Minimum

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination delivers a remarkably consistent gaming experience in Minimum, though the data reveals a clear division of labor between the two components depending on the resolution and settings. The RTX 4080 SUPER, with its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory, dominates at lower resolutions, while the Ryzen 5 5500’s six Zen 3 cores become the deciding factor at 1080p with high frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows how the performance burden shifts as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 327 FPS, which drops to 228 FPS at 2560x1440 and further to 123 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 62.4% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, a steep decline that indicates the GPU is not the limiting factor at the lowest resolution.

The scaling pattern changes dramatically when moving to Ultra settings. At 1080p Ultra, the system produces 173 FPS, while 1440p Ultra yields 112 FPS and 4K Ultra drops to 60 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 65.3%, which is larger than the Low settings drop. This suggests that the GPU workload increases disproportionately with resolution when higher quality presets are active, as the RTX 4080 SUPER’s 52.22 TFLOPS compute and 736.3 GB/s bandwidth become fully utilized.

The Medium settings row provides the only min/max data points, showing 271 FPS average at 1080p with a 230-312 FPS range, 175 FPS average at 1440p with a 149-201 FPS range, and 94 FPS average at 4K with an 80-108 FPS range. The consistency of the frame pacing degrades slightly as resolution increases, with the spread between min and max growing from 82 FPS at 1080p to 28 FPS at 4K in absolute terms, but the relative variance remains manageable.

The 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS is particularly telling. This is exactly half of the 1080p Low result, and the progression from 123 FPS at 4K Low to 94 FPS at 4K Medium to 79 FPS at 4K High to 60 FPS at 4K Ultra shows a nearly linear relationship between settings and performance at this resolution. The GPU is clearly the bottleneck at 4K, while the CPU’s influence becomes more apparent at 1080p where the frame rates exceed 300 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 3,712 tested combinations in Minimum, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER sits at rank 355. This places it in the top 9.6% of all tested system configurations, which is impressive given that the CPU is a mid-range 5000-series part rather than a flagship offering.

The CPU’s percentile ranking of 73 versus all CPUs indicates that the Ryzen 5 5500 performs better than roughly three-quarters of processors tested. However, the GPU’s percentile ranking of 86 is notably higher, suggesting the graphics card is the stronger individual component in this pairing. The rank of 355 out of 3,712 combos reflects this hierarchy — the system is held back more by the CPU than by the GPU.

Comparing to the CPU’s nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 5500 scores 19,593 on average, which is 0.1% lower than the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (19,617), 0.4% lower than the Intel Core i5-12500 (19,668), 0.5% higher than the Intel Core i7-10700F (19,499), and 0.7% lower than the Intel Core i5-11600KF (19,723). These deltas are small, within 1% of all four rivals, indicating that the Ryzen 5 5500’s compute performance is essentially interchangeable with these competitors.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show similar clustering. The RTX 4080 SUPER scores 54,209 on average, which is 0.1% below the RTX 4080 (54,247), 1.1% below the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (54,828), 2.7% below the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (55,698), and 2.8% below the AMD Radeon 8060S (55,757). The fact that the RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 355th in this game despite being within 3% of its GPU rivals suggests that other combinations achieve higher frame rates through better CPU-GPU balance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant force in this configuration for most tested scenarios. Its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for maintaining high frame rates at 4K resolution. The memory clock runs at 1438 MHz with 23 Gbps effective speed.

The GPU’s boost clock of 2550 MHz, paired with 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, enables a pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s. These specifications directly explain the 4K performance: the 60 FPS Ultra result at 3840x2160 translates to 165.9 million pixels per second, which is well within the GPU’s pixel throughput capability, suggesting the bottleneck lies elsewhere in the rendering pipeline.

The RTX 4080 SUPER’s 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are present but not directly reflected in the measured FPS for Minimum, which is a 2014 release that likely does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS features. The GPU’s FP32 compute of 52.22 TFLOPS provides substantial headroom for the game’s traditional rasterization workload.

The benchmark results show the GPU’s performance ceiling through synthetic tests: 66,000 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 260,075 in Geekbench Vulkan, and 219,065 in Geekbench OpenCL. The PassMark G3D score of 34,245 and GPU compute score of 19,822 indicate strong compute capability that translates to the high frame rates seen at 1080p and 1440p. The GPU’s 86th percentile ranking versus all GPUs confirms its position as a high-end part, though the 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS shows that even this hardware has limits in this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system produces its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings yield an average of 327 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. Medium settings produce 271 FPS with a minimum of 230 and maximum of 312, while High settings achieve 228 FPS and Ultra drops to 173 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 47.1% reduction in frame rate, which is substantial but leaves the system well above 144 Hz at all presets.

The 2560x1440 results show a similar pattern with lower absolute numbers. Low settings average 228 FPS, Medium averages 175 FPS with a 149-201 FPS range, High averages 147 FPS, and Ultra averages 112 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings is 30.3%, while at Ultra settings it is 35.3%, indicating that the GPU becomes more heavily loaded as both resolution and quality increase.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals the most significant performance constraints. Low settings average 123 FPS, which is still highly playable, but Medium drops to 94 FPS with an 80-108 FPS range, High averages 79 FPS, and Ultra falls to 60 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 51.2%, which is the largest relative difference across all resolutions. This suggests that the GPU memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s becomes a limiting factor at 4K Ultra, where the 16 GB frame buffer is likely under heavy demand.

The 4K Medium min/max values of 80-108 FPS provide the only complete data for that resolution, showing a 28 FPS spread. At 1080p Medium, the spread is 82 FPS (230-312), and at 1440p Medium it is 52 FPS (149-201). The narrowing spread at higher resolutions indicates that frame time variance decreases as the GPU workload increases, which is consistent with the GPU becoming the primary bottleneck.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 contributes significantly to the high frame rates at 1080p, where the GPU has headroom to render frames faster than the CPU can feed it. The processor’s six cores and twelve threads, based on the Zen 3 architecture with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz, provide sufficient single-thread performance for a 2014 title like Minimum.

The CPU’s benchmark results show its strengths: a single-thread score of 836 in 3DMark, 2,319 in Cinebench R23 single-core, and 3,058 in PassMark single-thread. These scores place it in the 73rd percentile of all CPUs, which is solid for a 5000-series part but not exceptional. The multi-threaded scores are more impressive: 5,411 in 3DMark max threads, 16,429 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, and 19,330 in PassMark multithread.

The 16 MB L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s dual-channel DDR4 memory bandwidth are adequate for the workload, but the PCIe Gen 3 interface could theoretically limit data transfer to the GPU. However, the measured FPS at 1080p Low (327 FPS) suggests this is not a practical constraint for Minimum, as the game’s data requirements are modest for a 2014 release.

The CPU’s nearest rivals all score within 0.7% of its average benchmark score, with the Intel Core i5-11600KF being the closest competitor at 19,723 (0.7% higher). The Intel Core i7-10700F scores 19,499, which is 0.5% lower. These small deltas indicate that the Ryzen 5 5500 does not provide a meaningful CPU advantage or disadvantage in this pairing, and the rank of 355 out of 3,712 combos is likely influenced by other factors such as GPU choice.

The 1080p High result of 228 FPS and Low result of 327 FPS both exceed what many displays can show, suggesting the CPU is capable of sustaining these frame rates without becoming a bottleneck. However, the 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS is unlikely to be CPU-limited, as the GPU workload dominates at that resolution. The data implies the CPU’s role is most critical at 1080p Low, where the system achieves its peak frame rate.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo in Minimum?*

A: The highest average FPS is 327, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Does this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra settings?

A: Yes, the 4K Ultra average is exactly 60 FPS, which is the minimum playable threshold commonly cited.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 SUPER compare to its closest GPU rival in benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER scores 54,209 on average, which is 0.1% lower than the RTX 4080’s 54,247.

Q: What is the largest frame rate drop between 1080p and 4K across settings?

A: At Low settings, the drop from 327 FPS to 123 FPS represents a 62.4% reduction, which is the largest relative decline in the dataset.

Q: Which CPU rival performs closest to the Ryzen 5 5500?

A: The AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 scores 19,617, which is 0.1% higher than the Ryzen 5 5500’s 19,593, making it the nearest competitor.

Q: At which resolution does the GPU become the clear bottleneck?

A: At 3840x2160, where the frame rate drops from 123 FPS at Low to 60 FPS at Ultra, indicating the GPU is fully saturated.

Settings Recommendations

For 1920x1080 displays, the High settings preset at 228 FPS is the recommended balance, as it provides a substantial visual upgrade over Medium (271 FPS) while still exceeding 200 FPS. The Ultra preset at 173 FPS is acceptable for competitive play, but the 55 FPS difference between High and Ultra may not justify the visual gains.

At 2560x1440, the High settings at 147 FPS provide the best experience for high-refresh-rate monitors, as it remains above 144 Hz. The Ultra preset at 112 FPS is still smooth, but the 35 FPS drop from High may be noticeable in fast-paced scenes. The Medium preset at 175 FPS is ideal for players prioritizing frame rate over visual fidelity.

For 3840x2160, the Medium settings at 94 FPS offer the best balance, with the min/max range of 80-108 FPS ensuring consistent performance. The High preset at 79 FPS is viable, but the Ultra preset at 60 FPS should only be used if the 60 FPS cap is acceptable. The Low preset at 123 FPS is recommended for players who prioritize smoothness above all else, as the visual difference between Low and Medium is less impactful at 4K due to the high pixel density.

The data suggests that the optimal configuration depends on the display refresh rate. For 144 Hz panels at 1440p, High settings are ideal. For 60 Hz 4K displays, Ultra settings are playable but the 80-108 FPS range at Medium provides a more comfortable margin. At 1080p, all presets exceed 170 FPS, so the choice depends on whether visual quality or maximum frame rate is preferred. The RTX 4080 SUPER’s 16 GB of VRAM provides ample headroom for texture quality at all resolutions, so users should prioritize the settings that affect shading and post-processing rather than memory capacity.