Minimum

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a decidedly GPU-bound experience in Minimum, a Third-Person Shooter released on 2014-06-25. The benchmark data shows a clear pattern where the aging Polaris 20 GPU, with its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, becomes the primary bottleneck as resolution increases. The 12-core, 20-thread Alder Lake processor (base 3.60 GHz, boost 5.00 GHz) is more than capable of feeding the GPU at lower resolutions, but the RX 570's 5.095 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth limit the overall frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance cliff when moving from 1080p to 4K, which is a classic indicator of severe GPU limitation. At 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 80.8 FPS, but this drops to 53.9 FPS at 1440p and then plummets to 26.4 FPS at 4K. This represents a 67% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, a drop that is far more aggressive than what a balanced system would show. The pattern strongly suggests that the RX 570's compute units and memory subsystem are saturated well before the i7-12700K is stressed.

The scaling behavior under High settings is even more telling. The system produces 54.4 FPS at 1080p, 33.7 FPS at 1440p, and just 20.4 FPS at 4K. The relative performance loss from 1440p to 4K is 39.5%, which is slightly less than the 50.9% loss observed from 1080p to 1440p. This non-linear degradation indicates that the GPU is hitting a hard architectural limit at higher resolutions, likely due to the 4 GB memory capacity and the 32 ROPs. The data shows that the i7-12700K is not the limiting component here; the RX 570's pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s are simply insufficient for 4K workloads in this title.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570's specifications directly explain the measured results. With a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz, the GPU operates with a modest 150 W TDP, but its GCN 4.0 architecture from the 14 nm process node is dated. The 4 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which appears to be a critical constraint in Minimum at higher resolutions. The benchmark data shows that Ultra settings at 4K produce only 14.5 FPS, which is a 44.8% drop from the already-low 26.4 FPS at Low settings. This sensitivity to settings suggests that texture and shader complexity are overwhelming the memory bus and the 2048 shading units.

The GPU's percentileVsAllGpus score of 74 indicates it performs better than 74% of all GPUs in the database, yet its nearest rivals are modern cards like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2) and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (deltaPct 0.2). This parity in average benchmark scores (30158 vs 30109 and 30097) is surprising given the generational gap, but it does not translate to competitive performance in Minimum at 4K. The RX 570's end-of-life production status and 2017-04-17 release date mean it lacks the modern feature set and memory efficiency of its rivals, which is evident in the measured FPS deltas.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700K and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks 1670 out of 1733 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the bottom 3.6% of all configurations. This rank is surprisingly low given the CPU's strong capabilities. The i7-12700K itself sits at the 89th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35684, but the GPU drags the overall combo down dramatically. The data shows that the CPU's nearest rivals — AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (deltaPct -0.3), Intel Core i7-13700T (deltaPct 0.6), Intel Core i5-14500HX (deltaPct -0.7), and Intel Core i7-13800H (deltaPct 0.8) — all have nearly identical average scores, indicating that the CPU is not a differentiator in this pairing.

The GPU's rank is similarly mid-pack at the 74th percentile, but its nearest rivals again show the mismatch: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2), AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (deltaPct 0.2), NVIDIA Tesla M60 (deltaPct 0.6), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.8) all have comparable average benchmark scores. However, the measured FPS in Minimum demonstrates that these synthetic averages do not reflect real-world gaming performance. The combo's 1670th rank out of 1733 combos is a clear statement that this pairing is severely unbalanced for this title, with the GPU being the overwhelming bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo shows usable performance across most settings. Low settings produce 80.8 FPS, Medium yields 62.1 FPS, High drops to 54.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 40.3 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra is a 50.1% reduction in frame rate, which is substantial but typical for a GPU with 4 GB of memory. The data indicates that 1080p is the only resolution where this combo approaches playable frame rates for competitive gaming, and even then, Ultra settings require compromises.

Moving to 2560x1440 reveals the GPU's limitations more clearly. Low settings deliver 53.9 FPS, which is a 33.3% drop from 1080p Low. Medium produces 39.5 FPS, High yields 33.7 FPS, and Ultra drops to 25.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium at 1440p is 26.7%, while the gap between Medium and High is 14.7%. This diminishing return suggests that the GPU's shading units are becoming the limiting factor, as the resolution increase demands more pixel throughput than the 32 ROPs can provide.

At 3840x2160, the performance collapses. Low settings manage only 26.4 FPS, Medium drops to 20.6 FPS, High falls to 20.4 FPS, and Ultra plummets to 14.5 FPS. The differences between Medium and High at 4K are negligible (0.2 FPS), which indicates that the GPU is completely saturated and settings changes have minimal impact. The 4K Ultra result of 14.5 FPS is below the threshold for acceptable playability, confirming that this combo is unsuitable for 4K gaming in Minimum.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-12700K or the AMD Radeon RX 570 the bottleneck in this game?

A: The data shows the GPU is the overwhelming bottleneck. The i7-12700K has an average benchmark score of 35684 and ranks at the 89th percentile among all CPUs, while the RX 570's percentileVsAllGpus is 74. The steep FPS drops with resolution scaling, particularly the 67% reduction from 1080p Low (80.8 FPS) to 4K Low (26.4 FPS), indicate the GPU cannot keep up with the CPU's output.

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this combo?

A: The benchmark results show that 1920x1080 with Low settings yields the highest average FPS at 80.8. For better visual quality, Medium at 1080p provides 62.1 FPS, which is still above 60 FPS. At 1440p, only Low settings (53.9 FPS) come close to playable frame rates, while 4K is not viable with any settings.

Q: How does this combo compare to other configurations with similar average benchmark scores?

A: The combo ranks 1670 out of 1733 tested combos, which is in the bottom 3.6%. Despite the GPU having a deltaPct of 0.2 compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT in synthetic benchmarks, the measured FPS in Minimum shows the RX 570 performs far worse in real gaming workloads due to its older GCN 4.0 architecture.

Q: What is the impact of the RX 570's 4 GB memory on performance?

A: The 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth is a critical constraint. At 4K Ultra settings, the system achieves only 14.5 FPS, which is a 44.8% drop from 4K Low (26.4 FPS). The non-linear scaling between resolutions suggests that memory capacity and bandwidth are exhausted when texture and geometry demands increase.

Q: Is this combination better suited for CPU-intensive tasks than gaming?

A: The data suggests yes. The i7-12700K excels in synthetic benchmarks like Cinebench R23 multicore (29241) and Passmark multithread (34404), but the RX 570's 74th percentile GPU rank relative to rivals like the RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2) shows it is not competitive for modern gaming workloads. The combo's 1670th rank in Minimum reflects this imbalance.

Q: What does the FPS scaling from Low to Ultra tell us about the game's engine?

A: The scaling pattern, particularly at 1080p where Ultra (40.3 FPS) is exactly half of Low (80.8 FPS), indicates that Minimum is heavily dependent on GPU fill rate and texture bandwidth. The 4K results, where Medium (20.6 FPS) and High (20.4 FPS) are virtually identical, suggest the engine saturates the GPU's 32 ROPs and 2048 shading units before settings differences can manifest.