Archeage

Archeage, the 2014 MMORPG, shows a clear split between its rendering demands and its engine's older threading model when paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. The measured data reveals that at 1080p, the system is heavily CPU-bound, while at 4K, the GPU becomes the dominant constraint. This combination sits at rank 412 out of 1727 tested combos for this game, indicating a solid but not top-tier pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and non-linear, with the steepest decline occurring between 1440p and 4K. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 211.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 143.9 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 78.9 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 32% reduction going from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a 45% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The scaling pattern indicates that at 1080p Low, the CPU is the limiting factor — the GPU has headroom it cannot use.

At Medium settings, the same pattern emerges: 190.4 FPS at 1080p, 125.9 FPS at 1440p, and 71.8 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 34%, while the 1440p-to-4K drop is 43%. High settings show 126.3 FPS at 1080p, 86.8 FPS at 1440p, and 50.9 FPS at 4K — a 31% drop, then a 41% drop. The consistency of these percentage drops across settings suggests the resolution scaling is governed more by pixel count than by specific graphical features.

Ultra settings tell a different story. The average FPS at 1080p is 89, dropping to 58 at 1440p and 32.1 at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p reduction is 35%, and the 1440p-to-4K reduction is 45%. The 4K Ultra result of 32.1 FPS is the only measured average below 50 FPS, making it the only configuration that falls below playable smoothness thresholds. The gap between High and Ultra at 4K is 18.8 FPS, while at 1080p it is 37.3 FPS — indicating that Ultra settings impose a heavier relative penalty at higher resolutions.

The limiting component shifts clearly with resolution. At 1080p, the Ryzen 7 9700X's 8 cores and 16 threads appear to cap performance, as evidenced by the 211.8 FPS ceiling at Low settings. At 4K, the RTX 4070's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth become the bottleneck, particularly at Ultra where the 32.1 FPS result shows the GPU struggling to maintain frame pacing. The data suggests that 1440p is the sweet spot for this pairing, where neither component is severely overburdened.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, has a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz. Its 5888 shading units and 184 texture mapping units are fed by a 192-bit memory bus carrying 12 GB of GDDR6X at 21 Gbps effective, yielding 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's 64 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s, and its FP32 throughput is 29.15 TFLOPS.

In Archeage, the GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the 211.8 FPS average is far below what the RTX 4070's raw compute could theoretically produce, confirming a CPU bottleneck. However, at 4K Ultra, the 32.1 FPS result shows the GPU being pushed hard. The RTX 4070's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for this game, which launched in 2014 and uses no ray tracing or DLSS features.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3854 and PassMark G3D score of 26927 place it in the 81st percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, which scores 37507 (0.6% higher), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile at 38135 (2.2% higher). The RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37283 is slightly below the RX Vega 56's 37507, but the delta is within noise for most games.

The 12 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Archeage at all tested settings. Even at 4K Ultra, the game does not appear to exceed this allocation, as the FPS drops are consistent with compute limitations rather than memory swapping. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is also adequate, given that the 4K High result of 50.9 FPS shows the GPU can maintain reasonable performance when not at maximum settings. The GPU's TDP of 200 W and suggested PSU of 550 W are not reflected in the FPS data but indicate the card's power envelope.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, part of the 9000 series built on Zen 5 (Granite Ridge) architecture, uses TSMC's 4 nm process and contains 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die. Its 8 cores and 16 threads run at a base clock of 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The 32 MB shared L3 cache and per-core L2 of 1 MB are the only cache levels listed in the data. The CPU supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth, along with PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes.

The CPU's benchmark scores show strong single-thread performance: 1280 in 3DMark single-thread, 449 in Cinebench R15 single-core, and 4459 in Cinebench R23 single-core. Multi-threaded scores are equally robust, with Cinebench R23 multicore at 31588 and Geekbench multicore at 17002. The PassMark multithread score of 37161 and single-thread score of 4654 place the CPU in the 89th percentile among all CPUs. Its average benchmark score is 36029, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i5-14500HX at 35940 (0.2% lower) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 at 35802 (0.6% lower).

In Archeage, the CPU's impact is most visible at 1080p. The 211.8 FPS average at Low settings suggests that the game's engine, released in 2014, does not scale beyond a limited number of threads. The Ryzen 7 9700X's 16 threads provide ample capacity, but the game likely uses only a fraction of them. The 5.50 GHz boost clock helps single-threaded performance, which is critical for an older MMORPG engine that often has a main thread bottleneck.

The CPU's 3DMark 16-thread score of 9824 and max-thread score of 9771 show that scaling between 8 and 16 threads is minimal, confirming that the CPU has headroom in multi-threaded workloads. However, Archeage does not appear to exploit this. The 1080p Low result of 211.8 FPS is likely near the engine's practical limit, regardless of CPU choice. The data shows the Ryzen 7 9700X is not the limiting factor at 1440p or 4K — the GPU takes over that role above 1080p.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combination achieves in Archeage?

A: The highest average FPS is 211.8, recorded at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Is 4K Ultra playable with this hardware in Archeage?

A: No, the 4K Ultra average FPS is 32.1, which falls below smooth playability thresholds.

Q: How much faster is 1080p versus 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, 1080p averages 126.3 FPS while 4K averages 50.9 FPS, making 1080p approximately 2.5 times faster.

Q: Which resolution shows the smallest FPS gap between Low and Ultra?

A: At 1920x1080, Low averages 211.8 FPS and Ultra averages 89 FPS, a gap of 122.8 FPS. At 4K, the gap shrinks to 46.8 FPS (78.9 vs 32.1).

Q: Does the RTX 4070's 12 GB VRAM cause issues in this game?

A: No, the measured FPS data shows no evidence of VRAM-related stutters or drops, even at 4K Ultra.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 9700X the bottleneck at 1080p Low?

A: Yes, the 211.8 FPS ceiling at 1080p Low suggests the CPU limits performance, as the GPU has no equivalent constraint at that resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a clear progression across settings. Low settings produce an average of 211.8 FPS, which is the highest measured value for this combination. Medium settings reduce this to 190.4 FPS, a drop of 21.4 FPS. High settings average 126.3 FPS, a significant 64.1 FPS reduction from Medium. Ultra settings further reduce performance to 89 FPS, which is 37.3 FPS lower than High. The largest single drop occurs between Medium and High, suggesting that High enables graphical features that heavily impact the engine.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern persists but with lower absolute values. Low settings average 143.9 FPS, Medium averages 125.9 FPS, High averages 86.8 FPS, and Ultra averages 58 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 18 FPS, between Medium and High is 39.1 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 28.8 FPS. The Medium-to-High drop remains the largest, consistent with the 1080p results.

At 3840x2160, the values compress further. Low settings average 78.9 FPS, Medium averages 71.8 FPS, High averages 50.9 FPS, and Ultra averages 32.1 FPS. The Low-to-Medium gap is 7.1 FPS, Medium-to-High is 20.9 FPS, and High-to-Ultra is 18.8 FPS. The 4K results show that even Low settings cannot maintain 60 FPS at this resolution, and Ultra drops below 33 FPS, making it the only configuration with an average below 32.1 FPS where the game becomes difficult to play.

The delta between Low and Ultra settings is consistent across resolutions: 122.8 FPS at 1080p, 85.9 FPS at 1440p, and 46.8 FPS at 4K. This narrowing delta indicates that at higher resolutions, the GPU's workload dominates, reducing the relative impact of settings changes. The 1080p Low result of 211.8 FPS and the 4K Ultra result of 32.1 FPS represent the full performance envelope of this pairing in Archeage, with all other measured configurations falling between these two extremes.