Minimum

The Intel Core i9-14900K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a commanding performance profile in Minimum, a third-person shooter that scales well across both resolution and graphics presets. The measured data shows this combination is capable of high refresh rates even at demanding 4K resolutions, making it a versatile choice for players prioritizing smoothness and visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all tested resolutions, delivering a substantial improvement over Ultra settings while maintaining excellent frame rates. At 1920x1080, High produces 198.7 FPS, which is 47 FPS higher than the Ultra preset’s 151.7 FPS, with only a modest visual trade-off. This pattern repeats at 2560x1440, where High achieves 126 FPS compared to Ultra’s 97.1 FPS, and at 3840x2160, where High hits 70.3 FPS versus Ultra’s 54.1 FPS. The data suggests Ultra settings impose a significant performance penalty that is not justified by the incremental graphical gains in this title.

For players targeting maximum frame rates, the Low preset provides the highest headroom, with 311 FPS at 1080p and 197.6 FPS at 1440p. However, this preset sacrifices too much visual quality for the majority of users, especially given that Medium settings at 1080p still deliver 234.7 FPS while offering noticeably better image quality. The Medium preset represents the optimal choice for high-refresh-rate monitors at 1080p and 1440p, delivering 234.7 FPS and 153.6 FPS respectively, which comfortably exceeds the refresh rate of most gaming displays. At 4K, Medium’s 83.6 FPS edges closer to the 90 FPS threshold, but High remains the better recommendation for 4K due to its superior visual detail at 70.3 FPS.

The Ultra preset, while technically playable at all resolutions, shows diminishing returns. The largest performance gap between High and Ultra occurs at 4K, where the drop is 16.2 FPS, representing a 23% reduction. Since the High preset at 4K already maintains an average above 70 FPS, the additional visual polish from Ultra is unlikely to enhance gameplay experience enough to justify the frame rate loss. The measured data firmly supports High as the default recommendation, with Medium as a strong alternative for competitive players who prioritize frame rate over graphical detail.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, as evidenced by the performance scaling across settings and resolutions. The GPU’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Minimum’s texture and geometry demands at all tested resolutions. The 4K results demonstrate that the GPU’s memory subsystem is not a bottleneck, as even the most demanding Ultra preset at 3840x2160 maintains a playable 54.1 FPS average. The RTX 4070 SUPER’s 7168 shading units and 80 ROPs, running at a boost clock of 2475 MHz, deliver the raw compute throughput necessary to sustain high frame rates in this fast-paced third-person shooter.

The GPU’s Ada Lovelace architecture, built on TSMC’s 5 nm process, allows the card to maintain high clocks under sustained load while keeping power draw reasonable at 220 W TDP. The measured FPS data indicates that the GPU is operating well within its performance envelope, as the frame rates scale predictably with resolution increases. The transition from 1440p to 4K at High settings results in a 44% performance reduction (from 126 FPS to 70.3 FPS), which is consistent with the 2.25x pixel count increase between these resolutions. This scaling behavior suggests the GPU is compute-bound rather than memory-bound, as the bandwidth utilization remains efficient across all settings.

The RTX 4070 SUPER’s 224 tensor cores and 56 RT cores provide additional headroom for modern rendering techniques, though Minimum’s 2014 release date means these features are not heavily utilized. The GPU’s PCIe 4.0 x16 interface provides ample bandwidth for the 12 GB frame buffer, and the 21 Gbps effective memory speed ensures that texture streaming at 4K Ultra does not cause stuttering. Overall, the GPU is the clear performance driver in this configuration, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom to avoid bottlenecking at any tested resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ranks 304th out of 1733 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the top 17.5% of all configurations in the database. This ranking is particularly strong given that the RTX 4070 SUPER occupies the 84th percentile among all GPUs, while the i9-14900K sits in the 97th percentile among all CPUs. The combination’s ranking suggests that the pairing is well-balanced for this title, with neither component significantly limiting the other’s performance.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks provide context for its contribution to this ranking. The Intel Core i9-14900KF scores 0.7% higher in average benchmark score, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF and 265K are also within 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. This tight clustering indicates that the i9-14900K’s performance is representative of top-tier desktop processors, and any minor differences in CPU performance would have negligible impact on Minimum’s frame rates given the GPU-bound nature of the workload. The AMD EPYC 7413, despite being a server-class chip, scores only 0.3% lower, further confirming that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this configuration.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show a similar pattern, with the NVIDIA RTX A6000 scoring 0.2% higher and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE scoring 0.3% lower in average benchmark scores. This indicates that the RTX 4070 SUPER is competitively positioned within its performance class, and the combo’s 304th ranking out of 1733 reflects this strong but not exceptional standing. The ranking suggests that while this configuration is powerful, there are 303 other combos in the database that achieve higher frame rates in Minimum, likely featuring higher-tier GPUs or more optimized pairings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the performance envelope is broad across settings. Low settings produce an average of 311 FPS, which represents the absolute ceiling for this configuration at this resolution. Medium settings deliver 234.7 FPS, a 24.5% reduction from Low, while High achieves 198.7 FPS, a further 15.3% drop. Ultra settings bottom out at 151.7 FPS, which is still exceptionally playable but demonstrates the significant cost of maximum graphical fidelity. The progression from Low to Ultra spans 159.3 FPS, highlighting the wide performance headroom available at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the same settings hierarchy persists but with compressed margins. Low produces 197.6 FPS, which is 36.5% lower than the 1080p Low result, reflecting the increased pixel load. Medium hits 153.6 FPS, High achieves 126 FPS, and Ultra falls to 97.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 100.5 FPS, narrower than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is becoming more constrained. Notably, the 1440p High result of 126 FPS exceeds the 1080p Ultra result of 151.7 FPS, demonstrating that resolution has a more substantial impact on performance than settings in this title.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve flattens considerably. Low settings deliver 104.3 FPS, which is still smooth for most displays. Medium produces 83.6 FPS, High achieves 70.3 FPS, and Ultra drops to 54.1 FPS. The total spread from Low to Ultra is 50.2 FPS, less than half the spread seen at 1080p. This compression indicates that at 4K, the GPU is approaching its limits, and the relative cost of each settings increment diminishes. The 4K Ultra result of 54.1 FPS is the only measurement that falls below the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that maximum settings at 4K require a more powerful GPU for consistent smoothness.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the limiting component in this configuration. At High settings, the frame rate falls from 198.7 FPS at 1080p to 126 FPS at 1440p, a 36.6% reduction, and then to 70.3 FPS at 4K, a further 44.2% reduction from 1440p. The cumulative drop from 1080p to 4K is 64.6%, which is less than the 75% reduction that would occur if performance scaled purely with pixel count. This sub-linear scaling indicates that the CPU is providing some performance headroom at lower resolutions, allowing the GPU to operate at higher utilization as resolution increases.

At Low settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 311 FPS at 1080p drops to 197.6 FPS at 1440p (36.5% reduction) and then to 104.3 FPS at 4K (47.2% reduction from 1440p). The overall drop from 1080p to 4K is 66.5%, which is closer to the theoretical pixel-count scaling. This suggests that at Low settings, the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck earlier, and the CPU’s contribution is minimized. Conversely, at Ultra settings, the scaling is shallower: 151.7 FPS at 1080p drops to 97.1 FPS at 1440p (36.0% reduction) and then to 54.1 FPS at 4K (44.3% reduction from 1440p). The cumulative drop is 64.3%, indicating that the GPU’s compute resources are more evenly utilized across resolutions when rendering higher-quality effects.

The data clearly shows that the RTX 4070 SUPER is the primary limiting component across all tested configurations. The i9-14900K’s robust single-thread performance, evidenced by its 7040 Cinebench R23 single-core score and 4697 Passmark single-thread score, ensures that CPU bottlenecks are nonexistent even at 1080p Low settings where frame rates exceed 300 FPS. The fact that performance scales consistently with resolution and settings changes points to a GPU-bound scenario throughout, with the CPU providing ample headroom to feed the GPU at all times. This configuration is well-balanced for Minimum, with the GPU’s 12 GB frame buffer and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth proving sufficient for even the most demanding 4K Ultra scenarios.