Minimum

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination demonstrates a stark performance curve in Minimum, where the GPU becomes the overwhelming bottleneck at higher resolutions, yet the pairing still delivers playable and often exceptional frame rates across the board. The data indicates that this combo ranks in the 88th percentile (449th of 3712 tested combos) for this title, a strong result that reflects the balance of a high-core-count CPU and a high-bandwidth GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and clearly illustrates where the performance ceiling lies. At 1080p with Ultra settings, the combo produces 161 FPS. Moving to 1440p Ultra, the average falls to 104 FPS, a 35% reduction. The leap to 4K Ultra is even more punishing, with the average dropping to 56 FPS, a further 46% decline. This pattern—an average FPS that nearly halves with each major resolution jump—is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 672.3 GB/s bandwidth are being taxed heavily at 4K, but the sheer pixel count is the primary limiting factor.

The scaling pattern shifts when looking at lower settings. At Low settings, the 1080p average of 329 FPS drops to 212 FPS at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 114 FPS at 4K (a further 46% reduction). The consistency of the percentage drops across different settings—roughly 35-36% for the 1080p to 1440p transition and 46-47% for the 1440p to 4K transition—confirms that resolution, not the game's graphical complexity, is the dominant variable. This is a game that is heavily dependent on the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth, and the CPU's role in this equation is minimal beyond a certain point.

The most telling comparison is the Ultra preset's scaling. The 161 FPS at 1080p is already high, but the drop to 104 FPS at 1440p and 56 FPS at 4K shows that even a top-tier GPU like the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER cannot maintain high refresh rates at native 4K with maximum settings in this title. The data suggests that for a 4K experience, users must be willing to sacrifice settings, as the 4K Medium preset at 87 FPS is a far more playable target than the 56 FPS Ultra result.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results indicate that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, providing a significant boost over Ultra while maintaining high visual fidelity relative to Low. At 1080p, Medium delivers 252 FPS, which is a 56% improvement over Ultra (161 FPS) and only a 23% reduction from Low (329 FPS). This makes Medium the clear choice for high-refresh-rate monitors at 1080p, as the frame rate is high enough to saturate most displays without the visual compromises of Low.

At 1440p, the Medium preset's 162 FPS is exceptionally strong, beating High (136 FPS) by 19% and nearly matching the Low preset's 212 FPS in terms of playability. The 1440p Medium result is the standout data point of the entire set, as it combines a very high frame rate with the better visual quality of Medium settings. For users with 1440p 144Hz or 165Hz monitors, this is the definitive recommendation.

At 4K, the Medium preset's 87 FPS is the only setting that breaks the 60 FPS barrier comfortably. The High preset at 73 FPS is playable, but the Medium preset's 87 FPS provides a much smoother experience, with a minimum FPS of 74 ensuring no significant dips. The Ultra preset at 56 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, making it a poor choice for smooth gameplay. The Low preset at 114 FPS is technically the fastest, but the visual degradation is substantial. The data clearly shows that Medium is the sweet spot for 4K on this hardware, offering a 55% improvement over Ultra while retaining enough visual detail to be immersive.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's specifications are central to understanding the measured results. The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 672.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical asset in Minimum given the game's heavy reliance on texture streaming and high-resolution assets. The 4K results, particularly the 73 FPS at High and 87 FPS at Medium, demonstrate that the memory subsystem is sufficient to avoid severe stuttering, but the GPU's compute capabilities are still the limiting factor at that resolution.

The GPU's boost clock of 2610 MHz, combined with its 8448 shading units, allows for immense raw throughput. The benchmark scores reflect this: a Passmark G3D score of 31811 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5569. These scores place the GPU in the 76th percentile among all GPUs, with its nearest rivals being the NVIDIA Quadro M5000 (0.4% slower) and the NVIDIA TITAN RTX (1.9% slower). This indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is a high-end part, but its performance in Minimum is not solely determined by its raw compute power; the game's engine appears to be well-optimized for the Ada Lovelace architecture.

The 4K Ultra result of 56 FPS, compared to the 4K Medium result of 87 FPS, suggests that the Ultra preset introduces effects that are particularly taxing on the GPU's pixel throughput. The pixel rate of 250.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 689.0 GTexel/s are impressive, but the Ultra preset's additional shading and post-processing demands push the GPU to its limits. The data shows that the GPU's performance scales almost linearly with resolution, confirming that it is the primary bottleneck in this configuration.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo is capable of extremely high frame rates. The Low preset averages 329 FPS, which is a remarkable figure that showcases the CPU's ability to feed the GPU at lower resolutions. The Medium preset averages 252 FPS with a minimum of 214 FPS, and the High preset averages 211 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 161 FPS, which is still very playable but represents a 51% reduction from Low. The 1080p results are consistently above 160 FPS, making this an excellent setup for competitive play on high-refresh-rate monitors.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but begins to show the GPU's load. The Low preset averages 212 FPS, which is a 36% drop from 1080p. The Medium preset averages 162 FPS (with a minimum of 138 FPS), the High preset averages 136 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 104 FPS. The 1440p Ultra result of 104 FPS is particularly notable, as it demonstrates that the GPU can still deliver a high refresh rate experience at maximum settings, albeit with a significant drop from the Medium preset.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's limits are clearly exposed. The Low preset averages 114 FPS, which is impressive for 4K, but the Medium preset's 87 FPS (with a minimum of 74 FPS) is the most balanced result. The High preset averages 73 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 56 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The 4K results show a clear hierarchy: Low and Medium are playable, High is marginal, and Ultra is not recommended for a consistent experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 449 out of 3712 tested combinations places it in the top 12.1% of all systems tested for Minimum. This is a strong result, but it is not at the absolute top, indicating that there are faster combinations available. The ranking is likely influenced by the fact that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, while powerful, is not the absolute fastest GPU on the market, and the Ryzen 9 5900X, despite its 12 cores and 24 threads, is a Zen 3 part that is one generation behind the latest CPUs.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 41376 places it in the 87th percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals such as the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (0.3% faster) and the Intel Core i7-14650HX (0.5% faster). The GPU's average benchmark score of 31087 places it in the 76th percentile, with nearest rivals including the NVIDIA TITAN RTX (1.9% faster). These percentile scores suggest that the CPU is slightly stronger relative to its peers than the GPU is, but both are high-end parts.

The gap between this combo's rank (449th) and the top of the list is likely due to the fact that Minimum is a 2014 title that may not fully utilize the CPU's multi-threading capabilities. The game's engine, being over a decade old, likely benefits more from raw single-thread performance and GPU throughput. The combo's 1080p Low result of 329 FPS is excellent, but newer CPUs with higher single-thread clocks or newer GPUs with more raw compute could push that number higher.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. Its 64 MB of L3 cache is substantial, and its benchmark scores reflect a strong multi-threaded performer: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16262 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 14118. However, its single-thread performance, while good (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1527), is not exceptional by modern standards.

In Minimum, the CPU's role appears to be secondary to the GPU. The evidence for this is the consistent frame rate drops that track with resolution changes. At 1080p Low, the 329 FPS average suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough data to achieve very high frame rates, but the fact that the 4K Low result is only 114 FPS confirms that the GPU is the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The CPU's 12 cores are likely underutilized in this game, which is typical for a title from 2014 that was designed for older, lower-core-count processors.

The CPU's passmark physics score of 1994 and data compression score of 499968 are high, but these metrics are not necessarily relevant to gaming performance. The game's engine likely relies more on the CPU's single-thread performance for game logic and draw calls, and the Ryzen 9 5900X's boost clock of 4.80 GHz is sufficient to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at 1080p and 1440p. The data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this configuration, as evidenced by the fact that the frame rates scale so predictably with resolution and settings, which are GPU-dependent variables. The CPU's contribution is to ensure that the GPU is never starved for data, which it does admirably given the high frame rates observed at lower resolutions.