Archeage

ArcheAge, a 2014 MMORPG built on an engine from that era, presents an interesting study in hardware scaling when paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The data reveals a system where the graphics card is rarely the limiting factor, and where CPU-driven frame rate caps define the experience across most settings and resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear pattern of diminishing returns as resolution increases, but the shape of that curve depends heavily on the chosen settings preset. At Low settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 sees average FPS drop from 219.8 to 192.9, a modest reduction. Moving further to 3840x2160 brings the average down to 112.8. This is a relatively shallow scaling curve, suggesting that at Low settings, the frame rate is being constrained by something other than raw pixel throughput.

At High settings, the resolution scaling is more aggressive. The average FPS at 1920x1080 is 182.7, which falls to 122.5 at 2560x1440, and then to 67.6 at 3840x2160. The drop from 1440p to 4K represents a loss of nearly half the frame rate, indicating that at this preset, the GPU begins to feel the pressure of the increased pixel count. Ultra settings show the steepest decline: 125 at 1080p, 84.9 at 1440p, and 49.1 at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 1440p at Ultra is 40.1 FPS, while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 35.8 FPS, showing a fairly consistent penalty per resolution step.

The data implies that at lower presets, the bottleneck shifts toward the CPU. The Ryzen 7 5700G, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, appears to be setting an upper bound on frame rates. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 219.8 FPS, but at 1440p Low it still hits 192.9 FPS, and even at 4K Low it manages 112.8 FPS. These numbers are remarkably high for a game from 2014, and the relatively small gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings suggests the CPU is the primary constraint. When the resolution increases, the GPU has to work harder, but the CPU has already reached its limit in terms of game logic and draw call processing.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset appears to offer the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 208.4 FPS, which is only 11.4 FPS less than Low but provides a visually richer scene. At 2560x1440, Medium produces 176.8 FPS, still exceptionally high and suitable for high-refresh-rate monitors. Even at 3840x2160, Medium maintains 101.2 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth play.

High settings are also viable, particularly at 1080p and 1440p, where the system delivers 182.7 and 122.5 FPS respectively. However, at 4K, High drops to 67.6 FPS, which is playable but closer to the edge. Ultra settings are the most demanding, with 49.1 FPS at 4K being the only measured result that falls below 60 FPS. For a game like ArcheAge, where large-scale player battles can cause frame drops beyond the measured averages, choosing Medium over High at 4K provides a larger safety margin. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot, offering a significant visual upgrade over Low while avoiding the steep performance penalty seen at Ultra.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 219.8, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Does the system maintain 60 FPS at 4K across all presets?

A: No. At 4K, the Ultra preset drops to 49.1 FPS, which is below 60 FPS. The High preset at 4K reaches 67.6 FPS, while Medium and Low are above 100 FPS.

Q: How big is the performance gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the difference between Low (192.9 FPS) and Ultra (84.9 FPS) is 108 FPS, meaning Ultra delivers only about 44% of the frame rate of Low.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 the limiting component at 1080p Low?

A: No. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system reaches 219.8 FPS. When moving to 1440p Low, it still achieves 192.9 FPS. This small drop suggests the CPU is the primary bottleneck, as the GPU has ample headroom at these settings.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and High at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, Medium averages 101.2 FPS while High averages 67.6 FPS, a difference of 33.6 FPS in favor of Medium.

Q: Which resolution and preset combination yields the lowest measured FPS?

A: The lowest measured average FPS is 49.1, recorded at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system shows its highest performance ceiling. Low settings produce 219.8 FPS, Medium follows at 208.4 FPS, and High reaches 182.7 FPS. Ultra is the outlier at 125 FPS, representing a 94.8 FPS drop from Low. This spread indicates that at 1080p, the CPU's frame generation capability is the primary limit, as even the most demanding preset stays above 120 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low delivers 192.9 FPS, Medium drops to 176.8 FPS, and High falls further to 122.5 FPS. Ultra manages 84.9 FPS. The relative gap between presets widens compared to 1080p, signaling that the GPU's workload is becoming more significant. The difference between High and Ultra at 1440p is 37.6 FPS, which is larger than the 57.7 FPS gap at 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the GPU clearly takes over as the dominant factor. Low produces 112.8 FPS, Medium drops to 101.2 FPS, and High falls to 67.6 FPS. Ultra bottoms out at 49.1 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K is a 63.7 FPS decrease, showing that the RTX 4090's compute resources are being fully utilized at this resolution. The jump from High to Ultra at 4K is particularly steep, a 18.5 FPS loss, suggesting that Ultra settings impose a disproportionately heavy shader and geometry load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, with its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth, is an extreme piece of hardware. Its benchmark results show a PassMark G3D score of 38194 and a percentile rank of 91 among all GPUs. In this pairing with the Ryzen 7 5700G, the GPU's role varies dramatically by resolution and settings.

At 1080p and 1440p with Low or Medium presets, the RTX 4090 is largely underutilized. The frame rates from 176.8 to 219.8 FPS are likely constrained by the CPU's ability to feed the GPU with draw calls. The GPU's massive 24 GB frame buffer is irrelevant in these scenarios, as the game's textures and geometry from 2014 are unlikely to exceed even a fraction of that capacity. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the GPU is not the bottleneck, as evidenced by the minimal FPS drop when moving to 1440p Low.

At 4K, the GPU's raw compute power becomes essential. The RTX 4090's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate are what allow the system to maintain 112.8 FPS at 4K Low and 101.2 FPS at 4K Medium. The card's 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are likely unused in this older MMORPG, but the sheer number of shading units (16384) provides the parallel processing strength needed for 4K rendering. The GPU's boost clock of 2520 MHz and base clock of 2235 MHz are high, but the performance at 4K Ultra (49.1 FPS) shows that even this flagship card has limits when faced with the most demanding settings.

The VRAM capacity of 24 GB is far beyond what ArcheAge requires, but it ensures there is no memory-related stuttering. The 384-bit bus width and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth provide ample data throughput, which is more relevant at 4K where texture streaming demands are higher. The data suggests that the RTX 4090 is overkill for this game at lower resolutions, but its capabilities are necessary to push 4K High above 60 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700G is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, running on the AM4 socket. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. Its benchmark scores are respectable, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20755 and a single-core score of 2930. The PassMark multithread score is 24419, and the single-thread score is 3283. This places the CPU in the 83rd percentile among all CPUs.

In ArcheAge, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the system hits 219.8 FPS, which is likely near the engine's practical limit. The 16 threads allow for decent parallel processing of game logic, but the game's age means it likely does not scale perfectly across all cores. The 3DMark scores are telling: the 16-thread score is 6629, but the single-thread score is only 899. This disparity suggests that while the CPU has strong multi-threaded capabilities, its single-thread performance may be the limiting factor for an older game like ArcheAge which may rely heavily on a main thread.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s with dual-channel DDR4 support is adequate for this game. The 16 MB of L3 cache is shared across the 8 cores, which is sufficient for the game's working set. The data shows that at Medium settings, the FPS drops from 208.4 at 1080p to 176.8 at 1440p, a 31.6 FPS decrease. This suggests that even at Medium, the CPU is still partially limiting, as a purely GPU-bound scenario would show a larger drop from such a resolution increase.

When comparing to rivals, the Ryzen 7 5700G's average benchmark score of 25626 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U, which scores 25706, a delta of -0.3%. It is also close to the Intel Xeon D-2752TER (25532, delta 0.4%) and the Intel Core 5 210H (25490, delta 0.5%). This indicates that the 5700G's compute performance is on par with these other processors, but its integrated graphics (Radeon Vega 8) are not used in this test since a discrete GPU is present. The CPU's 65 W TDP is low, but that is irrelevant to gaming performance when paired with a 450 W GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 76th out of 1727 tested combinations in ArcheAge. This places it in the top 4.4% of all tested hardware pairings. This high rank is primarily driven by the RTX 4090's immense power, which allows for strong 4K performance, and the 5700G's adequate single-thread speed for the game's engine.

However, the rank also highlights an inefficiency. The RTX 4090 is the second-fastest consumer GPU ever made, yet this combo does not crack the top 50. This is because the Ryzen 7 5700G, while a capable 8-core processor, is not the fastest CPU for gaming. Its Zen 3 architecture and 3.80 GHz base clock are good, but they are not top-tier. Combos with newer or higher-clocked CPUs likely achieve higher frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, where the CPU is the bottleneck.

The data suggests that this pairing is imbalanced. The GPU is in the 91st percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU is in the 83rd percentile among all CPUs. This discrepancy means that the GPU's capabilities are not fully realized in this game. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 219.8 FPS, but a faster CPU might push that closer to the 240-300 FPS range. The rank of 76 out of 1727 is impressive but indicates that there are 75 other combos that perform better in ArcheAge, likely those with faster CPUs paired with the same or similar GPUs. The RTX 4090's strength is shown at 4K, where it decisively overcomes any CPU limitation, but the overall rank is dragged down by the CPU's performance at lower resolutions.