Minimum

Minimum is a 2014 third-person shooter that scales surprisingly well across a wide range of hardware, and the data for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER reveals a configuration that is heavily balanced toward CPU headroom at lower resolutions but becomes firmly GPU-bound at 4K. The measured FPS rows show a system capable of exceeding 160 fps at 1080p Low, yet dropping to just over 27 fps at 4K Ultra, indicating that the RTX 2060 SUPER is the primary constraint in this pairing for demanding visual settings. This analysis breaks down the measured results, contextualizes them against the component benchmarks, and answers key questions about how this specific combo behaves in Minimum.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the "High" preset offers the most balanced experience for this combo, providing a playable frame rate without sacrificing the visual fidelity that the game's third-person perspective benefits from. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers an average of 110.5 fps, which is more than sufficient for smooth gameplay, while the Ultra preset drops to 82.8 fps—still playable but a significant 25% reduction for what may be marginal visual gains. Moving to 2560x1440, High averages 72.3 fps, which remains fluid, whereas Ultra dips to 57 fps, entering a range where some users might notice stutter on high-refresh-rate displays.

For users prioritizing maximum frame rates, the Low preset at 1080p yields 169.6 fps, which is nearly 54% faster than High, indicating that the game is highly scalable in its settings. However, the data implies that Low sacrifices considerable visual quality. The Medium preset sits as a middle ground: 130.5 fps at 1080p and 82.2 fps at 1440p, offering a 18% performance uplift over High at 1080p. At 4K, the situation changes dramatically; High preset produces 40.7 fps, which is technically playable but below the 60 fps threshold most gamers target, while Low at 4K hits 56.6 fps, suggesting that 4K gaming requires dropping to Low for a smoother experience. The Ultra preset at any resolution is punishing, with 4K Ultra yielding only 27.4 fps, making it effectively unplayable for competitive play. The best experience per the measured rows is either High at 1080p/1440p for balanced quality, or Low at 4K for playable frame rates.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060 SUPER is the defining component in this combo for Minimum's higher resolutions, and its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for this 2014 title but shows its age at 4K. The GPU's boost clock of 1650 MHz and base clock of 1470 MHz are modest by modern standards, and the benchmark data shows it sits at the 63rd percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in aggregate performance include the GeForce RTX 2070, which scores 0.5% higher, and the Quadro K5200, which is 0.8% ahead, indicating the 2060 SUPER is competitive with early Turing cards but not exceptional.

In Minimum, the GPU's role becomes apparent when comparing the FPS scaledown across resolutions. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 110.5 fps, but at 4K High, it drops to 40.7 fps—a 63% reduction—which is a clear sign of GPU limitation. The 4K Low preset at 56.6 fps versus 1080p Low at 169.6 fps further confirms that the RTX 2060 SUPER's pixel throughput is the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The GPU's 7.181 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 105.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are the key specs driving these results, and the data suggests that while the 2060 SUPER can handle Minimum at 1080p and 1440p with ease, its Turing architecture is not designed for 4K gaming with high settings.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and the RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1197 out of 1733 tested combos for Minimum, placing it in the lower 31st percentile of all system configurations. This ranking is somewhat surprising given the CPU's strength, as the Core Ultra 7 265K is a top-tier processor that scores in the 97th percentile among all CPUs and outperforms the Intel Core i9-14900K by 0.9% in average benchmark score. The low combo rank suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER drags down the overall standing, as the GPU's 63rd percentile performance is far below the CPU's 97th percentile.

The data implies that in Minimum, this combo is significantly CPU-overkill for most scenarios, except at 4K Ultra where the GPU is clearly overwhelmed. The combo rank of 1197 out of 1733 indicates that many other pairings, likely those with more balanced CPU-GPU distributions, achieve better overall FPS metrics. Notably, the CPU's nearest rivals, such as the Core Ultra 7 265KF with a -0.2% delta and the Core i9-14900K with a -0.9% delta, would likely produce similar combo rankings when paired with the same GPU, as the CPU is not the limiting factor in the vast majority of the measured FPS rows.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values show a clear progression across settings. Low delivers 169.6 fps, Medium achieves 130.5 fps, High reaches 110.5 fps, and Ultra bottoms out at 82.8 fps. The delta between Low and Ultra is 86.8 fps, representing a 51% performance penalty for maxing out settings. At 2560x1440, the numbers are 111.3 fps for Low, 82.2 fps for Medium, 72.3 fps for High, and 57 fps for Ultra. The 1440p Ultra result is 31% lower than the 1080p Ultra result, showing a consistent resolution penalty. At 3840x2160, the FPS figures collapse to 56.6 fps for Low, 47.8 fps for Medium, 40.7 fps for High, and 27.4 fps for Ultra.

The data reveals that the gap between settings widens at lower resolutions, indicating that the CPU has more headroom to feed the GPU at 1080p. For instance, the difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 86.8 fps, while at 4K, that same difference shrinks to 29.2 fps. This pattern is classic evidence of a GPU bottleneck emerging as resolution increases. The 4K Ultra result of 27.4 fps is the lowest measured value, more than 60% below the 1080p Low result, highlighting the extreme sensitivity of this combo to both resolution and settings simultaneously.

Resolution Scaling

From 1080p to 4K, the FPS drops are substantial across all settings, but the scaling is not linear. At Low settings, the 1080p average of 169.6 fps falls to 111.3 fps at 1440p, a 34% reduction, and then to 56.6 fps at 4K, a further 49% reduction from 1440p. At High settings, the progression is 110.5 fps at 1080p, 72.3 fps at 1440p (a 35% drop), and 40.7 fps at 4K (a 44% drop from 1440p). This scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 2060 SUPER's memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s is insufficient to maintain performance at 4K, where pixel fill requirements increase exponentially.

The limiting component is clearly the GPU, as evidenced by the fact that the Core Ultra 7 265K's 20 cores and 20 threads, with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, are never stressed in this title. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 50009 and single-core score of 7060 are far beyond what Minimum requires, and the data shows that even at 1080p Low, where CPU load would be highest, the combo still achieves 169.6 fps, suggesting the CPU is not a constraint. The resolution scaling analysis points to the GPU's 8 GB memory and 256-bit bus as the primary factors limiting 4K performance, with the 4K Ultra result of 27.4 fps being a clear outlier that no CPU upgrade could fix.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Minimum?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the sweet spot, with all settings producing average FPS above 82 fps, while 2560x1440 remains playable with High settings at 72.3 fps, but 4K requires Low settings to exceed 56 fps.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this configuration?

A: Benchmark results indicate the GPU is the bottleneck at 4K, where the RTX 2060 SUPER's pixel rate cannot keep up, while the Core Ultra 7 265K's 97th percentile CPU score suggests it has ample headroom even at 1080p Low.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to its nearest rival, the RTX 2070?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 19774, which is only 0.5% lower than the RTX 2070's score of 19680, indicating near-identical aggregate performance despite the RTX 2070 being a nominally higher-tier card.

Q: What FPS can be expected at 1440p Ultra settings?

A: The measured data shows an average of 57 fps at 2560x1440 with Ultra settings, which is just below the 60 fps threshold and may result in occasional perceived stutter on 60Hz displays.

Q: Does the CPU's high core count benefit Minimum's performance?

A: The Core Ultra 7 265K's 20 cores and 20 threads are largely underutilized, as evidenced by the FPS scaling patterns that show GPU limitation; the CPU's Cinebench R20 multi-core score of 21003 does not translate to higher FPS in this title.

Q: Is the 4K Ultra preset viable for this combo?

A: No, the 4K Ultra measured average of 27.4 fps is far below playable standards, making it unsuitable for anything but static scenes or screenshots, and even 4K High at 40.7 fps is marginal.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is an Arrow Lake-S architecture processor with 20 cores and 20 threads, base clock of 3.90 GHz, and boost clock of 5.50 GHz, making it one of the most powerful desktop CPUs available. Its benchmark scores are exceptional: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 50009 and single-core score of 7060, placing it in the 97th percentile of all CPUs. However, in Minimum, this processing power is largely untapped, as the game's 2014 engine does not scale with the CPU's 20 threads, and the measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor in nearly all scenarios.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark performance include the Core Ultra 7 265KF and Core i9-14900KF, both with -0.2% delta scores, confirming that this processor is at the top of its class. Despite this, the combo rank of 1197 out of 1733 in Minimum demonstrates that raw CPU power does not translate to in-game performance when paired with a mid-range GPU like the RTX 2060 SUPER. The CPU's 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB per core L2 cache are ample for this title, but the data suggests that even a significantly weaker CPU would produce similar FPS results in Minimum, as the bottleneck resides entirely within the GPU's rendering pipeline at 1440p and above.