Minimum

Minimum is a 2014 third-person shooter that remains popular in benchmark databases, and the tested configuration pairs the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H mobile processor with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. This combo ranks 1065th out of 2939 tested combinations in this game, placing it in the upper third of all systems evaluated. The data shows a system that delivers playable frame rates at 4K, excellent performance at 1440p, and very high refresh rate capability at 1080p, though the settings scaling reveals some interesting bottlenecks worth understanding before you commit to this pairing.

FAQ

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

A: At 2560x1440 with High settings, the system averages 97 FPS, which is a strong balance of visual quality and smoothness. At 1920x1080 with High settings, it reaches 150 FPS, making it ideal for high refresh rate monitors, while 4K at High settings drops to 52 FPS, which is still playable but not ideal for competitive play.

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

A: The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H has an average benchmark score of 44466, which is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D (44573, just 0.2% higher). It is 0.3% ahead of the Intel Core i9-13950HX and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI Max 385, showing that this chip sits in a very competitive performance cluster.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to other graphics cards in overall benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5070 Ti scores 49957 on average, which is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (50001, only 0.1% higher). It trails the RX 6900 XT by 2% but beats the RX 6800 XT by 3.1%, indicating that synthetic benchmarks place it in the same tier as previous-generation high-end cards.

Q: Should I use Ultra settings at 1440p with this hardware?

A: The data suggests no, because Ultra at 2560x1440 only yields 74 FPS, while dropping to High gives you 97 FPS — a 31% improvement. Given that High settings likely look nearly identical in a game from 2014, the extra performance from High is the practical choice.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Minimum?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K Medium settings, it averages 62 FPS with a minimum of 53, which is playable. High settings drop to 52 FPS, and Ultra falls to 40 FPS. For a smooth 4K experience, Medium is the highest playable preset.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance influence gaming results?

A: The CPU scores 2200.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 4280 in Passmark single-thread tests, placing it in the 88th percentile among all CPUs. In a 2014 shooter like Minimum, which likely relies heavily on single-thread performance, this strong showing helps maintain high frame rates at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the bottleneck.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB203 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock is 2295 MHz with a boost of 2452 MHz, and memory runs at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). These specifications translate to 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, 686.6 GTexel/s texture fill rate, and 235.4 GPixel/s pixel rate.

In Minimum, the GPU's role becomes apparent when examining frame rates across resolutions. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system hits 234 FPS, suggesting the GPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution and settings level. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p reduces average FPS to 179, and High brings it down to 150. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p (234 to 115 FPS) shows that the GPU has enough headroom to handle the game's demands even at maximum settings, but the frame rate drops by roughly half.

Moving to 2560x1440, the GPU's workload increases noticeably. Low settings produce 151 FPS, Medium drops to 116 FPS, High to 97 FPS, and Ultra to 74 FPS. The performance degradation from Low to Ultra is about 51%, which is less severe than at 1080p but still significant. At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. Low settings yield 81 FPS, Medium 62 FPS, High 52 FPS, and Ultra just 40 FPS. The 4K Ultra result indicates that the RTX 5070 Ti, despite its 16 GB of VRAM and high bandwidth, cannot maintain high frame rates at maximum settings in this resolution.

The 16 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for Minimum, a game from 2014 that likely uses less than 4 GB even at 4K Ultra. The bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s ensures that texture streaming and memory-intensive effects are handled without stutter. The GPU's 70 RT cores and 280 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for this title, which predates ray tracing and DLSS, so the raw rasterization performance of its 8960 shading units is what matters most here.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H is a mobile processor from the Core Ultra Series 3, built on Intel's 3 nm process with the Panther Lake architecture. It features 16 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz. The CPU has 192 KB of L1 cache per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports LPDDR5X memory on a dual-channel bus with 153.6 GB/s bandwidth, and it integrates Arc B390 graphics, though the discrete RTX 5070 Ti handles all rendering in this configuration.

The CPU's benchmark results place it in the 88th percentile of all processors. Its Cinebench R23 scores are 18911 multi-core and 2200.5 single-core, while Passmark shows 36811 multi-thread and 4280 single-thread. In synthetic tests, it is effectively tied with the AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D (0.2% behind), the Intel Core i9-13950HX (0.3% ahead), and the AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 (0.4% ahead). This clustering suggests that the 388H offers competitive performance in its class.

For Minimum, the CPU's single-thread performance is likely the more critical factor. The boost clock of 5.10 GHz is high for a mobile part, and the Cinebench R15 single-core score of 309.5 indicates strong per-core capability. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system reaches 234 FPS, which likely approaches the CPU's limit for this game. The fact that 1080p Low and 1080p Medium differ by 55 FPS (234 vs 179) suggests the GPU is still doing work, but the CPU must feed it frames quickly enough to maintain those rates.

The 16-core, 16-thread configuration provides ample multi-threaded headroom for background tasks and any modern game engine features, but Minimum's age means it likely uses fewer threads. The 18 MB L3 cache helps with data locality, and the dual-channel LPDDR5X memory bandwidth of 153.6 GB/s is sufficient for this workload. The CPU's TDP of 25 W is low for a high-clocked part, which may indicate thermal constraints in a mobile chassis, but the measured FPS results show that it does not throttle to the point of hurting gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimizing Minimum on this hardware. At 1920x1080, the best experience is High settings, which delivers 150 FPS average. This is high enough for 144Hz monitors, and the jump to Ultra only costs you 35 FPS for marginal visual gains in a 2014 title. Low settings at 234 FPS are only useful for competitive play on 240Hz displays, but the visual quality trade-off is substantial.

At 2560x1440, High settings at 97 FPS is the sweet spot. Medium at 116 FPS is also viable if you prefer higher frame rates, but High offers a better balance of image quality and smoothness. Ultra at 74 FPS is playable but not ideal for fast-paced third-person shooting, where consistent frame times matter more than peak visual fidelity. The data shows that dropping from Ultra to High at 1440p yields a 31% FPS improvement, which is worth the minor visual reduction.

At 3840x2160, Medium settings at 62 FPS is the recommended preset. The minimum FPS of 53 indicates some dips, but this is the only 4K setting that stays above the 60 FPS threshold on average. High at 52 FPS and Low at 81 FPS bracket this choice, but Low sacrifices too much visual quality for the resolution, and High's 52 FPS average is too close to the edge for consistent gameplay. Ultra at 40 FPS is not recommended for anything beyond screenshots.

For the overall best experience across all resolutions, High settings provides the most consistent frame rates relative to visual quality. The data indicates that the game scales well from Low to High, but Ultra introduces a disproportionate performance penalty across all resolutions, likely due to effects that are expensive on modern hardware despite the game's age.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H and RTX 5070 Ti combination ranks 1065th out of 2939 tested combos in Minimum, which places it in the 64th percentile of all systems tested. This is a solid ranking, considering that the database likely includes many desktop systems with higher-end components. The CPU's 88th percentile standing and the GPU's 86th percentile standing suggest that both components are above average individually, but the combo's overall rank is slightly lower, indicating that other factors like memory configuration or platform limitations may affect the pairing.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks — the Ryzen 5 7500X3D, Core i9-13950HX, Ryzen AI Max 385, and Core i5-13600 — all have average scores within 0.5% of the 388H. This tight clustering means that swapping to any of these CPUs would likely produce similar FPS results in Minimum, assuming the GPU remains the same. The GPU's nearest rivals include the RX Vega 64, Arc A550M, RX 6900 XT, and RX 6800 XT, with performance deltas ranging from -2% to +3.1%. The RX 6900 XT is 2% faster on average, which could translate to a few extra FPS in this game, but the difference is unlikely to be noticeable in practice.

Given the combo's rank, it sits comfortably in the upper third of all systems, meaning it outperforms the majority of tested configurations. For a mobile CPU paired with a high-end GPU, this ranking reflects the 388H's ability to keep up with the RTX 5070 Ti without becoming a significant bottleneck at most settings. The data suggests that this combo is well-matched for Minimum, with the CPU providing enough single-thread performance to drive high frame rates at 1080p and the GPU handling the resolution scaling up to 4K Medium.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce an average of 234 FPS, Medium drops to 179 FPS with a minimum of 152 and maximum of 206, High averages 150 FPS, and Ultra falls to 115 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 51% reduction in frame rate, but even the lowest result at this resolution is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong but show more variation. Low settings average 151 FPS, Medium averages 116 FPS with a minimum of 98 and maximum of 133, High averages 97 FPS, and Ultra averages 74 FPS. The step from High to Ultra costs 23 FPS, which is a significant drop for what is likely a small visual improvement in a 2014 game. The minimum FPS of 98 at Medium settings indicates that even under load, the system stays above 90 FPS at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes more constrained. Low settings average 81 FPS, Medium averages 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 and maximum of 72, High averages 52 FPS, and Ultra averages 40 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 41 FPS, showing that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at 4K. The Medium preset's minimum of 53 FPS suggests occasional dips below 60, but the average of 62 FPS is playable for most users.

The data shows consistent behavior across all resolutions: Low settings offer the highest frame rates, followed by Medium, High, and Ultra in descending order. The Medium preset has measured minimum and maximum values at all three resolutions, providing the most complete picture of performance stability. At 1080p Medium, the range is 152-206 FPS; at 1440p Medium, it is 98-133 FPS; and at 4K Medium, it is 53-72 FPS. These ranges indicate that the system maintains fairly stable frame times, with the widest spread occurring at 4K where the GPU is under the most stress.