To The Core

The Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER pairing delivers a remarkably fluid experience in To The Core, an idle game that clearly favors high refresh rates. The benchmark data shows that even at 4K Ultra, the combo maintains an average of 68.7 FPS, which is playable, but the performance scaling across settings and resolutions reveals a GPU-bound scenario at higher loads. The sweet spot for this pairing is 1440p, where the RTX 2070 SUPER can stretch its legs while the CPU keeps pace, offering a significant jump in frame rates without sacrificing visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience. At 1080p, the data shows that the Low preset delivers an average of 293.3 FPS, which is exceptionally high, but the Medium preset at 244.8 FPS still provides a massive margin over typical 144Hz monitors. The High preset at 213.4 FPS remains well above the 144Hz threshold, making it the most balanced choice for competitive play at this resolution. Ultra at 170.8 FPS is still very playable, but the incremental visual gains over High are not worth the 42.6 FPS drop.

Moving to 1440p, the High preset averages 145.7 FPS, which is just above the 144Hz marker, making it the ideal setting for users with high-refresh displays. The Medium preset at 164.7 FPS offers even more headroom, but High provides the best balance for visual quality. Low at 194.1 FPS is unnecessarily fast, and Ultra at 118.1 FPS, while smooth, dips below the 144Hz target, indicating that the GPU is starting to work harder. At 4K, the High preset drops to 79.7 FPS, which is still smooth for slower-paced idle gameplay, but the Medium preset at 92.9 FPS offers a better compromise, delivering a 13.2 FPS improvement over High while still looking good. Ultra at 68.7 FPS is the most demanding option and should be avoided for consistent 60 FPS play, as it sits close to the boundary.

FAQ

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

A: The data suggests 1440p is the optimal resolution. At 1440p High, the combo averages 145.7 FPS, which is above the common 144Hz refresh rate. While 1080p offers higher raw frame rates (up to 293.3 FPS on Low), 1440p provides a substantial visual upgrade without dropping below the 144Hz target on High settings.

Q: How does the RTX 2070 SUPER perform at 4K in this game?

A: The RTX 2070 SUPER is capable at 4K, but with compromises. The benchmark results show an average of 79.7 FPS on High settings and 68.7 FPS on Ultra. For a more comfortable margin, the Medium preset at 92.9 FPS is recommended, as it stays well above 60 FPS while maintaining decent visual quality.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 a bottleneck for the RTX 2070 SUPER?

A: The data indicates the CPU is not a significant bottleneck in this title. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 293.3 FPS, showing that the CPU can feed the GPU even at extreme frame rates. The performance drop from 1080p to 1440p (e.g., from 213.4 to 145.7 FPS on High) is consistent with a GPU-limited scenario, where the RTX 2070 SUPER's rendering load increases with resolution.

Q: What is the difference between the High and Ultra presets?

A: The Ultra preset demands significantly more GPU resources. At 1440p, moving from High (145.7 FPS) to Ultra (118.1 FPS) costs 27.6 FPS, a 19% reduction. At 4K, the same transition from High (79.7 FPS) to Ultra (68.7 FPS) results in an 11 FPS loss. The visual fidelity gains are typically subtle in idle games, making High the more efficient choice.

Q: Can this combo handle a 240Hz monitor?

A: At 1080p, yes. The Low preset averages 293.3 FPS, and even the High preset at 213.4 FPS exceeds the 240Hz threshold. However, at 1440p, the combo falls short of 240Hz on all presets, with the highest being Low at 194.1 FPS. For 240Hz gaming, 1080p is the only resolution where the data shows consistent support.

Q: How does the combo rank against other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 1074 out of 1756 tested combinations in To The Core. This places it in the 61st percentile of all tested combos, indicating that while it is not a top-tier pairing, it sits comfortably above the median, offering solid performance for the hardware involved.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a six-core, six-thread processor with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It is built on the Coffee Lake architecture and features 9 MB of shared L3 cache. In To The Core, an idle game, the CPU's role is less about raw multi-threaded muscle and more about maintaining a stable frame pipeline. The benchmark data supports this: at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 293.3 FPS, which is a high enough frame rate to stress the CPU's single-thread performance. The processor's boost clock of 4.10 GHz is likely the key factor here, as idle games often rely on a single primary thread for game logic.

The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 7969, and its single-core score is 1125. These scores are modest by modern standards, placing the i5-9400 at the 50th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i3-10305, scores 2300 on average, a delta of only 0.2%, showing that the i5-9400 is competitive with newer low-end parts. However, in this game, the CPU's impact on the measured FPS is overshadowed by the GPU. The scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a clear GPU-bound trend; if the CPU were the limiting factor, the FPS would not drop as dramatically with resolution increases. For instance, at High settings, the FPS drops from 213.4 at 1080p to 79.7 at 4K, a 62.7% reduction, which is characteristic of a GPU bottleneck rather than a CPU one. The i5-9400's six physical cores without hyper-threading are sufficient for the game's demands, as evidenced by the high frame rates even at lower resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

In the comprehensive database of tested hardware combinations for To The Core, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER holds the 1074th position out of 1756 total combos. This ranking places it in the upper-middle tier of all configurations tested. The percentile data is not explicitly listed for the combo, but the rank of 1074 out of 1756 implies that it outperforms roughly 61% of all other tested pairings.

To contextualize this rank, the RTX 2070 SUPER itself sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 22206. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A400, scores 22307, which is only 0.5% higher, making the 2070 SUPER essentially equivalent in raw compute performance. The CPU, however, is less impressive, sitting at the 50th percentile. The combination of a strong GPU with a mid-tier CPU yields a result that is better than an average pairing but not exceptional. The rank of 1074 suggests that while the RTX 2070 SUPER provides a robust graphical foundation, the i5-9400's more modest standing holds the combo back from the top echelons. The data indicates that for a game like To The Core, which is not heavily CPU-threaded, this pairing is sufficient to achieve high frame rates, but it is not among the elite configurations that dominate the ranking chart.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 213.4 at 1920x1080 to 145.7 at 2560x1440, and finally to 79.7 at 3840x2160. This represents a 31.7% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 45.3% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 62.7%, which is substantial and directly attributable to the increased pixel count that the RTX 2070 SUPER must render.

This scaling behavior is a strong indicator that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. The RTX 2070 SUPER has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and a 256-bit memory bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. As resolution increases, the demand on this memory bandwidth and the GPU's 2560 shading units grows exponentially. The CPU's role becomes less significant as resolution rises, because the frame rate is constrained by the GPU's fill rate and pixel processing power. For example, at 1080p Low, the combo hits 293.3 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's maximum frame delivery capacity. However, at 4K Low, the FPS drops to 112, showing that the GPU is now the bottleneck. The delta between Low and Ultra presets also widens at higher resolutions: at 1080p, the gap between Low (293.3) and Ultra (170.8) is 122.5 FPS, while at 4K, the gap shrinks to 43.3 FPS (112 vs 68.7). This compression at 4K indicates that the GPU is working harder at higher settings, leaving less headroom for the CPU to influence the final frame rate. The data confirms that for the best scaling efficiency, users should stick to 1080p or 1440p, where the i5-9400 can keep up and the RTX 2070 SUPER has enough bandwidth to deliver high refresh rates.