Minimum

Minimum, the 2014 third-person shooter, is remarkably forgiving on modern hardware, and the data for the Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT confirms this. The benchmark results indicate that this combination not only meets but vastly exceeds the demands of the game, delivering high refresh rate performance even at 4K. The most significant finding is that the CPU, while a mid-range part from 2018, is more than capable of feeding the high-end GPU, making the graphics card the sole determinant of performance scaling across resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows a clear hierarchy where the choice of settings is primarily a trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate headroom. For players with high refresh rate 1080p or 1440p monitors, the Ultra preset is the definitive recommendation. At 1920x1080, Ultra delivers an average of 148.9 FPS, which is not only playable but smooth enough for competitive scenarios. The jump to 2560x1440 on Ultra still yields a robust 97.5 FPS, ensuring a fluid experience without compromising on the game's graphical quality.

However, for those targeting 4K at 3840x2160, the High preset is the optimal balance. It produces an average of 64.7 FPS, which is a solid 60+ frame rate experience, while the Ultra preset drops to 51.3 FPS, which can feel less responsive. The data suggests that the visual jump from High to Ultra is not worth the 13.4 FPS loss at this resolution. The Low preset, while offering the highest frame rates (259.7 FPS at 1080p), is only advisable for players seeking absolute maximum refresh rates beyond 240Hz, as the visual compromise is significant. The Medium preset serves as a stepping stone, but High provides a better performance-to-quality ratio in the data, offering 192.4 FPS at 1080p and 122.3 FPS at 1440p.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader context of all tested system combinations, this specific pairing performs exceptionally well. The data places this combo at rank 398 out of 1733 tested combinations. This places it firmly in the top quarter of all systems, which is impressive given the age of the processor. This high ranking is almost entirely attributable to the GPU, as the RX 7900 XT is a top-tier card. The benchmark results indicate that the system's overall standing is limited by the i5-9400's processing power, but not in a way that hampers this specific title. In a game as lightweight as Minimum, the CPU’s lower benchmark percentile compared to the GPU does not manifest as a bottleneck, allowing the system to achieve a rank that belies the processor's age. The combo’s position suggests that for this game, the pairing is well-balanced, even if the CPU would struggle in more demanding modern titles.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications fully explain the measured frame rates. The GPU features a massive 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, providing a 800.0 GB/s bandwidth. This memory configuration is overkill for Minimum, ensuring that texture streaming and memory allocation are never a limiting factor. The core clocks are also substantial, with a base clock of 1387 MHz and a boost clock of 2394 MHz, with a game clock rated at 2025 MHz. This high clock speed, combined with 5376 shading units, allows the card to process the game's geometry and effects with immense speed. The GPU's performance percentile of 82 indicates it is faster than the vast majority of all GPUs, which is reflected in the ability to push over 250 FPS at 1080p. In this game, the GPU's raw compute power is the primary driver of the performance deltas seen between settings and resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across all standard resolutions. At 1920x1080, the system is profoundly GPU-bound, with frame rates that exceed the refresh rates of most monitors. The results are: Low at 259.7 FPS, Medium at 232.9 FPS, High at 192.4 FPS, and Ultra at 148.9 FPS. The scaling here is smooth, with each increase in settings reducing the frame rate by a predictable margin.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains exceptionally high, though the gap between settings begins to widen. The system delivers 191.2 FPS on Low, 148.9 FPS on Medium, 122.3 FPS on High, and 97.5 FPS on Ultra. These numbers indicate that even at 1440p, the system is far from being stressed. The most significant performance drop occurs at 3840x2160, where the GPU's work becomes more demanding. Here, the results are 104.9 FPS on Low, 76.9 FPS on Medium, 64.7 FPS on High, and 51.3 FPS on Ultra. The data shows that the transition from Low to Medium at 4K results in a 28 FPS drop, which is the largest single-settings delta observed in the entire dataset.

Resolution Scaling

The performance degradation from 1080p to 4K is a textbook example of GPU-bound scaling. When moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on the High preset, the average FPS drops from 192.4 to 122.3, a decline of 36.4%. This indicates that the GPU is being tasked with rendering significantly more pixels. The scaling continues as expected when moving to 3840x2160, where the High preset yields 64.7 FPS, a further 47.1% drop from 1440p. This linear progression in performance loss is a clear sign that the Intel Core i5-9400 is not the limiting factor at these settings.

The data suggests that the CPU is capable of maintaining a high frame rate ceiling, and the FPS is instead determined by the GPU's pixel throughput. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would observe a plateau in FPS at lower resolutions, where the GPU is waiting for the processor. Instead, the FPS continues to rise significantly from 4K to 1080p, confirming that the RX 7900 XT is the component doing the heavy lifting. The scaling pattern indicates that the i5-9400 has ample headroom, and the GPU is only fully saturated at the 4K resolution with higher settings.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run Minimum at 4K with high settings?

A: Yes. The measured data shows an average of 64.7 FPS at 3840x2160 on the High preset, which provides a smooth and playable experience for most users.

Q: What is the best settings preset for maximum frame rates at 1080p?

A: For the absolute highest frame rate, the Low preset delivers an average of 259.7 FPS at 1920x1080. This is ideal for 240Hz displays.

Q: How much of a performance hit does the Ultra preset take at 1440p?

A: Compared to the High preset at 2560x1440 (122.3 FPS), the Ultra preset averages 97.5 FPS, a reduction of 24.8 FPS.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 a bottleneck for the RX 7900 XT in this game?

A: The data indicates no. The frame rates scale consistently with resolution and settings, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU does not appear to limit performance in Minimum.

Q: Does the RX 7900 XT's 20 GB of VRAM make a difference in this game?

A: The game is from 2014 and is not demanding on memory. The 20 GB capacity and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth ensure that memory is never a limiting factor, but the game likely uses only a fraction of it.

Q: How does the system's performance rank compared to all tested combos?

A: The combination ranks 398th out of 1733 tested systems, placing it in the top 23% of all configurations in the database for this game.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor from the Coffee Lake generation. It has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, with a 9 MB shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 7969 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1125 in single-core. These scores place it at the 50th percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is a solid mid-range processor. However, for Minimum, these specifications are more than adequate.

The game's engine is not heavily multithreaded, and the i5-9400's six physical cores provide sufficient processing power. The benchmark results show that the CPU does not constrain the GPU. For instance, at 1080p Low, the system hits 259.7 FPS. This high frame rate indicates that the CPU is capable of issuing draw calls and processing game logic fast enough to keep up with the GPU's output. If the CPU were weaker, we would see this number capped at a lower value. The data shows that the processor's performance is sufficient to allow the RX 7900 XT to operate at its full potential, making the GPU the definitive performance ceiling for this pairing in Minimum.