measured FPS Breakdown

The raw data shows a clear hierarchy of resolution against settings. At 3840x2160 (4K UHDTQ): the system achieves an average of 81 FPS on High, 102 FPS on Medium (with a min of 86 and max of 117), 128 FPS on Low, and 50 FPS on Ultra. The wide 78 FPS delta from Low to Ultra in 4K is electric, indicating the Ultra preset imposes heavy rather than MSAA.

At 2560x1440: High averages 154 FPS, Low jumps to 245 FPS, Medium settles at 194 FPS with min 165 max 224, and Ultra is 96 FPS. This resolution enjoys nearly double-carry from 4K at every setting, even with the same GPU.

At 1920x1080: High hits 244 FPS, Low sits unusually high at 389 FPS, Medium averages 308 FPS with a min of 262 and max of 354, and Ultra yields 153 FPS. The 4K Ultra being 50 vs 1080p Ultra being 153 represents a drastic 103 FPS loss (around 67.3%), but the 180p peak.

These numbers consistently show that Minecraft with this hardware scales elasitic to raster-bound effects until resolution and preset cause a GPU cliff.

Resolution Scaling

Filterimg by settings and resolution: Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440, the average FPS declines by roughly 37% across all presets (from e.g., Low 389 to 245, a decrease of 144 FPS, or about 37% decrease). That's a textbook 1.78x pixel count factor, indicating a strong mix of CPU+GPU load shifting.

The most telling decline is in the "Low" setting: 389 FPS at 1080p vs 128 FPS at 4K, a 73.5% drop. Similarly, "High" falls from 244 to 81, a drop of 67%. However, the Ultra preset is a brutal 153 to 50, indicating a specific workload that hits the ROP/chip limits.

The percentage gap between Low and Ultra widens from 2.54x at 1080p (389 vs 153) to 2.56x at 4K (128 vs 50), showing GPU starts dictlive at 4K. The fact that the "Low" setting doubles from 4K to 1080p for minimal marketing suggests the CPU hits a wall around 300+ FPS, meaning the GPU is not saturating those high FPS even at 1080p; the processor dominates cheap rendering.

This understanding supports a typical Minecraft pattern: the game's draw distance and section complexity load the CPU's 6 threads; once they're saturated, even a mid-tier GPU kicks in.

Settings Recommendations

For maximum frame rate within reasonable minimums on a typical 144Hz display, 1080p High (244 avg) or 1440p Medium (194 avg) are excellent. However, if you favor 1440p but have a 144Hz monitor, Medium at 1440p provides an average closer to the refresh with a minimum of 165, while 1440p High averages 154 slightly under. Low provides saturating FPS only if the game is externally limited for a 240Hz monitor; 1080p Low at 389 and 1440p Low at 245 both reach that scope, but the latter dips below 240 average for the medium.

For likens of max detail, 4K Ultra fails at 50 avg (likely unusable for smooth gameplay), while 1440p Ultra gets 96 avg providing a playable near-4K experience. 1080p Ultra still gives 153. If you want the fidelity beyond a 50 FPS floor, I would recommend 1440p Medium or 1080p High.

The data suggests that this combo's sweet spot is 1440p Medium (194 avg) if you value detail per screen, or 1080p High (244 avg) if you prioritize framerate; no preset goes over 308 in avg FPS.

gpu Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT uses the Navi 23 chip, on RDNA 2.0 architecture, with a 7nm process giving it 11,060 million transistors in a 237 mm² die. It sports 2048 shading units, 128 texture units, and 64 ROPs, plus 32 ray-tracing cores. Clock speeds include a 1968 MHz base, 2359 MHz game clock, and a 2589 MHz boost, with memory clock of 2000 MHz or 16 Gbps effective on an 8 GB GDDR6 bus of 128-bit width, yielding 256.0 GB/s bandwidth. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6.

In this full-frame test, the GPU has to process high-load chunks, and delivers pixel rate of 165.7 GPixel/s and texture rate of 331.4 GTexel/s. Its compute output is 10.60 TFLOPS (FP32) or 21.21 TFLOPS FP16. This is roughly a block the RTX 2080 SUPER at 1.1% off in average score (deltaPct). However, its ability to sustain frames above 150 at 1080p shows the card is not the limiting factor there.

Where the GPU truly dominates is the 4K resolution. The data shows it clearly reaches a ceiling: Medium 4K (102 avg) but Ultra only 50. This radical fall from 1440p Ultra (96) to 4K Ultra (50) outlines that 8GB VRAM or pixel fill rate is the choke point. Meanwhile, the GTX 1630 (closest in average score) would likely suffer more at this resolution. The RX 6600 XT also provides a 256-bit such as, data. That 102 FPS at 4K Medium with a handful optimized mods, while the 50 FPS Ultra suggests that the game's texture pack or shaders would need a graphics card faster than this mid-range—even for the sandbox genre.