Minimum

# Minimum: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a robust experience in Minimum, a third-person shooter from 2014. Benchmark data shows this combination ranks 644th out of 3,712 tested combos in this game, placing it comfortably in the top 18% of all configurations. The pairing of a six-core Zen 3 processor with an Ada Lovelace GPU produces frame rates that range from playable at 4K Ultra to exceptionally high at 1080p Low, making it a versatile setup for this title.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling across resolutions reveals a clear pattern where the GPU becomes the dominant constraint as pixel count increases. At 1080p High, the combo produces 199 FPS, but moving to 1440p High drops that to 128 FPS — a reduction of 71 FPS or roughly 36%. The jump to 4K High further reduces performance to 69 FPS, which represents a 46% drop from the 1440p figure and a 65% drop from 1080p.

This scaling behavior indicates that the RTX 4070 SUPER is the limiting component starting at 1440p, while at 1080p the CPU plays a more significant role. The evidence lies in the Low settings results: at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 310 FPS, while at 1440p Low it hits 200 FPS, and at 4K Low it manages 108 FPS. The 1080p-to-1440p drop of 110 FPS (35%) is proportionally similar to the High preset drop, but the 1440p-to-4K Low reduction of 92 FPS (46%) shows the GPU struggling more with the pixel count increase.

The Medium preset tells a similar story with actual measured minimum and maximum values. At 1080p Medium, the average is 237 FPS with a range of 202 to 273 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average falls to 153 FPS with a range of 130 to 176 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average is 82 FPS with a range of 70 to 95 FPS. These numbers show that even at medium settings, the GPU's workload scales heavily with resolution, while the CPU maintains enough headroom to keep minimum frames relatively stable.

Ultra settings amplify the resolution sensitivity further. The combo delivers 152 FPS at 1080p Ultra, 98 FPS at 1440p Ultra, and 53 FPS at 4K Ultra. The 1080p-to-4K drop of 99 FPS (65%) under Ultra settings indicates that the game's higher-quality effects at 4K place substantial pressure on the RTX 4070 SUPER's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and its 192-bit memory bus.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 SUPER's specifications directly explain its behavior in Minimum. With 7,168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines, the GPU has substantial compute resources for a game from 2014. Its boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1980 MHz provide the raw throughput needed to push high frame rates at lower resolutions.

Memory considerations play a significant role in the 4K results. The 12 GB GDDR6X frame buffer operating at 21 Gbps effective with a 192-bit bus width yields 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. In a 2014 title, this is more than sufficient capacity, but the bandwidth constraints become apparent at 4K Ultra where the average drops to 53 FPS. The measured minimum at 4K Medium is 70 FPS, suggesting that memory bandwidth limitations contribute to frame time spikes when texture detail increases.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate its gaming performance profile. Its PassMark G3D score of 29,995 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,627 place it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals — the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB at 43,262 average score, the RTX 5050 Mobile at 43,268, and the RTX 4090 Mobile at 43,667 — show that desktop-class performance remains competitive even against newer mobile parts, with the RTX 4070 SUPER trailing the RTX 4090 Mobile by just 1% in aggregate benchmarks.

The GPU's FP32 performance of 35.48 TFLOPS and texture rate of 554.4 GTexel/s explain why the card excels at 1080p and 1440p in this title. At 1080p Low, it produces 310 FPS, which suggests the game's draw calls and geometry processing are well within the GPU's capabilities. The pixel rate of 198.0 GPixel/s becomes the bottleneck at 4K Ultra, where fill-rate demands exceed what the card can sustain at high quality settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance for optimizing the experience across different display resolutions. At 1080p, the Ultra preset delivers 152 FPS, which is sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays while maintaining maximum visual quality. The High preset bumps this to 199 FPS, and Medium reaches 237 FPS, but the diminishing returns above 152 FPS make Ultra the best choice for most users at this resolution.

For 1440p, the High preset at 128 FPS offers the best balance between visual fidelity and smoothness. The Ultra preset at 98 FPS is playable but may not fully utilize high-refresh-rate monitors, while Medium at 153 FPS sacrifices some visual quality for a significant frame rate boost. Given that the game is a third-person shooter where clarity matters, High provides the most consistent experience without dropping below the 60 FPS threshold in demanding scenes.

At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. The Medium preset at 82 FPS with a measured minimum of 70 FPS is the highest playable configuration, as High drops to 69 FPS and Ultra falls to 53 FPS. The Low preset at 108 FPS is viable for competitive play, but the visual degradation may not justify the frame rate increase. For 4K users, Medium represents the sweet spot where the game maintains fluid motion without compromising too much on texture quality or shadow detail.

The delta between Medium and High at 4K is 13 FPS (82 vs. 69), while the delta between Low and Medium is 26 FPS (108 vs. 82). This non-linear scaling suggests that the Medium preset includes effects that disproportionately impact performance, making it the recommended ceiling for 4K displays.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results. Low settings produce 310 FPS average, Medium produces 237 FPS with a range of 202 to 273 FPS, High produces 199 FPS, and Ultra produces 152 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 158 FPS, indicating that the game's quality presets have a substantial impact on GPU workload at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop across all presets. Low delivers 200 FPS, Medium delivers 153 FPS with a range of 130 to 176 FPS, High delivers 128 FPS, and Ultra delivers 98 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread narrows to 102 FPS, showing that resolution scaling compresses the performance differences between presets as the GPU becomes more heavily loaded.

At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens further. Low delivers 108 FPS, Medium delivers 82 FPS with a range of 70 to 95 FPS, High delivers 69 FPS, and Ultra delivers 53 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread is now just 55 FPS, meaning that at 4K, even the lowest preset cannot fully escape the GPU's resolution-bound limitations.

The Medium preset is the only configuration with complete minimum and maximum data across all three resolutions, providing insight into frame time consistency. The 1080p range of 71 FPS (202 to 273) narrows to 46 FPS at 1440p (130 to 176) and 25 FPS at 4K (70 to 95). This tightening suggests that as resolution increases, the CPU becomes less involved in frame pacing, and the GPU's consistent workload produces more stable frame times.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 644 out of 3,712 tested configurations places it in the 82.6th percentile of all CPU-GPU pairings tested in Minimum. This is a strong showing for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU, indicating that the RTX 4070 SUPER carries most of the performance weight in this title.

The CPU's aggregate benchmark score of 19,593 puts it in the 73rd percentile of all processors, which is lower than the GPU's 83rd percentile standing. This discrepancy suggests that the Ryzen 5 5500 may slightly constrain the RTX 4070 SUPER at lower resolutions where frame rates exceed 200 FPS. However, the measured results show that even at 1080p Low with 310 FPS, the combination still delivers exceptionally high performance.

In the broader benchmark landscape, the Ryzen 5 5500's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (average score 19,617, delta -0.1%), the Intel Core i5-12500 (19,668, delta -0.4%), the Intel Core i7-10700F (19,499, delta +0.5%), and the Intel Core i5-11600KF (19,723, delta -0.7%). These small deltas — all within 1% — indicate that the Ryzen 5 5500 performs essentially on par with a wide range of competing processors from both AMD and Intel, making it a well-rounded choice for this GPU pairing.

The GPU's ranking among its peers shows similar clustering. The RTX 4070 SUPER's average benchmark score of 43,223 sits within 1% of the Quadro M6000 24 GB (43,262), the RTX 5050 Mobile (43,268), the Quadro M6000 (43,301), and the RTX 4090 Mobile (43,667). This tight grouping suggests that in aggregate compute tasks, the 4070 SUPER is competitive with workstation and mobile flagship parts, though its gaming-specific performance in Minimum may differ based on driver optimization and architecture-specific features.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 provides six cores and twelve threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz, combined with 16 MB of L3 cache, deliver solid single-threaded performance as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,319 and multi-core score of 16,429.

In Minimum, a game from 2014, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle game logic. The 3DMark single-thread score of 836 and 2-thread score of 1,645 indicate that the processor's single-core performance is adequate for this older title, which likely does not utilize more than a few threads effectively. The 8-thread score of 4,593 and max-thread score of 5,411 show that scaling beyond four cores provides diminishing returns, consistent with a game from this era.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR4 interface may become a limiting factor at extremely high frame rates. The difference between 1080p Low (310 FPS) and 1080p Ultra (152 FPS) suggests that at Low settings, the CPU must process more frames per second, potentially exposing memory latency or bandwidth constraints. However, the fact that the combo still achieves 310 FPS indicates that these constraints are not severe enough to hamper the experience.

The Ryzen 5 5500's 65W TDP and unlocked multiplier make it an efficient partner for the RTX 4070 SUPER, which has a 220W TDP. The CPU's PassMark multithread score of 19,330 and single-thread score of 3,058 place it well within the range needed to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at 1440p and 4K, where the measured frame rates drop to levels where CPU overhead is less critical. At 4K Ultra with 53 FPS, the CPU is clearly not the limiting factor — the GPU's fill-rate and memory bandwidth constraints dominate the performance profile.