To The Core

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance tier of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 + Intel Arc B570 combo in To The Core?

A: This combination ranks 2380th out of 2991 tested combos in the game, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the performance spectrum. The CPU itself sits in the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU is in the 65th percentile among all GPUs, indicating the graphics card is the limiting factor in this pairing.

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ultra 7 265 has an average benchmark score of 64640. It trails the AMD EPYC 4464P by 0.3% and the AMD EPYC 9124 by 0.7%, while leading the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F by 0.3% and the AMD EPYC 7343 by 0.7%. These are all very close margins, making the 265 effectively performance-equivalent to its closest competitors.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 4K gameplay with this combo?

A: At 3840x2160, the High preset delivers 64 avg FPS, which is playable. The Medium preset provides 73 avg FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS and maximum of 84 FPS, offering a better balance of smoothness and visual quality. Ultra drops to 51 FPS, which may feel less fluid for some users.

Q: How much VRAM does the Intel Arc B570 have and does it matter for this game?

A: The Arc B570 comes with 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, delivering 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. For an idle game like To The Core, this capacity is more than sufficient across all tested resolutions and settings, as the frame rate scaling suggests the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

Q: What is the CPU's core and thread configuration?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 features 20 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. It has a 30 MB shared L3 cache and 3 MB L2 cache per core, built on the Arrow Lake architecture with a 3 nm process node from TSMC.

Q: What is the launch MSRP for both components?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 has a launch MSRP of $394, while the Intel Arc B570 has a launch MSRP of 219 USD.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear pattern: scaling from Low to Ultra settings produces consistent frame rate drops across all three resolutions, but the relative cost of Ultra is steep. At 1920x1080, Low delivers 225 avg FPS, Medium drops to 191 avg FPS, High sits at 165 avg FPS, and Ultra falls to 133 avg FPS. The gap between Medium and Ultra is 58 FPS, or roughly 30% of the Medium value.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds: Low achieves 152 avg FPS, Medium 128, High 111, and Ultra 89. The Medium preset again provides a substantial cushion above 60 FPS while retaining visual fidelity improvements over Low. At 3840x2160, Low hits 87 avg FPS, Medium 73, High 64, and Ultra 51. Here, Ultra falls below the 60 FPS threshold, making it the least desirable option for smooth gameplay.

The Medium preset is the recommended choice across all resolutions. At 1080p it produces 191 avg FPS with a minimum of 162 FPS, at 1440p it yields 128 avg FPS with a minimum of 109 FPS, and at 4K it delivers 73 avg FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS. These minimums ensure consistent frame pacing without dips into stutter territory. High is a viable alternative for users prioritizing visual quality, especially at 1080p where it still maintains 165 avg FPS, but Medium offers the best compromise of performance headroom and graphical enhancement. Ultra should be avoided at 4K, as 51 avg FPS risks noticeable judder in a genre where smooth interactions matter.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2380 out of 2991 tested combinations places this system in the 20th percentile of all tested hardware pairings in To The Core. This is a modest standing, reflecting the GPU's mid-range positioning rather than the CPU's strength. The Intel Arc B570's percentile of 65 among all GPUs suggests it performs better than the average graphics card, but the game's demands or optimization may not favor it heavily.

The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking indicates the Ultra 7 265 is a top-tier processor by general benchmark standards. However, its nearest rivals—the AMD EPYC 4464P, EPYC 9124, EPYC 7343, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F—all score within 0.7% of each other, meaning no single processor in this group has a meaningful advantage. This tight clustering suggests that CPU choice among these models would not measurably alter the combo's rank in To The Core.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a similar pattern: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile is 0.1% ahead, the Intel Arc A750 is 0.1% behind, the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M is 0.4% ahead, and the AMD Radeon R9 M390X is 0.5% behind. These deltas are negligible, indicating the B570 sits in a competitive but crowded performance band. The combo's overall rank of 2380 implies that many other GPU pairings outperform it, but the data does not specify which specific combinations achieve higher ranks.

Given the CPU's high percentile and the GPU's mid percentile, the bottleneck in this system is clearly the graphics card. Users seeking a higher rank in To The Core would need to pair the Ultra 7 265 with a stronger GPU, as the processor has ample headroom to support faster graphics hardware without becoming a limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 + Intel Arc B570 delivers its strongest performance. Low settings produce 225 avg FPS, Medium achieves 191 avg FPS with a minimum of 162 and maximum of 219, High reaches 165 avg FPS, and Ultra settles at 133 avg FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 40.9% reduction in frame rate, but even the lowest Ultra figure remains far above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain robust. Low settings yield 152 avg FPS, Medium provides 128 avg FPS with a minimum of 109 and maximum of 147, High delivers 111 avg FPS, and Ultra drops to 89 avg FPS. The percentage reduction from Low to Ultra is 41.4%, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling, suggesting the GPU is not yet memory-bandwidth-limited at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the performance picture changes. Low settings still manage 87 avg FPS, Medium offers 73 avg FPS with a minimum of 62 and maximum of 84, High falls to 64 avg FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 51 avg FPS. The Low-to-Ultra reduction here is 41.4%, consistent with the lower resolutions, but the absolute numbers place Ultra below the 60 FPS line. The Medium preset's minimum of 62 FPS is the only 4K configuration that consistently stays above 60 FPS, making it the safest choice for 4K displays.

The resolution scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings shows a 61.8% drop in average frame rate (from 191 to 73 FPS). This is a moderate scaling penalty, typical of a GPU with 10 GB of VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth. The lack of min/max data for Low, High, and Ultra presets at all resolutions limits deeper analysis of frame pacing, but the available Medium data shows tight minimums relative to averages, indicating stable performance.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture with the BMG-G21 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process by TSMC. Its 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die yield a density of 72.1M per mm². The GPU operates at a fixed 2500 MHz base and boost clock, with memory running at 2375 MHz for 19 Gbps effective speed. This clock configuration results in 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, backed by 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 80 ROPs.

The 10 GB GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus provides 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. For To The Core, an idle game that likely does not demand large texture pools, this capacity is ample. The measured FPS data shows no signs of VRAM insufficiency: even at 4K Ultra, the game runs at 51 avg FPS, which is more likely a compute or fill-rate limitation than a memory capacity issue. The pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s suggest the GPU can handle the resolution scaling observed in the benchmarks.

The B570's benchmark scores place it in the 65th percentile among all GPUs. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2649 and Passmark G3D score of 14195 reflect mid-range performance. The nearest rivals—RTX 3070 Mobile, Arc A750, Quadro M4000M, and R9 M390X—all score within 0.5% of the B570, indicating this GPU is competitively positioned but not a standout in raw compute. In To The Core, the GPU's role is clearly the limiting factor: the CPU can push far higher frame rates, but the B570 caps performance at the levels shown.

The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface and 150 W TDP with a 450 W suggested PSU make this a power-efficient option. The dual-slot cooler and 272 mm length are standard for this class. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6, ensuring broad API compatibility for modern games. The display outputs include one HDMI 2.1a and three DisplayPort 2.1, which support high refresh rates at 4K if the game's performance allows.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, specifically the Arrow Lake-S desktop variant. It has a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The 3 nm process node from TSMC enables high efficiency, while the 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die represent a dense design. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in dual-channel mode with a theoretical bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, though the game's performance is not memory-sensitive.

With a 93rd percentile ranking among all CPUs and an average benchmark score of 64640, the Ultra 7 265 is a high-end processor by any measure. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42216 and single-core score of 5960 demonstrate strong both multithreaded and single-threaded capabilities. In To The Core, an idle game that likely relies on modest single-thread performance, the CPU is far from being a bottleneck. The measured FPS differences between 1080p and 4K are consistent with GPU-bound scaling, not CPU limitations.

The nearest rivals—the EPYC 4464P, EPYC 9124, EPYC 7343, and Ultra 7 265F—all score within 0.7% of the 265, making this processor's performance essentially indistinguishable from its peers in synthetic benchmarks. This suggests that swapping to any of these CPUs would produce negligible changes in To The Core frame rates. The CPU's 20 cores and 20 threads (notably lacking Hyper-Threading) provide ample parallelism for background tasks, but the game itself likely uses only a fraction of these resources.

The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 30 MB shared L3. This large L3 cache benefits workloads with moderate data reuse, though idle games typically have small working sets. The CPU's boost clock of 5.30 GHz ensures snappy responsiveness in menu-heavy game states, and the 65 W TDP keeps thermals manageable for most coolers. The integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 32EU provides a fallback display output, but the discrete B570 handles all rendering duties in this configuration.

The CPU's launch MSRP of $394 positions it as a mid-to-high-range desktop part, but its performance rank suggests it outperforms its price class. The lack of a multiplier unlock means overclocking is not possible, but the factory boost behavior is sufficient for this game. In summary, the Ultra 7 265 is a capable foundation for this combo, but its power is largely untapped in To The Core due to the GPU's lower performance ceiling.