To The Core

# To The Core with Intel Core i5-14400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070

The Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers an exceptional experience in To The Core, an idle-genre title that clearly favors high frame rates over visual complexity. The measured data shows this combination producing triple-digit average FPS at every resolution and preset tested, from a peak of 463.7 FPS at 1080p Low down to a still-smooth 103.4 FPS at 4K Ultra. The gap between the lowest and highest settings at each resolution reveals a title that scales predictably with GPU load, while the CPU's 10-core, 16-thread configuration with a 4.70 GHz boost clock keeps pace without becoming a limiting factor in the tested scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not punishing, indicating a balanced workload between CPU and GPU. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 reduces average FPS from 340.1 to 228.7, a decline of approximately 33%. The further step to 3840x2160 brings the average down to 132.3, representing a 61% drop from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern suggests that the GPU is becoming increasingly dominant as resolution climbs, with the RTX 5070's 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 12 GB of GDDR7 VRAM handling the additional pixel throughput effectively.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced in absolute terms. The 463.7 FPS at 1080p falls to 312.9 at 1440p and then to 180.7 at 4K. The 4K result represents a 61% reduction from 1080p, mirroring the High preset's scaling almost exactly. This consistency across presets indicates that resolution scaling is largely independent of the quality level, which is typical for a game where the GPU's fill rate and shader work scale directly with pixel count. The RTX 5070's 201.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 482.3 GTexel/s texture rate provide the raw throughput necessary for these results.

The Medium and Ultra presets follow the same trajectory. Medium drops from 393.6 at 1080p to 268 at 1440p and 152.3 at 4K, while Ultra goes from 274.5 to 185.5 and finally 103.4. The Ultra 4K result is the only figure below 120 FPS in the entire dataset, suggesting that even the most demanding configuration remains highly playable. The narrowing gap between resolutions at higher presets—Ultra 4K is 62% lower than Ultra 1080p, while Low 4K is 61% lower than Low 1080p—shows that the GPU's workload scales almost perfectly with pixel count, with no unexpected bottlenecks emerging.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows point to High settings as the optimal compromise between visual quality and performance headroom. At 1080p, High delivers 340.1 FPS, which is only 37% below the Low preset's 463.7 but provides significantly better visual fidelity. Moving to Medium yields 393.6 FPS, but the 15% gain over High is unlikely to be perceptible on most displays, especially given that High already exceeds the refresh rate of all but the most extreme gaming monitors. At 1440p, High produces 228.7 FPS, comfortably above the 144 Hz threshold that many high-refresh displays target, while Ultra drops to 185.5, still exceeding that mark but with diminishing returns.

For 4K users, High at 132.3 FPS is the recommended starting point, as it clears the 120 Hz bar while delivering full visual quality. Medium at 152.3 offers a modest 15% uplift, but the visual difference between Medium and High in this idle title is likely more noticeable than the FPS delta. Ultra at 103.4 FPS remains playable, but the 22% penalty versus High is substantial for what is typically an incremental quality improvement. The data suggests that players with 4K 120 Hz displays should select High, while those with 60 Hz panels can safely enable Ultra without concern.

The Low preset's performance figures—from 180.7 FPS at 4K to 463.7 at 1080p—are impressive but unnecessary for a game in this genre. The sheer headroom available at Low settings indicates that To The Core is far from demanding, and the RTX 5070 has ample compute capacity for the title. The 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 6144 shading units provide far more processing power than the game appears to require, making Low a reasonable choice only for competitive play at extreme refresh rates.

GPU Role

The RTX 5070's specifications align closely with the measured results. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus produces 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for all tested configurations, including 4K Ultra. The absence of any min or max FPS data in the measured results suggests consistent frame delivery without significant drops, which is consistent with a game that does not appear to stress memory capacity. The 28 Gbps effective memory clock and 1750 MHz memory base clock provide the bandwidth headroom needed for high-resolution rendering.

The GPU's clock behavior shows a base of 2325 MHz and a boost of 2512 MHz, with the 250 W TDP indicating a power envelope that allows sustained performance under load. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5077 places the card in the 83rd percentile among all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 41687 is within 0.6% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, according to the nearestRivals data. This positioning explains why the card can deliver 132.3 FPS at 4K High in To The Core—it has the compute and memory resources to handle demanding resolutions without compromise.

The GPU's 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores are likely underutilized in this title, given the idle genre's lack of ray-traced effects or DLSS requirements. The card's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility ensure broad driver-level optimization, but the game's simple rendering demands mean that the RTX 5070 is operating well below its theoretical maximum. The PassMark G3D score of 29137 and the DirectX 12 score of 108 provide additional context for the card's capabilities, though the game-specific results are the most relevant metric for this analysis.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces results from 274.5 FPS at Ultra to 463.7 FPS at Low. Medium sits between at 393.6, while High achieves 340.1. The spread of 189.2 FPS between Low and Ultra demonstrates the game's sensitivity to quality presets, though even the lowest figure is far beyond what most displays can show. The 1080p results indicate that the CPU is not a limiting factor; the i5-14400F's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 21914 and single-core score of 3093 provide ample processing headroom for the game's logic and rendering threads.

At 2560x1440, the results compress somewhat: Low drops to 312.9, Medium to 268, High to 228.7, and Ultra to 185.5. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 127.4 FPS, reflecting the increased GPU load at this resolution. The 1440p High result of 228.7 FPS is particularly notable, as it represents a 33% reduction from 1080p High, aligning closely with the 77% increase in pixel count from 1080p to 1440p. This near-linear scaling reinforces the GPU-bound nature of the workload at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are 103.4 FPS at Ultra, 132.3 at High, 152.3 at Medium, and 180.7 at Low. The 4K Ultra figure is the only result below 120 FPS in the entire dataset, and even it remains comfortably above 100 FPS. The 4K High result of 132.3 represents a 42% drop from 1440p High, which is slightly less than the 125% pixel increase, suggesting that the GPU's efficiency improves somewhat at higher resolutions due to better utilization of its compute resources. The RTX 5070's 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs provide the pixel and texture throughput necessary for these results.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination ranks 363rd out of 1756 tested combos in To The Core, placing it in the top 21% of all configurations in the database. This ranking is impressive given the game's modest requirements, but it reflects the raw performance of both components. The CPU's average benchmark score of 32508 places it in the 88th percentile of all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i7-12800H at a 0% delta and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 at a 0.2% delta. The GPU's average score of 41687 places it in the 83rd percentile, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 just 0.6% behind.

The combo's rank suggests that the i5-14400F and RTX 5070 are well matched for this title. The CPU's 10 cores and 16 threads, combined with a 20 MB shared L3 cache, provide sufficient processing power for the game's simulation and logic, while the GPU's 12 GB VRAM and 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 performance handle the rendering workload. The 5 nm process node and 31,100 million transistors on the GPU, along with the CPU's 10 nm process and 215 mm² die size, represent modern manufacturing that contributes to the combination's efficiency.

The ranking also benefits from the fact that To The Core is an idle game, which typically features simpler graphics and lighter CPU loads than action or strategy titles. This means that the i5-14400F's single-thread performance, evidenced by its PassMark single-thread score of 3723, is likely the more important factor for frame pacing, while the RTX 5070's massive compute headroom ensures that even the most demanding settings remain playable. The 363rd position out of 1756 combos indicates that there are 362 configurations that perform better, but these are likely to feature higher-end CPUs or GPUs that provide marginal gains in a game that already runs at over 100 FPS in all tested scenarios.