Minimum

The Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers a striking performance profile in Minimum, a 2014 third-person shooter. The data reveals a system that is dramatically overqualified for the game’s engine, yet the scaling between resolutions and settings tells a nuanced story about where the bottlenecks truly lie. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 394.3 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, that number collapses to 64.7 FPS, revealing a shift in the limiting factor that is worth investigating closely.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a steep and consistent drop in average FPS across all settings. On the Low preset, the frame rate falls from 394.3 FPS at 1080p to 252.5 FPS at 1440p, then to 134 FPS at 4K. That represents a 66% reduction from the lowest to the highest resolution. The pattern is similar on High, where 256.8 FPS at 1080p drops to 160.7 FPS at 1440p and finally to 90.5 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows the most absolute decline, falling from 195 FPS at 1080p to 123.9 FPS at 1440p and then to 64.7 FPS at 4K.

What is revealing is the shape of the curve. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is relatively modest on each preset—about 36% on Low, 37% on High, and 36% on Ultra. However, the subsequent drop from 1440p to 4K is much steeper, hovering around 47% across all presets. This accelerating decline suggests that the game engine is becoming increasingly pixel-bound at higher resolutions, with the RTX 4090’s raw throughput being the primary constraint. The data indicates that at 1080p, the system is likely CPU-limited or engine-limited, as the FPS figures (256.8 to 394.3) are far above what the GPU’s pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s would suggest for a modern title. The 4K results, conversely, show the GPU working harder, with the gap between Low (134 FPS) and Ultra (64.7 FPS) widening to a 2.07x difference, compared to only a 1.53x difference at 1080p.

Settings Recommendations

Examining the measured rows, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across resolutions. At 4K, Medium produces 106.4 FPS, which is 64% higher than Ultra’s 64.7 FPS, while only sacrificing some visual fidelity. At 1440p, Medium hits 196.7 FPS, which is comfortably above the 123.9 FPS of Ultra. The High preset sits between Medium and Ultra, with 90.5 FPS at 4K and 160.7 FPS at 1440p. For players targeting a smooth 60 FPS baseline, Ultra at 4K is just barely viable at 64.7 FPS, but it leaves almost no headroom for drops. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for 4K, providing a 42% FPS boost over High while remaining visually distinct from Low. At 1440p, High becomes more attractive, as it delivers 160.7 FPS versus 196.7 FPS on Medium, and the visual gains are more perceptible at that resolution. At 1080p, the choice is less critical—even Ultra achieves 195 FPS, so the user can prioritize visuals without concern.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44534 and single-core score of 6287 place it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. The processor’s high single-thread performance is likely the key factor in Minimum’s 1080p results, where the game appears to be CPU-bound. The fact that 1080p Low achieves 394.3 FPS—a figure that exceeds what the RTX 4090’s 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 compute would typically deliver on a modern engine—suggests that the CPU is feeding frames faster than the GPU can render them at lower pixel counts. The 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache likely help with the game’s relatively simple draw calls, allowing the CPU to maintain high frame rates without stuttering. The data shows that the i7-14700K is not the limiting factor until the resolution demands more from the GPU. Its PassMark single-thread score of 4472 reinforces its strength in lightly-threaded workloads, which Minimum likely relies on for its core simulation and physics. The processor’s 125W TDP and Raptor Lake architecture are more than sufficient for a 2014 title, and the benchmark results confirm that the CPU headroom is vast—the game simply cannot push this processor to its limits.

FAQ

*Q: Is the RTX 4090 overkill for Minimum at 1080p?*

A: The data suggests yes. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 394.3 FPS, and even at Ultra it hits 195 FPS. These figures indicate that the GPU is not fully utilized at this resolution, as the frame rates approach the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls.

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming on this combo?

A: Medium is the most balanced choice. It delivers 106.4 FPS at 3840x2160, which is 64% higher than Ultra’s 64.7 FPS, while still offering better visuals than Low’s 134 FPS. High sits in between at 90.5 FPS.

Q: How does the i7-14700K compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i7-14700K has an average benchmark score of 70074, which is essentially identical to the Intel Core i7-14700KF at 70104 (0% delta). It is 0.5% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and 1.4% ahead of the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270.

Q: Why does the FPS drop so much from 1440p to 4K?

A: The drop is steeper than from 1080p to 1440p, indicating a shift to GPU-bound rendering. At 4K, the RTX 4090’s pixel throughput becomes the constraint, with the Ultra preset falling to 64.7 FPS, a 47% reduction from 1440p Ultra.

Q: Can this combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra?

A: Yes, but just barely. The measured average FPS for 4K Ultra is 64.7 FPS, which is above 60 but leaves minimal margin for demanding scenes. The min FPS is not recorded, so the actual 1% lows remain unknown.

Q: Is the RTX 4090’s 24 GB VRAM relevant for this game?

A: Not for performance. The game is from 2014 and likely has modest VRAM requirements. The 24 GB GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are far beyond what Minimum can utilize, and the data shows no VRAM-related bottlenecks across any preset or resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a massive GPU with 16384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. Its boost clock of 2520 MHz and base clock of 2235 MHz drive a pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s. The GPU’s 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for any resolution tested. In Minimum, the RTX 4090’s role becomes evident at higher resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 64.7, which is a 67% drop from the 195 FPS at 1080p Ultra. The GPU’s compute power of 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 is clearly not the bottleneck at lower resolutions, but at 4K, the pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth come into play. The data shows that the RTX 4090 is capable of pushing 134 FPS at 4K Low, but the Ultra preset’s additional shading cost reduces that to 64.7 FPS. This indicates that the game’s Ultra settings introduce effects that heavily tax the GPU’s ROPs and shading units. The RTX 4090’s 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are irrelevant for this title, as Minimum predates widespread ray tracing. The GPU’s benchmark percentile of 91 places it below its rivals in the database—its nearest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla T4 at -0.4% delta—but this is a reflection of the synthetic workload, not the real-world gaming results seen here.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces 394.3 FPS on Low, 301 FPS on Medium, 256.8 FPS on High, and 195 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra is 199.3 FPS, or roughly 2.02x. At 2560x1440, the scores are 252.5 FPS on Low, 196.7 FPS on Medium, 160.7 FPS on High, and 123.9 FPS on Ultra. The gap narrows to 128.6 FPS, or 2.04x. At 3840x2160, the results are 134 FPS on Low, 106.4 FPS on Medium, 90.5 FPS on High, and 64.7 FPS on Ultra. The gap here is 69.3 FPS, or 2.07x. Notably, the relative performance difference between Low and Ultra remains consistent at around 2x across all resolutions, suggesting that the settings scale linearly in their GPU cost. The absolute FPS numbers, however, show a clear trend: as resolution increases, the cost of each preset becomes more pronounced in absolute terms. The data also reveals that the transition from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 35% of the FPS on each preset, while the transition to 4K costs another 47%. This is consistent with the pixel count increase, where 4K has 2.25x the pixels of 1440p, but the FPS drop is less than that, indicating some efficiency in the GPU’s scaling.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination ranks 44th out of 1733 tested combos in Minimum. This places it in the top 2.5% of all system configurations, which is an excellent result for a game that is over a decade old. The rank is impressive given that the game’s engine is likely not optimized for modern multi-core processors or high-end GPUs. The fact that this combo is not higher in the rankings suggests that some other configurations—possibly with even higher single-core CPU performance or more specialized gaming GPUs—can achieve slightly better results. However, the 44th rank out of 1733 is a strong showing, and the measured FPS data supports this position. The CPU’s percentile of 96 versus all CPUs and the GPU’s percentile of 91 versus all GPUs indicate that neither component is a weak link. The combo’s rank is likely limited by the game’s engine, which may cap frame rates or fail to utilize the full potential of the hardware. The data implies that this system is at the upper echelon of performance for Minimum, and any higher-ranking combos would need to overcome the engine’s inherent limitations rather than simply adding more hardware power. The 44th rank also suggests that the i7-14700K/RTX 4090 pairing is well-balanced for this title, with no single component dragging down the overall result.