To The Core

Intel Core i5-10400F + Intel Arc B570 delivers a remarkably consistent and highly playable experience in To The Core, with 1080p performance exceeding 130 FPS on every preset and 4K remaining viable at all settings. The data shows a system that scales predictably with resolution, placing it in the 2380th position out of 2991 tested combos, a result that underscores its position as a mainstream pairing rather than a high-end outlier. The Arc B570’s 10 GB of VRAM and 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth prove sufficient for this idle game’s demands, while the i5-10400F’s six cores and twelve threads keep up without becoming a bottleneck. The measured frames per second across all twelve rows reveal a clear hierarchy: resolution scaling costs roughly 40-50% performance from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 40-50% from 1440p to 4K, with Ultra presets consistently demanding the most from the GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K in To The Core is steep but expected for a modern GPU, and the pattern points squarely at the graphics card as the limiting factor. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 165 FPS at 1920x1080 to 111 FPS at 2560x1440, a 32.7% reduction, and then to 64 FPS at 3840x2160, a further 42.3% decline from the 1440p result. This compounding loss—totaling 61.2% from 1080p to 4K—is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the pixel count increase directly translates into render workload. Low settings show the same trend: 225 FPS at 1080p, 152 FPS at 1440p (32.4% lower), and 87 FPS at 4K (42.8% lower than 1440p). The consistency of these percentages across presets reinforces that resolution, not scene complexity, drives the frame rate changes.

Medium settings offer the most complete data, with min and max FPS values that illuminate the scaling further. At 1080p Medium, the average is 191 FPS with a minimum of 162 and maximum of 219, a spread of 57 FPS. Moving to 1440p Medium drops the average to 128 FPS (33.0% lower) with min/max of 109/147, while 4K Medium averages 73 FPS (43.0% lower than 1440p) with min/max of 62/84. The minimum frame rates at each step—162, 109, and 62—show that even the worst-case dips remain playable at 1440p and above, but the 4K minimum of 62 FPS is noticeably closer to the edge of comfortable smoothness. This scaling behavior indicates that the i5-10400F is not the bottleneck: if the CPU were limiting, the 1080p numbers would plateau rather than continue climbing to 225 FPS, and the resolution-based drops would be smaller.

The 4K Ultra result of 51 FPS average, while the lowest measurement in the entire dataset, still technically clears the 50 FPS threshold for acceptable playability, but it represents a 61.7% drop from the 1080p Ultra average of 133 FPS. This is the largest percentage loss across any resolution-preset combination, suggesting that Ultra settings at 4K push the Arc B570 to its limits. The data indicates that To The Core at 4K is primarily a GPU exercise, with the Arc B570’s 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 200.0 GPixel/s pixel rate handling the load, while the CPU’s single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark and 1451 in Cinebench R23 single-core remain adequate for the game’s idle-genre logic.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570’s specifications align closely with the measured performance in To The Core, revealing a GPU that is well-matched to this game’s visual demands. The card’s 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus delivers 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which appears sufficient for all tested presets—even at 4K Ultra, the average of 51 FPS indicates no memory capacity or bandwidth wall is being hit. The GPU’s 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units work in concert with the 2500 MHz base and boost clock (identical at 2500 MHz, indicating a fixed operating point) to produce the frame rates seen. The 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die, built on TSMC’s 5 nm process, provide the computational headroom for the pixel-rate demands of 4K rendering.

The Arc B570’s benchmark scores contextualize its game performance. Its PassMark G3D score of 14195 and average benchmark score of 20556 place it in the 65th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.1) and Intel Arc A750 (deltaPct -0.1). This near-tie with the Arc A750 is telling: both cards sit within 0.2% of each other in aggregate benchmarks, yet the B570’s newer Xe2-HPG architecture and GDDR6 memory at 2375 MHz (19 Gbps effective) give it a slight edge in sustained workloads. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2649, while not directly comparable to game FPS, suggests the GPU’s DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) feature set is fully utilized by To The Core’s rendering pipeline.

The GPU’s memory configuration deserves particular attention given the game’s resolution scaling. At 1080p, the 10 GB frame buffer is overkill for even Ultra settings, which is why the 133 FPS average at 1080p Ultra is only 40.9% lower than the 225 FPS at 1080p Low. The 4K results—87 FPS at Low, 73 FPS at Medium, 64 FPS at High, and 51 FPS at Ultra—show that the GPU’s bandwidth and compute scale down gracefully rather than collapsing, a sign that the 380.0 GB/s throughput is well-provisioned for this title. The texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s are the raw numbers that determine fill-rate-bound scenarios, and the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (51) suggests the card is operating near its practical pixel-throughput ceiling. The CPU’s role is secondary here: the i5-10400F’s 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth and PCIe Gen 3, 16 lanes interface are adequate to feed the GPU, as evidenced by the lack of CPU-bound plateaus at lower resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of Intel Core i5-10400F and Intel Arc B570 ranks 2380th out of 2991 tested combinations in To The Core, placing it in the 20th percentile of all systems on this benchmark. This ranking is surprisingly strong given the CPU’s age—the i5-10400F was released in 2020—but it reflects the game’s modest threading requirements. The CPU’s percentileVsAllCpus of 68 and average benchmark score of 14185 show it remains competitive, with nearest rivals like the Intel Xeon 6756E (deltaPct 0.2) and AMD EPYC 7552 (deltaPct 0.5) scoring nearly identically. The GPU’s percentileVsAllGpus of 65 and average score of 20556 similarly position it in the upper-midrange, with the RTX 3070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.1) and Arc A750 (deltaPct -0.1) as direct competitors.

The ranking’s implications are clear: this combo outperforms roughly 80% of all tested systems, which is notable for a pairing that uses a six-core CPU from two generations ago and a GPU with a 219 USD launch MSRP. The i5-10400F’s Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10283 and Geekbench multicore score of 6257 indicate solid multi-threaded capability, while its single-thread performance (1451 in R23 single-core, 688 in 3DMark single-thread) is sufficient for To The Core’s idle-game logic, which typically relies on a single primary thread for game state updates. The GPU’s PassMark G3D score of 14195 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 96844 provide the graphics compute headroom that drives the measured FPS.

When compared to the field, this combo’s 2380th rank out of 2991 means it sits in the middle-to-upper tier of the database, but its performance consistency across resolutions is what sets it apart. The 1080p results (133-225 FPS) are excellent for competitive or high-refresh play, while the 1440p results (89-152 FPS) and 4K results (51-87 FPS) cover the full spectrum of display capabilities. This breadth of playable settings is rare for a sub-200 USD GPU pairing, and it suggests that the Arc B570’s architecture is particularly well-suited to To The Core’s rendering style, which likely favors the GPU’s strengths in sustained fill-rate and memory throughput. The combo’s rank does not tell the whole story—the deltaPct of 0.2 to the RTX 3070 Mobile and -0.1 to the Arc A750 in GPU benchmarks shows a tight cluster, yet the B570’s 10 GB VRAM advantage over many 8 GB rivals gives it future-proofing that the raw rank does not capture.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for this combo provides a complete picture across three resolutions and four settings levels, with Medium settings offering the only full min/max/avg dataset. At 1920x1080, the results are uniformly high: Low averages 225 FPS, Medium averages 191 FPS (min 162, max 219), High averages 165 FPS, and Ultra averages 133 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 92 FPS, a 40.9% reduction, which is substantial but leaves even the lowest 1080p result firmly in high-refresh territory. The Medium min of 162 FPS and max of 219 FPS show a 57 FPS range, indicating some scene-to-scene variance but no problematic stutters.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop predictably: Low produces 152 FPS, Medium 128 FPS (min 109, max 147), High 111 FPS, and Ultra 89 FPS. The 1440p results are all above 85 FPS, which means the combo can drive a 1440p 144Hz monitor at Medium or High settings without issue, and even Ultra maintains a solid 89 FPS. The Medium min of 109 FPS at 1440p is particularly noteworthy—it exceeds the 1440p High average of 111 FPS only slightly, suggesting that Medium settings provide a more stable experience than the average-vs-min spread would indicate. At 3840x2160, the averages are 87 FPS at Low, 73 FPS at Medium (min 62, max 84), 64 FPS at High, and 51 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Medium min of 62 FPS is the only sub-60 result in the entire dataset, and even that is only briefly, while the 4K Ultra average of 51 FPS is the sole measurement below the 60 FPS target.

The progression from 1080p Low (225 FPS) to 4K Ultra (51 FPS) represents a 77.3% total reduction, but the stepwise analysis is more informative. The 1080p-to-1440p drop averages 34.4% across all settings (ranging from 32.4% at Low to 33.1% at Ultra), while the 1440p-to-4K drop averages 42.7% (ranging from 42.3% at High to 44.9% at Medium). This acceleration in performance loss at higher resolutions is typical of pixel-bound rendering and confirms the GPU as the scaling bottleneck. The Medium settings row at each resolution provides the most reliable comparison due to its complete data: 191 FPS at 1080p, 128 FPS at 1440p, and 73 FPS at 4K, with min FPS of 162, 109, and 62 respectively. These min FPS values show that the combo never drops below 60 FPS in any measured configuration, which is a strong endorsement of its playability across the board.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance for most users, particularly at 1440p and 4K. At 1920x1080, Medium averages 191 FPS with a minimum of 162 FPS, which is 26 FPS higher than High (165 FPS) and only 34 FPS lower than Low (225 FPS). The 1080p Medium result provides a 57 FPS range (162-219), which is tighter than the High preset’s average-to-Low gap and suggests more consistent frame pacing. For 2560x1440, Medium’s 128 FPS average (min 109) is the sweet spot: it is 17 FPS faster than High (111 FPS) and 39 FPS slower than Low (152 FPS), but the 109 FPS minimum ensures no noticeable dips on a 144Hz display. At 3840x2160, Medium’s 73 FPS average (min 62) is the only preset besides Low that maintains a minimum above 60 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K gaming.

The Ultra preset, while visually the most demanding, offers diminishing returns relative to its cost. At 1080p Ultra, the 133 FPS average is 58 FPS lower than Medium (191 FPS), a 30.4% penalty for what is typically a modest visual upgrade in an idle game. At 1440p Ultra, the 89 FPS average is 39 FPS below Medium (128 FPS), a 30.5% reduction, and at 4K Ultra, the 51 FPS average is 22 FPS below Medium (73 FPS), a 30.1% drop. This consistent ~30% penalty across resolutions indicates that Ultra settings tax the GPU uniformly, and the 4K Ultra result of 51 FPS falls below the 60 FPS target that most users consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. For users prioritizing frame rate over visual fidelity, the Low preset is viable at all resolutions—225 FPS at 1080p, 152 FPS at 1440p, and 87 FPS at 4K—but the Medium preset’s additional visual detail is worth the 15-17% frame rate cost at 1080p and 1440p.

The High preset is a middle ground that is difficult to recommend over Medium. At 1080p, High’s 165 FPS average is 26 FPS lower than Medium (191 FPS), a 13.6% penalty, while at 1440p the gap is 17 FPS (111 vs 128, a 13.3% penalty) and at 4K it is 9 FPS (64 vs 73, a 12.3% penalty). The High preset’s consistent ~13% penalty over Medium, combined with its lack of min/max data in the dataset, suggests it offers no stability advantage. Therefore, the data-driven recommendation is clear: Medium at every resolution, with Low as a fallback for users with 144Hz or 165Hz displays who want to maximize frame rates above 200 FPS at 1080p, and Ultra reserved for users with high-end monitors who accept the 51-133 FPS range depending on resolution.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in To The Core?*

A: The data shows 1440p is the sweet spot: at Medium settings, the combo averages 128 FPS with a minimum of 109 FPS, providing a smooth experience on high-refresh displays. 1080p is faster (191 FPS at Medium) but leaves performance headroom unused, while 4K at Medium (73 FPS average, 62 FPS minimum) dips close to the 60 FPS threshold.

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

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K Low, the average is 87 FPS; at Medium, 73 FPS; at High, 64 FPS; and at Ultra, 51 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 62 FPS is the lowest recorded value across all configurations, so 4K is playable but not ideal for high-refresh monitors.

Q: How does the Arc B570 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B570’s average benchmark score of 20556 places it within 0.2% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile and 0.1% of the Intel Arc A750, with deltaPct values of 0.1 and -0.1 respectively. Its PassMark G3D score of 14195 and 65th percentile ranking confirm it is a mid-to-upper-range card.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-10400F a bottleneck for the Arc B570 in this game?

A: No. The resolution scaling data shows consistent FPS drops from 1080p to 4K (averaging 34.4% from 1080p to 1440p and 42.7% from 1440p to 4K), which indicates GPU-bound performance. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10283 and 68th percentile ranking suggest it has ample headroom for this idle game.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings?

A: At 1080p, Low averages 225 FPS versus Ultra’s 133 FPS, a 40.9% reduction. At 1440p, the gap is 152 FPS to 89 FPS (41.4% reduction), and at 4K, it is 87 FPS to 51 FPS (41.4% reduction). The consistent ~41% penalty for Ultra makes it a costly choice.

*Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems in To The Core?*

A: This combo ranks 2380th out of 2991 tested combinations, placing it in the upper 20% of all systems. This is strong for a CPU from 2020 and a GPU with a 219 USD launch MSRP, reflecting the game’s modest hardware demands relative to the combo’s capabilities.