Undisputed

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and Intel Arc B370 pairing delivers a playable but heavily constrained experience in Undisputed, with the measured data revealing a clear ceiling that varies dramatically by resolution and quality preset. This combination ranks 2592 out of 2813 tested combos, placing it firmly in the bottom 8% of all systems, a statistic that underscores the significant bottleneck presented by the discrete-class integrated GPU.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of which presets offer the most practical experience. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves 115 FPS average, which is the only setting that comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The Medium preset at 1080p produces 83 FPS average with a minimum of 70 FPS, making it the superior choice for those prioritizing visual quality while still maintaining solid frame pacing. The High preset at 1080p drops to 68 FPS, which remains playable but shows a 22% performance reduction from Medium, suggesting diminishing returns. The Ultra preset at 1080p falls to 44 FPS, which is below the ideal playability threshold.

Moving to 1440p, the situation becomes more restrictive. The Low preset delivers 83 FPS, matching the 1080p Medium result, indicating that resolution scaling at this tier is efficient. However, the Medium preset at 1440p produces 60 FPS with a minimum of 51 FPS, which is borderline for competitive play. The High preset at 1440p drops to 49 FPS, and Ultra falls to 32 FPS, making both unsuitable for consistent performance. At 4K, only the Low preset achieves 52 FPS, while Medium drops to 38 FPS, High to 31 FPS, and Ultra to 20 FPS, rendering the higher presets effectively unplayable at this resolution.

The data suggests that the Medium preset at 1080p offers the best balance, providing 83 FPS average with a 70 FPS minimum, which ensures frame time consistency. For users with 1440p displays, the Low preset at 83 FPS is the only viable option for maintaining high refresh rate performance. The measured minimum FPS values for Medium at all resolutions indicate that the GPU can sustain its average performance without severe drops, which is a positive indicator for stability.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2400 MHz, featuring 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 render output units. Its memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning it relies on the system's DDR5 memory rather than dedicated VRAM, with bandwidth described as "System Dependent." This architecture explains the performance limitations observed in the measured results.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1184 places it in the 5th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rivals being the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, -0.2%), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, -0.5%), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192, -0.7%), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168, 1.4%). This comparison highlights that the Arc B370's raw performance is comparable to legacy discrete GPUs from over a decade ago, which contextualizes its inability to handle high-quality settings in modern titles.

The shared memory architecture means that performance is heavily dependent on the system's memory bandwidth and capacity, which is rated at 102.4 GB/s for the CPU's dual-channel DDR5 configuration. This shared resource creates a potential conflict between CPU and GPU memory demands, particularly at higher resolutions where frame buffers require more memory. The pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s are modest figures that align with the observed FPS drops when increasing resolution from 1080p to 4K.

The GPU's FP32 performance of 6.144 TFLOPS and FP16 of 12.29 TFLOPS (2:1) provide theoretical compute capabilities, but the measured results indicate that memory bandwidth and fill rate are the limiting factors in Undisputed. The 20 ROPs are particularly constrained for 4K rendering, which explains the dramatic FPS collapse at that resolution.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best preset for 1080p gaming in Undisputed?*

A: The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 83 FPS average with a 70 FPS minimum, offering the best combination of visual quality and performance stability. The Low preset achieves 115 FPS but sacrifices visual fidelity, while High drops to 68 FPS and Ultra falls to 44 FPS.

*Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Undisputed?*

A: The data indicates that 4K gaming is only marginally playable at Low settings with 52 FPS average. Medium drops to 38 FPS, High to 31 FPS, and Ultra to 20 FPS, making higher settings unplayable at this resolution.

Q: How does the Arc B370 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B370 scores 1184 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, which is nearly identical to the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186) and within 1.4% of the AMD FirePro M2000 (1168). This places it in the 5th percentile of all GPUs.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, the Low preset achieves 83 FPS while Ultra drops to 32 FPS, representing a 61.4% performance reduction. The Medium preset at 60 FPS and High at 49 FPS show progressive degradation.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this configuration?

A: The CPU's 14 cores and 14 threads, with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, produce a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769 and single-core score of 2085. Given the GPU's 5th percentile ranking, the CPU is unlikely to be the limiting factor in Undisputed's measured results.

Q: What is the minimum FPS performance at Medium settings?

A: At 1080p Medium, the minimum FPS is 70, at 1440p Medium it's 51, and at 4K Medium it's 32. These values indicate that the GPU maintains relatively stable frame delivery without severe stuttering.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2592 out of 2813 tested combos in Undisputed, placing it in the bottom 7.9% of all systems tested. This ranking reflects the GPU's severe performance limitations, as the CPU alone performs in the 89th percentile of all processors with an average benchmark score of 46062, nearly identical to its nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (46030, 0.1% higher) and Intel Core i9-13900HX (46098, 0.1% lower).

The stark contrast between the CPU's strong standing and the GPU's 5th percentile performance creates a significant imbalance. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 4364P (45970, 0.2% higher) and AMD EPYC 7303 (45960, 0.2% higher), all within 0.2% of each other, indicating that the processor is well-matched with high-end alternatives. However, the GPU's rivals are all legacy ATI and AMD parts, showing that the Arc B370 is competing with hardware from a different era.

The rank of 2592 suggests that the vast majority of other tested combinations, likely those with discrete mid-range or high-end GPUs, significantly outperform this setup. The data implies that the GPU is the primary constraint, as the CPU's capabilities are more than sufficient for the game's requirements. This ranking also highlights that the system's performance is highly dependent on resolution and settings, with the GPU's limitations becoming more pronounced at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 features 14 cores and 14 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It is built on TSMC's 3 nm process with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 24 MB shared L3 cache. This architecture, codenamed Arrow Lake-S, supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and 102.4 GB/s bandwidth.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769 and single-core score of 2085. Its Cinebench R20 scores are 6202 multi-core and 875 single-core, while R15 scores are 1488 multi-core and 210 single-core. PassMark results show a multi-thread score of 37816 and single-thread score of 4516, with specific workloads like data compression at 390711 and floating point math at 117951.

The CPU's 89th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 46062 place it in elite company, with its nearest rivals all within 0.2% of its score. This indicates that the processor is not a bottleneck in Undisputed, as its single-core performance, which is critical for games, is robust. The 14 threads, while not offering hyper-threading, provide sufficient parallelism for modern game engines.

Given the GPU's limitations, the CPU's role in the measured FPS is likely minimal, as the system is clearly GPU-bound across all tested settings. The high single-core score of 2085 in Cinebench R23 suggests that the CPU can handle the game's simulation and AI logic without introducing frame time issues. The L3 cache of 24 MB provides adequate data locality for gaming workloads, reducing memory latency.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system achieves 115 FPS on Low, 83 FPS on Medium (70 min, 95 max), 68 FPS on High, and 44 FPS on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 61.7% performance drop, with the largest single-step decline occurring between Medium and High (18.1% reduction) and between High and Ultra (35.3% reduction).

At 2560x1440, the results are 83 FPS on Low, 60 FPS on Medium (51 min, 69 max), 49 FPS on High, and 32 FPS on Ultra. This represents a 61.4% drop from Low to Ultra, with the Medium to High transition showing an 18.3% reduction and High to Ultra showing a 34.7% reduction. The 1440p results are consistently lower than 1080p, with the gap widening at higher settings.

At 3840x2160, the system produces 52 FPS on Low, 38 FPS on Medium (32 min, 43 max), 31 FPS on High, and 20 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Low to Ultra is 61.5%, showing a consistent pattern across resolutions. The 4K results indicate that only the Low preset approaches playability, with a 52 FPS average that would still benefit from further optimization.

The data reveals that the performance scaling from 1080p to 1440p to 4K is not linear. At Low settings, the 1080p to 1440p drop is 27.8%, and the 1440p to 4K drop is 37.3%. At Medium settings, the corresponding drops are 27.7% and 36.7%. These percentages suggest that the GPU's memory bandwidth and fill rate become increasingly strained at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data shows a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drop across all settings is approximately 27.7%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is approximately 37.0%. This non-linear scaling indicates that the GPU's limitations are more pronounced at 4K, likely due to the system-shared memory architecture struggling to provide sufficient bandwidth for larger frame buffers.

At Low settings, the framerate drops from 115 FPS at 1080p to 83 FPS at 1440p (27.8% reduction) and then to 52 FPS at 4K (37.3% reduction from 1440p). This pattern suggests that the pixel fill rate, rated at 48.00 GPixel/s, becomes a limiting factor at higher resolutions. The 4K resolution requires approximately 8.3 million pixels per frame, compared to 3.7 million at 1440p and 2.1 million at 1080p, which directly correlates with the observed FPS reductions.

The scaling behavior indicates that the system is primarily GPU-bound, as the CPU's performance remains constant regardless of resolution. The fact that the FPS drops are proportionally similar across all settings (61-62% from Low to Ultra at each resolution) reinforces this conclusion. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller FPS differences at lower resolutions where the GPU has less work to do.

The data implies that the Arc B370's shared memory architecture is the critical constraint at 4K, as the "System Dependent" bandwidth cannot scale to meet the demands of ultra-high-resolution rendering. The 20 ROPs, responsible for pixel output, are particularly strained at 4K, resulting in the sub-60 FPS performance even at Low settings. This makes the system unsuitable for 4K gaming, with 1440p Low being the practical ceiling for consistent playability.