Minimum

The Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER combination delivers its best overall experience at 1080p with the Medium preset, which produces a measured average of 101.9 FPS. This strikes the optimal balance between visual fidelity and frame rate headroom for a third-person shooter, as the Low preset at 133.5 FPS offers diminishing returns on visual quality while the High preset at 86.3 FPS begins to sacrifice responsiveness. At 1440p, the Medium preset drops to 63.6 FPS, which remains playable but shows the GPU starting to strain, while the High preset at 52.8 FPS is borderline for fast-paced gameplay. The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution, as it yields only 64.1 FPS at 1080p and falls to a sluggish 22.3 FPS at 4K, indicating that the settings curve is heavily front-loaded toward the lower tiers in this title.

Settings Recommendations

Benchmark results indicate that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this hardware pairing. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 101.9 FPS, which is 15.6 FPS higher than High (86.3 FPS) and 37.8 FPS higher than Ultra (64.1 FPS). The jump from Low to Medium costs 31.6 FPS (from 133.5 to 101.9), but the visual improvement in a third-person shooter is typically worth that trade-off, as you are constantly observing character models and environmental details. For competitive play where maximum frame rate is paramount, Low at 133.5 FPS is the obvious choice, but the data shows that Medium still provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold. At 2560x1440, Medium is the highest playable option at 63.6 FPS, while High dips to 52.8 FPS, which is below what most players would consider smooth for this genre. Users with 1440p displays should stick to Medium or drop to Low (81.6 FPS) if they prioritize refresh rate over detail.

GPU Role

The GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary performance limiter in this configuration, as evidenced by the steep FPS drops when resolution increases. The GPU features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s bandwidth, which is sufficient for this 2014 title even at 4K, but the raw compute throughput of 5.027 TFLOPS FP32 begins to bottleneck at higher resolutions. The card's boost clock of 1785 MHz and base clock of 1530 MHz are moderate for its class, and the benchmark data shows that the GPU's DirectX 11 score of 104 (PassMark) is more relevant than its DirectX 12 score of 50, suggesting the game's rendering path favors the older API. The GPU sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs and is closely matched with the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT, which trails by only 0.7% in average benchmark score. When comparing measured FPS across resolutions, the GPU's influence becomes clear: at 1080p Low, the CPU has enough headroom to push 133.5 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, the GPU is overwhelmed at 22.3 FPS, a 111.2 FPS drop that indicates the graphics card is doing nearly all the heavy lifting in this scenario.

CPU Role

The i5-10400F provides a solid foundation for this game, with 6 cores and 12 threads running at a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost clock of 4.30 GHz. Its multi-threaded performance is respectable for gaming, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10297 and a single-core score of 1453, the latter being more critical for most game engines. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 2541 and multi-thread score of 12115 place it at the 73rd percentile among all CPUs, indicating that it is not a weak link in this pairing. Benchmark results show that the CPU is rarely the bottleneck at 1080p, where the GPU limits frame rates to 133.5 FPS on Low settings; however, the CPU's 3DMark 2-thread score of 1350 versus 8-thread score of 3929 suggests that the game can leverage multiple cores but does not heavily depend on them. The CPU's L3 cache of 12 MB (shared) and DDR4 memory support with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for this title, and the data shows that the CPU's performance is statistically similar to the Intel Core i5-8500, which is only 1.1% faster in average benchmark score. In practical terms, the CPU will not hold back the GTX 1660 SUPER at any resolution in this game, as even the 4K Low result of 46.5 FPS is more likely GPU-bound than CPU-bound.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 60+ FPS at 1080p?

A: The Medium preset delivers 101.9 FPS, and High also exceeds 60 FPS at 86.3 FPS. Ultra is the only 1080p preset that falls below 60 FPS, with a measured 64.1 FPS.

Q: Can this hardware handle 4K gaming in Minimum?

A: Only at Low settings, which produces 46.5 FPS. Medium drops to 37.1 FPS, High to 32.1 FPS, and Ultra to 22.3 FPS, making 4K playable only with significant visual compromises.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 14286, which is 0.2% lower than the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (14314) and 0.7% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (14389). It performs 0.2% better than the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14315).

Q: Is the i5-10400F a bottleneck for this game?

A: No. The CPU's single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 score of 1453) and multi-thread score (10297) are sufficient, as evidenced by 1080p Low reaching 133.5 FPS, which is likely GPU-limited rather than CPU-limited.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: Low settings produce 81.6 FPS, while Ultra drops to 41.4 FPS. The difference is 40.2 FPS, which is a 49.3% reduction in frame rate when maxing out settings.

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

A: The average FPS drops from 101.9 at 1080p to 37.1 at 4K, a reduction of 64.8 FPS (63.6% lower). This indicates the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling as resolution increases. At Medium settings, moving from 1920x1080 (101.9 FPS) to 2560x1440 (63.6 FPS) costs 38.3 FPS, and moving to 3840x2160 (37.1 FPS) costs another 26.5 FPS. The total drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium is 64.8 FPS, representing a 63.6% reduction in performance. This scaling behavior is typical for a GPU with 6 GB of VRAM and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth, as the pixel throughput requirement quadruples from 1080p to 4K while the GPU's fill rate remains constant. At Low settings, the drop is even more pronounced in absolute terms: from 133.5 FPS at 1080p to 81.6 FPS at 1440p to 46.5 FPS at 4K, a total loss of 87.0 FPS (65.2%). The fact that Low settings show proportionally similar scaling to Medium suggests that the game's settings do not drastically change the GPU workload profile—the bottleneck shifts consistently with pixel count rather than with specific effects. At Ultra settings, the 1080p result of 64.1 FPS drops to 22.3 FPS at 4K, a 41.8 FPS decrease (65.2%), which mirrors the Low settings percentage drop almost exactly. This consistency indicates that resolution is the dominant factor in this game's performance scaling, and users should expect roughly a 65% performance penalty when quadrupling pixel count, regardless of quality preset.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this hardware combination is as follows:

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 133.5 FPS
• Medium: 101.9 FPS
• High: 86.3 FPS
• Ultra: 64.1 FPS

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 81.6 FPS
• Medium: 63.6 FPS
• High: 52.8 FPS
• Ultra: 41.4 FPS

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 46.5 FPS
• Medium: 37.1 FPS
• High: 32.1 FPS
• Ultra: 22.3 FPS

The data shows that the 1080p Low setting is the only configuration exceeding 120 FPS, which is important for high-refresh-rate displays. At 1080p, the spread between Low and Ultra is 69.4 FPS, indicating that the settings menu offers substantial performance headroom. At 1440p, the spread narrows to 40.2 FPS, and at 4K it narrows further to 24.2 FPS, which means that at higher resolutions, the choice of preset has less impact on absolute frame rate because the GPU is already saturated. The 1440p Medium result of 63.6 FPS is nearly identical to the 1080p Ultra result of 64.1 FPS, suggesting that users can trade resolution for quality at roughly equivalent performance levels. Similarly, 4K Low at 46.5 FPS is comparable to 1440p Ultra at 41.4 FPS, though the latter may look better due to higher texture detail despite the lower resolution. For players targeting 60 FPS, the viable options are 1080p at any preset (including Ultra at 64.1 FPS) and 1440p at Medium (63.6 FPS) or Low (81.6 FPS). The 4K resolution is only viable at Low settings if the user accepts sub-50 FPS gameplay, which is generally not recommended for a third-person shooter that benefits from smooth camera movement.