To The Core

To The Core, an idle game released on February 14, 2024, presents a unique benchmarking scenario where frame rates are extraordinarily high across the board. The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 yields results that consistently exceed the refresh rates of most displays, making the choice of settings more about consistency and visual fidelity than raw playability.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals that this hardware combination is overwhelmingly powerful for this title. At 1080p, even the most demanding preset produces an average of 197 FPS, which is far beyond the 144Hz standard for high-refresh monitors. However, the data shows a clear hierarchy in performance and stability across the four tested presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra.

For the best experience, the High preset at 1440p emerges as the sweet spot. This configuration delivers an average of 165 FPS, which is ideal for a 165Hz monitor. It offers a significant visual upgrade over the Medium preset while maintaining a frame rate that is 33 FPS higher than the Ultra preset's 132 FPS at the same resolution. The High preset provides a 25% performance increase over Ultra while likely offering a substantial improvement in visual quality over Medium.

The Medium preset is a strong alternative for those prioritizing frame rate headroom. At 1440p, it achieves 190 FPS, a 15% increase over High. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers a 282 FPS average with a minimum of 240 FPS, ensuring buttery-smooth performance even in the most chaotic idle-game moments with thousands of on-screen elements. The data for Medium is the only preset at each resolution that includes `minFps` and `maxFps` values, suggesting it was the primary focus for stability testing, with the 1080p result showing a 85 FPS range between minimum and maximum.

The Ultra preset, while visually the most demanding, shows a notable performance cost. At 1080p, it drops to 197 FPS, which is a 30% reduction compared to the Medium preset. The gap becomes more pronounced at higher resolutions, with Ultra at 4K producing an average of 76 FPS. While this is still playable, it is the only configuration that falls below the 100 FPS threshold, indicating that the graphical load begins to strain the GPU's capabilities. Low settings provide the highest frame rates—334 FPS at 1080p—but for a game like this, the visual compromise is likely unnecessary given the headroom at higher presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is the primary driver of the frame rate differences between settings. Its specifications include a boost clock of 2497 MHz and 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. The data indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor when transitioning from Medium to Ultra settings, as the average FPS drops consistently across all resolutions.

This is a GPU with a 72nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, placing it in the upper-midrange tier. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, which it leads by 1.2% in average benchmark score. This performance is sufficient to handle the graphical demands of To The Core's Ultra preset, but the framerate cost is significant. The transition from High to Ultra at 4K results in a 19% decrease in average FPS (from 94 to 76), indicating that the Ultra preset's additional effects are particularly taxing on the RTX 5060.

The GPU's 8 GB of VRAM is not a bottleneck in this scenario, as the game's requirements are modest. The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K, which shows a 61% reduction in FPS at High settings, is a classic sign of GPU-bound rendering. The RTX 5060's compute capabilities, rated at 19.18 TFLOPS, are the determining factor for how many pixels can be processed each frame. The data suggests that the GPU's architecture, Blackwell 2.0, handles the load efficiently but is ultimately constrained by its 128-bit memory interface and 48 ROPs when pushing 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a predictable and steep decline as resolution increases, confirming that the rendering load scales directly with pixel count. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 245 FPS at 1080p to 165 FPS at 1440p, a 33% reduction. Moving to 4K (2160p) further reduces the average to 94 FPS, a 43% drop from the 1440p result and a 62% decrease from the 1080p baseline.

This pattern holds across all presets. For Medium settings, the averages are 282 FPS at 1080p, 190 FPS at 1440p, and 109 FPS at 4K. The Low preset shows a similar trend, with averages of 334 FPS, 225 FPS, and 128 FPS at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, respectively. Even the Ultra preset follows the same curve, going from 197 FPS at 1080p to 132 FPS at 1440p and finally 76 FPS at 4K.

This scaling indicates a GPU-bound workload. The CPU, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT, is powerful enough to feed the GPU at all resolutions. Its 8-core, 16-thread configuration and boost clock of 4.80 GHz are more than sufficient for an idle game. The fact that the FPS drops proportionally with pixel count is the definitive indicator that the RTX 5060 is the limiting component. The GPU's pixel rate of 119.9 GPixel/s is the hard ceiling, and as the resolution increases, more of that rate is consumed, resulting in lower FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global database of tested hardware combinations for To The Core, this specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 holds a rank of 1639 out of 3725 combos. This places it in the 56th percentile of all tested systems, meaning it outperforms more than half of the configurations in the database but is outclassed by a significant portion of the top 44%.

This ranking is likely influenced by the GPU's performance tier. While the RTX 5060 is a capable card, it is not top-tier. The CPU, however, is a strong performer, ranking in the 81st percentile of all CPUs. This suggests that the combo's rank is dragged down by the GPU's position in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs. The data implies that the CPU has headroom to support a more powerful GPU, and that the RTX 5060 is the bottleneck in this specific pairing.

The combo's rank of 1639 suggests that there are 1,638 other configurations that achieve higher average frame rates in this game. These are likely combinations featuring higher-end GPUs. However, this rank also shows that the combo sits comfortably above the median, offering a high-refresh experience at all but the most demanding 4K settings. The pairing is well-balanced for mainstream gaming, where the 1080p and 1440p resolutions are the most common.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in To The Core?

A: Yes, but with caveats. The data shows a 4K average of 94 FPS on High settings and 76 FPS on Ultra. This is playable but does not take full advantage of high-refresh 4K monitors. For a locked 100+ FPS experience at 4K, the Medium preset (109 FPS) is the recommended choice.

Q: What is the best preset for a 144Hz monitor?

A: The High preset at 1440p (165 FPS) is the ideal match. It provides a significant visual upgrade over Medium and comfortably exceeds the 144Hz refresh rate, ensuring smooth motion. At 1080p, the High preset (245 FPS) also works, but the Ultra preset (197 FPS) remains above 144Hz for maximum visual quality.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the limiting component. This is evidenced by the significant FPS drop when moving from 1080p to 4K (e.g., 245 to 94 FPS on High). The CPU (AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT) has sufficient headroom, as its performance ranking (81st percentile) is higher than the GPU's (72nd percentile).

Q: How does the RTX 5060 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 5060's average benchmark score is 26,331. Its closest rival, the AMD Radeon 860M, scores 26,401, which is 0.3% higher. It also trails the NVIDIA GeForce MX550 by 0.3% (score of 26,421). Conversely, it leads the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT by 1.2%, which scores 26,011.

Q: What is the minimum FPS I can expect at 1080p?

A: Data is only available for the Medium preset, which shows a minimum average FPS of 240. Given that the High and Ultra presets have higher average FPS (245 and 197, respectively), the minimums for those presets are likely to be lower than 240 but still high, ensuring a smooth experience.

Q: Is the 8GB VRAM on the RTX 5060 sufficient?

A: For To The Core, the data suggests it is not a limiting factor. The performance scaling is consistent with a compute-bound GPU rather than a memory-capacity-bound one. The 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is sufficient for the game's demands, as no anomalies or severe frame drops are present in the data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table details the exact measured average FPS for every tested configuration.

| Resolution | Settings | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

| :--------- | :------- | :------ | :------ | :------ |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 334 | - | - |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 282 | 240 | 325 |

| 1920x1080 | High | 245 | - | - |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 197 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 225 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 190 | 161 | 218 |

| 2560x1440 | High | 165 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 132 | - | - |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 128 | - | - |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 109 | 92 | 125 |

| 3840x2160 | High | 94 | - | - |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 76 | - | - |

The data shows that the Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, allowing for a more detailed analysis of frame pacing. At 1080p, the Medium preset has an 85 FPS spread between its minimum and maximum. This spread narrows to 57 FPS at 1440p and 33 FPS at 4K, suggesting that frame times become more consistent at higher resolutions where the GPU is more consistently saturated. The performance deltas between presets are consistent across resolutions, with Ultra being approximately 40% slower than Medium at 1080p (197 vs 282 FPS) and a similar 30% slower at 4K (76 vs 109 FPS).