Minimum

# Minimum — AMD Ryzen 5 4600G + AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600G paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT delivers a playable but not overwhelming experience in Minimum, a 2014 third-person shooter. The RX 6800 XT clearly dominates this pairing, as frame rates scale dramatically with resolution and settings, while the Ryzen 5 4600G's six Zen 2 cores provide just enough throughput to keep the GPU fed at lower resolutions. This combo ranks 1173rd out of 3712 tested combinations, placing it in the upper third of all systems, but the data reveals a CPU-bound ceiling at 1080p that prevents the GPU from reaching its full potential. The overall picture is one of a strong GPU held back by a mid-range processor, with the best experience found at 1440p where the balance between the two components is most favorable.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent, indicating that the RX 6800 XT's rendering workload is the primary scaling factor as resolution increases. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 259 at 1920x1080 to 167 at 2560x1440, a 35.5% reduction, and then to 90 at 3840x2160, another 46.1% drop from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern is typical for a GPU-bound scenario at Low settings, where the processor has ample headroom and the graphics card's pixel throughput becomes the limiting factor.

At High settings, the same trend holds but with a smaller relative gap between 1080p and 1440p. The average FPS is 166 at 1920x1080, 107 at 2560x1440 (a 35.5% decrease), and 58 at 3840x2160 (a 45.8% drop from 1440p). The 1080p-to-1440p reduction is identical in percentage terms to the Low setting, suggesting that the CPU is not yet the bottleneck at 1080p High. However, the 4K figure of 58 FPS at High is notably close to the 60 FPS threshold, and the fact that Ultra at 4K drops to 44 FPS shows that the GPU's 16 GB of VRAM and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth are stretched thin by the combination of high resolution and maximum quality.

The most telling comparison comes at Medium settings, where the data includes min/max FPS values. At 1920x1080, Medium averages 198 FPS with a min of 168 and max of 228. At 2560x1440, the average falls to 128 FPS with a min of 109 and max of 147, while at 3840x2160, the average is 69 FPS with a min of 59 and max of 79. The 4K Medium min of 59 FPS is just below the 60 FPS target, and the 1440p Medium min of 109 FPS suggests that even at this mid-range setting, the system can maintain smooth gameplay without dipping into stutter territory. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium is a 65.2% reduction in average FPS, which is slightly less severe than the Low setting's 65.3% reduction, indicating that the GPU's memory bandwidth is becoming a factor at higher resolutions.

The data shows that this combo is GPU-limited at 4K across all settings, with the RX 6800 XT's 20.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute being the primary constraint. At 1080p, however, the CPU begins to show its limits: the jump from 166 FPS at High to 259 FPS at Low represents a 56% increase, which is far larger than the corresponding 47% increase at 1440p (107 to 167) or the 55% increase at 4K (58 to 90). The fact that 1080p Low produces 259 FPS while 1440p Low produces 167 FPS indicates that the Ryzen 5 4600G's single-thread performance, with a boost clock of 4.20 GHz and a 3DMark single-thread score of 726, is sufficient to push high frame rates at lower resolutions but cannot fully exploit the GPU's capabilities at the highest refresh rates.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal settings for this combo depend heavily on the target resolution, but the data clearly favors Medium as the best balance of visual quality and frame rate consistency. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 198 FPS average with a minimum of 168 FPS, which is more than enough for any display and provides a 19.3% improvement over High's 166 FPS. The jump from Medium to Low at 1080p yields 259 FPS, a 30.8% increase, but the visual quality loss is substantial for a game that already shows its 2014 origins. Ultra at 1080p drops to 127 FPS, which is still playable but represents a 35.9% reduction from Medium, making it a poor trade-off for the marginal visual gains.

At 2560x1440, Medium again emerges as the sweet spot. The 128 FPS average with a 109 FPS minimum provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, and it is 19.6% faster than High's 107 FPS. Ultra at 1440p falls to 82 FPS, which is still respectable, but the 35.9% drop from Medium is identical to the 1080p pattern, suggesting that the GPU's shading units and texture units are the limiting factor at this quality level. Low at 1440p produces 167 FPS, but the difference from Medium is only 30.5%, which is smaller than the 1080p gap, indicating that resolution scaling is starting to equalize the settings.

At 3840x2160, the recommendation shifts to Low or Medium, depending on the user's tolerance for visual compromises. Low at 4K averages 90 FPS, which is the only setting that provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. Medium at 4K averages 69 FPS but has a minimum of 59 FPS, meaning that brief dips below 60 FPS are possible during intense scenes. High at 4K drops to 58 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold, and Ultra falls to 44 FPS, which is not suitable for smooth gameplay. For a 4K display, Low is the only setting that guarantees a consistent experience, while Medium is acceptable for users who prioritize visual quality over absolute frame rate stability.

The data shows that the best experience per the measured rows is Medium at 1440p, where the 128 FPS average and 109 FPS minimum provide both high frame rates and a safety margin. At 1080p, Medium is also the recommended choice, as the 198 FPS average is far beyond what most displays can show, and the jump to Low does not justify the visual degradation. The Ultra preset is consistently the worst value, offering only marginal improvements over High while costing 23.5% to 36.0% in frame rate depending on resolution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the frame rate patterns observed across resolutions and settings. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for a 2014 title even at 4K. The 4608 shading units, 288 texture mapping units, and 128 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 288.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 648.0 GTexel/s, which are more than sufficient for Minimum's relatively simple geometry and textures.

The GPU's clock behavior is notable: the base clock is 1825 MHz, the game clock is 2015 MHz, and the boost clock is 2250 MHz. The measured FPS data suggests that the GPU is running at or near its boost clock in most scenarios, as the frame rates scale predictably with resolution and settings. At 1080p Low, the 259 FPS average implies that the GPU is not fully saturated, as the CPU's single-thread performance becomes the limiting factor. At 4K Ultra, the 44 FPS average shows the GPU operating at its maximum capacity, with the 20.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute being the primary constraint.

The 16 GB VRAM capacity is never a limiting factor in this game, as even the most demanding settings at 4K would not approach this memory size. The RX 6800 XT's percentile ranking of 85th among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48477, places it well above the mid-range, and its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A1000 Mobile, is only 1.5% behind in average score. The Intel Arc A550M is 2.5% ahead, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is 3.0% ahead, indicating that the RX 6800 XT is competitive with modern mid-range GPUs despite being from the previous generation.

The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3689, is relevant for Minimum's rendering pipeline, though the game's 2014 release date means it likely uses DirectX 11 or earlier. The OpenGL score of 171304 in Geekbench and the Vulkan score of 136875 suggest strong API support, but the game's actual performance is more dependent on the raw shader throughput and memory bandwidth than on specific API features.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 259 FPS, which is the best result in the entire dataset. Medium settings achieve 198 FPS with a minimum of 168 and a maximum of 228, providing a narrow but consistent range. High settings average 166 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 127 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 50.9% reduction in average FPS, which is the largest relative drop among all resolutions, indicating that the CPU is capable of sustaining high frame rates when the GPU is not overloaded.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates are lower but still robust. Low settings average 167 FPS, Medium averages 128 FPS with a minimum of 109 and a maximum of 147, High averages 107 FPS, and Ultra averages 82 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across settings: Low drops by 35.5%, Medium by 35.4%, High by 35.5%, and Ultra by 35.4%. This uniformity suggests that the GPU's pixel throughput is the primary scaling factor, as the CPU has sufficient headroom at 1440p to avoid becoming the bottleneck.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates fall to the lowest levels in the dataset. Low settings average 90 FPS, Medium averages 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 and a maximum of 79, High averages 58 FPS, and Ultra averages 44 FPS. The 4K Medium minimum of 59 FPS is particularly noteworthy, as it indicates that the system can occasionally dip below 60 FPS even at medium quality. The 4K Ultra average of 44 FPS represents a 65.9% reduction from 1080p Ultra's 127 FPS, which is the largest absolute frame rate cost in the dataset.

The Medium settings across all three resolutions provide the most complete picture, as they include min and max FPS values. At 1080p, the range from 168 to 228 FPS represents a 35.7% spread, while at 1440p the range from 109 to 147 FPS represents a 34.9% spread, and at 4K the range from 59 to 79 FPS represents a 33.9% spread. The consistency of these ranges suggests that the game's frame pacing is stable, with no significant stuttering or frame time spikes at any resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1173 out of 3712 tested combinations places it in the 68th percentile of all systems, which is a solid but not exceptional result. This ranking reflects the combination of a mid-range CPU and a high-end GPU, where the GPU contributes most of the performance potential but the CPU limits the upper ceiling. The Ryzen 5 4600G's percentile ranking of 71st among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17507, places it in the upper third of processors, while the RX 6800 XT's percentile ranking of 85th among all GPUs places it in the top 15% of graphics cards.

The combo's rank is influenced by the fact that Minimum is a 2014 title with relatively low system requirements, meaning that even mid-range CPUs can achieve high frame rates when paired with a powerful GPU. The Ryzen 5 4600G's nearest CPU rivals include the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 5355GE (0.1% higher average score), the Intel Core 7 150U (0.6% higher), the AMD Ryzen 3 8300GE (0.6% lower), and the Intel Core i3-14100T (0.8% lower). These small deltas indicate that the 4600G is closely matched with modern entry-level and mid-range processors, and its six cores and 12 threads provide enough parallelism for most gaming workloads.

The RX 6800 XT's nearest GPU rivals show a slightly wider spread, with the NVIDIA RTX A1000 Mobile 1.5% lower, the Intel Arc A550M 2.5% higher, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 3.0% higher, and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 3.0% higher. The fact that the RX 6800 XT is competitive with these newer GPUs, despite being released in 2020, speaks to its strong raw compute performance and ample memory bandwidth. However, the combo's overall rank of 1173 suggests that the CPU is holding the system back, as pairing the RX 6800 XT with a stronger processor would likely push the rank significantly higher.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600G plays a supporting role in this pairing, and its specifications reveal both its strengths and limitations. The CPU features six cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 2 architecture, built on a 7 nm process with 9,800 million transistors. The base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz provide adequate single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 3DMark single-thread score of 726 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1919. The 8 MB of shared L3 cache and 512 KB of L2 cache per core are modest by modern standards, but they are sufficient for a 2014 game.

The CPU's multi-threaded performance is more impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 13593 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 6637. The 3DMark scores show a clear scaling pattern: 1430 for 2 threads, 2732 for 4 threads, 4138 for 8 threads, and 4889 for 16 threads, indicating that the CPU scales well up to its full thread count. The PassMark multi-thread score of 15992 and the PassMark single-thread score of 2653 further confirm that the CPU is capable of handling modern workloads, though it is not a top-tier performer.

In Minimum, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p, where the frame rates at Low settings (259 FPS) and High settings (166 FPS) suggest that the CPU is capable of driving high frame rates but cannot fully saturate the GPU's potential. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 4863 is close to the max-thread score of 4889, indicating that the CPU's six cores are well-utilized, but the game likely does not use more than a few threads. The single-thread performance, with a Cinebench R15 single-core score of 193, is the limiting factor at high frame rates, as the CPU cannot issue draw calls and physics calculations fast enough to keep the GPU fully occupied at 1080p.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's role diminishes, as the GPU becomes the bottleneck. The frame rate reductions from 1080p to 1440p and 1440p to 4K are consistent across settings, indicating that the CPU is not causing any additional bottlenecks at higher resolutions. The 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for gaming, and the CPU's integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are irrelevant when paired with a discrete GPU. The Ryzen 5 4600G's launch MSRP of $154, with a 71st percentile ranking among all CPUs, makes it a capable mid-range processor that provides a solid foundation for this gaming combo, even if it does not fully unlock the RX 6800 XT's power at lower resolutions.