To The Core

# To The Core with Intel Core Ultra 7 265 + Intel Arc B390

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 paired with the Intel Arc B390 delivers a playable but decidedly entry-level experience in To The Core, an idle game that places modest demands on hardware. Benchmark data shows the combo ranking 2643rd out of 2991 tested combinations, placing it in the lower 12th percentile of systems. The Arc B390's integrated graphics architecture—an IGP solution with system-shared memory—proves to be the primary bottleneck, while the 20-core CPU sits largely underutilized. Across all tested resolutions and settings, the system never exceeds 147 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it drops to just 33 FPS, indicating that this configuration is best suited for 1080p gaming with moderate settings.

Settings Recommendations

The data reveals a clear hierarchy across the four tested presets, with the most balanced experience appearing at Medium settings. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 124 FPS average with a minimum of 105 FPS and maximum of 143 FPS, providing a smooth and consistent frame rate that comfortably exceeds standard display refresh rates. The jump from Low to Medium costs 23 FPS (from 147 to 124), but the visual quality improvement is substantial, and the frame rate remains well above playable thresholds.

High settings at 1080p achieve 107 FPS, representing an additional 17 FPS drop from Medium. This is still a perfectly playable experience, but the diminishing returns in visual fidelity versus the frame rate loss suggest Medium is the sweet spot. Ultra at 1080p drops to 86 FPS—a 31% reduction from Medium—which begins to feel less fluid on high-refresh displays, though it remains technically playable.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with Medium again offering the best compromise: 83 FPS average with a 71 FPS minimum. High drops to 72 FPS, and Ultra falls to 58 FPS. The 1440p Medium experience is solid for casual play, but the 1080p Medium result of 124 FPS is clearly superior in smoothness. For 4K, even Low settings only produce 56 FPS, and Medium falls to 48 FPS—both below the 60 FPS threshold that most players consider ideal.

The verdict is unambiguous: Medium at 1080p provides the best overall experience. It delivers a 124 FPS average with a tight 105-143 FPS range, indicating stable frame pacing. The 105 FPS minimum ensures no noticeable stutter, while the 143 FPS maximum shows headroom for scenes with less activity. This preset balances the Arc B390's limited graphics throughput against the visual demands of the game, yielding a smooth idle-game experience.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics solution built on the Xe3-LPG architecture with a 3 nm process from Intel. It operates with a 300 MHz base clock and 2500 MHz boost clock, and critically, it uses system-shared memory—there is no dedicated VRAM. The memory bus width, memory type, and bandwidth are all listed as "System Shared" or "System Dependent," meaning performance scales with the host system's DDR5 memory configuration.

With 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output pipelines, the Arc B390 also includes 12 ray tracing cores. Its compute capabilities are modest: 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 and 15.36 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1). The graphics card's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 1482, which places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs—a very low standing. Its nearest rivals, according to benchmark data, are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (scoring 1463, a 1.3% difference), the GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% difference), the GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% difference), and the GT 710 (1443, 2.7% difference). These are all legacy or low-end mobile/desktop parts, confirming the Arc B390's position as an entry-level graphics solution.

The measured FPS data in To The Core reflects this positioning. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 147 FPS, which shows the GPU can handle undemanding scenes. However, the rapid falloff as settings increase—from 147 to 124 to 107 to 86 FPS across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra at 1080p—demonstrates that the GPU's limited shading and texture throughput quickly becomes the limiting factor. The pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s are low enough that higher-quality textures and effects exact a significant toll.

The system-shared memory architecture is particularly relevant for an idle game like To The Core, which likely has modest texture memory requirements. The Arc B390's 80 W TDP and IGP form factor mean it draws from the same power envelope as the CPU, and it has no dedicated power connectors. This is a laptop-class or compact-desktop solution that prioritizes efficiency over raw performance, and the benchmark results confirm it delivers accordingly.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling across resolutions reveals a GPU-bound scenario at higher settings. Going from 1080p to 1440p to 4K at Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 124 to 83 to 48—a 33% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 42% reduction from 1440p to 4K. This steep decline indicates that the Arc B390's fill rate and memory bandwidth (system-dependent) are insufficient to maintain performance as pixel count increases.

At Low settings, the scaling is somewhat less severe: 147 FPS at 1080p, 99 FPS at 1440p, and 56 FPS at 4K. The 4K Low result of 56 FPS is interesting because it shows the game is still playable at the highest resolution when graphical features are minimized, but the frame rate is below the 60 FPS threshold. The 1440p Low result of 99 FPS is the highest frame rate achieved at that resolution, reinforcing that Low settings are necessary for smoother 1440p play.

The 4K High and Ultra results are particularly telling: 41 FPS and 33 FPS respectively. These are the only results below 40 FPS in the entire dataset, and they demonstrate that 4K is only viable with Low or Medium settings. The 33 FPS at 4K Ultra is barely interactive, even for an idle game where twitch reflexes are not required.

The scaling pattern strongly suggests the GPU is the limiting component at resolutions above 1080p. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain relatively constant across resolutions, since the CPU's workload does not change with pixel count. Instead, the consistent decline from 147 to 99 to 56 FPS at Low settings—a 62% drop from 1080p to 4K—indicates that the Arc B390's rendering pipeline is saturated at higher resolutions. The system-shared memory bandwidth, which is "System Dependent," likely becomes a significant constraint at 4K, as the GPU competes with the CPU for memory access.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and Intel Arc B390 combination ranks 2643rd out of 2991 tested combos in To The Core, placing it in the bottom 12% of all systems tested. This is a poor showing, driven almost entirely by the GPU's low performance ceiling. The CPU alone is a strong performer—its average benchmark score of 64640 places it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs—but the Arc B390's 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482 (9th percentile) drags the combined result down dramatically.

The combo's rank of 2643 means that 348 tested systems performed worse, while 2642 performed better. This places the system in the company of budget laptops and older desktop configurations that lack discrete graphics. The nearest CPU rivals to the Core Ultra 7 265 include the AMD EPYC 4464P (average score 64823, just 0.3% higher), the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F (64438, 0.3% lower), the AMD EPYC 7343 (64202, 0.7% lower), and the AMD EPYC 9124 (65104, 0.7% higher). These are all high-core-count server or desktop parts, and their similar scores underscore that the Core Ultra 7 265 is not the limiting factor here.

In the context of To The Core, the combo's rank is particularly revealing because the game is an idle genre title that typically does not demand high-end graphics. Yet even with this modest workload, the Arc B390 struggles to maintain high frame rates at elevated settings. A system with a discrete GPU—even a low-end one—would likely rank substantially higher, as the CPU has ample headroom to drive higher FPS if the graphics pipeline were not the constraint.

The data is measured, not estimated, which lends credibility to these results. The 12 measured FPS data points span four resolutions and four quality presets, providing a comprehensive picture of the combo's capabilities. The rank of 2643 is a statistical summary of how this specific pairing compares to all others, and it clearly indicates that this is not a gaming-focused configuration.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread desktop processor from the Core Ultra Series 2, based on the Arrow Lake-S architecture built on a 3 nm process from TSMC. It operates at a 2.40 GHz base clock and boosts to 5.30 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth, and it connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 20 CPU lanes. Its cache hierarchy includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 30 MB shared L3.

The processor's benchmark scores are strong across the board. Its Cinebench R23 multicore score is 42216, and single-core is 5960. PassMark results show 49682 for multithread, 4689 for single-thread, and 522983 for data compression. The average benchmark score of 64640 places it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, confirming its high-end positioning. The nearest rivals—AMD EPYC 4464P, Intel Core Ultra 7 265F, AMD EPYC 7343, and AMD EPYC 9124—all score within 0.7% of the 265, indicating tight competition among high-core-count parts.

In To The Core, the CPU's role is largely supportive. The game is an idle title, meaning most of the computational load is on the GPU for rendering, while the CPU handles game logic and simulation at a relatively low frequency. The fact that FPS drops by roughly half from 1080p to 4K at every settings level demonstrates that the GPU, not the CPU, is the performance limiter. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect similar FPS across resolutions, as the CPU work per frame does not scale with pixel count.

The Core Ultra 7 265's 20 cores and 20 threads are far more than an idle game requires, but they provide headroom for background tasks, streaming, or multitasking while playing. The 5.30 GHz boost clock ensures snappy single-threaded performance for game logic, and the 30 MB L3 cache helps keep frequently accessed data close to the cores. The 3 nm process and 65 W TDP make this an efficient processor that does not generate excessive heat, which is beneficial in compact systems where the Arc B390's IGP form factor is likely to be found.

The CPU's PassMark data encryption score of 40456 and extended instructions score of 41478 indicate strong cryptographic and SIMD performance, though these are unlikely to impact To The Core gameplay. The floating-point math score of 172776 and integer math score of 134773 are robust, but again, the game's physics and logic are simple enough that these capabilities remain underutilized.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this system in To The Core?*

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 at Medium settings delivers the best balance, with a 124 FPS average, 105 FPS minimum, and 143 FPS maximum. This provides a smooth experience while maintaining visual quality. At 4K, even Low settings only achieve 56 FPS, so 1080p is the recommended resolution.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 2643rd out of 2991 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 12% of systems. This low rank is primarily due to the Intel Arc B390's graphics performance, which scores in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, while the CPU alone ranks in the 93rd percentile.

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 or the Intel Arc B390 the bottleneck in this game?

A: The GPU is clearly the limiting component. Evidence shows FPS dropping from 147 at 1080p Low to 56 at 4K Low, a 62% reduction that correlates with pixel count increases. If the CPU were the bottleneck, FPS would remain relatively stable across resolutions. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking confirms it has ample headroom.

Q: What are the nearest GPU rivals to the Intel Arc B390, and how much faster are they?

A: The nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (scoring 1463, which is 1.3% lower), GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% lower), GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% lower), and GT 710 (1443, 2.7% lower). All of these are within 3% of the Arc B390's 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482, indicating they are closely matched in performance.

Q: Does the system use dedicated video memory?

A: No, the Intel Arc B390 uses system-shared memory. The memory size, type, and bus width are all listed as "System Shared," with bandwidth described as "System Dependent." This means graphics performance is tied to the host system's DDR5 memory configuration, and there is no dedicated VRAM available.

Q: What is the CPU's memory bandwidth and how does it affect gaming?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus and 102.4 GB/s bandwidth. Since the GPU relies on system-shared memory, this bandwidth is shared between CPU and GPU workloads. In To The Core, this shared memory arrangement likely contributes to the steep performance drop at higher resolutions, as the GPU competes with the CPU for memory access.