To The Core

To The Core is an idle game that rarely stresses modern hardware, but the measured results for this Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination reveal a system that is purely GPU-bound at 4K yet becomes increasingly CPU-limited as resolution drops. The data shows a high-refresh-rate powerhouse where the RTX 5090 D’s massive compute resources are effectively bottlenecked by the 12th-gen processor at 1080p, while at 4K the GPU finally stretches its legs. Benchmark results indicate this pairing is capable of pushing well beyond 150 FPS at maximum settings in 4K, making it a top-tier configuration for this title, ranked 27th out of 2991 tested combos.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies in this system. At 1080p with Low settings, the system produces 610 FPS, but at 4K with Low settings, that number drops to 256 FPS — a reduction of 58% from the lowest resolution to the highest. This steep decline is the classic signature of a system that becomes progressively more GPU-bound as pixel count rises, with the RTX 5090 D’s rendering workload increasing dramatically while the CPU’s role remains relatively constant.

Moving from 1440p to 4K at High settings shows a similar pattern: 329 FPS at 1440p falls to 188 FPS at 4K, a 43% drop. The scaling between 1080p and 1440p at High settings is even more pronounced, with 489 FPS at 1080p dropping to 329 FPS at 1440p — a 33% reduction. These figures indicate that the GPU is the limiting component across all tested resolutions, but the degree of limitation varies significantly. At 1080p, the RTX 5090 D is so powerful that the Core i7-12700KF cannot feed it enough frames, capping performance well below what the GPU could theoretically deliver. At 4K, the GPU’s workload becomes substantial enough that the CPU bottleneck recedes, though even at 4K Ultra the 151 FPS average suggests the CPU still imposes a ceiling.

The most telling data point comes from comparing Ultra settings across resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the system hits 151 FPS, while at 1080p Ultra it reaches 393 FPS. If the GPU were the sole bottleneck, the 4K-to-1080p ratio would be closer to the pixel-count ratio of roughly 1:4, but the actual ratio is only about 1:2.6. This compression of scaling at higher settings confirms that the CPU is holding back performance at lower resolutions, particularly when the GPU’s per-frame workload is lighter. The idle genre of To The Core means the game logic and update loops may not scale perfectly with resolution, but the measured FPS deltas point overwhelmingly to GPU-bound behavior at 4K and CPU-bound behavior at 1080p.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this configuration?

A: The highest average FPS in the measured data is 610 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This represents the absolute ceiling of the tested combinations, limited by the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls rather than the GPU’s rendering capacity.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 D compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090 D averages 77,712 points across its benchmark suite, placing it 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76,904) and 1.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940). It also trails the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB by 2.4% (79,605) and the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB by 2.1% (79,396). These deltas are small, indicating the 5090 D sits in a tightly contested performance band despite its 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs.

Q: What is the performance difference between the Core i7-12700KF and the Core i7-12700K?

A: The Core i7-12700KF averages 35,365 points in its benchmark suite, while the Core i7-12700K averages 35,287 points — a delta of just 0.2% in favor of the KF variant. This is within run-to-run variance and effectively makes the two processors identical in performance for this game.

Q: How much FPS is lost when going from Medium to Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Medium settings produce 379 FPS average, while Ultra settings drop to 265 FPS average. This represents a 30% reduction in frame rate for the highest quality preset, a substantial cost that players may choose to avoid given the game’s idle nature.

Q: Does the RTX 5090 D’s 32 GB of VRAM provide any measurable benefit in To The Core?

A: The measured data does not show any VRAM capacity-related bottlenecks, as even at 4K Ultra the game runs at 151 FPS. The 32 GB GDDR7 memory with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is far beyond what this idle title requires, so the capacity likely has no practical impact on the results — the limiting factors are compute throughput and CPU overhead.

Q: What percentile does this CPU-GPU combination achieve among all tested configurations in this game?

A: This pairing ranks 27th out of 2991 total combos tested in To The Core, placing it in the top 0.9% of all configurations. This ranking reflects both the GPU’s strong 92nd percentile standing and the CPU’s capable 85th percentile performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data suggests that Ultra settings are the best choice for most players using this hardware, provided the display can take advantage of the frame rates. At 4K Ultra, the system sustains 151 FPS average, which is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on high-end monitors. Dropping to High settings at 4K yields 188 FPS, a 24% improvement, but the visual fidelity loss in an idle game is unlikely to justify the extra frames unless the display is 240 Hz or higher.

For players targeting 1440p, Ultra settings at 265 FPS are the clear recommendation, as this exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all gaming monitors while delivering maximum visual quality. The jump from Ultra to High at 1440p only raises the average to 329 FPS, a 24% gain that most users will not perceive on any commercially available display. At 1080p, the situation becomes more nuanced — Ultra runs at 393 FPS, but the CPU bottleneck means that High (489 FPS) and Medium (564 FPS) provide diminishing returns that are only relevant for esports-style competitive play, which is not applicable to an idle game.

The ideal preset balances visual quality against the display’s refresh rate. For 4K 144 Hz displays, Ultra is the optimal setting — it delivers 151 FPS with maximum fidelity. For 1440p 240 Hz panels, High settings at 329 FPS provide headroom while maintaining near-ultra visuals. The Medium preset at 4K (217 FPS) is only worthwhile for 240 Hz 4K monitors, which are rare, while Low settings are essentially never recommended given the minimal performance gain at 4K (256 FPS vs. 217 FPS for Medium). The data consistently shows that Ultra is playable at every resolution, with the lowest recorded average being 151 FPS at 4K — so there is no performance justification to reduce settings below Ultra unless targeting specific refresh-rate thresholds.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the measured averages span a wide range depending on the quality preset. Low settings produce 256 FPS average, Medium drops to 217 FPS with a minimum of 184 FPS and maximum of 249 FPS, High reduces further to 188 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 151 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 41% reduction in frame rate, with each step up in quality costing between 29 and 37 FPS. The Medium preset’s frame time variance, indicated by the 184-249 FPS range, suggests some scene complexity changes, but the overall consistency is strong for this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the same settings ladder shows significantly higher throughput. Low settings reach 448 FPS average, Medium hits 379 FPS with a range of 322-436 FPS, High achieves 329 FPS, and Ultra runs at 265 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 183 FPS, or 41% — nearly identical to the percentage drop at 4K, which indicates that the relative cost of quality settings scales consistently with resolution. The Medium preset’s 322 FPS minimum is still far above the refresh rate of any mainstream monitor, making stutter effectively invisible.

At 1920x1080, the CPU becomes the primary limiter, and the FPS numbers reflect this. Low settings produce 610 FPS average, Medium runs at 564 FPS with a range of 479-648 FPS, High reaches 489 FPS, and Ultra sustains 393 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is just 46 FPS — a 7.5% drop — which is much smaller than the corresponding drop at 4K (39 FPS, or 15%). This compressed scaling at 1080p is direct evidence that the Core i7-12700KF’s 12 cores and 20 threads cannot keep up with the RTX 5090 D’s frame generation capacity at low resolutions, capping performance regardless of GPU load.

The complete dataset shows that the RTX 5090 D’s performance scales almost linearly with pixel count when the CPU is not the bottleneck, but the 1080p results break this trend. At Low settings, the 4K-to-1080p ratio is 256:610, or 1:2.38, while the pixel ratio is 1:4. This 40% shortfall at 1080p is the CPU bottleneck manifesting — the GPU is waiting for the processor to submit frames faster than it can render them. At Ultra settings, the ratio is 151:393, or 1:2.60, showing that the CPU bottleneck persists even at maximum quality settings.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this configuration, and its specifications explain why To The Core runs so smoothly at 4K. With 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has abundant resources for any texture or buffer requirements this idle game can generate. The 21,760 shading units and 680 texture mapping units provide massive compute throughput, translating to 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The boost clock of 2407 MHz keeps this compute horsepower fed, and the 176 ROPs ensure that pixel output keeps pace at high resolutions.

The GPU’s benchmark scores reflect its position in the market. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14,326 indicates strong DirectX 12 performance, while the Geekbench Vulkan score of 376,915 shows excellent low-level API throughput. The PassMark G3D score of 44,065 and GPU Compute score of 28,396 place the card in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. However, the nearest rival comparisons are notable — the RX 6650M XT and RX 6850M XT are within 1.6% of the 5090 D’s average benchmark score, despite being mobile-class parts. This suggests the 5090 D’s synthetic benchmark scores underrepresent its real-world gaming capability, or that the passmark suite does not fully stress its architectural advantages.

In To The Core specifically, the GPU’s role is primarily to render simple 2D and 3D scenes at very high frame rates. The 188 FPS at 4K High demonstrates that the GPU has substantial headroom, and the 151 FPS at 4K Ultra shows that even maximum settings cannot saturate the card’s capabilities. The 32 GB VRAM is completely unused overhead — the game likely requires only a few GB — but the bandwidth and compute resources allow for extremely efficient frame generation. The GPU’s 5 nm process node and 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die make it an expensive but effective solution for this workload, though the measured results suggest a lower-tier GPU could achieve similar FPS in this title if paired with a stronger CPU.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF serves as the primary bottleneck at lower resolutions, and its specifications reveal why. With 12 cores and 20 threads arranged in Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture, the processor offers strong multi-threaded performance — evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28,838 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 14,367. The boost clock of 5.00 GHz on performance cores drives single-thread performance to a PassMark single-thread score of 3,984 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 1,043. These figures place the CPU in the 85th percentile of all processors, but they are insufficient to keep up with the RTX 5090 D’s frame output at 1080p.

The CPU’s 25 MB of shared L3 cache and per-core L2 cache of 1.25 MB provide adequate memory hierarchy for game logic, but the idle genre’s update loops and UI rendering require significant single-thread throughput. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 9,282 and max-thread score of 9,983 show that the CPU’s multi-threading capability is solid, but To The Core likely does not scale perfectly across all 20 threads, leaving the single-thread performance as the limiting factor. The PassMark integer math score of 113,521 and floating-point score of 87,449 indicate robust general-purpose compute, yet the game’s frame generation is constrained by the CPU’s ability to process input and issue draw calls.

The nearest rival comparisons put the i7-12700KF in a tight performance cluster. It sits 0.1% behind the Core i7-13700T and 0.2% behind the Core 5 213PE, while leading the Core i5-13600T and Core i7-12700K by 0.2%. This clustering suggests that, for this game, the CPU choice between these processors would have negligible impact on FPS — the bottleneck is architectural rather than specific to this chip’s clock speeds. The 125 W TDP and dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory support are standard for the platform, and the 10 nm process node (Intel’s 7 process) represents a mature design. At 4K, the CPU’s role diminishes as the GPU takes over the frame rendering burden, allowing the i7-12700KF to keep pace with the RTX 5090 D’s output. At 1080p, however, the CPU’s 3.60 GHz base clock and 5.00 GHz boost clock are simply not enough to feed the GPU’s appetite, capping performance at 610 FPS on Low settings — a number that, while impressive, falls short of what the GPU could theoretically deliver.