Revolution Idle

# Revolution Idle with AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

Revolution Idle, a 2023 idle game, presents an unusual stress profile for the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination. The measured data shows this pairing delivers extremely high frame rates across all tested resolutions, with performance scaling that reveals a system increasingly bound by the CPU as resolution drops. The combo ranks 66th out of 3,712 tested configurations, placing it in the top 2% of all hardware pairings for this title, though the absolute scores tell a more nuanced story about where the bottleneck lies.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 4K down to 1080p demonstrates classic behavior for a high-end GPU paired with a mid-range CPU in a lightly threaded game. At 3840x2160 Ultra settings, the system produces 40 FPS average, which jumps to 62 FPS at High settings. Dropping to 2560x1440 High yields 118 FPS, and at 1920x1080 High the system reaches 187 FPS average. The scaling from 4K to 1440p represents roughly a 90% improvement in frame rate at High settings, while the move from 1440p to 1080p adds another 58% — a diminishing return pattern that signals the CPU beginning to limit throughput.

At Low settings, the resolution scaling becomes even more pronounced. The 4K Low result of 86 FPS climbs to 164 FPS at 1440p, a 91% gain, but only reaches 257 FPS at 1080p, a 57% improvement over 1440p. This pattern — where the percentage gain from lowering resolution shrinks as pixel count drops — indicates that the Ryzen 7 9700F's eight cores and 16 threads are increasingly the limiting factor at lower resolutions. The RTX 4090, with its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth, has ample headroom to render more frames, but the CPU cannot feed it fast enough.

The Medium settings row reinforces this interpretation. At 4K Medium, the average sits at 65 FPS with a minimum of 55 and maximum of 74. At 1440p Medium, the average rises to 124 FPS with a spread of 105 to 142. At 1080p Medium, the average reaches 196 FPS with minimum 167 and maximum 226. The FPS range widens proportionally as resolution drops, suggesting frame pacing variance increases when the CPU is more heavily tasked. The Ultra preset tells a similar story: 40 FPS at 4K, 76 FPS at 1440p, and 120 FPS at 1080p — each step down in resolution yields roughly a 90% increase, then a 58% increase, matching the High preset's scaling closely.

FAQ

Q: Why does the RTX 4090 only achieve 40 FPS at 4K Ultra in this idle game?

A: The data shows this is an extreme settings scenario. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average FPS is 40, which is 35% lower than the 4K High result of 62 FPS. The Ultra preset imposes rendering demands that even this GPU class cannot overcome at 4K, though the 1440p Ultra result of 76 FPS and 1080p Ultra of 120 FPS show the preset is playable at lower resolutions.

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combo in Revolution Idle?

A: Based on measured results, 2560x1440 High offers the best balance, delivering 118 FPS average. This is more than double the 4K High result of 62 FPS while maintaining higher visual fidelity than Low settings, which produce 164 FPS at 1440p but with reduced quality.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9700F compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 9700F scores 69,996 average in Passmark, sitting 0.2% above the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875) and 0.7% above the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515). It trails the Intel Core i7-14700KF by 0.2% (70,163) and the Intel Core i7-14700K by 0.9% (69,355). The CPU sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's performance in this game typical of its benchmark standing?

A: The GPU's Passmark G3D score is 38,194, placing it in the 88th percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 60,347 is nearly identical to the Intel Arc Pro A60 (60,326, 0% delta), though it trails the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M by 2.5% (61,896) and beats the AMD Radeon PRO V710 by 2.9% (58,657).

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: The measured average is 196 FPS, with a minimum of 167 and maximum of 226 FPS. This represents the highest consistency among all settings at 1080p, as the frame range of 59 FPS is narrower than the 1080p High spread, though High offers a 187 FPS average.

Q: Does the game favor the CPU or GPU more heavily?

A: The scaling data suggests CPU limitation at lower resolutions. At 1080p, Low settings produce 257 FPS versus 187 FPS at High, a 37% difference, while at 4K the same settings gap yields 86 FPS versus 62 FPS, a 39% difference. However, the 4K Ultra result of 40 FPS versus 1080p Ultra of 120 FPS shows the GPU is still heavily taxed at maximum settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 brings substantial resources to Revolution Idle, with 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output processors. Its 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for an idle game, but the raw compute throughput — 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 — ensures that no GPU-side effect becomes a bottleneck until Ultra settings at 4K. The 24 GB of GDDR6X memory operating across a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is far more than this title requires, as evidenced by the minimal frame rate differences between Low and High settings at each resolution.

The clock behavior is telling: base clock of 2235 MHz boosting to 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). The boost behavior under load in a non-demanding title like Revolution Idle likely allows the card to sustain higher clocks than in heavier games, contributing to the strong Low and Medium settings results. The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 38,194 and DirectX 12 score of 150 suggest it excels in specific workloads, though the DirectX 11 score of 326 is notably higher, which may explain solid performance in a game that may not utilize the latest API features.

The 4K Ultra result of 40 FPS stands out as the only sub-60 FPS measurement in the entire dataset. This suggests that the Ultra preset introduces rendering features — possibly excessive shadow detail, post-processing, or draw distance effects — that finally stress the RTX 4090 to its limits at 2160p. The jump from Ultra to High at 4K (40 to 62 FPS, a 55% improvement) is far larger than the same settings transition at 1440p (76 to 118 FPS, 55%) or 1080p (120 to 187 FPS, 56%), indicating the Ultra preset's GPU load scales strongly with pixel count.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the RTX 4090 produces 62 FPS average on High settings, 86 FPS on Low, 65 FPS on Medium with a range of 55 to 74 FPS, and 40 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset's minimum of 55 FPS is the lowest recorded frame rate in the entire dataset, suggesting transient GPU load spikes at 4K. The 21 FPS gap between Low and High at 4K (86 vs 62) is proportionally similar to the 20 FPS gap at 1080p (257 vs 187), indicating consistent GPU scaling across resolutions for these two presets.

At 2560x1440, High settings deliver 118 FPS average, Low produces 164 FPS, Medium averages 124 FPS with a 105-142 FPS range, and Ultra hits 76 FPS. The jump from 4K to 1440p at High settings is a 90% improvement (62 to 118 FPS), while at Low settings it is 91% (86 to 164 FPS). The Medium preset shows an 91% improvement (65 to 124 FPS), and Ultra improves by 90% (40 to 76 FPS). This consistency across all four presets indicates the resolution scaling is uniform regardless of quality level.

At 1920x1080, the results are 187 FPS High, 257 FPS Low, 196 FPS Medium (167-226 range), and 120 FPS Ultra. The 1080p Medium result of 196 FPS is notably close to the High result of 187 FPS, a difference of only 9 FPS, whereas at 1440p that same gap is 6 FPS (118 vs 124) and at 4K it is 3 FPS (62 vs 65). This narrowing gap at lower resolutions suggests that both Medium and High presets become CPU-limited at 1080p, with the GPU easily handling either quality level. The Ultra preset at 1080p (120 FPS) remains 36% below Low (257 FPS), showing that Ultra still imposes significant GPU work even at the lowest resolution tested.

Settings Recommendations

The data supports High settings as the optimal choice across all three resolutions. At 4K, High yields 62 FPS average, which is playable, while Ultra drops to 40 FPS — a 35% reduction for marginal visual gains. At 1440p, High produces 118 FPS versus Ultra's 76 FPS, a 55% advantage, and the Medium preset only adds 6 FPS over High (124 vs 118) while likely reducing visual quality. At 1080p, High delivers 187 FPS, which is within 5% of Medium's 196 FPS and 27% above Ultra's 120 FPS.

For users prioritizing maximum frame rates, Low settings provide the highest measured results: 257 FPS at 1080p, 164 FPS at 1440p, and 86 FPS at 4K. However, the jump from Low to High at 1080p costs 70 FPS (257 to 187, a 27% reduction) while at 4K it costs 24 FPS (86 to 62, a 28% reduction) — the relative cost is consistent, but the absolute frame rate remains high enough at High settings to justify the quality increase.

Ultra settings are only viable at 1080p, where the 120 FPS average remains above the 60 FPS threshold, and marginally at 1440p with 76 FPS. At 4K, Ultra's 40 FPS average falls below typical playability standards. The Medium preset offers the best frame time consistency, with the narrowest minimum-to-maximum spread at each resolution (19 FPS at 4K, 37 FPS at 1440p, 59 FPS at 1080p), though this advantage is unlikely to be perceptible at the high frame rates involved.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F, based on Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge codename), provides 8 cores and 16 threads with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost clock of 5.50 GHz. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache, 1 MB L2 per core, and 80 KB L1 per core offer substantial on-die storage for game logic. The 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth position this as a mainstream desktop processor, and the data shows it becomes the limiting factor in Revolution Idle at lower resolutions.

The Passmark single-thread score of 4,691 and multithread score of 36,470 indicate strong per-core performance, which matters for an idle game that likely runs most logic on one or two threads. The physics score of 2,122 and integer math score of 120,788 suggest the CPU handles the game's internal calculations easily. However, the scaling data reveals the constraint: at 1080p, moving from Low to High settings only reduces FPS by 27% (257 to 187), while at 4K the same settings change reduces FPS by 28% (86 to 62). This consistency shows the GPU is handling the additional settings load proportionally at both resolutions, but the absolute frame rates at 1080p (187-257 FPS) far exceed what the CPU can support at 4K (62-86 FPS), implying the CPU is not the bottleneck at higher resolutions.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 94 and average benchmark score of 69,996 place it in elite company, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875, 0.2% slower), Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163, 0.2% faster), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515, 0.7% slower), and Intel Core i7-14700K (69,355, 0.9% slower). These margins are negligible in real-world gaming, yet the CPU's 8-core/16-thread configuration may limit frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios. The 1080p Low result of 257 FPS likely approaches the maximum frame rate this CPU can feed to any GPU in this title, regardless of the RTX 4090's capabilities.

The combination of 4 nm process node, 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die, and PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes ensures the CPU can communicate with the RTX 4090 (which uses PCIe 4.0 x16) without bandwidth constraints. The ECC memory support and unlocked multiplier are irrelevant to gaming performance but indicate the processor's workstation heritage. In Revolution Idle specifically, the CPU's role is to keep the game's simulation ticking at high frequency, and the data shows it succeeds admirably — the system never drops below 55 FPS in any measured configuration, and at 1080p it maintains a minimum of 167 FPS even on Medium settings.