Minimum

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination delivers exceptional performance in Minimum, with the data showing this pairing ranks 110th out of 3712 tested combos. The benchmark results reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s strong single-thread performance keeps frame rates remarkably high at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS data to show exactly how resolution and settings impact the experience, and what the underlying hardware contributes to these results.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and predictable pattern: performance degrades significantly as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop reveals where the bottleneck lies. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 368 FPS, which is an extraordinary figure that indicates the GPU is nowhere near its limit and the CPU is doing the heavy lifting. Moving to 1440p at the same Low settings drops the average to 260 FPS, a 29% reduction, and at 4K it falls to 140 FPS, a 62% drop from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern is the signature of a GPU that is becoming progressively more saturated as pixel count rises.

The High settings preset tells a similar story with slightly different numbers. At 1080p High, the system produces 259 FPS, which drops to 167 FPS at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 90 FPS at 4K (a 65% drop from 1080p). The percentage losses between 1440p and 4K are nearly identical across Low and High settings, which strongly suggests that the RTX 5090’s rendering throughput is the limiting factor at 4K, regardless of how light or heavy the graphics load is. The GPU’s massive 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth and 32 GB of GDDR7 VRAM are clearly sufficient for this game, so the frame rate ceiling at 4K is set by the shader and texture processing rate.

The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic scaling, with 197 FPS at 1080p, 127 FPS at 1440p, and 69 FPS at 4K. The 65% drop from 1080p to 4K on Ultra aligns almost perfectly with the 62-65% drops seen on other presets, reinforcing that resolution scaling is consistent and GPU-bound. What is notable is that the gap between 1080p and 1440p on Ultra is 36%, which is the same as High, while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 46% — slightly steeper than the 41-46% range seen on other presets. This suggests that Ultra settings add enough extra shading work that the 4K resolution becomes even more punishing, but the overall trend remains firmly in GPU-bound territory.

For this specific hardware combination, the data indicates that 1440p is the sweet spot for balancing frame rate and visual fidelity, as it retains 70-77% of the 1080p performance while delivering a much higher pixel count. The 4K results, while still playable, show that even the flagship RTX 5090 cannot maintain triple-digit averages on the most demanding preset, with the Ultra setting dipping to 69 FPS. This is not a CPU limitation — the Ryzen 7 5800X’s 4.70 GHz boost clock and Zen 3 architecture provide ample headroom, as evidenced by the 368 FPS result at 1080p Low.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data makes it clear that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination, particularly at 1440p and 4K where it provides a substantial frame rate uplift over High without a massive visual compromise. At 1440p Medium, the system achieves 199 FPS, which is 32 FPS higher than High (167 FPS) and only 61 FPS lower than Low (260 FPS). The Medium preset also comes with the only complete min/max FPS data in the pack: at 1440p it ranges from 169 to 229 FPS, and at 4K it ranges from 91 to 123 FPS. These figures show that Medium is not only fast but also consistent, with no severe frame time spikes that would be visible in the minimum FPS.

For players targeting 4K, the Medium preset at 107 FPS is the best choice according to the data. It is 17 FPS faster than High (90 FPS) and 38 FPS faster than Ultra (69 FPS), while the visual difference between Medium and High in a fast-paced third-person shooter is likely to be less impactful than the frame rate difference. The Low preset at 4K does deliver 140 FPS, which is 33 FPS faster than Medium, but the visual quality reduction from dropping to Low would be significant. The Ultra preset, at 69 FPS, falls below the 90 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth competitive play, so it is not recommended for 4K.

At 1080p, the situation is different because all presets are already above 197 FPS. Here, the Ultra preset at 197 FPS is the best choice for maximum visual quality, as it remains well above the refresh rate of any standard 144Hz monitor. The Medium preset at 309 FPS is unnecessary for most displays, and the Low preset at 368 FPS offers no practical benefit unless the user has a 360Hz monitor. The data shows that at 1080p, the RTX 5090 has so much headroom that even the most demanding settings cannot push the frame rate below 197 FPS, making Ultra the obvious pick for image quality.

At 1440p, the recommendation is more nuanced. The High preset at 167 FPS is sufficient for high-refresh displays, but the Medium preset at 199 FPS is better suited for 165Hz or 180Hz monitors. The Ultra preset at 127 FPS is still playable but represents a 24% performance hit compared to High, which is a steep price for what is likely an incremental visual gain. The data suggests that Medium at 1440p provides the best combination of smoothness and visual fidelity, with the 169 FPS minimum ensuring that even demanding scenes stay above the refresh rate of most monitors.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable with this hardware combination?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 368, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is 59 FPS higher than the next best result of 309 FPS at 1080p Medium.

*Q: Is the RTX 5090 capable of running Minimum at 4K with a 100+ FPS average?*

A: Yes, the data shows that at 4K with Medium settings, the system achieves 107 FPS on average, with a minimum of 91 FPS and a maximum of 123 FPS. The High preset at 4K drops to 90 FPS, which is just below the 100 FPS threshold.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K?

A: The performance loss depends on the preset. At Low settings, the drop from 1080p (368 FPS) to 4K (140 FPS) is 228 FPS, or 62%. At High settings, the drop from 259 FPS to 90 FPS is 169 FPS, or 65%. At Ultra, the drop from 197 FPS to 69 FPS is 128 FPS, or 65%.

Q: Does the Medium preset provide consistent frame times?

A: Yes, the Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max FPS data. At 1920x1080, the range is 262 to 355 FPS; at 2560x1440, the range is 169 to 229 FPS; and at 3840x2160, the range is 91 to 123 FPS. The spread between min and max is roughly 30% of the average in all cases, indicating stable performance.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p?

A: The data strongly indicates the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p. The RTX 5090 is so powerful that at 1080p Low, the system only reaches 368 FPS, which is likely constrained by the Ryzen 7 5800X’s single-thread performance rather than the GPU’s rendering capability.

Q: What is the rank of this hardware combination among all tested configurations?

A: This combination of AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 110th out of 3712 total combinations tested for Minimum, placing it in the top 3% of all configurations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all presets. Low settings produce an average of 368 FPS, which is the single highest measured value in the entire dataset. Medium settings follow at 309 FPS, with a measured range of 262 to 355 FPS, showing that the minimum FPS is still above what most monitors can display. High settings reduce the average to 259 FPS, and Ultra settings bring it down to 197 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 59 FPS, from Medium to High costs 50 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 62 FPS. This shows that at 1080p, each settings tier costs roughly 50-60 FPS, but even the most demanding configuration remains well above any refresh rate concern.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show the increased GPU load. Low settings average 260 FPS, which is a 29% reduction from the 1080p Low result. Medium settings average 199 FPS, with a range of 169 to 229 FPS, and the minimum of 169 FPS is still smooth for most displays. High settings average 167 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 127 FPS. The cost of each settings tier at 1440p is 61 FPS from Low to Medium, 32 FPS from Medium to High, and 40 FPS from High to Ultra. The Medium to High gap is notably smaller at 1440p than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is beginning to feel the resolution load.

At 3840x2160, the performance is the most constrained. Low settings average 140 FPS, which is still very playable. Medium settings average 107 FPS, with a range of 91 to 123 FPS, and the 91 FPS minimum indicates that the game will occasionally dip below the 100 FPS mark. High settings average 90 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 69 FPS. The cost of each settings tier at 4K is 33 FPS from Low to Medium, 17 FPS from Medium to High, and 21 FPS from High to Ultra. The diminishing returns are clear: at 4K, the difference between Medium and High is only 17 FPS, making Medium the better choice for maintaining a higher frame rate.

The data shows that the performance gap between presets narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 171 FPS; at 1440p, it is 133 FPS; and at 4K, it is 71 FPS. This is a classic sign of GPU saturation — as the pixel count rises, the relative cost of each settings tier decreases because the GPU is already spending most of its time on pixel shading rather than the specific features that differentiate presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, and the measured FPS data shows a GPU that is massively overprovisioned for Minimum at 1080p but appropriately matched at 4K. The GPU’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, is far beyond what this game requires, and the data confirms this — there is no evidence of memory capacity or bandwidth limiting performance at any resolution. The frame rates scale almost entirely with pixel count and shading load, which points to the GPU’s 21,760 shading units and 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute as the primary engine.

The GPU’s boost clock of 2407 MHz, combined with its 176 ROPs, explains the extraordinary raw throughput at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 368 FPS, which is a frame rate that only the most powerful GPUs can achieve, and it is a direct result of the RTX 5090’s pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s. This pixel rate is what allows the card to fill the screen at extreme speeds when the shading load is light, and it is the reason why the 1080p results are so high across all presets.

The GPU’s performance percentile of 92 against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79,842, places it in the top tier of graphics hardware. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (0.3% higher score) and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.1% lower score), but these are data center and mobile parts, respectively. In the context of Minimum, the RTX 5090’s gaming performance is clearly head and shoulders above what the game’s 2014 engine can stress, and the 4K Ultra result of 69 FPS is the only configuration where the GPU appears to be genuinely taxed.

The fact that the 4K Ultra result drops to 69 FPS, while 4K Low stays at 140 FPS, indicates that the GPU’s shader and texture units are the limiting factor at the highest settings. The RTX 5090’s 680 TMUs, which handle texture fetching, and its 21,760 shading units are being fully utilized at 4K Ultra, and the 65% performance drop from 1080p to 4K is consistent with the 4x increase in pixel count. The GPU’s 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is not the bottleneck, as memory bandwidth scales linearly with resolution, and the frame rate drops are proportional to pixel count rather than bandwidth saturation.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X plays a supporting but crucial role in this configuration, particularly at 1080p where the GPU is so fast that the CPU’s ability to feed it becomes the limiting factor. The CPU’s 8 cores and 16 threads, based on the Zen 3 Vermeer architecture, provide a solid foundation, but the key metric for gaming is single-thread performance. With a boost clock of 4.70 GHz and a 3DMark single-thread score of 943, the 5800X delivers the kind of latency-sensitive performance that Minimum needs to push frame rates into the 300+ range.

The evidence for CPU limitation at 1080p is strong. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 368 FPS, but at 1440p Low, it drops to 260 FPS, and at 4K Low, it falls to 140 FPS. If the CPU were the bottleneck at 1080p, the frame rate would stay roughly constant as resolution increases, but it does not — it drops by 29% to 1440p and 62% to 4K. However, the fact that 1080p Low (368 FPS) is only slightly higher than 1080p Medium (309 FPS) suggests that the CPU is starting to cap the frame rate, as the GPU should be able to handle both presets with similar ease at such a low resolution.

The CPU’s benchmark scores provide context for its gaming performance. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15,476 and single-core score of 1,574.5 show a balanced processor that can handle both heavy multi-threaded workloads and light single-threaded tasks. The Geekbench single-core score of 2,032 is particularly relevant for gaming, as most game logic and physics are single-threaded. The 5800X’s PassMark single-thread score of 3,445 places it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs, which is respectable but not top-tier, and this is likely the reason why the 1080p results cap out around 368 FPS rather than going higher.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the Intel Core Ultra 5 135H (0.1% higher) and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT (0.6% lower), but these comparisons are on synthetic workloads. In Minimum, the 5800X’s 32 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to keep the RTX 5090 fed at most resolutions. The data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck at 1440p or 4K, where the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, but at 1080p, the CPU’s single-thread performance is what prevents the system from exceeding 368 FPS. This is not a criticism — 368 FPS is an exceptional result — but it does highlight that the 5800X, while aging gracefully, is not in the same league as the RTX 5090 in terms of raw performance headroom.