Minimum

Minimum, the 2014 third-person shooter, shows a clear performance hierarchy for the Intel Core i5-12600KF and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT combination, where the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, sacrificing only a modest amount of frame rate over Low settings while delivering a substantial visual uplift over High and Ultra. The benchmark data reveals that this pairing is heavily GPU-bound at higher settings and resolutions, with the CPU providing ample headroom to push frame rates well beyond 100 FPS at 1080p when graphical load is reduced. The measured results indicate that while Ultra settings are playable, they incur a severe performance penalty, making Medium the sweet spot for consistent, high-refresh-rate gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The Medium preset is the definitive recommendation for this combo, as it provides the best compromise between visual fidelity and performance across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers an average of 156 FPS, which is 25 frames higher than High at 131 FPS and 56 frames higher than Ultra at 100 FPS, while only trailing Low by 48 FPS. This gap narrows at higher resolutions, but the pattern persists: at 2560x1440, Medium produces 101 FPS average, which is 16 frames above High's 85 FPS and 37 frames above Ultra's 64 FPS, while Low reaches 132 FPS. The advantage of Medium becomes even more pronounced at 4K, where it maintains 54 FPS average, versus 46 FPS on High and a nearly unplayable 35 FPS on Ultra, while Low achieves a smooth 71 FPS.

For players targeting 60 FPS as a baseline, Medium is the only preset that consistently hits that mark at 2560x1440 and above, with the 4K Medium result showing a minimum of 46 FPS and maximum of 62 FPS, indicating some frame-time variance but generally acceptable performance. Ultra settings are not recommended at any resolution for this game, as the 35 FPS average at 4K and 64 FPS at 1440p demonstrate that the visual gains do not justify the substantial frame rate cost. Low settings are viable for competitive play at 1080p, where the 204 FPS average exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, but the visual downgrade is significant. The data shows that Medium provides the most consistent experience, with the smallest percentage drop from Low while maintaining a comfortable margin above High and Ultra.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT plays the dominant role in determining frame rates in Minimum, as evidenced by the dramatic scaling between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 384.0 GB/s bandwidth is more than sufficient for this title, even at 4K, where the High preset uses enough memory bandwidth to sustain 46 FPS average. The RDNA 2.0 architecture, built on TSMC's 7 nm process with 17,200 million transistors, provides a solid foundation, with the 2560 shading units and 40 ray accelerators contributing to the card's 13.21 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance. The boost clock of 2581 MHz and game clock of 2424 MHz indicate that the card is running near its maximum potential in this workload, as the frame rates scale predictably with resolution changes.

The GPU's 64 ROPs and 160 TMUs deliver a pixel rate of 165.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 413.0 GTexel/s, which are adequate for the visual complexity of Minimum but show clear limitations at Ultra settings. The benchmark scores for the GPU, including a Passmark G3D score of 19786 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2435, place it at the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 27425 is within 0.5% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, indicating that this card punches above its class for this generation. The 230 W TDP and PCIe 4.0 x16 interface ensure that the card can maintain consistent performance without thermal throttling in most systems, though the data suggests that the GPU becomes the limiting factor well before the CPU does.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, where reducing resolution yields disproportionately large gains in FPS. At Medium settings, the average frame rate drops from 156 FPS at 1080p to 101 FPS at 1440p, a 35% reduction, and then to 54 FPS at 4K, a further 47% reduction from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern indicates that the RX 6700 XT's rendering pipeline is the primary constraint, as the pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K, yet the frame rate does not drop proportionally, suggesting that other bottlenecks such as memory bandwidth and fill rate mitigate the impact. The Low preset shows the most dramatic scaling, with 204 FPS at 1080p, 132 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K, representing a 65% total drop from 1080p to 4K.

The High and Ultra presets exhibit steeper relative declines, with High dropping from 131 FPS at 1080p to 85 FPS at 1440p and 46 FPS at 4K, while Ultra drops from 100 FPS to 64 FPS and then 35 FPS across the same resolutions. This behavior confirms that the GPU's 384.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 165.2 GPixel/s pixel rate are being saturated at higher settings, particularly at 4K where the Ultra preset's 35 FPS average suggests the card is struggling to maintain playable performance. The CPU, with its 10 cores and 16 threads running at a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, is clearly not the limiting factor, as evidenced by the 204 FPS result at 1080p Low, which leaves substantial headroom for the GPU to be the sole bottleneck in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12600KF and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT combination ranks 1935th out of 3712 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the 48th percentile of all system configurations tested for this game. This mid-pack ranking is somewhat surprising given the individual component strengths, but it reflects the fact that Minimum is an older title that does not heavily stress modern hardware, allowing many lower-end CPUs paired with higher-end GPUs to achieve comparable or better frame rates. The CPU itself ranks at the 79th percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 27799, placing it just 0.3% below the Intel Core i9-10900K and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which have average scores of 27872 and 27896 respectively.

The GPU's performance is similarly strong, ranking at the 72nd percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 27425, which is statistically tied with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile at 27435 and within 0.5% of the RTX 3090 at 27565. However, the combo's ranking in Minimum suggests that the game's engine is not fully utilizing the available hardware resources, as the measured frame rates show that even at 1080p Ultra, the system only achieves 100 FPS, which is well below what the individual component benchmarks would suggest. The data indicates that this combo is better suited for more demanding modern titles, as Minimum's relatively simple rendering pipeline leaves the RX 6700 XT underutilized at lower resolutions, while the CPU's strong single-thread performance does not translate into proportional gains in this specific game.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset to use for 1440p gaming with this combo?

A: Medium is the optimal choice, delivering 101 FPS average with a minimum of 86 FPS and maximum of 116 FPS, which provides a smooth experience while maintaining visual quality. High settings are also viable at 85 FPS average, but Ultra drops to 64 FPS and is not recommended for competitive play.

Q: How does the RX 6700 XT compare to the RTX 3090 in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RX 6700 XT has an average benchmark score of 27425, which is only 0.5% lower than the RTX 3090's score of 27565, placing them in the same performance tier despite the significant price difference between the two cards.

Q: Is the i5-12600KF a bottleneck for this GPU in Minimum?

A: No, the data shows the CPU is not the limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 204 FPS, and the CPU's average benchmark score of 27799 indicates it has substantial headroom, with the GPU becoming the bottleneck at higher settings and resolutions.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: The measured average is 35 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. For 4K, Medium is recommended at 54 FPS average, or Low at 71 FPS if higher frame rates are preferred over visual fidelity.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations for Minimum?

A: It ranks 1935th out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the middle of the pack. This ranking reflects the game's age and relatively low hardware demands, as many lower-end CPUs paired with comparable GPUs achieve similar results.

Q: Does the 12 GB VRAM on the RX 6700 XT affect performance in Minimum?

A: The 12 GB of GDDR6 memory is more than sufficient for this game, as even at 4K Ultra, the frame rate is limited by compute and fill rate rather than memory capacity, with no indication that VRAM allocation is a bottleneck in the measured results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all presets, with Low achieving an average of 204 FPS, Medium reaching 156 FPS with a minimum of 133 FPS and maximum of 180 FPS, High producing 131 FPS, and Ultra falling to 100 FPS. These results show that at 1080p, the RX 6700 XT has enough headroom to maintain high refresh rates even on Ultra, though the 100 FPS figure represents a 51% reduction from Low. The 1440p results follow a similar pattern with reduced absolute numbers: Low averages 132 FPS, Medium averages 101 FPS with a range of 86 to 116 FPS, High averages 85 FPS, and Ultra averages 64 FPS. At 4K, the performance drops significantly across all presets, with Low achieving 71 FPS, Medium averaging 54 FPS with a minimum of 46 FPS and maximum of 62 FPS, High averaging 46 FPS, and Ultra dropping to 35 FPS. The complete dataset demonstrates that Medium is the only preset that maintains playable frame rates at all three resolutions, while Ultra becomes increasingly less viable as resolution increases, with the 4K Ultra result falling below 40 FPS average.