To The Core

To The Core presents an unusual benchmarking scenario: an idle game that nevertheless drives frame rates well beyond typical display refresh rates. The measured data for the Intel Core i7-13700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 shows a configuration that is heavily front-end limited at lower resolutions, with the GPU only beginning to assert its dominance as pixel count climbs. The combination ranks 24th out of 1756 tested configurations in this title, placing it in the top 1.4% of all tested combos, which aligns with the hardware's individual percentiles: the CPU sits at the 93rd percentile against all CPUs, while the GPU is at the 91st percentile against all GPUs.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate deltas across resolutions reveal a classic CPU-bound scenario at 1080p that gradually transitions to a GPU-bound one at 4K. At the High preset, the average frame rate drops from 450.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 301.8 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 33%. The subsequent drop to 173.3 FPS at 3840x2160 represents a further 42.6% decrease from the 1440p figure. This pattern shows that the scaling penalty is not linear; the jump from 1440p to 4K is significantly steeper than the jump from 1080p to 1440p.

The Low preset tells a more extreme story. At 1080p Low, the system pushes 614.2 FPS, which falls to 411.8 FPS at 1440p (a 32.9% drop) and then to 235.2 FPS at 4K (a 42.9% drop from 1440p). The fact that even at 4K Low the system still produces over 235 FPS suggests that the RTX 4090 has ample headroom, and the limiting factor at lower resolutions is almost certainly the CPU's ability to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic updates.

At the Ultra preset, the trend continues: 363.4 FPS at 1080p, 243.6 FPS at 1440p, and 138.7 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are consistent with the other presets, confirming that the resolution scaling behavior is independent of the graphics settings applied. The data indicates that the RTX 4090's 1.01 TB/s memory bandwidth and 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM are not bottlenecks even at 4K Ultra, as the frame rates remain comfortably above 60 FPS. The limiting component at 1080p is the CPU, evidenced by the fact that increasing resolution from 1080p to 1440p only costs roughly one-third of the frame rate, which is a smaller penalty than would be expected if the GPU were fully saturated at 1080p.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide clear guidance on the optimal settings preset for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 363.4 FPS, which is 12.7% lower than High's 450.6 FPS but still far beyond any display's refresh rate capability. The Medium preset produces 521.1 FPS, and Low produces 614.2 FPS. Since the data shows no minimum frame rate values, the average FPS alone must guide the recommendation; however, the sheer magnitude of these numbers means that even the Ultra preset at 1080p is unlikely to cause perceptible stutter.

At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 301.8 FPS, while Ultra drops to 243.6 FPS. The delta between Medium (347.9 FPS) and High (301.8 FPS) is 15.3%, which is a meaningful visual quality gain for a modest frame rate cost. At 4K, the High preset produces 173.3 FPS, which is 25% higher than Ultra's 138.7 FPS. Given that the game is an idle genre title, the visual fidelity improvements from Ultra over High are likely to be less impactful than in action-oriented games, making High the recommended preset across all resolutions.

The data suggests that High is the sweet spot for this configuration. At 1080p High, the system produces 450.6 FPS, which is 24% higher than Ultra. At 1440p High, the 301.8 FPS result is 23.9% higher than Ultra. At 4K High, the 173.3 FPS result is 24.9% higher than Ultra. This consistent ~25% performance uplift from dropping from Ultra to High, combined with the fact that High still exceeds 170 FPS at 4K, makes High the clear choice for users who prioritize frame rate headroom. For those with 120 Hz or 144 Hz displays, even the 4K Ultra setting at 138.7 FPS would be sufficient, but the marginal visual gains from Ultra likely do not justify the 20% performance penalty over High.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K is a 16-core, 24-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. Its base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.40 GHz provide substantial single-thread performance, which is critical for idle games that often rely on a single main thread for game logic updates. The benchmark scores corroborate this: the 3DMark single-thread score is 1136, while the 2-thread score is 2262, indicating near-perfect scaling for the first two threads. The 4-thread score of 4469 shows further scaling, but the 8-thread score of 8193 reveals diminishing returns beyond four threads, and the max-thread score of 12412 demonstrates that the processor's 24 threads are not all fully utilized in this workload.

The game's measured performance at 1080p Low (614.2 FPS) versus 1080p Ultra (363.4 FPS) shows a 69% difference, which is substantial but not indicative of a purely GPU-bound scenario at either setting. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 39000 and single-core score of 5505 place it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, yet the nearest rivals show interesting deltas: the Core i7-13700KF is 0.1% ahead, the AMD EPYC 4364P is 0.3% behind, and the Core i9-12900F is 0.4% behind. These tiny margins suggest that the CPU is not the primary differentiator for this game at high resolutions; the frame rate differences between these CPUs would be negligible in practice.

The CPU's 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache likely help with the game's asset streaming and procedural generation, which are common in idle games. The 16 cores provide ample parallelism for background tasks, but the benchmark data indicates that the game does not scale beyond roughly eight threads effectively. The PassMark multi-thread score of 45887 and single-thread score of 4333 reinforce the notion that single-thread performance is the more relevant metric for this title, given that the 1080p frame rates are likely constrained by the CPU's ability to process the game loop.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average frame rate is 614.2 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset. This is 36.3% higher than the 1080p High preset's 450.6 FPS, demonstrating the significant impact of graphics settings on this system.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 bottleneck the i7-13700K in this game?

A: The data suggests the opposite. At 1080p, the frame rates are likely limited by the CPU, as evidenced by the relatively small performance drop when moving to 1440p (33% at High preset). The GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are underutilized at lower resolutions, with the GPU becoming the limiting factor only at 4K.

Q: How does the i7-13700K compare to its closest rival in benchmark scores?

A: The i7-13700K has an average benchmark score of 47282, which is 0.1% lower than the Core i7-13700KF (47334) and 0.4% higher than the Core i9-12900F (47081). The AMD EPYC 4364P scores 47131, placing it 0.3% behind the i7-13700K.

Q: Is the Ultra preset worth the performance cost at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset delivers 138.7 FPS, which is 24.9% lower than the High preset's 173.3 FPS. While the Ultra preset is still playable, the High preset offers a substantial frame rate advantage with likely minimal visual difference in an idle game.

Q: What does the combo rank of 24 out of 1756 indicate?

A: This rank places the i7-13700K + RTX 4090 combination in the top 1.4% of all tested configurations for this game. This is consistent with the CPU's 93rd percentile ranking and the GPU's 91st percentile ranking among their respective categories.

Q: How does the GPU's benchmark performance compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 4090 has an average benchmark score of 66473, which is 0.4% lower than the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66733) and 0.5% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla P40 (66127). The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 scores 67097, which is 0.9% higher than the RTX 4090.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, with a massive 76,300 million transistors on a 609 mm² die. Its base clock of 2235 MHz and boost clock of 2520 MHz, combined with 16384 shading units and 512 tensor cores, provide exceptional compute throughput. The GPU's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus delivers 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for this game's requirements, even at 4K Ultra where the measured frame rate remains at 138.7 FPS.

The GPU's passmark G3D score of 38194 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9223 reflect its raw performance capabilities. However, the benchmark data for this game shows that the GPU is not fully taxed until the resolution reaches 4K. At 1080p, the frame rates range from 363.4 FPS (Ultra) to 614.2 FPS (Low), which are well beyond what any current display can refresh. The GPU's pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are more than adequate for the game's visual effects, even at the highest settings.

The RTX 4090's 91st percentile ranking against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66473, places it in a competitive position, though its nearest rivals are not gaming-focused cards: the Tesla T4 (0.4% behind), Tesla P40 (0.5% ahead), and Quadro P6000 (1.3% ahead) are all professional or datacenter products. The GPU's 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for this idle game, which likely does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS features. The data indicates that the GPU's role in this configuration is to provide a high baseline frame rate that remains playable even at 4K Ultra, with the CPU being the primary constraint at lower resolutions. The GPU's 450 W TDP and triple-slot design are substantial, but the performance headroom it provides means that users can run the game at High settings and still achieve frame rates above 170 FPS at 4K, which is a significant margin over typical 60 Hz or 144 Hz displays.