Minimum

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti delivers a playable but resolution-sensitive experience in Minimum, a 2014 Third-Person Shooter. Across the measured 1080p, 1440p, and 4K presets, the data reveals a system where the GPU is the primary limiter at higher resolutions, while the CPU provides ample headroom for the game's engine demands. The combo ranks 1491st out of 1733 tested combinations, placing it in the lower tier of the database, but its performance profile shows clear strengths at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drops sharply as resolution increases, confirming that the GTX 1660 Ti is the bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 133.7 FPS, but this falls to 88 FPS at 1440p and 44.2 FPS at 4K—a reduction of 34.2% and 66.9% from the 1080p baseline, respectively. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where the pixel count outpaces the graphics card's fill rate.

The trend holds across all presets. At High settings, the system delivers 86.7 FPS at 1080p, 57.4 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K. The 4K High result is below the 30 FPS threshold often considered the minimum for smooth gameplay, indicating that the GTX 1660 Ti's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit bus are insufficient for high-fidelity 4K rendering in this title. The Ultra preset is even more demanding, with 4K dropping to 19.5 FPS—a figure that is effectively unplayable.

Interestingly, the scaling from 1440p to 4K is steeper than from 1080p to 1440p. For Medium settings, the drop from 102.3 FPS at 1080p to 67.1 FPS at 1440p is a 34.4% reduction, while the further drop to 36.4 FPS at 4K is a 45.8% reduction. This non-linear behavior suggests that at 4K, the GPU's memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s becomes a critical constraint, as the increased data footprint of higher resolution textures and geometry exceeds what the card can efficiently process. The data implies that 1440p is the practical ceiling for this combo, with 4K reserved for Low settings only if the user accepts sub-60 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows indicate that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance for this hardware. At 1080p, Medium yields 102.3 FPS, which is 15.6 FPS higher than High and 37.3 FPS lower than Low, but it provides substantially better image quality than Low without the steep cost of High or Ultra. The 1440p Medium result of 67.1 FPS is also comfortably above the 60 FPS target, making it the recommended resolution for this preset.

High settings are viable only at 1080p, where the 86.7 FPS average is smooth, but the 1440p High result of 57.4 FPS dips below 60 FPS, and 4K High is unplayable at 29 FPS. Ultra is not recommended at any resolution: the 1080p Ultra score of 65 FPS is playable but only marginally better than 1440p Medium in terms of frame rate, while sacrificing resolution for settings that the GTX 1660 Ti cannot fully leverage.

For users prioritizing frame rate, Low settings at 1080p deliver 133.7 FPS, which is ideal for competitive play or high-refresh-rate displays. However, the data suggests that Medium at 1080p or 1440p is the sweet spot for this game's engine, as it maintains a high frame rate while avoiding the diminishing returns of higher presets. The 4K Low result of 44.2 FPS is the only 4K option above 30 FPS, but it is still below the 60 FPS threshold, making 4K a poor choice for this combo unless the user is willing to accept significant compromises.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 provides a robust foundation for this game, with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz, combined with 16 MB of L3 cache, ensure that the CPU is not a limiting factor in Minimum's performance. The CPU's benchmark scores support this: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20655 and a single-core score of 2916 indicate strong throughput for a 2022 processor.

In this game, the CPU's role appears to be secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the resolution scaling data. At 1080p Low, where the GPU has less work, the system reaches 133.7 FPS, which suggests the CPU can handle high frame rates without bottlenecking. The 3DMark results show a 16-thread score of 6628 and a single-thread score of 901, indicating balanced multi-threaded and single-threaded performance that aligns well with the game's likely engine demands.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and 7 nm process node (TSMC) contribute to efficient operation, but the benchmark data does not show any signs of thermal throttling or performance degradation under load. The Ryzen 7 5700's average benchmark score of 27220 places it at the 84th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rival being the Intel Core i9-9900K at a 0.7% delta. This means the CPU is well above average for the database, but the combo's overall rank of 1491 out of 1733 is dragged down by the GPU's performance, confirming that the processor is not the bottleneck in this pairing.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1491 out of 1733 tested combinations places it in the bottom 14% of the database, which is a low standing for a system with a high-percentile CPU. This disparity highlights the GPU's limiting role: the Ryzen 7 5700 is a capable processor, but the GTX 1660 Ti's 55th percentile ranking among all GPUs (with an average benchmark score of 13925) holds the system back. The GPU's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, is only 0.4% behind, while the NVIDIA Tesla K10 is 0.7% ahead, indicating that the GTX 1660 Ti is not an outlier in its performance class.

The rank reflects the measured FPS across all resolutions and settings. At 1080p, the combo performs adequately, but the low 4K results (19.5 FPS at Ultra, 29 FPS at High) significantly skew the overall assessment. In a database where many combos are tested at 4K, this system's inability to maintain playable frame rates at that resolution contributes to its low rank. However, the rank should not be interpreted as a failure of the CPU; rather, it is a measure of the combined system's capability, and the data shows that the GPU is the weak link.

The combo's position relative to other tested systems can be understood by examining the CPU and GPU percentile scores. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking is excellent, but the GPU's 55th percentile is merely average. This mismatch means that the combo underperforms systems with similar CPUs but stronger GPUs, and it outperforms systems with weaker CPUs but similar GPUs. The rank of 1491 is thus a reflection of the GPU's limitations in a game that scales heavily with resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, built on the Turing architecture with a 12 nm process, is the primary determinant of this combo's gaming performance. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, clocked at 1500 MHz with 12 Gbps effective speed, provides a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s over a 192-bit bus. The GPU's base clock of 1500 MHz and boost clock of 1770 MHz, along with 1536 shading units and 48 ROPs, deliver a 5.437 TFLOPS FP32 performance. These specifications are adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming but struggle at 4K.

The measured FPS data directly reflects the GPU's capabilities. At 1080p Low, the 133.7 FPS result shows that the GPU can handle high frame rates when the pixel load is low. However, the 4K Ultra result of 19.5 FPS indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute throughput are insufficient for 4K rendering, even with the game's relatively simple graphics. The PassMark G3D score of 12871, which places the GPU at the 55th percentile, corroborates this mid-range positioning.

The GPU's role is further emphasized by the settings scaling. At 1080p, the difference between Low (133.7 FPS) and Ultra (65 FPS) is 68.7 FPS, while at 4K, the difference between Low (44.2 FPS) and Ultra (19.5 FPS) is 24.7 FPS. This compressed range at 4K suggests that the GPU is already near its limits at the lowest settings, and higher presets do not add much visual fidelity without a disproportionate frame rate cost. The GTX 1660 Ti's 6 GB VRAM is also a consideration, as 4K textures and effects can exceed this capacity, leading to potential stuttering or texture pop-in, though the measured data does not explicitly show such artifacts.

In comparison to its nearest rivals, the GTX 1660 Ti's performance is tightly clustered: the AMD Radeon RX 570X is 0.4% behind, and the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile is 0.8% ahead. This indicates that the GPU is a solid mid-range option for 1080p and light 1440p gaming, but it is not designed for high-end 4K workloads. The combo's overall rank is thus a direct consequence of the GPU's ceiling, and users seeking higher 4K performance would need to pair the Ryzen 7 5700 with a more powerful graphics card, though such an upgrade is beyond the scope of this analysis.