Minimum

Minimum is a 2014 third-person shooter that still gets recommended for low-end systems, but the data here tells a different story for high-end hardware. The pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 produces a wide spread of results across resolutions and presets, and the pattern reveals a system that is heavily constrained by the mobile CPU in many scenarios. The measured frames per second (FPS) show that this is not a straightforward GPU-bound title at every setting; instead, the bottleneck shifts dramatically depending on where you point the resolution slider. This analysis breaks down the raw numbers to show exactly where the strengths and weaknesses of this combo lie.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep, but the shape of that drop changes with the preset. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 280 at 1920x1080 to 180 at 2560x1440, then to 97 at 3840x2160. That is a 35.7% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and another 46.1% reduction from 1440p to 4K. This scaling is close to what you would expect from a purely pixel-bound workload, suggesting the GPU is doing most of the heavy lifting at Low presets. However, the Ultra preset tells a different story. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 137 FPS; at 1440p Ultra, it drops to 88 FPS; and at 4K Ultra, it collapses to 48 FPS. The percentage drops are 35.8% and 45.5% respectively, which looks similar on the surface, but the absolute numbers reveal a critical detail: the gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 143 FPS (280 vs 137), while at 4K that gap shrinks to 49 FPS (97 vs 48). This compression at higher resolutions indicates that the CPU is no longer the limiting factor once the GPU is saturated with pixels.

The Medium preset provides the only min/max FPS data in the pack, which offers insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the average is 214 FPS, with a minimum of 182 and a maximum of 246. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 138 FPS, with min/max of 117/159. At 4K Medium, the average is 74 FPS, with min/max of 63/86. The spread between minimum and maximum FPS is relatively tight across all three resolutions, which suggests that the frame pacing is stable even when the average FPS is low. The data shows that resolution scaling is not linear; the biggest relative jump in performance is moving from 4K to 1440p, which nearly doubles the average FPS at every preset level. For a practical perspective, if you are targeting a 60 FPS baseline, 4K is only viable at Medium or Low, while 1440p gives you headroom to run High or Ultra comfortably above 88 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo can achieve in Minimum?

A: The highest measured average is 280 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration that breaks the 280 FPS mark, and it is a strong indicator that the CPU is the limiting factor at this resolution.

Q: Can this system run Minimum at 4K with a playable frame rate?

A: Yes, but only at Medium or Low settings. The measured average FPS is 74 at Medium and 97 at Low. High settings drop to 62 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 48 FPS, which is below a typical 60 FPS target.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Ultra produces an average of 88 FPS, while High produces 116 FPS. That is a 28 FPS difference, or roughly a 24% performance penalty for enabling the highest preset. The gap is similar at 1080p, where Ultra averages 137 FPS versus 180 FPS on High.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 being fully utilized in this game?

A: The data suggests not at lower resolutions. The 1080p Low average of 280 FPS is far below what an RTX 4090 is capable of in older titles, and the fact that the FPS does not scale proportionally with GPU load indicates that the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is holding back the GPU in CPU-bound scenarios.

Q: What is the best setting for a 144Hz monitor at 1440p?

A: High settings at 2560x1440 yield an average of 116 FPS, which is close to a 144Hz refresh rate but not fully saturating it. Low settings at 1440p hit 180 FPS, which would fully saturate a 144Hz panel, but you would sacrifice visual quality.

Q: How does the average FPS at 4K Low compare to 1080p Ultra?

A: The 4K Low average is 97 FPS, while the 1080p Ultra average is 137 FPS. This shows that resolution has a larger impact on performance than the preset level in this specific combination, as the GPU is more sensitive to pixel count than to the quality settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a monstrous GPU on paper, with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is rated at 2520 MHz, and it packs 16,384 shading units. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 38,194 in Passmark G3D and 92,23 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, sitting in the 88th percentile of all GPUs. Yet in Minimum, the measured FPS at 1080p Low is 280, which is high but not exceptional for a card of this caliber. The data indicates that the GPU is not the bottleneck at lower resolutions, as the frame rates are likely capped by the CPU’s ability to feed the render pipeline. However, at 4K, the GPU’s role becomes dominant. The 4K Ultra average of 48 FPS is a clear sign that the RTX 4090 is being pushed hard by the pixel count, and the gap between 4K Low (97 FPS) and 4K Ultra (48 FPS) shows that the GPU’s shading units and memory bandwidth are the primary drivers of performance at this resolution.

The VRAM capacity of 24 GB is effectively irrelevant for a 2014 title like Minimum, which would not require anywhere near that amount of memory even at 4K. The memory bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s is also overkill, but it does ensure that the GPU never stalls on texture fetching. The fact that the RTX 4090 only achieves a 62 FPS average at 4K High is more telling about the game’s engine limitations than the GPU’s raw power. The card’s percentile rank of 88 versus all GPUs suggests it is a top-tier part, but the measured results in Minimum show that it is not being fully utilized until you reach 4K Ultra, where the average FPS drops to 48. This is a case where the GPU’s specifications (82.58 TFLOPS FP32, 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate) are far ahead of what this game can extract, and the bottleneck moves from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU only at the highest resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset reveals a clear hierarchy across resolutions and presets. Starting at 1920x1080, Low settings produce an average of 280 FPS, which is the highest number in the entire pack. Medium drops to 214 FPS, with a minimum of 182 and a maximum of 246. High comes in at 180 FPS, and Ultra falls to 137 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p is a 51% reduction in average FPS, which is a significant penalty for visual fidelity. Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 180 FPS on Low, 138 FPS on Medium (min 117, max 159), 116 FPS on High, and 88 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Low to Ultra at 1440p is 51.1%, which is nearly identical to the 1080p scaling, indicating that the CPU is still a limiting factor at this resolution. At 3840x2160, the averages are 97 FPS on Low, 74 FPS on Medium (min 63, max 86), 62 FPS on High, and 48 FPS on Ultra. The Low-to-Ultra drop at 4K is 50.5%, and the absolute values show that the GPU is now the primary bottleneck, as the FPS numbers are far lower and the relative differences between presets are similar.

The Medium preset is the only one with min/max data, and it shows that the frame rate variance is consistent across resolutions. At 1080p, the min is 182 (85% of the average), and at 4K, the min is 63 (85% of the average). This consistency suggests that the game’s frame pacing is stable, and the bottlenecks do not cause stuttering. The data also shows that the jump from 1080p to 1440p at any given preset costs roughly 35-37% of the average FPS, while the jump from 1440p to 4K costs roughly 45-47%. This non-linear scaling is typical of GPU-bound scenarios, but the fact that the 1080p-to-1440p drop is so uniform across presets reinforces the idea that the CPU is the limiter at lower resolutions. For 4K, the only preset that exceeds a 60 FPS average is Low at 97 FPS, with Medium at 74 FPS being the highest quality option that still maintains a playable frame rate.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core, 22-thread mobile processor from the Meteor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It has 24 MB of shared L3 cache and a TDP of 28 W, which is low for a processor that is expected to drive a flagship GPU. In Cinebench R23, it scores 14,551 multi-core and 1,759 single-core, and its average benchmark score is 34,083, placing it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, which scores 34,260 and is 0.5% faster, and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350, which scores 34,222 and is 0.4% faster. These comparisons show that the 165H is a capable mid-range mobile chip, but it is not a desktop-class part.

In Minimum, the CPU’s influence is most apparent at 1080p. The average FPS of 280 at Low settings is likely near the engine’s single-threaded limit, as the game is from 2014 and would not scale perfectly across 22 threads. The fact that increasing the preset from Low to Ultra at 1080p only drops the FPS from 280 to 137, while the GPU is clearly capable of more, points to the CPU being the limiting factor. The Passmark single-thread score of 3,509 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1,759 are moderate, and they suggest that the CPU can handle the game’s physics and draw calls, but not at the frame rates the RTX 4090 could theoretically deliver. The multi-threaded performance (Cinebench R23 multi-core of 14,551) is strong, but Minimum likely does not use all 16 cores effectively, so the single-core performance is what matters most here.

The bottleneck shifts as resolution increases. At 4K, the CPU’s job is to feed the GPU with enough data, and the 165H appears to do that adequately, as the FPS drops are consistent with GPU load. The data shows that the CPU is not the primary constraint at 4K, since the FPS at 4K Low (97) is still higher than 4K Ultra (48), but the relative scaling across presets is similar to 1080p. This indicates that the CPU is still setting a ceiling on performance, but that ceiling is high enough that the GPU becomes the limiting factor when pixel count rises. The 165H’s 28 W TDP is a significant limitation compared to desktop CPUs, and this likely explains why the 1080p FPS is not higher. The benchmark results show that the CPU is a solid performer for its class, but it is not a match for the RTX 4090 in a CPU-bound title like Minimum at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The data provides a clear guide for optimizing this combo in Minimum. For a 60 FPS target at 4K, the best choice is Medium settings, which deliver an average of 74 FPS with a minimum of 63 FPS. This gives you a comfortable margin above 60 FPS and avoids the visual quality loss of Low settings. High settings at 4K produce a 62 FPS average, which is technically playable but leaves no headroom for dips, and Ultra at 48 FPS is not recommended for smooth gameplay. If you have a 144Hz monitor at 1440p, High settings are the sweet spot, as they produce 116 FPS average, which is close to the refresh rate but not fully saturating it. Lowering to Medium at 1440p gives 138 FPS, which is closer to 144Hz, but the visual difference between Medium and High in a 2014 shooter is likely minimal, so High is the better balance of quality and performance.

At 1080p, the choice depends on your monitor’s refresh rate. For a 240Hz panel, Low settings at 280 FPS is the only way to fully saturate the display, but this sacrifices visual fidelity. Medium at 214 FPS is a more practical choice, as it still exceeds 200 FPS and provides better image quality. High at 180 FPS is also viable for a 165Hz or 180Hz monitor, and Ultra at 137 FPS is the best option for a 144Hz panel if you prioritize visuals over raw frame rate. The data shows that the Medium preset offers the most consistent frame pacing, with the only min/max data in the pack, which suggests it is the most stable option across all resolutions. For most users, the recommended configuration is 1440p with High settings, as it delivers 116 FPS average and balances the CPU and GPU loads effectively. If you prefer 4K, stick to Medium for a smooth experience, and avoid Ultra unless you can tolerate an average below 50 FPS.