Minimum

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 delivers a playable but constrained experience in Minimum, a 2014 third-person shooter. The data shows that this combination is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s substantial headroom becomes evident only at 1080p with lower settings. The measured results indicate that users must trade visual fidelity for frame rate, with the sweet spot depending on the target resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset emerges as the most balanced option across all three resolutions, though its viability varies sharply. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 80 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The Low preset at the same resolution pushes performance to 91 FPS average, but the jump from Low to Medium costs roughly 23% of the frame rate while likely delivering noticeably better image quality. Given that 70 FPS still clears the 60 FPS bar, Medium is the recommended starting point for 1080p users.

At 2560x1440, Medium drops to 45 FPS average, with the measured range spanning 38 to 52 FPS. This is a significant step down from 1080p, and it falls below the 60 FPS target. Low at 1440p delivers 59 FPS average, which is right at the edge of playability. For users who prioritize frame rate consistency, Low is the safer pick at this resolution, since the 45 FPS average of Medium may feel choppy during intense firefights. However, if the game’s visual style benefits from higher detail, Medium’s 45 FPS could still be acceptable for a slower-paced third-person shooter, but the data suggests that Low is the pragmatic choice to maintain fluidity.

At 3840x2160, the picture worsens considerably. Medium averages only 24 FPS, with a minimum of 21 FPS and a maximum of 28 FPS. This is stuttery and barely playable in the best case. Low at 4K produces 32 FPS average, which is still below the 30 FPS console-style baseline for many titles, but it is the only preset that approaches a tolerable experience. High at 4K yields just 20 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 15 FPS, making those presets effectively unplayable. The measured data indicates that 4K users should stick to Low, accepting the visual compromises, or drop to a lower resolution altogether.

Overall, the best experience per the measured rows is Medium at 1080p, as it offers the highest quality setting that still maintains a 60+ FPS average. For 1440p, Low is the recommendation, and for 4K, Low is the only viable option, albeit with a sub-30 FPS average. The data clearly shows that this combo is not designed for high-fidelity gaming at high resolutions.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the primary bottleneck in this pairing, and its specifications explain why. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 1257 MHz with a boost clock of 1340 MHz, and the memory runs at 2000 MHz (8 Gbps effective). The chip, Polaris 20, is built on a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries, containing 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die. The shading units number 2304, with 144 texture mapping units and 32 ROPs, producing a pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s. Peak FP32 performance is 6.175 TFLOPS.

These numbers place the RX 580 at the 53rd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 12928. Its nearest rivals in the database are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (avg score 12940, deltaPct -0.1%), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (avg score 12986, deltaPct -0.4%), the AMD Radeon 740M (avg score 12870, deltaPct 0.5%), and the AMD FirePro W5100 (avg score 12847, deltaPct 0.6%). These deltas are all within about half a percent, meaning the RX 580 is effectively on par with those parts in synthetic benchmarks.

In Minimum, the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM is not the limiting factor at 1080p or 1440p, as the game’s texture and geometry demands from 2014 are modest. The data shows that the frame rate scales almost linearly with resolution, which is a classic sign of GPU-bound performance. At 1080p Low, the GPU delivers 91 FPS, but at 4K Low, it falls to 32 FPS, a 65% drop. This behavior aligns with the GPU’s raw throughput capabilities rather than any memory capacity constraint. The ROP count of 32 and the fill rates are modest by modern standards, and the measured FPS reflects that the GPU is simply overwhelmed by the pixel workload at higher resolutions.

The boost clock of 1340 MHz is fixed, and the data shows no indication of thermal or power throttling affecting the results, since the frame rates are consistent with the GPU’s known performance class. The 185 W TDP and dual-slot cooler are irrelevant to the in-game results, but the GPU’s position in the benchmark hierarchy (53rd percentile) corroborates the measured FPS, which places it well below the current midrange and high-end parts.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals that the RX 580 is the limiting component in nearly all scenarios. At Low settings, the average frame rate goes from 91 FPS at 1920x1080 to 59 FPS at 2560x1440 to 32 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a decline of 32 FPS (35%) when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and another 27 FPS (46%) when moving from 1440p to 4K. The total loss from 1080p to 4K is 59 FPS, or 65% of the 1080p performance. This steep scaling is typical of a GPU that is saturated by pixel count, with the CPU playing a negligible role.

At Medium settings, the same pattern holds: 70 FPS at 1080p, 45 FPS at 1440p, and 24 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are similar, confirming that the GPU’s fill rate and bandwidth are the primary constraints. The 256.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is a key factor here, as higher resolutions demand more memory throughput, and the RX 580’s bandwidth is insufficient for 4K workloads. The fact that Low settings improve frame rates across all resolutions indicates that reducing shading complexity (likely lower texture detail and effects) alleviates some pressure on the GPU, but the resolution scaling remains steep.

The data strongly suggests that the CPU is not limiting the system in Minimum. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect frame rates to plateau as resolution increases, since the CPU workload would remain constant while the GPU struggles. Instead, the frame rates fall consistently with resolution, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, with 24 cores and 24 threads, has ample headroom even at 1080p Low, where the 91 FPS result is likely near the game’s engine limit or the GPU’s ceiling, not a CPU constraint. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (91 FPS) is high enough that any CPU limitation would have shown a smaller gap between 1080p and 1440p, but the gap is substantial, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting component.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of presets is available. Low settings deliver an average of 91 FPS, with no minimum or maximum reported. Medium settings produce 70 FPS average, with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 80 FPS, indicating a stable frame time distribution. High settings yield 58 FPS average, which is just below the 60 FPS target but still playable. Ultra settings drop to 45 FPS average, which may be acceptable for a game like Minimum given its age, but the gap between Ultra and High is 13 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset imposes heavy demands on the GPU. The data shows that 1080p is the only resolution where the combo can achieve a 60+ FPS average, and only with Low or Medium settings.

At 2560x1440, the same preset ladder shows significant degradation. Low settings average 59 FPS, which is a 35% drop from 1080p Low. Medium averages 45 FPS, with a minimum of 38 FPS and a maximum of 52 FPS, meaning the frame rate can dip below 40 FPS in demanding scenes. High averages 38 FPS, and Ultra averages 29 FPS. None of the 1440p presets reach 60 FPS, and only Low is close, at 59 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 30 FPS, which is similar to the 46 FPS spread at 1080p, indicating that the GPU’s performance scales consistently with settings regardless of resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are poor across the board. Low averages 32 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS (with a minimum of 21 and maximum of 28), High averages 20 FPS, and Ultra averages 15 FPS. The differences between presets are smaller in absolute terms, with only 17 FPS separating Low from Ultra, but the percentage differences are similar to lower resolutions. For example, Medium is 25% slower than Low at 4K, compared to a 23% difference at 1080p. The minimum FPS of 21 at 4K Medium indicates that the game can become nearly unplayable during action sequences. The data shows that 4K is not a viable option for this combo, as even the lowest settings fail to maintain a 30 FPS average.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Minimum, this pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 580 ranks 3383 out of 3712 total combos. This places it in the bottom 9% of all tested configurations, which is a poor showing. The rank reflects the GPU’s age and performance class, as the CPU is one of the fastest available, but the GPU drags the overall score down. The combo’s percentile of 53 for the GPU alone (vs all GPUs) is misleading because the CPU’s high percentile (96 vs all CPUs) does little to boost gaming performance when the GPU is the bottleneck.

Compared to other tested combos, the ranking indicates that most systems achieve higher frame rates in Minimum, likely due to more recent GPUs with higher fill rates and bandwidth. The RX 580’s nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark—such as the GTX 1660 SUPER (deltaPct -0.4%)—would likely produce similar or slightly better in-game results, but the ranking shows that this combo is near the bottom of the distribution. The 3712 total combos span a wide range of hardware, and a rank of 3383 means that only 329 combinations perform worse. This is a clear signal that the RX 580 is the limiting factor, and that users seeking better performance should prioritize a GPU upgrade over a CPU upgrade, as the Ultra 9 290K Plus is already in the top percentile of processors.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. It is built on a 3 nm process from TSMC, with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support is DDR5 with a dual-channel bus, providing 115.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The chip supports ECC memory and has 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes from the CPU. Its integrated graphics are Arc Xe-LPG with 64 execution units.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 51731 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 7303 in single-core, with a Passmark multithread score of 60860 and a single-thread score of 4823. Its average benchmark score is 84003, placing it at the 96th percentile among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (avg score 83807, deltaPct 0.2%), the AMD EPYC 4584PX (avg score 83090, deltaPct 1.1%), the AMD EPYC 9135 (avg score 82980, deltaPct 1.2%), and the AMD EPYC 7F72 (avg score 85072, deltaPct -1.3%). All of these are within 1.3% of the 290K Plus, indicating that the CPU is at the top of the performance hierarchy.

In Minimum, the CPU’s role is minimal, as the measured FPS is almost entirely determined by the GPU. The game, released in 2014, is unlikely to utilize more than a few cores, and the 24-core, 24-thread configuration provides massive headroom that goes unused. The boost clock of 5.80 GHz is more relevant, as single-threaded performance often dictates frame pacing in older games. The CPU’s single-core score of 736 in Cinebench R15 and 7303 in R23 suggest strong per-thread performance, but the data shows that the GPU cannot keep up even at 1080p Low, where the CPU would have the least load. If the CPU were a limiting factor, we would see a smaller FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p, but the 35% drop at Low settings indicates the GPU is saturated.

The CPU’s 36 MB of L3 cache and high memory bandwidth are irrelevant to this game’s results, as the bottleneck is purely in the GPU’s rasterization and fill rate. The data shows that the CPU contributes nothing to the FPS differences between presets; the frame rate scales with settings and resolution in a way that is consistent with the GPU’s known performance envelope. For this particular game, the Ultra 9 290K Plus is overkill, but it does ensure that the system is never CPU-bound, even at the lowest resolution. The comboRankInGame of 3383 out of 3712 is a direct consequence of the GPU, not the CPU, and any improvement in frame rate would require a GPU with higher throughput.