Minimum

# Minimum: Intel Core Ultra 5 135H + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile — Benchmark Analysis

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile delivers a decidedly mixed experience in Minimum, a 2014-released Third-Person Shooter. The combo ranks 834th out of 3,712 tested configurations, placing it in the top 22.5% of all tested combos for this title. While the RTX 4090 Mobile provides ample graphics horsepower, the 14-core Meteor Lake CPU becomes a bottleneck at lower resolutions and settings, capping frame rates well below what the GPU alone could deliver. The data shows a system that excels at 4K Ultra settings, where the GPU workload dominates, but struggles to fully utilize its potential at 1080p Low, where the CPU's single-thread performance limits headroom.

FAQ

*Q: What is the overall rank of this combo in Minimum?*

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H + RTX 4090 Mobile combo ranks 834th out of 3,712 tested combinations, placing it in the top 22.5% of all tested systems for this game.

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

A: The Core Ultra 5 135H has an average benchmark score of 29,093, which is effectively tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (29,123, -0.1% delta) and the Intel Core i5-13500HX (29,270, -0.6% delta). It sits between the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT (28,940, +0.5% delta) and the Intel Xeon Phi 7210 (29,245, -0.5% delta).

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

A: The RTX 4090 Mobile's average benchmark score of 43,667 places it slightly above the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 (43,301, +0.8% delta) and the RTX 5050 Mobile (43,268, +0.9% delta), while trailing the RTX A6000 (44,075, -0.9% delta) by a small margin.

Q: What are the best and worst frame rates recorded at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the best average frame rate is 97 FPS on Low settings, while the worst is 48 FPS on Ultra settings. The Medium preset yields 74 FPS average, with minimum and maximum of 63 and 86 FPS respectively.

Q: Does the GPU have enough VRAM for this game?

A: The RTX 4090 Mobile comes with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth. For a game from 2014, this is far more than sufficient; even the most demanding 4K Ultra preset does not approach capacity limits.

Q: What is the CPU's single-thread performance relative to its multi-core?

A: The Core Ultra 5 135H scores 1,700 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 11,875.5 in multi-core, a ratio of roughly 1:7. This indicates strong multi-threaded capabilities for a mobile chip, but the single-thread score is modest for gaming workloads that are lightly threaded.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the Minimum benchmark database, this specific CPU-GPU combination achieves a rank of 834 out of 3,712 total tested combos. This places the system in the 77.5th percentile of all configurations — comfortably above the median but not among the elite performers. The rank reflects the overall average across all tested resolutions and settings, which is pulled down significantly by the CPU-limited results at 1080p and 1440p.

The data indicates that the combo's ranking is heavily influenced by the resolution at which it is tested. At 4K Ultra, the system produces 48 FPS average, which is playable but not exceptional for a flagship mobile GPU. The 1080p Low result of 280 FPS shows that the GPU can push very high frame rates when the CPU is not the limiting factor, but this score is only 28% higher than the 4K Low result of 97 FPS, despite rendering 4x fewer pixels — a clear sign of CPU bottlenecking at lower resolutions.

The combination's percentile position (84th for the GPU, 81st for the CPU) suggests that neither component is a weak link in absolute terms. However, the game's engine appears to be more sensitive to single-thread CPU performance than to raw GPU throughput. This is consistent with the CPU's modest single-core score of 1,700 in Cinebench R23, which limits the frame rate ceiling in scenarios with fewer pixels to render.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile is built on the AD103 chip using TSMC's 5 nm process, packing 45,900 million transistors into a 379 mm² die. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1335 MHz and a boost clock of 1695 MHz, with memory running at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The memory subsystem consists of 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth — ample for Minimum, a title from 2014 that predates the GPU by nearly a decade.

The GPU's compute capabilities are substantial: 9,728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, and 112 ROPs. It delivers 32.98 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and a pixel rate of 189.8 GPixel/s, along with a texture rate of 515.3 GTexel/s. The 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 APIs, though Minimum is old enough that these advanced features are largely unused.

In Minimum, the GPU's role is most apparent at 4K resolution. At 3840x2160, the frame rate scales from 48 FPS on Ultra to 97 FPS on Low, a 102% improvement from reducing settings. This shows that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution — the CPU at this point has enough headroom to feed the GPU. The 74 FPS average on Medium settings with a 63 FPS minimum and 86 FPS maximum indicates consistent frame delivery even under load.

The GPU's 84th percentile ranking among all GPUs (average benchmark score 43,667) confirms its high-end positioning. It outperforms the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 by 0.8% and the RTX 5050 Mobile by 0.9%, while trailing the RTX A6000 by 0.9%. These are all within a narrow band, suggesting that the RTX 4090 Mobile's real-world gaming performance is comparable to professional-grade workstation cards.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 280 FPS, which is the single highest result in the entire dataset. Medium settings produce 214 FPS average, with a minimum of 182 FPS and maximum of 246 FPS. High settings drop to 180 FPS average, while Ultra settings yield 137 FPS average. These numbers demonstrate that at 1080p, the system is CPU-limited — the gap from Low to Ultra is only 143 FPS, or roughly 51%, despite the GPU having far more headroom.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings produce 180 FPS average, Medium delivers 138 FPS (117 minimum, 159 maximum), High yields 116 FPS, and Ultra drops to 88 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1440p is 92 FPS, or 51% — nearly identical percentage-wise to 1080p. This consistency suggests that the bottleneck shifts gradually from CPU to GPU as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the dominant limiter. Ultra settings produce 48 FPS average, High yields 62 FPS, Medium delivers 74 FPS (63 minimum, 86 maximum), and Low achieves 97 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra is 49 FPS, or 51% — again the same percentage. This uniform scaling across resolutions indicates that the game's settings have a consistent impact on GPU workload, regardless of resolution.

The data shows that the system is capable of running Minimum at 4K Ultra with an average of 48 FPS — playable but not smooth by modern standards. At 1080p Ultra, the 137 FPS average is smooth, but the 280 FPS Low result suggests the CPU is capping performance well below the GPU's potential.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is revealing about the system's bottleneck characteristics. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 180 at 1080p to 116 at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 62 at 4K (a 66% reduction from 1080p). At Low settings, the drop is from 280 at 1080p to 180 at 1440p (36%) and then to 97 at 4K (65%).

The consistent 36% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings indicates that this transition is primarily GPU-bound — the pixel count increases by 78% (from 2.07 million to 3.69 million pixels), yet the frame rate drops by only 36%, suggesting the GPU has ample headroom at 1440p. However, the drop from 1440p to 4K is more pronounced: at High settings, FPS falls from 116 to 62, a 47% reduction for a 125% increase in pixel count (from 3.69 million to 8.29 million).

This pattern reveals that the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p and 1440p, particularly at Low and Medium settings. The 1080p Low result of 280 FPS is 3.9x higher than the 4K Low result of 97 FPS, but the pixel count is 4x lower — if the system were purely GPU-limited, the 1080p result would be 4x higher (388 FPS). The actual 280 FPS indicates a CPU throughput ceiling around that mark.

At 4K, the frame rate becomes more proportional to pixel count. The 4K Ultra result of 48 FPS is 2.9x lower than the 1080p Ultra result of 137 FPS, while the pixel count is 4x higher. This suggests that at 4K Ultra, the GPU is the bottleneck, and the CPU has enough headroom to feed it consistently. The 4K Medium result of 74 FPS with a 63 FPS minimum shows that even in the most demanding scenarios, the frame pacing remains stable.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H is a 14-core, 18-thread processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 7 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, with a TDP of 28 W. The cache hierarchy includes 112 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support extends to DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth.

In Minimum, the CPU's performance is the single largest factor limiting frame rates at resolutions below 4K. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1,700 is modest for a modern processor, placing it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs (average benchmark score 29,093). The multi-core score of 11,875.5 is respectable for a mobile chip, but the game is primarily single-threaded, as evidenced by the frame rate ceiling observed at 1080p.

The CPU's nearest rivals show how close it is to other mainstream processors. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (avg score 29,123) is effectively identical at -0.1% delta, while the Intel Core i5-13500HX (29,270) is only 0.6% faster. This places the 135H in the same performance class as desktop processors from the previous generation, which is notable for a mobile chip with a 28 W TDP.

The bottleneck manifests most clearly at 1080p Low, where the 280 FPS average is likely close to the CPU's maximum frame delivery rate. The fact that increasing resolution from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings only reduces FPS by 36% (from 280 to 180) — rather than the 44% that would be expected from the pixel increase — confirms that the CPU is holding the GPU back at both resolutions. Only at 4K does the GPU workload become heavy enough to fully utilize the RTX 4090 Mobile's capabilities, as evidenced by the 97 FPS result at 4K Low, which is 2.9x lower than 1080p Low despite 4x the pixels.

The 18-thread count and multi-core performance (Cinebench R23 multi-core score 11,875.5) are irrelevant for Minimum's lightly threaded engine. What matters is the single-thread performance, and the 1,700 score in Cinebench R23 single-core indicates that the CPU can sustain frame rates around 280 FPS at best. For a game that targets 60 FPS at 4K, this is sufficient, but for competitive play at 1080p, the CPU becomes a frustrating constraint. The system's 834th rank out of 3,712 combos reflects this imbalance — the GPU is capable of much more than the CPU can deliver at lower resolutions.