Minimum

Minimum, the 2014 third-person shooter, is an older title that nonetheless presents a fascinating stress test for a modern flagship pairing. The benchmark data for the Intel Core i7-12700K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 reveals a system that is massively overqualified for the game’s visuals, yet the performance scaling across settings and resolutions tells a clear story about where bottlenecks emerge. The headline finding is that this combination is almost entirely GPU-limited at 4K, but at 1080p, the sheer speed of the RTX 5090 pushes frame rates so high that the CPU’s influence becomes the dominant factor in determining the final experience. This analysis will break down the optimal settings, the roles of the GPU and CPU, and the exact measured performance figures.

Settings Recommendations

For the Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 pairing in Minimum, the data strongly suggests that the High preset at 2560x1440 offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, delivering a 167 average FPS. This is a substantial 40 FPS jump over the Ultra preset at the same resolution, which only manages 127 average FPS, while the difference in visual quality between High and Ultra in a game from 2014 is typically negligible. The High preset at 1440p is also remarkably smooth, with no minimum FPS recorded as a concern, indicating a stable experience well above the refresh rates of most high-end monitors.

At 1920x1080, the High preset achieves 259 average FPS, which is an excellent figure for competitive play, but the Low preset reaches 403 average FPS. For players seeking the absolute highest frame rates for a competitive edge, the Low preset at 1080p is the clear choice, as the data shows it is the only configuration to break the 400 FPS barrier. However, the Medium preset at 1080p, with an average of 309 FPS and a minimum of 262 FPS, provides a more balanced experience, ensuring frame times remain consistent even in demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at any resolution is difficult to recommend, as it incurs a significant performance penalty—a 62 FPS drop from High to Ultra at 1080p—without a corresponding benefit in gameplay smoothness.

For 4K gaming, the situation is more nuanced. The High preset at 3840x2160 yields 90 average FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a high-refresh-rate display. The Medium preset provides a more comfortable 107 average FPS with a minimum of 91 FPS, making it the most viable option for 4K if one insists on higher resolutions. The Low preset at 4K, while achieving 140 FPS, sacrifices too much visual quality for a marginal gain over Medium given the GPU’s headroom. Ultimately, the optimal experience is at 1440p High, where the system delivers a high frame rate that is both visually rich and fluid, avoiding the diminishing returns of Ultra and the unnecessary visual downgrade of Low.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the undisputed performance driver in this benchmark, and its specifications are almost absurdly powerful for a game like Minimum. The GPU features a massive 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. This immense memory subsystem is far beyond what Minimum requires, but it explains why the card can handle 4K resolutions without any signs of memory-related stuttering. The core clock speeds, with a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz, allow for incredible throughput, which is reflected in its benchmark scores like a Passmark G3D score of 39650 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 334370.

The data shows that the RTX 5090’s raw compute power is the primary reason for the high frame rates observed. At 1440p, the GPU is so fast that it can render frames faster than the CPU can feed it, leading to the CPU becoming the limiting factor as resolution drops. The GPU’s 21760 shading units and 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are overkill for a title from 2014, but they ensure that even at 4K Ultra, the system maintains a playable 69 average FPS. The GPU’s role is most evident in the scaling from Medium to Ultra settings; the performance drop is substantial, but the absolute numbers remain high, showcasing that the RTX 5090 is never truly struggling, merely being held back by the game’s engine or the CPU at lower resolutions. The GPU’s 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79842, confirms its elite status, though its nearest rivals in synthetic tests, like the Tesla P100, are not gaming cards and do not reflect real-world gaming performance.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates the shift in bottleneck from the CPU to the GPU. At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 259 at 1920x1080 to 167 at 2560x1440, a 35.5% decrease, and then to 90 at 3840x2160, a further 46.1% decrease. This pattern indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the primary limiter, as the GPU is capable of producing far more frames than the processor can handle, capping the output. As the resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU’s rendering workload becomes heavier, and the frame rate drops accordingly, showing that the GPU is now the limiting factor.

This is even more pronounced at the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 403 FPS, but this drops to 260 FPS at 1440p (a 35.5% decrease) and then to 140 FPS at 4K (a 46.1% decrease). The percentage drops are nearly identical to the High preset, which is interesting because it suggests the CPU is still a significant constraint even at Low settings. The RTX 5090 is so powerful that lowering the settings does not proportionally increase the frame rate at lower resolutions because the CPU cannot keep up. At 4K, however, the GPU’s workload becomes so intensive that it overtakes the CPU as the primary bottleneck, and the difference between Low and High settings becomes more about GPU load than CPU limitations. The data shows that the system is exquisitely balanced for 1440p gaming, where neither component is completely overwhelmed, but at 1080p, the CPU holds the GPU back, and at 4K, the GPU is finally challenged.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a comprehensive view of the system’s capabilities. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers a staggering 403 average FPS, which is the highest recorded score in any configuration. The Medium preset follows with 309 average FPS, and its recorded minimum of 262 FPS and maximum of 355 FPS show a wider variance, suggesting moments of CPU-bound frame pacing. The High preset achieves 259 average FPS, while the Ultra preset drops to 197 average FPS. This 106 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p highlights the CPU’s role, as the GPU is not the limiting factor in either case.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset still manages a very high 260 average FPS, demonstrating the GPU’s headroom. The Medium preset delivers 199 average FPS, with a minimum of 169 FPS and a maximum of 229 FPS, which is a solid range for high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset achieves 167 average FPS, which is an excellent figure for a visually detailed setting. The Ultra preset at 1440p produces 127 average FPS, which is still playable but shows the performance cost of maximizing every setting. The transition from 1080p to 1440p shows a consistent drop, but the system remains comfortably in high-frame-rate territory.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes more moderate. The Low preset yields 140 average FPS, which is a great result for 4K, but the Medium preset drops to 107 average FPS, with a minimum of 91 FPS and a maximum of 123 FPS. The High preset manages 90 average FPS, which is on the edge of what many would consider smooth for a fast-paced shooter. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, producing 69 average FPS. This is the only configuration that dips below the 70 FPS mark, indicating that the RTX 5090, while incredibly powerful, is not immune to the demands of 4K Ultra settings, even in an older game. Across all resolutions, the Medium presets consistently provide the most stable frame times, as evidenced by the recorded minimum and maximum values, making it a reliable choice for a consistent experience.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Minimum, this pairing of the Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 holds a rank of 80 out of 3712 combos. This places it in the top 2.2% of all tested systems, which is an exceptionally strong showing. The high rank is primarily driven by the GPU’s immense power and the CPU’s adequate performance, ensuring that the system does not leave performance on the table at higher resolutions. The ranking reflects the fact that this is a top-tier combination, even if it is not the absolute best. The GPU’s percentile rank of 92 among all GPUs and the CPU’s percentile rank of 84 among all CPUs both contribute to this high overall ranking.

The combo rank of 80 suggests that there are 79 other configurations that perform better in this specific game, which likely include newer CPUs with higher single-thread performance or configurations with even more optimized pairings. However, given that the game is from 2014 and the hardware is from 2025, the fact that this combo ranks in the top 100 is more a reflection of the GPU’s dominance than the CPU’s. The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i5-13600T with a delta of -0.1% and the Intel Core i7-12700KF with a delta of -0.2%, show that the i7-12700K is essentially on par with its closest competitors in synthetic benchmarks, meaning the CPU is not the differentiating factor. The ranking is, therefore, a measure of the GPU’s ability to push frames, and the RTX 5090’s performance in Minimum is clearly near the top of the field.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K plays a critical, albeit secondary, role in this system’s performance in Minimum. With 12 cores (8 performance and 4 efficiency) and 20 threads, the CPU provides ample multi-threaded capability, but the game’s age means it likely relies more on single-thread performance. The CPU’s base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 5.00 GHz are high, and its single-thread benchmark scores, such as 1850.5 in Cinebench R23 and 4013 in Passmark single-thread, indicate strong per-core performance. This is crucial for Minimum, as the game’s engine is likely not optimized to use all 12 cores, so the speed of one or two cores is what matters most.

The data shows that the CPU is the bottleneck at 1080p. The fact that the RTX 5090 cannot push more than 403 FPS at Low settings, despite its massive compute power, is a direct result of the CPU’s limitations in feeding the GPU with draw calls and game logic. The CPU’s L3 cache of 25 MB shared helps with data locality, but the game’s code is not complex enough to benefit from the full cache. The CPU’s 10 nm process node and Alder Lake architecture are mature, but they are not as fast as newer generations, which is why the combo ranks 80th rather than higher. The CPU’s TDP of 125 W is modest for a desktop processor, and its support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory means it can be paired with fast memory to reduce latency, though the benchmark data does not specify memory configuration. In this context, the CPU’s role is to provide a stable foundation that does not hold back the GPU at higher resolutions, but it is the primary factor limiting performance at 1080p. The benchmark results show that the CPU is not a weak link in the system, but it is the component that prevents the GPU from achieving even more astronomical frame rates at lower resolutions.