To The Core

In the measured data for To The Core, the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination delivers its most balanced experience at the High preset across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, High produces 463.8 FPS, which is 89.4 FPS lower than Low but 89.4 FPS higher than Medium and 89.4 FPS above Ultra. The pattern repeats at 1440p, where High hits 309.4 FPS versus 423.7 FPS on Low and 251.3 FPS on Ultra. At 4K, High yields 179.7 FPS, a figure that remains well above the 140.8 FPS seen on Ultra while avoiding the diminishing returns of pushing toward the 242.4 FPS Low setting. The data suggests that High is the sweet spot because it maintains substantial headroom over 144 FPS at 4K while the gap between High and Ultra grows larger as resolution increases — 89.4 FPS at 1080p, 58.1 FPS at 1440p, and 38.9 FPS at 4K. This indicates that Ultra settings impose a consistent cost, but the relative penalty becomes less severe at higher resolutions where the GPU is already under heavier load.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows show that the Medium preset offers the most predictable scaling for users who prioritize stability over maximum fidelity. At 1080p, Medium delivers 535.4 FPS, which sits nearly halfway between Low’s 631.2 FPS and High’s 463.8 FPS. The same midpoint behavior appears at 1440p, where Medium produces 358.5 FPS compared to 423.7 FPS on Low and 309.4 FPS on High. At 4K, Medium achieves 207.6 FPS, which is 34.8 FPS below High but 66.8 FPS above Ultra. This consistent interpolation suggests that Medium does not introduce any anomalous bottlenecks, making it a reliable choice for users with variable refresh rate displays. However, for users targeting maximum visual quality without sacrificing playability, High is the recommended preset because it remains above 300 FPS at 1440p and above 170 FPS at 4K, which comfortably exceeds typical high-refresh thresholds. Ultra, conversely, should be reserved for scenarios where frame rate is secondary, as it drops to 140.8 FPS at 4K — a 21.7% reduction from High — while only offering incremental visual gains that the data does not quantify.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus provide a 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, which is exceptionally high for any workload. In To The Core, an idle game, the GPU’s raw throughput appears to be the primary driver of frame rates, as evidenced by the steep scaling from 1080p to 4K. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 631.2 FPS, but this drops to 242.4 FPS at 4K Low — a 61.6% reduction. The GPU’s boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz, combined with 21760 shading units, allow it to handle even the most demanding preset at 4K, where Ultra still manages 140.8 FPS. The data shows that the GPU is not the limiting factor at 1080p, where frame rates exceed 600 FPS, but becomes increasingly influential as resolution climbs. The 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are consistent with the observed ability to maintain high frame rates across all settings, though the gap between Low and Ultra at 4K (101.6 FPS) reveals that the GPU’s pixel throughput is being taxed more heavily at higher resolutions.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average is 631.2 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: How much does the Ultra preset cost in performance at 4K compared to High?

A: At 3840x2160, Ultra delivers 140.8 FPS while High delivers 179.7 FPS, representing a 38.9 FPS difference or a 21.7% reduction.

Q: Does the combo maintain above 200 FPS at 4K on any setting?

A: Yes, both Low (242.4 FPS) and Medium (207.6 FPS) exceed 200 FPS at 3840x2160, while High falls just short at 179.7 FPS.

Q: What is the largest performance gap between consecutive settings at any resolution?

A: The largest gap is between Low and Medium at 1080p, where the difference is 95.8 FPS (631.2 vs 535.4 FPS).

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations in this game?

A: The combo ranks 15th out of 1756 tested combinations in To The Core.

Q: Is the frame rate difference between Medium and High consistent across resolutions?

A: No, the difference shrinks as resolution increases: 71.6 FPS at 1080p, 49.1 FPS at 1440p, and 27.9 FPS at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame places this configuration at 15th out of 1756 tested combos, which puts it in the top 0.9% of all measured systems. This ranking is notable because To The Core is an idle game, a genre that typically does not stress high-end hardware as aggressively as other titles. The data shows that the RTX 5090’s massive memory bandwidth and compute resources are being utilized effectively, as the combo outperforms the vast majority of alternatives. The 15th rank suggests that only 14 other combinations deliver higher average frame rates, which likely involve even more specialized configurations or overclocked variants. The CPU’s percentileVsAllCpus of 96 and the GPU’s percentileVsAllGpus of 94 both indicate top-tier hardware, and their combination yields a result that is greater than the sum of its parts. The gap between this combo and the median tested system is substantial, as evidenced by the fact that even the lowest measured setting (4K Ultra at 140.8 FPS) would be considered excellent for most titles.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck shifts in this system. At Low settings, the transition from 1080p (631.2 FPS) to 1440p (423.7 FPS) represents a 32.9% reduction, while the drop from 1440p to 4K (242.4 FPS) is another 42.8% reduction. This compounding decline indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the CPU’s 20 cores and 28 threads are unlikely to be saturated at 631.2 FPS. For Ultra settings, the scaling is slightly more gradual: 374.4 FPS at 1080p drops to 251.3 FPS at 1440p (32.9% reduction) and then to 140.8 FPS at 4K (44.0% reduction). The consistent percentage drops across settings suggest that the game’s rendering load scales predictably with pixel count, and the RTX 5090’s 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is being pushed closer to its limits at 4K. The fact that even at 4K Ultra the frame rate stays above 140 FPS indicates that the GPU has substantial headroom, but the data clearly shows that resolution scaling has a linear relationship with frame rate output, pointing to the GPU as the dominant constraint.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo achieves 631.2 FPS on Low, 535.4 FPS on Medium, 463.8 FPS on High, and 374.4 FPS on Ultra. The progression shows a consistent decline of approximately 71.6 FPS between Low and Medium, 71.6 FPS between Medium and High, and 89.4 FPS between High and Ultra. At 2560x1440, the values are 423.7 FPS (Low), 358.5 FPS (Medium), 309.4 FPS (High), and 251.3 FPS (Ultra). The gaps here are 65.2 FPS, 49.1 FPS, and 58.1 FPS respectively, showing that the penalty for higher settings narrows as resolution increases. At 3840x2160, the results are 242.4 FPS (Low), 207.6 FPS (Medium), 179.7 FPS (High), and 140.8 FPS (Ultra). The differences at 4K are 34.8 FPS, 27.9 FPS, and 38.9 FPS, respectively. Across all resolutions, the Ultra preset imposes the largest absolute penalty at 1080p (89.4 FPS versus High), but the smallest relative penalty at 4K (21.7% reduction versus High). This breakdown confirms that the game is highly scalable, with no setting producing a frame rate below 140 FPS even at maximum resolution and quality.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF brings 20 cores and 28 threads from the Raptor Lake architecture, with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz and a base clock of 3.40 GHz. In To The Core, an idle game that likely relies more on single-threaded logic than multi-threaded rendering, the CPU’s single-core performance is critical. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6290 and Geekbench single-core score of 2972 indicate strong single-thread capability, which helps maintain high frame rates at 1080p where the GPU is not the bottleneck. The CPU’s 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample storage for game data, reducing latency. The fact that the combo achieves 631.2 FPS at 1080p Low suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at extremely high rates, and the 96th percentile ranking versus all CPUs confirms its performance class. However, as resolution increases to 4K, the CPU’s role diminishes, and the GPU’s 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance becomes the limiting factor. The CPU’s nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i7-14700K and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, show negligible performance differences (0% to -0.4% delta), indicating that the i7-14700KF is well-matched to the RTX 5090 without creating a bottleneck at any tested resolution.