To The Core

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data for To The Core with the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 reveals a predictable but informative scaling pattern. At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the combo averages 143.6 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Ultra drops that to 98.1 FPS, a reduction of roughly 31.7%. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average falls further to 57.9 FPS, which is about 59.7% below the 1080p Ultra result. This steep decline as resolution climbs strongly suggests that the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck at higher pixel counts.

The pattern is consistent across all settings. For High settings, the average FPS goes from 175.1 at 1080p, to 121.7 at 1440p, to 68.1 at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is particularly severe — a 44% reduction — which indicates that the RTX 2060's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit memory bus are being saturated by the 4K workload. The data implies that at 1080p, the CPU still has headroom to push more frames, but the GPU's rendering throughput caps the output as resolution increases.

Interestingly, the Low preset at 4K still manages 94.7 FPS, which is higher than the Ultra preset at 1440p (98.1 FPS). This shows that the game's settings have a larger impact on performance than resolution alone. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K is severe: 94.7 FPS at Low, 77.8 at Medium, 68.1 at High, and 57.9 at Ultra. That's a 38.9% performance penalty for moving from the lowest to the highest quality preset at 4K. The data suggests that To The Core is not a particularly demanding title for this hardware at 1080p, but 4K Ultra pushes the RTX 2060 near its limits.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-9400 brings six cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. Its architecture is Coffee Lake, built on a 14 nm process. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 7969 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1125 in single-core. Those scores place it at the 50th percentile of all CPUs, meaning it sits exactly in the middle of the pack. Compared to its nearest rivals, the i5-9400 is virtually identical in average benchmark score (2305) to the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300, deltaPct 0.2%) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (2299, deltaPct 0.2%). It is also essentially tied with the Intel Xeon E-2134 (2295, deltaPct 0.4%) and slightly behind the Intel Core i7-8809G (2319, deltaPct -0.6%).

Given the game's genre — idle — the CPU's six physical cores without hyper-threading (six threads total) appear sufficient to feed the GPU at 1080p. The fact that 1080p Low reaches 238.8 FPS and 1080p Medium hits 206 FPS suggests that the i5-9400 is not the limiting factor at those settings. However, at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS drops to 57.9, the CPU's role is diminished because the GPU is clearly the bottleneck. The data implies that for this game, the i5-9400's six cores are adequate, but they would not sustain high frame rates in more CPU-intensive scenarios. The single-core Cinebench R23 score of 1125 is modest, yet it still allows for 175.1 FPS at 1080p High, indicating that To The Core is not heavily dependent on per-core performance.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 a bottleneck for the RTX 2060 in this game?

A: The data suggests no at 1080p. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 238.8 FPS, and at 1080p High it hits 175.1 FPS. The CPU's six cores and six threads are sufficient to keep up with the GPU at these settings. The bottleneck shifts to the GPU at 4K, where the average FPS for all presets is below 95.

Q: What is the best resolution to play at for a balance of quality and performance?

A: Based on the measured data, 2560x1440 on High settings delivers 121.7 FPS, which is well above 60 FPS and only 9.5 FPS lower than the 1440p Low result of 163.1 FPS. This resolution provides a clear visual upgrade over 1080p while maintaining high frame rates.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 2060 has an average benchmark score of 16074, placing it at the 58th percentile of all GPUs. It is 0.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7600S (15996) and 1.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (15786), but it is 1.7% behind both the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M and AMD Radeon Pro 5700 (both 16351).

Q: What FPS can I expect at 4K with the Ultra preset?

A: The measured average FPS for 3840x2160 Ultra is 57.9 FPS. This is the lowest result across all tested configurations and is just below the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that 4K Ultra is playable but not ideal for high-refresh displays.

Q: Does increasing settings from Low to Ultra at 1080p have a large impact?

A: Yes. At 1080p, the average FPS drops from 238.8 at Low to 143.6 at Ultra, a reduction of 39.9%. This suggests that the higher presets significantly increase the GPU workload, even at the lowest resolution.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combos for this game?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 and RTX 2060 combination ranks 1397 out of 1756 tested combos in To The Core. This places it in the lower-middle range, indicating that many other hardware pairings achieve higher performance in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 1397 out of 1756 tested combinations in To The Core. This ranking places it in the bottom 20% of all tested systems, which is noteworthy given that the individual components are not at the bottom of their respective performance charts. The CPU sits at the 50th percentile of all CPUs, and the GPU is at the 58th percentile of all GPUs. Yet, when combined, they land at the 79.6th percentile rank (1397/1756).

This discrepancy suggests that To The Core may favor hardware configurations that are more balanced toward GPU capacity or that the game's idle genre does not heavily reward the i5-9400's six-core layout. The fact that the combo ranks lower than the individual component percentiles implies that either the CPU or GPU is holding back the other in specific scenarios. Given the GPU's strong synthetic performance (16074 average score) and the CPU's moderate scores, the data points to the i5-9400 as the weaker link in this pairing for this particular game. However, the ranking is still functional — the measured FPS at 1080p High (175.1 FPS) shows that the combo is far from unplayable.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the best experience depends on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the High preset (175.1 FPS) offers a strong balance of visual quality and performance, but the Ultra preset (143.6 FPS) is still well above 60 FPS and may be preferable for users who prioritize image fidelity. At 2560x1440, the High preset (121.7 FPS) is the recommended choice, as it provides a significant visual upgrade over Low (163.1 FPS) with only a 25.4% performance penalty. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset (77.8 FPS) is the best option, as it stays above 60 FPS while the High preset drops to 68.1 FPS and Ultra falls to 57.9 FPS. The Low preset at 4K (94.7 FPS) is also viable but sacrifices too much visual quality for the extra frame rate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average FPS values are as follows: Low preset achieves 238.8 FPS, Medium achieves 206 FPS, High achieves 175.1 FPS, and Ultra achieves 143.6 FPS. At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 163.1 FPS, Medium at 135.6 FPS, High at 121.7 FPS, and Ultra at 98.1 FPS. At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 94.7 FPS, Medium at 77.8 FPS, High at 68.1 FPS, and Ultra at 57.9 FPS. Across all resolutions, the transition from Low to Ultra results in an average performance drop of roughly 40-50%. The largest absolute gap is at 1080p, where the difference between Low and Ultra is 95.2 FPS, while at 4K that gap narrows to 36.8 FPS.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the TU106 chip using a 12 nm process from TSMC. It features 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units, along with 30 ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1680 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The 6 GB of GDDR6 memory is connected via a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s. The GPU's FP32 performance is 6.451 TFLOPS, and its pixel rate is 80.64 GPixel/s.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 2060 scores 14111 in Passmark G3D and 1242 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Its average benchmark score is 16074, placing it at the 58th percentile of all GPUs. The measured FPS data shows that the GPU's 6 GB VRAM is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at all settings, but at 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 57.9, indicating the GPU is nearing its limits. The 192-bit memory bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth appear to be adequate for this game's demands, as the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 1440p is less severe (from 175.1 to 121.7 FPS at High) than from 1440p to 4K (from 121.7 to 68.1 FPS at High). This suggests that the GPU's compute capacity, rather than its memory subsystem, is the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The RTX 2060's launch MSRP was 349 USD, but that figure does not reflect its current market position as an end-of-life product.