Minimum

The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti in Minimum is a study in extreme bottlenecking. The data shows a CPU that is among the most capable available, paired with a GPU that sits near the bottom of the performance hierarchy. This combination produces playable results only at the lowest settings and resolutions, with the graphics card acting as the definitive limiting factor in every scenario measured.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is severe and reveals a purely GPU-bound workload. At 1080p Low, the combo delivers an average of 67.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that figure to 40.3 FPS, a reduction of roughly 40%. At 4K Low, the average plummets to 21.2 FPS, representing less than a third of the 1080p Low performance.

This scaling pattern is consistent across all settings presets. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 40.7 FPS at 1080p to 26.1 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 16.5 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows the same trajectory, starting at 33.6 FPS at 1080p, dropping to 20.8 FPS at 1440p, and collapsing to 13.9 FPS at 4K. The consistent proportional drops across all presets indicate that the GTX 1050 Ti is fully saturated at every resolution, with the Ryzen 7 9700X’s substantial processing power never becoming the bottleneck.

The data indicates that the 4 GB VRAM and the GPU’s compute capabilities are overwhelmed as pixel count increases. The gap between Low and Ultra settings widens with resolution, suggesting that the graphics card’s memory bandwidth and fill rate are the primary constraints. The CPU’s 8 cores and 16 threads are irrelevant at these frame rates; the GPU simply cannot feed frames fast enough to utilize them.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Minimum, this pairing ranks 1707 out of 1733 combos. This places it in the bottom 2% of all tested systems, a position that reflects the GPU’s severe limitations rather than the CPU’s capabilities. The Ryzen 7 9700X alone sits in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, but the GTX 1050 Ti languishes in the 30th percentile of all GPUs.

The disparity between the components is stark. The CPU’s average benchmark score is 36029, making it nearly seven times higher than the GPU’s average benchmark score of 5316. This is a classic case of a high-end modern processor being strangled by a low-end legacy graphics card. The GPU’s nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce 930A and the AMD Radeon R7 240, have average scores within 0.7% of the GTX 1050 Ti, confirming its position at the very bottom of the performance ladder.

The combo rank of 1707 out of 1733 indicates that almost every other pairing in the database delivers a better experience in this game. The benchmark results show that the frame rates are playable only in narrow circumstances, which is consistent with a system that is fundamentally unbalanced. The CPU has the headroom to run this game at hundreds of frames per second, but the GPU caps the output at the figures shown in the measured FPS data.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows a clear trade-off between visual quality and playability. For a consistently smooth experience, the Low preset at 1080p is the only setting that provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, with an average of 67.9 FPS. This is the recommended configuration for active gameplay.

At Medium settings, the 1080p average drops to 49.6 FPS. This is playable but may show occasional stutter on displays with a 60Hz refresh rate. The High preset at 1080p yields 40.7 FPS, which is borderline for a third-person shooter where reaction times matter. Ultra at 1080p produces 33.6 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth motion.

At 1440p, the Low preset delivers 40.3 FPS, which is acceptable for slower-paced exploration but not ideal for combat. All other settings at 1440p fall below 32 FPS, making them unsuitable for a responsive experience. At 4K, every preset fails to reach 22 FPS, rendering the game effectively unplayable regardless of settings.

The data suggests that users should prioritize frame rate over visual fidelity with this hardware. The Low preset at 1080p is the only measured configuration that provides a fluid, responsive experience. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 18.3 FPS, a significant loss for a modest visual improvement. The Ultra preset offers no playable benefit at any resolution, confirming that it should be avoided entirely.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset for this combination in Minimum is as follows. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 67.9 FPS. Medium settings at this resolution produce 49.6 FPS. High settings yield 40.7 FPS, while Ultra drops to 33.6 FPS. The spread between the lowest and highest settings at 1080p is 34.3 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 40.3 FPS. Medium reduces this to 31.5 FPS. High settings deliver 26.1 FPS, and Ultra settles at 20.8 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 19.5 FPS, showing that the GPU’s limitations compress the performance envelope as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the numbers are uniformly low. The Low preset averages 21.2 FPS. Medium achieves 19.6 FPS. High settings produce 16.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 13.9 FPS. The total range at 4K is a mere 7.3 FPS between Low and Ultra, indicating that the GPU is so heavily constrained that settings changes have minimal impact on the final frame rate.

These figures show that resolution has a far greater impact on performance than settings. Dropping from 1080p to 1440p at Low costs 27.6 FPS, while dropping from Low to Ultra at 1080p costs 34.3 FPS. At 4K, no setting combination produces a playable result, with even the fastest measured configuration falling far short of 30 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the sole determinant of performance in this pairing. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is insufficient for the demands of Minimum at higher resolutions. The GPU’s boost clock of 1392 MHz and base clock of 1291 MHz are low by modern standards, and its 768 shading units are simply too few to handle the geometry and pixel workload of a 2014 third-person shooter at high settings.

The GPU’s benchmark scores confirm its limitations. It scores 6340 in Passmark G3D, which places it in the 30th percentile of all GPUs. Its DirectX 11 score of 45 and DirectX 12 score of 26 are particularly low, indicating weak support for the APIs that modern games rely on. The GPU’s FP32 performance of 2.138 TFLOPS is a fraction of what contemporary graphics cards offer, explaining why it struggles to maintain even 30 FPS at 1080p Ultra.

The GPU’s memory configuration is also a limiting factor. With only 4 GB of VRAM, the card likely exceeds its memory capacity at higher resolutions and settings, leading to texture thrashing and performance degradation. The measured FPS drop from Medium to High at 1080p (9.1 FPS) and from High to Ultra (7.1 FPS) suggests that the card is not only compute-bound but also memory-constrained.

The GPU’s launch MSRP of 139 USD places it firmly in the entry-level segment, and its end-of-life production status means it has no modern feature set to offset its raw performance deficits. The data shows that this GPU is the definitive bottleneck, and any attempt to improve frame rates in Minimum would require a graphics card upgrade, as the Ryzen 7 9700X has ample headroom to drive far higher performance.