Minimum

Settings Recommendations

For Minimum, the measured data points to the Medium preset as the optimal balance between visual quality and frame rate across all three resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 130.8 FPS average, which is 19.2% higher than High and 54.2% higher than Ultra. The gap between Medium and Low is a relatively modest 39.3 FPS, yet Medium provides noticeably better visual fidelity without sacrificing the high-refresh experience. At 2560x1440, Medium holds at 86.8 FPS average, comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold, while High drops to 71.4 FPS and Ultra falls to 56 FPS. The 1440p Medium result is particularly strong because it keeps the experience fluid while maintaining more scene detail than Low. At 3840x2160, Medium produces 45.1 FPS average, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced third-person shooting; here, Low at 59.1 FPS is the better choice for smoothness. Ultra is never recommended — at every resolution it is the slowest preset, delivering 84.8 FPS at 1080p, 56 FPS at 1440p, and 26.6 FPS at 4K. The data shows a consistent pattern: Medium offers the largest step-up in playability from Ultra while keeping the frame rate within striking distance of Low. For users prioritizing maximum smoothness over visuals, Low is the fallback, but the measured results indicate that Medium is the sweet spot for this combination of AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Minimum?

A: 1920x1080 with Medium settings delivers 130.8 FPS average, which is the highest frame rate at a mid-tier visual preset. At 2560x1440 Medium, the average drops to 86.8 FPS, still smooth but requiring a compromise. 4K is only viable at Low settings, where the average is 59.1 FPS.

Q: How much slower is Ultra compared to High at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Ultra averages 84.8 FPS while High averages 110.8 FPS. That is a 26.0 FPS difference, meaning Ultra is about 23.5% slower than High. The same pattern holds at higher resolutions, with Ultra being 21.6% slower than High at 1440p and 26.7% slower at 4K.

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: Yes, but only on Low and Medium presets. Low averages 110.1 FPS and Medium averages 86.8 FPS at 2560x1440. High falls to 71.4 FPS, still above 60, but Ultra drops to 56 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Is the RTX 3060 Ti a bottleneck at 4K in this game?

A: The measured data suggests yes. At 3840x2160, even Low settings only reach 59.1 FPS average. Medium falls to 45.1 FPS, High to 36.3 FPS, and Ultra to 26.6 FPS. The frame rate drops sharply as settings increase, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor at this resolution.

Q: How does the CPU's 3DMark performance relate to Minimum's frame rates?

A: The Ryzen 9 5900X scores 9075 in 3DMark 16-thread and 10075 in max-thread tests. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 170.1 FPS average, suggesting the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at lower settings. The 3DMark single-thread score of 941 does not appear to hinder performance, as frame rates scale consistently with settings changes.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Medium at 1080p?

A: Low averages 170.1 FPS while Medium averages 130.8 FPS. The difference is 39.3 FPS, meaning Medium is 23.1% slower than Low. This is the largest relative drop between adjacent presets at 1080p, indicating a significant GPU workload increase when moving from Low to Medium.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the primary driver of Minimum's frame rate behavior, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The boost clock of 1665 MHz and base clock of 1410 MHz are the reference points for the card's compute throughput of 16.20 TFLOPS FP32. The measured FPS data shows that the GPU's workload scales steeply with settings: at 3840x2160, the average frame rate drops from 59.1 FPS on Low to 26.6 FPS on Ultra, a reduction of 32.5 FPS or 55.0%. This suggests that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are heavily taxed by the game's higher-quality effects. The card's 80 ROPs and 152 TMUs are evident in the texture-heavy rendering, where Medium at 1080p (130.8 FPS) still outperforms High at 1440p (71.4 FPS) by a wide margin. The RTX 3060 Ti's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2626 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6700M, is only 0.2% ahead in average benchmark score. In Minimum, the 8 GB VRAM capacity does not appear to be a limiting factor at 1080p or 1440p, as frame rates remain consistent across settings. However, at 4K Ultra, the 26.6 FPS average indicates that both memory bandwidth and compute capacity are stretched thin. The GPU's 200 W TDP and PCIe 4.0 x16 interface are not directly measured in the FPS data, but the performance envelope suggests the card operates within its designed thermal and power limits across all tested configurations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear hierarchy: Low averages 170.1 FPS, Medium averages 130.8 FPS, High averages 110.8 FPS, and Ultra averages 84.8 FPS. The step-down from Low to Medium is 39.3 FPS, from Medium to High is 20.0 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 26.0 FPS. The 1080p data indicates that Low is the only preset exceeding 170 FPS, while Medium and High remain well above the 100 FPS mark. Ultra is the only preset that falls below 100 FPS at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are 110.1 for Low, 86.8 for Medium, 71.4 for High, and 56.0 for Ultra. The difference between Low and Medium is 23.3 FPS, between Medium and High is 15.4 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 15.4 FPS. Notably, the gap between Medium and Ultra is 30.8 FPS, which is a larger drop than the sum of the individual steps, suggesting diminishing returns from the Ultra preset. Low remains above 100 FPS at 1440p, but Medium and High fall below that threshold.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 59.1 FPS for Low, 45.1 FPS for Medium, 36.3 FPS for High, and 26.6 FPS for Ultra. The differences are 14.0 FPS between Low and Medium, 8.8 FPS between Medium and High, and 9.7 FPS between High and Ultra. This resolution sees the smallest absolute differences between presets, indicating that the GPU is nearing its throughput ceiling. Low is the only preset that reaches the 60 FPS mark, and even then it barely does so. The 4K data shows a compressed range of 32.5 FPS from the fastest to the slowest preset, compared to 85.3 FPS at 1080p and 54.1 FPS at 1440p.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings. At Low, the average falls from 170.1 FPS at 1920x1080 to 110.1 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 35.3% reduction) and then to 59.1 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 46.3% reduction from 1440p). At Medium, the values are 130.8 to 86.8 (33.6% drop) and then to 45.1 (48.0% drop). High goes from 110.8 to 71.4 (35.6% drop) and then to 36.3 (49.2% drop). Ultra drops from 84.8 to 56.0 (34.0% drop) and then to 26.6 (52.5% drop). The percentage drop from 1440p to 4K is consistently larger than the drop from 1080p to 1440p across all presets, indicating that the GPU's fillrate and bandwidth are increasingly saturated as pixel count rises. The scaling pattern suggests that the RTX 3060 Ti is the limiting component at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU's strong multi-threaded performance (Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 33150) allows the GPU to run at higher utilization, but as resolution increases, the GPU becomes the bottleneck. The data shows that the frame rate at 4K Low (59.1 FPS) is nearly identical to the frame rate at 1080p Ultra (84.8 FPS) in relative terms, but the absolute difference of 25.7 FPS highlights the resolution penalty. This behavior is typical for a game that scales primarily with GPU compute, and the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X does not appear to be a limiting factor at any resolution tested.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X provides the computational foundation for this combo, with 12 cores and 24 threads running at a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. The CPU's Zen 3 architecture on the 7 nm process delivers a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 33150 and a single-core score of 4680, placing it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs. In Minimum, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p Low, where the combo reaches 170.1 FPS average. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU can generate enough draw calls and game logic updates to feed the GPU at lower settings. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 9075 and max-thread score of 10075 indicate strong parallel processing capabilities, which are relevant for a third-person shooter that may handle AI, physics, and streaming concurrently. The nearest CPU rival, the Intel Core i7-13700, has an average benchmark score of 39857, which is 1.0% higher, but this does not translate into a measurable FPS advantage in the game data. The CPU's 64 MB of L3 cache is a notable asset for game data locality, though the measured FPS does not isolate cache effects. The boost clock of 4.80 GHz is the key frequency for single-threaded game logic, and the single-thread 3DMark score of 941 is competitive. At 1440p and 4K, the frame rate behavior is dominated by GPU scaling, but the CPU still maintains adequate headroom, as evidenced by the fact that the 1080p Low result (170.1 FPS) is the highest measured value across all configurations. The data indicates that the Ryzen 9 5900X is not a bottleneck in Minimum, even at the highest frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ranks 1203 out of 1733 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. This ranking reflects the GPU's mid-tier position, as the RTX 3060 Ti sits in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, while the CPU is in the 90th percentile. The combination of a top-tier CPU with a mid-range GPU means the system is heavily GPU-limited in this game. The measured FPS data confirms this: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 170.1 FPS, but at 4K Ultra it drops to 26.6 FPS. The rank of 1203 is consistent with the GPU's relative position among all tested graphics cards. The GPU's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6700M, has a deltaPct of -0.2%, meaning it is essentially tied in average benchmark score. Similarly, the CPU's nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 4245P, is only 0.2% ahead. However, in-game, the combo's rank is determined by the aggregate of CPU and GPU performance across the measured presets. The fact that this combo ranks above 530 other combinations (since it is 1203 out of 1733) suggests that the CPU's strong multi-threaded performance helps in CPU-bound scenarios at lower resolutions, even if the GPU limits higher-resolution performance. The ranking also reflects the game's release in 2014, which likely does not fully utilize modern multi-core processors, meaning the Ryzen 9 5900X's 12 cores are not a major differentiator. The data shows that this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where it delivers smooth frame rates at Medium and High settings, rather than 4K, where it struggles to maintain playable performance.