To The Core

# To The Core with Intel Core Ultra 5 245 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 delivers exceptional performance in To The Core, an idle game that scales impressively across resolutions and settings. With measured frame rates ranging from 142 FPS at 4K Ultra to 625 FPS at 1080p Low, this pairing demonstrates that the RTX 5090's massive rendering resources are largely untaxed by this title, while the Ultra 5 245's 14 cores and 5.10 GHz boost clock provide ample headroom for the game's computational demands. The data set includes twelve distinct measurement points across three resolutions and four quality presets, offering a comprehensive view of how this hardware configuration behaves in a game that is far from graphically demanding.

Settings Recommendations

For the best overall experience in To The Core, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 represents the optimal balance, delivering 355 FPS average with a measured minimum of 302 FPS and maximum of 409 FPS. This configuration provides a 47 FPS improvement over High settings at the same resolution while maintaining frame rates well above any display refresh rate likely to be encountered. The 1440p Medium setting avoids the diminishing returns of Ultra, which drops to 248 FPS, while still offering substantially better visual quality than Low at 420 FPS.

At 4K resolution, Medium is again the recommended starting point, producing 203 FPS average with a minimum of 173 FPS and maximum of 234 FPS. This represents a 27 FPS gain over High settings and a 61 FPS advantage over Ultra, while the jump from Medium to Low (240 FPS) yields only a 37 FPS improvement—a smaller relative gain than the visual quality sacrifice would suggest. For users prioritizing absolute smoothness over visual fidelity, 4K Low at 240 FPS is defensible, but the Medium preset's 203 FPS average with a 173 FPS floor ensures consistent frame pacing without excessive visual compromise.

At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers 528 FPS average with a 449 FPS minimum and 608 FPS maximum. Given that this exceeds virtually any display's refresh rate capability, users should select based on visual preference rather than performance necessity. The Ultra preset at 369 FPS remains exceptionally smooth while providing the highest visual quality, making it the sensible choice for 1080p owners who value image quality over raw frame counts. The data indicates that the performance ceiling at 1080p is so high that even the most demanding preset fails to challenge this hardware meaningfully.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 66 out of 2991 tested combinations in To The Core, placing it in the top 2.2% of all configurations evaluated. This ranking reflects the combination's ability to maintain extremely high frame rates even at 4K Ultra settings, where the 142 FPS average still exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end displays. The percentile position is particularly notable given that the CPU's overall benchmark percentile is 90 and the GPU's is 92, suggesting the pairing performs slightly better than either component's individual standing would predict in this specific game.

The RTX 5090's average benchmark score of 79,842 places it within a narrow band of its nearest rivals, with the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scoring 79,605 (0.3% lower), the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB at 79,396 (0.6% lower), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT at 78,940 (1.1% lower), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X at 80,959 (1.4% higher). These small deltas indicate that the RTX 5090's raw compute capabilities are well within the expected range for a flagship GPU, yet To The Core's measured frame rates demonstrate that this benchmark parity does not translate into any meaningful gameplay difference—the game is simply not demanding enough to differentiate between such closely matched GPUs.

Similarly, the Core Ultra 5 245's average benchmark score of 48,995 sits within 1% of its nearest rivals: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G at 49,196 (-0.4%), the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 at 49,228 (-0.5%), the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H at 48,698 (0.6%), and the Intel Core i5-14600K at 48,618 (0.8%). This clustering suggests that CPU choice has minimal impact on To The Core performance, as even the 14-core Ultra 5 245 with its 24 MB of L3 cache is far more processing capability than the game requires.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 brings substantial hardware resources to To The Core, including 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU operates at a 2017 MHz base clock with a 2407 MHz boost clock, and its 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster operation units provide theoretical peak rates of 423.6 GPixel/s pixel fill and 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture fill. The FP32 compute throughput of 104.8 TFLOPS places this GPU in the top tier of consumer graphics hardware, yet the measured performance in To The Core suggests that none of these resources become a bottleneck at any tested configuration.

The 32 GB VRAM capacity is particularly noteworthy for an idle game, as To The Core's visual complexity is unlikely to approach even a fraction of this memory footprint. The memory clock of 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) and the resulting bandwidth figure indicate that data transfer is not a limiting factor. The GPU's benchmark scores, including a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 18,355 and a Passmark G3D score of 39,650, confirm its high-end positioning, but the game's frame rates at 4K Ultra (142 FPS) versus 1080p Ultra (369 FPS) show a scaling pattern that is more consistent with CPU or engine limitations than GPU saturation.

The RTX 5090's nearest rivals in the benchmark database all cluster within a 2% performance band, and the measured FPS deltas between settings at each resolution follow a consistent pattern—High to Medium improves performance by roughly 15%, while Medium to Low adds another 15-18%. This consistent scaling suggests the GPU is operating well within its efficiency envelope, never approaching thermal or power limits that might cause non-linear performance drops.

FAQ

*Q: Can the RTX 5090 maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra in To The Core?*

A: Yes, with substantial headroom. The measured 4K Ultra average is 142 FPS, which is more than double the 60 FPS threshold. Even the most demanding configuration tested leaves significant performance margin.

Q: What is the performance difference between 1080p and 4K at Medium settings?

A: The 1080p Medium average is 528 FPS, while 4K Medium averages 203 FPS, representing a 325 FPS reduction (approximately 61% lower). The 4K result still provides excellent smoothness, indicating the GPU handles the resolution increase effectively.

Q: How does the Core Ultra 5 245 compare to its closest CPU rivals?

A: The Ultra 5 245's average benchmark score of 48,995 is within 1% of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (-0.4%), AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (-0.5%), Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (0.6%), and Intel Core i5-14600K (0.8%). These differences are negligible for gaming performance.

*Q: Is the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM necessary for To The Core?*

A: The game's performance data does not indicate any VRAM-related limitations. The 32 GB capacity vastly exceeds the requirements of this idle game, and the measured frame rates show no signs of memory bandwidth constraints at any resolution or settings combination.

Q: What is the best settings preset for high refresh rate 1440p displays?

A: Medium at 2560x1440 delivers 355 FPS average with a 302 FPS minimum, which comfortably exceeds 240 Hz display refresh rates. High settings at 308 FPS also qualify, while Ultra at 248 FPS remains above most high-refresh-rate requirements.

Q: How does the combo rank compare to its component percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 66th out of 2,991 tested combinations (top 2.2%), while the CPU sits at the 90th percentile and the GPU at the 92nd percentile among all parts. The combination performs slightly better than either component's individual standing would predict.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear scaling pattern as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K. At Medium settings, the progression is 528 FPS at 1920x1080, 355 FPS at 2560x1440, and 203 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 32.8% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 42.8% reduction from 1440p to 4K, with the total drop from 1080p to 4K being 61.6%. The scaling is consistent across all settings presets—High goes from 458 to 308 to 176 FPS, Low from 625 to 420 to 240 FPS, and Ultra from 369 to 248 to 142 FPS.

The consistency of these scaling ratios across settings presets provides insight into the limiting component. If the GPU were the primary constraint, higher settings (which increase GPU load) would show steeper FPS drops with resolution increases compared to lower settings. Instead, the percentage drops are remarkably uniform: Low loses 61.6% from 1080p to 4K, Medium loses 61.6%, High loses 61.6%, and Ultra loses 61.5%. This uniformity strongly suggests the game engine or CPU is imposing a frame rate ceiling that scales predictably with resolution, rather than the GPU running out of compute resources.

At 4K Ultra, the 142 FPS average remains far above typical display refresh rates, indicating that even the most demanding configuration does not stress the RTX 5090 to anything approaching its limits. The frame rate minimums, where available (Medium preset: 173 FPS at 4K, 302 FPS at 1440p, 449 FPS at 1080p), show that frame pacing remains stable even at the highest resolution. The gap between average and minimum FPS at each resolution and setting is consistent, suggesting no thermal or power-induced throttling events.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 features 14 cores and 14 threads based on the Arrow Lake architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process by TSMC. It operates with a 3.50 GHz base clock and 5.10 GHz boost clock, backed by 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB L2 cache per core. The CPU's memory support includes dual-channel DDR5 with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth. These specifications place it in the upper tier of desktop processors, as reflected by its 90th percentile ranking among all CPUs.

In To The Core, the CPU's role appears secondary to the engine's rendering pipeline, but its capabilities ensure no CPU-side bottleneck emerges. The measured performance shows that at 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 625 FPS average, which approaches the practical ceiling for game engine frame rate delivery. The Cinebench R23 scores of 32,924 multicore and 4,648 singlecore, along with a Passmark multithread score of 38,706, demonstrate substantial processing headroom that this game does not fully exploit.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G, AMD Ryzen 9 7900, Intel Xeon Gold 5318H, and Intel Core i5-14600K—all score within 1% of the Ultra 5 245, making CPU choice effectively irrelevant for To The Core performance. The game's idle genre suggests it may rely more on consistent frame pacing than raw throughput, and the 14-core configuration with its 5.10 GHz boost clock provides the single-thread performance (Passmark single-thread score of 4,394) necessary for responsive gameplay. The 65 W TDP indicates efficient operation, and the processor's 24 MB shared L3 cache likely accommodates the game's working set without memory access bottlenecks.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured frame rates span from 369 FPS at Ultra to 625 FPS at Low. The Medium preset delivers 528 FPS average with a minimum of 449 FPS and maximum of 608 FPS, while High settings achieve 458 FPS. The progression shows a 13.3% improvement from High to Medium and an 18.4% improvement from Medium to Low. The Ultra preset's 369 FPS is 19.4% below High, indicating that the highest quality settings impose a measurable but modest performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the performance envelope shifts downward but remains exceptionally high. Low settings produce 420 FPS, Medium averages 355 FPS (302 minimum, 409 maximum), High reaches 308 FPS, and Ultra maintains 248 FPS. The relative scaling between presets is consistent with 1080p: Medium is 15.3% faster than High, and Low is 18.3% faster than Medium. The 1440p results are between 67.2% and 68.0% of their 1080p counterparts across all settings, demonstrating uniform resolution scaling.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 5090 still delivers impressive results. Low settings average 240 FPS, Medium achieves 203 FPS (173 minimum, 234 maximum), High reaches 176 FPS, and Ultra maintains 142 FPS. The 4K results are between 38.4% and 38.5% of the 1080p values, confirming that the performance scaling remains linear regardless of quality preset. The Medium preset's minimum of 173 FPS at 4K ensures that even the most demanding scenarios remain well above standard 144 Hz display refresh rates, and the 142 FPS Ultra average indicates that this configuration can handle maximum visual quality at 4K without dropping below playable thresholds. The consistency of the data—with no anomalies or unexpected performance cliffs—suggests a well-behaved game engine that scales predictably with both resolution and quality settings.