Archeage

Archeage, a 2014 MMORPG, shows a surprisingly wide performance spread across resolution and settings when paired with the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. The data indicates a configuration that is heavily influenced by both CPU and GPU limits depending on the workload, with the measured results revealing a clear hierarchy of frames per second (FPS) that shifts predictably as resolution scales. The combo ranks 450th out of 1,727 tested combinations, placing it in the upper quartile of all systems tested for this title.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a massive performance cost, underscoring the GPU's increasing dominance at higher pixel counts. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 201.7 at 1920x1080 to 143.8 at 2560x1440, a 28.7% reduction, and then plummets further to 84 at 3840x2160, which is 58.4% below the 1080p figure. This steep decline suggests that even at Low settings, the RTX 4070's rendering workload becomes the primary bottleneck as pixel count rises.

The scaling pattern changes character when moving to High settings. At 1080p High, the system produces 125.1 FPS, but this falls to 87.5 at 1440p (a 30.1% drop) and 50.3 at 4K (a 59.8% drop). The percentage loss between 1080p and 1440p is nearly identical to the Low setting, indicating that the GPU is already the limiting factor at these resolutions. However, the fact that 1080p High (125.1 FPS) is far below 1080p Low (201.7 FPS) suggests that the CPU is not the constraint at the lower resolution, since the GPU has headroom to render more frames when settings are reduced.

At Ultra settings, the curve becomes even more punishing. The 1080p result is 87.5 FPS, matching the 1440p High result exactly, which is a notable coincidence. From there, 1440p Ultra drops to 56.8 FPS (a 35.1% decline) and 4K Ultra falls to 32.9 FPS (a 62.4% decline from the 1080p figure). This indicates that Ultra settings amplify the GPU's workload disproportionately, making the RTX 4070 the sole bottleneck at 4K. The data shows that this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K reserved for lower presets if playable frame rates are the goal.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear hierarchy for the best experience. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 188.8 FPS, which is nearly double the High preset's 125.1 FPS and only 6.4% below the Low preset's 201.7 FPS. Given that Medium typically offers a substantial visual upgrade over Low with a modest FPS penalty, the 1080p Medium setting appears to be the sweet spot for this configuration. It maintains a frame rate well above the refresh rate of most monitors while avoiding the heavy cost of High or Ultra, which at 87.5 FPS still offers a playable but less fluid experience.

At 2560x1440, the recommendation shifts. Medium produces 127.8 FPS, which is a 32.3% improvement over High's 87.5 FPS and a 55.4% improvement over Ultra's 56.8 FPS. The Low preset at 143.8 FPS is only 12.5% faster than Medium, making Medium the logical choice for 1440p users who want a balance of visual fidelity and responsiveness. High at 87.5 FPS is still playable, but the jump from Medium to High costs 40.3 FPS, which is a significant loss for a single preset step.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. Low yields 84 FPS, which is the only preset that approaches a smooth 60+ FPS experience. Medium drops to 71.4 FPS, still playable, but High falls to 50.3 FPS and Ultra to 32.9 FPS, both of which are below the threshold for fluid gameplay in a fast-paced MMORPG. The data suggests that 4K users should stick to Low or Medium settings, with Low being the safest choice to maintain a consistent frame rate. Overall, the best experience per the measured rows is 1080p Medium or 1440p Medium, depending on the display's native resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combo sits at rank 450 out of 1,727 tested combinations in Archeage, placing it in the top 26.1% of all systems. This is a strong showing for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU, and it reflects the fact that the RTX 4070 is doing most of the heavy lifting. The CPU, which holds a 79th percentile ranking among all processors, is capable enough to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the combo's overall rank suggests that other pairings with faster CPUs achieve higher scores in this title.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i5-12500, which scores 20,897 on average, a 0.1% delta from the Ryzen 5 5500's 20,875. The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE also scores 20,900, a 0.1% delta, while the AMD EPYC 7J13 scores 20,845, a 0.1% delta in the opposite direction. These rivals are all within a fraction of a percent in raw compute, meaning the CPU is not a differentiator in this combo's ranking. The GPU, which holds an 81st percentile ranking, has nearest rivals that include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 with an average score of 37,507 (a 0.6% delta) and the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A at 38,008 (a 1.9% delta). The RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37,283 is competitive with these parts, but the combo's in-game rank of 450 indicates that Archeage's engine rewards the GPU's specific architecture more than synthetic scores suggest.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS ranges from a high of 201.7 on Low to a low of 87.5 on Ultra. The Medium preset delivers 188.8 FPS, which is only 6.4% slower than Low, while High hits 125.1 FPS, a 38.0% reduction from Low. The gap between Medium and High is 63.7 FPS, indicating that High introduces effects that significantly tax the GPU. Ultra at 87.5 FPS is 53.6% slower than Low, and it exactly matches the 1440p High result, suggesting a similar workload ceiling.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset produces 143.8 FPS, Medium 127.8 FPS, High 87.5 FPS, and Ultra 56.8 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 16 FPS, while the delta between Medium and High is 40.3 FPS, showing that the cost of High becomes more pronounced at this resolution. The Ultra preset at 56.8 FPS is 60.5% below Low, which is a steeper drop than at 1080p, where the same comparison is 56.7%. This indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute resources are being stretched more at 1440p.

At 3840x2160, the numbers compress significantly. Low achieves 84 FPS, Medium 71.4 FPS, High 50.3 FPS, and Ultra 32.9 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 12.6 FPS, between Medium and High is 21.1 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 17.4 FPS. The 4K Ultra result of 32.9 FPS is the lowest figure in the entire dataset, and it represents a 83.7% reduction from the 1080p Low result. The data shows a consistent pattern where the RTX 4070's performance halves roughly every time resolution doubles, which is expected given the pixel count increase from 2.07 million (1080p) to 8.29 million (4K).

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory is a key factor. The GPU's memory bus is 192-bit with a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is ample for Archeage's texture-heavy environments. The measured FPS drops at 4K Ultra suggest that the GPU is hitting a raw compute limit, not a memory capacity limit, since 12 GB is rarely fully utilized in a 2014 MMORPG. The GPU's boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1920 MHz are high for a 5 nm process, and the Ada Lovelace architecture's 5,888 shading units are working hard to render the game's geometry.

The GPU's role becomes clearer when comparing the Low and Ultra presets at the same resolution. At 1080p, the difference between Low (201.7 FPS) and Ultra (87.5 FPS) is 114.2 FPS, which is a 56.6% reduction. At 1440p, the same comparison yields an 87 FPS difference (60.5% reduction), and at 4K, it's a 51.1 FPS difference (60.8% reduction). This consistent percentage reduction across resolutions indicates that the GPU's shader and texture units are the primary bottleneck, as the CPU has enough headroom to feed frames even at the highest settings. The RTX 4070's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are present, but Archeage likely does not utilize ray tracing, so the raw rasterization performance of the 5,888 shading units is what drives these numbers. The GPU's TDP of 200 W and suggested PSU of 550 W are consistent with a mid-range-to-high-end card, and its dual-slot design with a 16-pin connector indicates a power delivery system that can sustain boost clocks under load.