To The Core

The Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER lands at rank 106 out of 1,756 tested combos in To The Core. That places this pairing in the top 6% of all configurations tested, a strong result that reflects a balanced system capable of extreme frame rates. The combo outperforms the vast majority of alternatives, though the data shows that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting at higher resolutions while the CPU becomes more relevant as resolution drops.

How This Combo Ranks

At rank 106 of 1,756, this combo sits comfortably in the upper echelon of tested hardware pairs. The ranking indicates that the i5-12600KF and RTX 4080 SUPER work well together for this idle game, which rewards raw throughput. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 27,827 places it nearly identical to the Intel Core i9-10900K (27,829, 0% delta) and just 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-12600K (27,851). It is also 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i7-13700H (27,716). This near-tie with the i9-10900K is notable because the i5-12600KF is a newer architecture, but the data shows no practical performance difference in synthetic averages.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 53,610 puts it 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (53,489) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (53,414). It also leads the AMD Radeon RX 7700S (52,505) by 2.1% and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (52,086) by 2.9%. These margins are tight, meaning the RTX 4080 SUPER is not leaving much on the table relative to its closest rivals. For To The Core, the combo’s high rank suggests that this pairing will not be the bottleneck in most scenarios, but the nature of the game means the CPU can still limit performance at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 SUPER carries 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory runs at 1438 MHz with 23 Gbps effective speed. The GPU’s base clock is 2295 MHz with a boost of 2550 MHz. These specifications are more than adequate for To The Core, an idle game that does not demand heavy graphical assets. The 16 GB frame buffer is excessive for this title, but it ensures headroom for any future content or higher texture settings without concern.

The GPU’s compute capabilities are substantial: 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, backed by 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores. The FP32 performance reaches 52.22 TFLOPS, which is overkill for a game of this type. The pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s further confirm that the RTX 4080 SUPER is far from stressed in this workload. The benchmark results bear this out: at 1080p Low, the combo hits 549.4 FPS, which is well beyond any display’s refresh rate. The GPU’s role here is to remove any graphical bottleneck, allowing the CPU to become the limiting factor at lower resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear shift in the limiting component. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 401.5 FPS, but at 4K High, it drops to 154.7 FPS — a 61.5% reduction. This steep decline indicates that the GPU is becoming the primary constraint at higher resolutions, as the pixel workload increases dramatically. The same pattern holds across all settings: Low goes from 549.4 FPS at 1080p to 210.5 FPS at 4K, Medium from 466.7 to 180.5, and Ultra from 321.6 to 126.5.

However, the scaling is not purely linear. At 1440p High, the combo hits 272.6 FPS, which is still extremely high. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is smaller than the gap between 1440p and 4K, suggesting that the CPU is still contributing meaningfully at 1440p. At 1080p, the CPU is likely the limiting factor, as the GPU can easily push past 500 FPS but the processor cannot keep up. The data shows that the i5-12600KF’s 10 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, are sufficient to drive high frame rates but not unlimited ones. The 4K results, by contrast, are almost entirely GPU-bound, as the RTX 4080 SUPER’s raw throughput dictates the frame rate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the combo delivers exceptional performance across all settings. Low settings produce 549.4 FPS, Medium 466.7 FPS, High 401.5 FPS, and Ultra 321.6 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 41.5%, which reflects the increasing demand on the GPU, but even the lowest Ultra result is far above any competitive refresh rate. The 1080p numbers are so high that they are more useful as a CPU benchmark than a GPU benchmark, as the processor is likely capping performance.

Moving to 1440p, the results remain strong. Low hits 370.3 FPS, Medium 312.6 FPS, High 272.6 FPS, and Ultra 220 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p ranges from 32.6% (Low) to 31.6% (Ultra), showing a consistent scaling pattern. These frame rates are still high enough for any display, and the gap between settings narrows slightly compared to 1080p, indicating a more balanced load between CPU and GPU.

At 4K, the performance drops significantly but remains playable. Low produces 210.5 FPS, Medium 180.5 FPS, High 154.7 FPS, and Ultra 126.5 FPS. The Ultra result is the only one below 200 FPS, but it is still well above 60 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K is 39.9%, similar to the 1080p drop, which shows that the GPU is consistently the limiting factor at this resolution. The 4K results are the most relevant for real-world use, as they represent a scenario where the GPU is fully utilized.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the data suggests that High settings at 1440p or 4K offer the optimal balance between visual quality and frame rate. At 1440p High, the combo hits 272.6 FPS, which is more than enough for any high-refresh-rate monitor. Moving to Ultra at 1440p drops the frame rate to 220 FPS, a 19.3% reduction for marginal visual gains. At 4K, High delivers 154.7 FPS, which is excellent for a 4K display, while Ultra drops to 126.5 FPS — still smooth but with a noticeable 18.2% penalty.

If the goal is maximum frame rates, Low settings at 1080p produce 549.4 FPS, but this is only useful for competitive play or benchmarking. For most users, Medium at 1080p (466.7 FPS) or High at 1440p (272.6 FPS) are the practical sweet spots. The data shows that Ultra settings do not double the visual workload, but they do reduce frame rates by roughly 20-40% across resolutions. Given that To The Core is an idle game, the visual differences between Medium and Ultra are likely minimal, so Medium or High settings are recommended to keep frame rates as high as possible without sacrificing image quality.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12600KF is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. It has 20 MB of shared L3 cache, and its 3DMark scores show strong multi-threaded performance: 7,956 in the 16-thread test and 7,952 in the max-thread test. Single-thread performance is also solid at 1,016 in the 3DMark single-thread test. These numbers place the CPU in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, meaning it outperforms most processors on the market.

In To The Core, the CPU’s role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions. The 1080p results show that even with a powerful GPU, the frame rate is capped around 549 FPS on Low, which is likely a CPU limit. The single-thread score of 1,016 is relevant here, as idle games often rely on a few cores for game logic and UI updates. The 10 cores and 16 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks, but the boost clock of 4.90 GHz is what drives the high frame rates at 1080p. The CPU’s benchmark scores are nearly identical to the i9-10900K, which means there is no practical difference in this game’s performance between the two processors. The i5-12600KF’s 125 W TDP is modest for a desktop CPU, and its unlocked multiplier allows for overclocking, though the data shows that stock performance is already sufficient for To The Core.