Minimum

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Radeon RX 6650 XT combination delivers a wide performance envelope in Minimum, a Third-Person Shooter released on 2014-06-25. The data reveals a system that can handle high-refresh 1080p gaming but begins to struggle as resolution climbs, with the GPU clearly becoming the primary bottleneck at higher pixel counts.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep and predictable decline as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate falls from 88.4 FPS at 1080p to 56.8 FPS at 1440p, a drop of 31.6 FPS. Moving from 1440p to 4K Ultra, the score plummets further to 30.3 FPS, representing another 26.5 FPS loss. This pattern indicates a classic GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions; the RX 6650 XT’s render output units and memory bandwidth are being saturated.

The scaling from 1080p to 4K is even more pronounced at lower settings. At Low settings, the average jumps from 176.3 FPS at 1080p to 113.5 FPS at 1440p, and then down to 62.1 FPS at 4K. The relative performance drop from 1080p to 4K is roughly 65% at Low settings, while at Ultra settings it is about 66%. This consistency suggests that the limiting factor is not the CPU’s ability to feed frames, but the GPU’s raw pixel throughput.

Interestingly, the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens significantly at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low (176.3 FPS) and Ultra (88.4 FPS) is 87.9 FPS. At 4K, the same comparison yields a 31.8 FPS difference (62.1 vs 30.3). This narrowing delta indicates that at 4K, even reducing settings cannot fully compensate for the GPU’s architectural limits, as the fill-rate and memory bandwidth constraints become the dominant factor.

For 1440p gaming, the data presents a mixed picture. High settings yield 71.8 FPS, which is playable, while Medium settings improve that to 85.1 FPS. However, Ultra at 1440p drops to 56.8 FPS, suggesting that users targeting 60 FPS at this resolution will need to stick with High or Medium presets. The 1080p results, by contrast, show headroom for high-refresh monitors, with High settings achieving 112.6 FPS and Low hitting 176.3 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is the clear performance ceiling in this pairing. Based on the RDNA 2.0 architecture and the Navi 23 chip, it features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 280.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The card’s boost clock is listed at 2635 MHz, with a game clock of 2410 MHz, and it contains 2048 shading units. These specifications directly correlate with the measured results; the 128-bit memory bus is a likely culprit for the significant frame drops at 4K, where memory bandwidth demand is highest.

The GPU’s 64 ROPs and 128 TMUs provide a texture and pixel rate of 337.3 GTexel/s and 168.6 GPixel/s, respectively. In Minimum, the 4K Ultra result of 30.3 FPS suggests that the card is hitting its pixel throughput limits. The FP32 performance of 10.79 TFLOPS is respectable for 1080p and 1440p, but the data shows it is insufficient for smooth 4K Ultra play in this title.

The VRAM capacity of 8 GB is adequate for the game’s settings, as evidenced by the fact that reducing settings from Ultra to High yields substantial gains at all resolutions (e.g., from 30.3 to 41.7 FPS at 4K). This indicates that the bottleneck is not memory capacity but rather the speed and width of the memory interface. The card’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1859 and Passmark G3D score of 17166 place it in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, confirming its mid-range positioning. It trades blows with the AMD Radeon RX 6800M (0.0% delta) and sits slightly ahead of the RX 470 (0.1% delta), but the data shows it is not designed for 4K Ultra workloads.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this specific CPU-GPU pairing ranks 1114 out of 1733 total combos for Minimum. This places it in the lower half of all tested systems, which is a direct consequence of the GPU’s mid-range class. While the CPU is a high-end part, the GPU’s performance ceiling drags the overall combo ranking down.

The rank of 1114 against 1733 combos suggests that the RX 6650 XT is the limiting factor in most scenarios. For a game like Minimum, which is not excessively demanding by modern standards, the combo’s ranking is more about the GPU’s position than the CPU’s strength. The data shows that the 5800X3D is capable of pushing frame rates much higher, but it is held back by the graphics card.

This ranking also implies that there are 619 tested combos that perform better, likely featuring more powerful GPUs paired with similar or better CPUs. The combo’s position is not surprising given the GPU’s 72nd percentile standing among all GPUs. The CPU’s 83rd percentile ranking is significantly higher, highlighting the imbalance in this pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo shows its strength. Low settings yield an average of 176.3 FPS, which is exceptionally smooth. Medium settings drop to 138.4 FPS, and High settings produce 112.6 FPS. Ultra at 1080p still manages a respectable 88.4 FPS, indicating that the GPU can handle 1080p Ultra with ease, though not at the highest refresh rates.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance becomes more moderate. Low settings achieve 113.5 FPS, Medium hits 85.1 FPS, and High reaches 71.8 FPS. Ultra at 1440p falls to 56.8 FPS, which is on the edge of playability for smooth action. The data shows a 26.7 FPS difference between Low and High at 1440p, a narrower margin than at 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the results are more constrained. Low settings produce 62.1 FPS, Medium drops to 47 FPS, and High falls to 41.7 FPS. Ultra at 4K is the weakest result, with an average of 30.3 FPS, which is below the threshold for a smooth third-person shooter experience. The data indicates that 4K is only viable at Low settings, and even then, it barely exceeds 60 FPS.

The scaling from Low to Ultra at each resolution provides insight into the settings’ impact. At 1080p, Ultra is 87.9 FPS slower than Low. At 1440p, the difference is 56.7 FPS. At 4K, the difference shrinks to 31.8 FPS. This diminishing impact of settings at higher resolutions reinforces that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as lowering settings cannot compensate for the lack of raw rasterization power.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a formidable processor that is not the limiting factor in this configuration. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer), it has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.50 GHz. Its standout feature is the 96 MB of shared L3 cache, which is critical for gaming performance. The CPU’s TDP is 105 W, and it supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s.

The CPU’s benchmark scores are strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 24063 and a single-core score of 3397. Its Passmark multithread score is 28309, and the 3DMark 16-thread score is 7299. These numbers place the 5800X3D in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs, far ahead of its nearest rivals in the database. For instance, it is 0.1% ahead of the AMD EPYC 8024P and the Intel Core i9-11900K, and 0.2% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600.

In Minimum, the CPU’s performance is largely untapped. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (176.3 FPS) is likely still below the CPU’s maximum frame output, as the GPU is the constraining component. The data shows that the 5800X3D’s single-thread performance (Passmark single-thread score of 3234) is more than sufficient for this title. The CPU’s high L3 cache and boost clock ensure that it will not cause frame dips even in complex scenes, but the RX 6650 XT prevents the system from realizing its full potential. The combo’s ranking of 1114 out of 1733 reflects this, as the CPU’s capabilities are effectively wasted at higher resolutions where the GPU’s 128-bit memory bus and 2048 shading units become the absolute limit.