Minimum

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 delivers a formidable performance profile in Minimum, a Third-Person Shooter released in 2014. The benchmark data shows this combination consistently produces high frame rates across all tested resolutions and settings, with the system demonstrating a clear capacity to handle the game’s demands. This analysis breaks down the measured results to understand the roles of the CPU and GPU, the optimal settings, and the scaling behavior from 1080p to 4K.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, built on a 3 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz, supported by a 36 MB shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, the processor achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51,731 and a single-core score of 7,303, indicating strong headroom for both heavily threaded workloads and lightly threaded tasks.

For a game like Minimum, which was released in 2014, the CPU’s single-threaded performance is often the primary factor for maintaining high frame rates, especially at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the bottleneck. The data supports this: at 1080p Low settings, the combo reaches 369 FPS, a figure that relies heavily on the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU quickly. The boost clock of 5.80 GHz is a key enabler here, as it provides the rapid instruction execution needed for game logic and physics calculations.

The processor’s 24 threads are more than sufficient for a title from this era, which typically utilizes fewer than eight threads. However, the high multi-threaded scores—such as the Passmark multithread score of 60,860—ensure there is no risk of background processes or the operating system causing frame-time stutters. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this configuration, even at 1080p, where frame rates exceed 360 FPS. This is further corroborated by the CPU’s percentile rank of 96 among all tested processors, placing it well ahead of most rivals, including the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which trails by a marginal 0.2% in average score.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy across the four settings presets—Low, Medium, High, and Ultra—at each resolution. At 4K (3840x2160), the Ultra preset yields an average of 63 FPS, which is playable but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes. The High preset improves this to 82 FPS, while Medium reaches 98 FPS, and Low achieves 128 FPS. Given that the game is a fast-paced Third-Person Shooter, a higher frame rate is often preferable to maximum visual fidelity.

At 1440p, the Medium preset delivers an average of 182 FPS with a minimum of 155 FPS, which is excellent for smooth gameplay. The High preset at this resolution provides 153 FPS, which is still very smooth, while Ultra offers 117 FPS. At 1080p, all presets are exceptionally playable, with even Ultra averaging 181 FPS and Medium hitting 283 FPS.

The best experience per the measured rows appears to be the Medium preset at 1440p. This configuration balances a high average frame rate of 182 FPS with a minimum of 155 FPS, ensuring no significant dips. At 4K, the Medium preset is the most balanced choice, as it maintains an average of 98 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold, while High drops to 82 FPS and Ultra falls to 63 FPS. For players prioritizing maximum smoothness over visual detail, the Low preset at 1080p offers a staggering 369 FPS average, though the visual trade-offs are substantial.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus compare to its nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has an average benchmark score of 84,003, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K’s average score of 83,807, indicating a marginal performance advantage.

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate measured for this combo in Minimum?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 369 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: Does the RTX 5080’s performance in Minimum exceed that of the AMD Radeon 8060S?

A: Yes, the RTX 5080 has an average benchmark score of 56,083, which is 0.6% higher than the AMD Radeon 8060S’s score of 55,757, based on the nearestRivals data.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the combo maintain a minimum frame rate above 150 FPS?

A: At 2560x1440 resolution with Medium settings, the combo achieves an average of 182 FPS with a minimum of 155 FPS, ensuring a minimum frame rate above 150 FPS. At 1920x1080 with Medium settings, the minimum is 240 FPS.

Q: How much more memory bandwidth does the RTX 5080 have compared to its predecessor?

A: The RTX 5080 features 960.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, though the data pack does not provide a direct comparison figure for its predecessor, the GeForce 40 series.

Q: What is the combo’s ranking among all tested combinations for this game?

A: The combo ranks 209th out of 3,712 tested combinations, placing it in the top percentile for performance in Minimum.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination holds a rank of 209 out of 3,712 tested combos in Minimum. This places the system firmly in the upper echelon of performance, outperforming the vast majority of other CPU-GPU pairings tested against this game. The top 209th position indicates that only about 5.6% of tested configurations deliver higher average frame rates across the measured scenarios.

This ranking confirms the balance between the CPU and GPU. The CPU’s strong single-threaded performance, evidenced by a Passmark single-thread score of 4,823, ensures that even at lower resolutions, the GPU is not starved of data. Meanwhile, the GPU’s substantial compute power, with a Passmark G3D score of 36,565, allows it to maintain high frame rates at 4K. When compared to other high-end combos, this pairing’s rank suggests it is well-suited for high-refresh-rate monitors at 1440p and for smooth 4K gameplay, despite the game’s age. The data shows that the combo is not at the very top, but it is far above the median, making it a highly capable configuration for this title.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, featuring 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus. The memory operates at an effective speed of 30 Gbps, providing a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The GPU’s base clock is 2295 MHz, with a boost clock of 2617 MHz, and it houses 10,752 shading units, 336 TMUs, and 112 ROPs.

For Minimum, a game from 2014, the GPU’s massive memory bandwidth and 16 GB VRAM are far beyond what the title requires. The game’s textures and geometry are unlikely to exceed even 4 GB of VRAM at 4K Ultra, so the RTX 5080 is not constrained by memory capacity. Instead, its raw throughput, measured at 56.28 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, drives the high frame rates observed in the data.

The GPU’s performance is evident in the frame rates: at 4K Ultra, the combo still manages an average of 63 FPS, which is a demanding resolution and settings combination for any hardware. The boost clock of 2617 MHz allows the GPU to maintain high utilization, and the benchmark results indicate that the RTX 5080 is the primary driver of frame rates at 4K, where the CPU’s influence diminishes. Compared to its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon 8060S, the RTX 5080 has a 0.6% higher average benchmark score, and it outperforms the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by 2.2%, solidifying its position as a top-tier GPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the combo’s performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the system delivers exceptional frame rates across the board. Low settings yield an average of 369 FPS, while Medium settings produce an average of 283 FPS with a minimum of 240 FPS and a maximum of 325 FPS. High settings average 237 FPS, and Ultra settings average 181 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain very high but show a slight reduction. Low settings average 238 FPS, Medium settings average 182 FPS with a minimum of 155 FPS and a maximum of 210 FPS. High settings average 153 FPS, and Ultra settings average 117 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a performance hit of approximately 35% on Medium settings (from 283 to 182 FPS), which is expected as the GPU works harder to render more pixels.

At 3840x2160 (4K), the frame rates drop more significantly. Low settings average 128 FPS, Medium settings average 98 FPS with a minimum of 83 FPS and a maximum of 113 FPS. High settings average 82 FPS, and Ultra settings average 63 FPS. The minimum frame rate of 83 FPS at 4K Medium indicates that the combo is still capable of maintaining smooth gameplay, though the Ultra preset’s average of 63 FPS is near the lower bound for competitive play. The data shows a clear degradation as resolution and settings increase, with Ultra at 4K being the most demanding scenario tested.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals critical insights into the system’s bottleneck characteristics. At Medium settings, the average frame rate drops from 283 FPS at 1080p to 182 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of 35.7%. From 1440p to 4K, the average drops to 98 FPS, a further reduction of 46.2%. This progressive decline indicates that the GPU is becoming the limiting component as resolution increases, since the CPU’s workload remains relatively constant across resolutions.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 369 FPS at 1080p falls to 238 FPS at 1440p (a 35.5% drop) and then to 128 FPS at 4K (a 46.2% drop from 1440p). This pattern suggests that at 1080p, the system is heavily CPU-bound, as the frame rates are extremely high, but the CPU still manages to keep up. As resolution increases, the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the bottleneck, causing the frame rates to scale more closely with the number of pixels.

The data also shows that the gap between Low and Ultra settings narrows at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low (369 FPS) and Ultra (181 FPS) is 188 FPS, while at 4K, the difference is only 65 FPS (128 vs 63 FPS). This narrowing indicates that at 4K, the GPU is saturated regardless of settings, and the CPU has less influence on the final frame rate. Consequently, for this combo, the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p, while the GPU becomes the dominant constraint at 4K, with 1440p serving as a balanced middle ground where both components contribute meaningfully to performance.