Minimum

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 lands at rank 1298 out of 2939 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the 44th percentile of all configurations evaluated. This is a mid-pack result for a game that launched in 2014, and the data suggests the pairing is far more capable than the rank implies, with the GPU acting as the primary constraint at higher resolutions while the CPU shows substantial headroom.

How This Combo Ranks

At rank 1298 of 2939, this combo sits almost exactly in the middle of the database’s tested configurations. The percentile placement is consistent with what the measured FPS shows: this is not a top-tier pairing for Minimum, but it is far from a weak one. The rank reflects a balance where neither component is a bottleneck at 1080p, but the GPU begins to limit performance as resolution climbs.

The CPU itself is a strong performer in synthetic benchmarks. Its average benchmark score of 53620 places it in the 91st percentile of all CPUs tested. The nearest rivals in the database include the Intel Xeon 6505P at 53701 (0.2% faster), the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 at 53469 (0.3% slower), the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X at 53288 (0.6% slower), and the AMD EPYC 7313P at 53206 (0.8% slower). The i7-14700F essentially trades blows with these processors, all within a single percentage point of each other. This tells you the CPU is not the limiting factor in this combo’s mid-pack rank.

The GPU tells a different story. Its average benchmark score of 15852 places it in the 58th percentile of all GPUs, which is notably lower than the CPU’s 91st percentile. The nearest GPU rivals include the AMD Radeon R9 370X at 15862 (0.1% faster), the AMD Radeon RX 9060 at 16014 (1% faster), the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 at 15679 (1.1% slower), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at 16129 (1.7% faster). The RX 7700 is competitive with these cards, but none of them are top-tier performers either. The GPU’s 58th percentile is the bottleneck that drags the combo rank down.

The rank disparity between the components is clear: the CPU is a 91st-percentile part, the GPU is a 58th-percentile part, and the combo lands at roughly the 44th percentile. In a game like Minimum, which is a third-person shooter from 2014, the GPU’s role becomes even more significant because the game’s engine is not particularly demanding on the CPU. The data shows that the combo’s rank is almost entirely dictated by the GPU’s performance tier, not the CPU’s.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 32 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The GPU contains 28,100 million transistors on a 346 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 81.2 million per mm². It has 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operators. The ray tracing core count is 40, but Minimum is a 2014 title that does not use ray tracing, so that hardware remains idle for this game.

Memory capacity is generous at 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 2438 MHz, which translates to 19.5 Gbps effective. For a game released in 2014, 16 GB of VRAM is far beyond what the title can utilize, but it does mean the GPU is not constrained by memory capacity at any resolution or settings level tested.

Clock speeds are modest in absolute terms. The base clock is 1900 MHz, the boost clock is 2459 MHz, and the game clock is 2041 MHz. These clocks are relevant because Minimum is not a graphically intensive game by modern standards, so the GPU’s raw compute throughput matters more than its memory subsystem. The FP32 performance is 25.18 TFLOPS, with FP16 also at 25.18 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The pixel rate is 236.1 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 393.4 GTexel/s.

In Minimum, the GPU’s performance is best understood through its benchmark scores. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 2865, while the PassMark G3D score is 20974. The PassMark DirectX 11 score is 186, DirectX 12 is 96, DirectX 10 is 92, and DirectX 9 is 261. The PassMark GPU Compute score is 10963, and the Geekbench OpenCL score is 106028. These numbers indicate a GPU that is solidly mid-range, which aligns with its 58th percentile ranking.

The VRAM capacity of 16 GB does not influence the measured FPS in Minimum because the game does not require that much memory. However, the memory bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s does play a role at higher resolutions, where the GPU must move more data per frame. The measured FPS drops from 214 at 1080p Low to 48 at 4K High, and the bandwidth is one of the reasons the GPU cannot maintain higher frame rates at 4K.

FAQ

*Q: What is the combo’s rank in Minimum compared to all tested configurations?*

A: The combo ranks 1298 out of 2939 tested combos, placing it in the 44th percentile.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The i7-14700F has an average benchmark score of 53620. The nearest rival, the Intel Xeon 6505P, scores 53701 (0.2% faster). The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X scores 53288 (0.6% slower), and the AMD EPYC 7313P scores 53206 (0.8% slower).

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RX 7700 has an average benchmark score of 15852. The AMD Radeon R9 370X scores 15862 (0.1% faster), the AMD Radeon RX 9060 scores 16014 (1% faster), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti scores 16129 (1.7% faster).

Q: What is the best measured FPS result for this combo?

A: The highest average FPS is 214, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: What is the worst measured FPS result for this combo?

A: The lowest average FPS is 36, achieved at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU have a higher percentile ranking?

A: The CPU ranks in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU ranks in the 58th percentile of all GPUs. This indicates the GPU is the weaker component in this pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions (1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160) and four settings levels (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). The data is measured, not estimated, so these numbers represent actual performance from the tested configuration.

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows. Low settings produce an average of 214 FPS. Medium settings produce an average of 164 FPS, with a minimum of 139 FPS and a maximum of 188 FPS. High settings produce an average of 137 FPS. Ultra settings produce an average of 105 FPS. The spread from 214 FPS at Low to 105 FPS at Ultra is substantial, representing a 51% drop. This indicates that at 1080p, the GPU is handling the workload comfortably, and the CPU is not a limiting factor at any settings level.

At 2560x1440, the results shift downward. Low settings produce an average of 138 FPS. Medium settings produce an average of 106 FPS, with a minimum of 90 FPS and a maximum of 121 FPS. High settings produce an average of 89 FPS. Ultra settings produce an average of 68 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is from 138 FPS down to 68 FPS, a 51% reduction. Compared to 1080p, the Low setting drops from 214 FPS to 138 FPS (36% lower), and the Ultra setting drops from 105 FPS to 68 FPS (35% lower). This shows a consistent scaling pattern where the GPU’s workload increases with resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results show the GPU struggling. Low settings produce an average of 74 FPS. Medium settings produce an average of 57 FPS, with a minimum of 48 FPS and a maximum of 65 FPS. High settings produce an average of 48 FPS. Ultra settings produce an average of 36 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is from 74 FPS down to 36 FPS, a 51% reduction. The 4K results are notably lower than the 1440p results. For example, High settings drop from 89 FPS at 1440p to 48 FPS at 4K, a 46% reduction. Ultra settings drop from 68 FPS at 1440p to 36 FPS at 4K, a 47% reduction.

The pattern across all resolutions and settings is consistent: the GPU’s performance scales roughly linearly with the resolution’s pixel count. The minimum FPS values are only provided for Medium settings at each resolution. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 139 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the minimum is 90 FPS. At 4K Medium, the minimum is 48 FPS. These minimums suggest that frame pacing is generally stable, with no severe stuttering indicated in the data.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear pattern of GPU limitation. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 214 at 1080p to 138 at 1440p to 74 at 4K. This represents a 36% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 46% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 65%. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 137 at 1080p to 89 at 1440p to 48 at 4K. This is a 35% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 46% drop from 1440p to 4K, with a total drop of 65%. At Ultra settings, the average FPS drops from 105 at 1080p to 68 at 1440p to 36 at 4K, with drops of 35% and 47% respectively, totaling 66%.

The consistency of these percentages across all settings levels is striking. Whether at Low or Ultra, the FPS drops by roughly 35% when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and by roughly 46% when moving from 1440p to 4K. This uniform scaling is a hallmark of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the FPS would not drop as steeply with resolution because the CPU workload remains constant regardless of resolution. The fact that FPS drops by two-thirds from 1080p to 4K indicates that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting and is the constraint.

The limiting component is clearly the GPU. The RX 7700’s 58th percentile ranking, combined with its 624.1 GB/s memory bandwidth and 25.18 TFLOPS FP32 performance, is simply not enough to maintain high frame rates at 4K in Minimum. At 1080p, the combo can push well beyond 100 FPS at all settings, but at 4K, even Low settings only achieve 74 FPS. The CPU’s performance is not a factor in this scaling because the i7-14700F’s 91st percentile ranking and strong multi-core scores (Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 35122) mean it can easily feed the GPU at any resolution.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, specifically the Raptor Lake-R refresh. It is manufactured on Intel’s 10 nm process with a die size of 257 mm². The base clock is 2.10 GHz, and the boost clock is 5.40 GHz. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it includes ECC memory support. The socket is Intel Socket 1700, and the PCIe interface is Gen 5 with 16 lanes for the CPU.

The cache hierarchy consists of 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 cache per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. This is a substantial amount of cache for a desktop processor, and it helps with the single-threaded performance that Minimum relies on. The CPU’s launch MSRP is $359, and it was released on 2024-01-07. The production status is Active, and it does not have an unlocked multiplier.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i7-14700F demonstrates strong multi-threaded performance. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 35122, and the single-core score is 4958. The Cinebench R20 scores are 14751 multi-core and 2082 single-core. The Geekbench multi-core score is 19620, and the single-core score is 2429. PassMark scores include a multi-thread score of 41317, a single-thread score of 4257, an integer math score of 155808, a floating-point math score of 107005, and a data compression score of 505885.

The CPU’s 91st percentile ranking means it outperforms the vast majority of processors in the database. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon 6505P (53701 average score, 0.2% faster) and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (53288 average score, 0.6% slower). This places the i7-14700F in elite company, with performance nearly identical to server-class Xeon processors.

In Minimum, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic. The game was released in 2014, so it does not take advantage of modern multi-core processors. The i7-14700F’s 20 cores and 28 threads are overkill for this title, but the high single-core performance (boost clock of 5.40 GHz and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4958) ensures that the CPU is never the bottleneck. The measured FPS at 1080p Low of 214 FPS is likely near the game’s engine limit, and the CPU is not constraining that result.

The data shows that the CPU’s performance is not a limiting factor in this combo. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is consistent with GPU-bound behavior, and the CPU’s high percentile ranking confirms it has ample headroom. If the GPU were replaced with a more powerful card, the combo rank would likely improve significantly because the CPU would not hold back the new GPU. Conversely, the current GPU is the weak link, and its 58th percentile ranking is what keeps this combo at rank 1298 of 2939.