Allods Online

Allods Online, a 2010 MMORPG, shows surprising scaling behavior with the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. The measured frames per second (FPS) across resolutions and presets reveal a system that is rarely bound by the GPU, instead leaning heavily on the six-core processor. This analysis breaks down what those numbers mean for actual gameplay, which settings to choose, and how this specific combination stacks up against other tested hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is moderate at most settings, but the pattern changes drastically depending on the preset. At Low settings, the average FPS goes from 166.6 at 1920x1080 down to 114.7 at 3840x2160. That is a 31% reduction, which is noticeable but far from a collapse. The game remains very playable at 4K Low, staying above the 60 FPS threshold. At Medium settings, the drop is similar in percentage: 150.6 FPS at 1080p falls to 93.2 FPS at 4K, a 38% decrease. High settings show a steeper relative decline, from 125.7 FPS at 1080p to 54.4 FPS at 4K, which is a 57% loss. The most dramatic scaling occurs at Ultra, where 107.3 FPS at 1080p plummets to 36.1 FPS at 4K, a 66% reduction.

These numbers indicate that at Low and Medium presets, the CPU is the primary limiting factor. The RTX 4070 has plenty of headroom, so raising the resolution from 1440p to 4K only costs about 20-30% performance. For example, at Medium, 2560x1440 yields 134.6 FPS, while 4K yields 93.2 FPS. The GPU is doing more work, but the processor is still holding the frame rate back. At High and Ultra, the picture changes: the GPU becomes more stressed, and the resolution penalty grows. The jump from 1080p High to 4K High is severe, and Ultra at 4K drops below 40 FPS. This suggests that the Ultra preset introduces effects that heavily tax the graphics card, possibly related to shadows or draw distance, which are not optimized for modern hardware.

The data also shows that moving from Low to Medium at any resolution yields a smaller FPS hit than moving from Medium to High. At 4K, Low is 114.7 FPS, Medium is 93.2 FPS, and High is 54.4 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is nearly double the gap between Low and Medium. This is a classic sign of a settings tier that crosses a complexity threshold. For a 2010 game, the High preset likely enables post-processing or particle effects that the old engine struggles to render efficiently on the RTX 4070. In short, resolution scaling is well-behaved until you push past Medium, after which the GPU workload spikes disproportionately.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a six-core, six-thread processor from the Coffee Lake family, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. Its benchmark scores are modest: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and a single-core score of 1125. The processor sits at the 50th percentile among all CPUs tested, meaning it is exactly average. Its nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the Intel Core i3-10305 (0.2% faster) and the Intel Xeon E-2134 (0.4% faster), with the Intel Core i7-8809G being 0.6% slower. This is not a high-end part, and its age shows in Allods Online.

The measured FPS at Low settings confirms the CPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the system hits 166.6 FPS, but at 1440p Low it only drops to 141.8 FPS, and at 4K Low it still manages 114.7 FPS. The GPU is barely being pushed, yet the frame rate does not scale linearly with resolution. This is because the i5-9400's six threads are the ceiling. Allods Online, being an MMORPG, relies heavily on a single main thread for game logic and network handling. The 4.10 GHz boost clock helps, but the lack of hyper-threading means only six threads are available for all background tasks, addons, and the game's own simulation. The Cinebench R20 multi-core score of 3346 versus a single-core score of 472 shows that while multi-threaded workloads are handled adequately, single-thread performance is merely acceptable.

When the preset is raised to High or Ultra, the CPU load does not increase proportionally; instead, the GPU starts to take over as the limiting factor. At 1080p Ultra, the system still produces 107.3 FPS, which is only slightly lower than the 125.7 FPS at High. The CPU is still keeping up, but the GPU is now working harder. The real takeaway is that the i5-9400 is just enough to feed the RTX 4070 at lower settings, but it lacks the headroom to maintain high frame rates when the GPU is not the constraint. In crowded areas or large raids, the six threads will likely become a problem, as the 50th percentile ranking suggests it is outclassed by many modern CPUs. The 9 MB of shared L3 cache is also small by current standards, which can hurt in open-world MMO scenarios.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is a much more powerful piece of hardware, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process. It has 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units. Its memory configuration is 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. The base clock is 1920 MHz with a boost clock of 2475 MHz. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 26927 in Passmark G3D and 168006 in Geekbench OpenCL. It ranks at the 81st percentile among all GPUs, which is high, but its nearest rivals show a tight cluster: the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is 0.6% faster, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is 2.2% faster. The RTX 4070 is a strong card, but it is not top-tier.

In Allods Online, the GPU's role is secondary until you enable Ultra. At Low and Medium settings across all resolutions, the RTX 4070 is clearly underutilized. The frame rates at 4K Medium (93.2 FPS) and 4K Low (114.7 FPS) are high, but they are not limited by the GPU's raw compute. The card's 12 GB of VRAM is more than enough for a 2010 game, even at 4K, so memory is never a concern. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is also irrelevant here, as the game's textures are not demanding by modern standards.

The Ultra preset is where the RTX 4070's capabilities become visible. At 1080p Ultra, the FPS drops to 107.3, which is still good, but at 4K Ultra it falls to 36.1 FPS. This is a massive performance hit that suggests the Ultra preset enables some form of advanced lighting or anti-aliasing that the Ada Lovelace architecture handles poorly in this old engine. The card's FP32 performance of 29.15 TFLOPS is high, but the game likely does not use modern APIs efficiently. The DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) is not a factor for a 2010 title that probably runs on DirectX 9 or 11. The GPU's 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores are also unused. This is a case where a powerful GPU is held back by legacy software, and the only way to get high FPS is to avoid the Ultra preset. The measured data shows that the RTX 4070 can easily push 150+ FPS at 1080p Medium, but the game engine simply cannot scale beyond that due to CPU limits.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the best experience is achieved at Medium settings. At 1920x1080 Medium, the average FPS is 150.6, which is smooth and responsive. Moving to 2560x1440 Medium yields 134.6 FPS, still excellent. Even at 3840x2160 Medium, the system maintains 93.2 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS target for most displays. Medium offers a substantial visual improvement over Low without the steep performance cost of High or Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium at 4K costs only 21.5 FPS (from 114.7 to 93.2), while the jump from Medium to High costs 38.8 FPS (from 93.2 to 54.4). That is nearly double the penalty for a single step up in quality.

High settings are only viable at 1080p, where 125.7 FPS is acceptable, but at 1440p High (108 FPS) and 4K High (54.4 FPS), the experience degrades quickly. The 57% FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at High is too steep. Ultra should be avoided entirely. Even at 1080p, Ultra yields 107.3 FPS, which is only 43.3 FPS less than Medium at the same resolution. At 1440p Ultra, the FPS falls to 67, and at 4K Ultra it is 36.1, which is unplayable. The visual gains from Ultra are not worth the massive performance hit, especially in an MMORPG where consistent frame times matter more than shadows or reflections.

For players with a 144Hz monitor, Medium at 1080p or 1440p is the sweet spot. For 4K users, Medium is the only playable preset, as High struggles to stay above 60 FPS and Ultra is a slideshow. The data suggests that the game's engine has a hard ceiling around 150-170 FPS due to the CPU, so chasing higher settings at the cost of FPS is counterproductive. Stick with Medium, and the RTX 4070 will deliver a smooth experience at any resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 898th out of 1715 tested combos in Allods Online. That places it in the lower-middle tier of all possible hardware pairings. The rank is a direct reflection of the CPU's limitations. The RTX 4070 is a high-end card, but it is paired with a mid-range processor from 2018. The 50th percentile CPU ranking drags the overall combo down, despite the GPU being in the 81st percentile. The data shows that the frame rates are often CPU-bound, so a stronger processor would likely push this combo much higher in the rankings.

The nearest rival CPUs to the i5-9400, such as the Intel Core i3-10305, have nearly identical average scores (2300 vs 2305), so swapping to those would not change the combo's rank significantly. The bottleneck is not the specific model but the six-thread architecture. The combo rank of 898 out of 1715 means that about half of the tested systems perform better, likely because they have newer processors with higher single-thread performance or more threads. The RTX 4070 is wasted in this pairing for Allods Online, as the game rarely stresses it. If the goal is to play this specific MMO, a cheaper GPU and a better CPU would rank higher. However, for other games, the RTX 4070 would shine. This rank is specific to Allods Online and should not be taken as a general statement about the hardware's overall capability.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 strong enough for Allods Online?

A: The data shows it is barely adequate. At Low settings, the system achieves 166.6 FPS at 1080p, but the CPU's six threads become the limiting factor, preventing higher frame rates. The processor ranks at the 50th percentile overall, indicating average performance that will likely struggle in crowded MMO scenarios.

Q: What is the best resolution and preset for this combo?

A: Medium settings at 2560x1440 provide the best balance, with 134.6 FPS average. At 4K, Medium is also the recommended preset, yielding 93.2 FPS, which is playable. High and Ultra presets cause significant frame rate drops, especially at higher resolutions.

Q: Why does the Ultra preset perform so poorly?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 36.1, a 66% drop from 1080p Ultra (107.3 FPS). This suggests the Ultra preset enables effects that the game engine renders inefficiently on the RTX 4070, likely due to legacy code. The GPU is not the issue, as its 12 GB of VRAM and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth are more than sufficient.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 compare to its nearest rivals in this game?

A: The RTX 4070's average benchmark score is 37283, which is 0.6% lower than the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 and 1.9% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A. These differences are minimal, and in Allods Online, the GPU is rarely the bottleneck, so these small deltas are unlikely to affect gameplay.