Archeage

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 secures the 3rd position out of 1,727 tested combinations in Archeage. This places the combo in the top 0.2% of all tested systems, a ranking that reflects the synergy between a high-end 2024 CPU and a flagship 2025 GPU. The data indicates that for a game released in 2014, this pairing is far beyond what is necessary to achieve maximum performance, but the specific bottleneck characteristics reveal a nuanced story about where the remaining performance headroom resides.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 3 out of 1,727 is exceptional, but it is not the absolute pinnacle of performance. This suggests that while the hardware is top-tier, other configurations with marginally different component pairings have produced slightly higher average frame rates in this specific title. The CPU itself holds a percentile rank of 89 against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36,029. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14500HX, posts an average score of 35,940, representing a negligible 0.2% difference.

This proximity in CPU scores indicates that the Ryzen 7 9700X is in a tight cluster of high-performance processors where generational and architectural differences yield minimal practical impact in synthetic tests. The GPU, meanwhile, sits at the 94th percentile against all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 84,306. Its closest competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, scores 84,241, a 0.1% delta that is essentially a statistical tie. The fact that the combo ranks 3rd overall, despite both components being near the top of their respective percentile charts, implies that Archeage’s engine has specific optimization quirks that favor certain combinations of memory bandwidth and core count over raw synthetic compute power.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 brings substantial resources to this 2014 MMORPG. It is equipped with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The memory clocks run at 1750 MHz, which translates to 28 Gbps effective. This vast memory pool is far beyond the requirements of Archeage, but it ensures that texture streaming and large-scale player character rendering never hit a VRAM ceiling. The GPU’s boost clock is rated at 2407 MHz, with a base clock of 2017 MHz.

In the context of Archeage, the GPU’s role shifts depending on the resolution and settings. At 1080p Low settings, the frame rate reaches 309.7 FPS, which suggests the GPU is being fed a relatively light workload. However, the gap between the CPU’s single-threaded performance and the GPU’s throughput becomes the defining factor at lower resolutions. The RTX 5090’s FP32 compute of 104.8 TFLOPS and its 21,760 shading units are effectively idle at these settings, waiting on the CPU to issue draw calls. Conversely, at 4K Ultra, the GPU’s pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s become heavily utilized, pulling the frame rate down to 47.1 FPS. The data shows that the GPU is the scaling component when moving from Medium to Ultra settings, where the added visual fidelity demands significantly more shading and rasterization work.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the combo delivers 273 FPS, which is a 36.7% reduction from the Low preset’s 309.7 FPS but still far above any display refresh rate. Moving to 1440p Medium yields 186.8 FPS, and 4K Medium drops to 107.3 FPS. The High preset offers a marginal improvement in visual quality but comes with a significant performance cost: at 4K High, the frame rate falls to 69.3 FPS, a 35.4% drop from Medium.

The Ultra preset is where the data shows a disproportionate penalty. At 1080p Ultra, the frame rate is 128 FPS, which is less than half of the Medium result. At 4K Ultra, the 47.1 FPS average is below the threshold for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate displays. The jump from High to Ultra at 4K costs 22.2 FPS, whereas the jump from Medium to High costs 38 FPS. This suggests that Ultra in Archeage introduces effects that are particularly demanding on the RTX 5090’s rasterization pipeline, likely related to shadow quality and draw distance. For a 2014 MMORPG, Medium settings at 4K offer the best compromise between the 107.3 FPS average and visual fidelity, while High at 1440p achieves 126.3 FPS for those who prioritize image quality over raw frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the combo’s performance across resolutions and settings.

At 1080p, the results are as follows:

• Ultra: 128 FPS
• High: 188.5 FPS
• Medium: 273 FPS
• Low: 309.7 FPS

The delta between Low and Medium is 36.7 FPS, while the delta between Medium and High is a substantial 84.5 FPS. The jump from High to Ultra costs 60.5 FPS, indicating that Ultra’s additional effects are the most demanding single step in the settings ladder. The 1080p Low result of 309.7 FPS is likely near the engine’s frame rate cap or CPU single-thread limit, as it represents a 13.4% improvement over Medium.

At 1440p, the results are:

• Ultra: 87 FPS
• High: 126.3 FPS
• Medium: 186.8 FPS
• Low: 210.1 FPS

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is consistent. The Low preset drops by 99.6 FPS, while Medium drops by 86.2 FPS. The High preset loses 62.2 FPS, and Ultra loses 41 FPS. The relative performance between settings remains similar, but the absolute gains from lowering settings diminish as resolution increases, suggesting the GPU is beginning to become the limiting factor.

At 4K (3840x2160), the results are:

• Ultra: 47.1 FPS
• High: 69.3 FPS
• Medium: 107.3 FPS
• Low: 116.6 FPS

The most striking observation is the compression of the Low and Medium results. The difference between Low (116.6 FPS) and Medium (107.3 FPS) is only 9.3 FPS, which is the smallest gap across any resolution. This indicates that at 4K, the GPU is so heavily loaded that the difference in shader complexity between Low and Medium is partially masked by the sheer pixel throughput required. The High to Ultra drop of 22.2 FPS remains significant, but the overall frame rate ceiling at 4K is clearly set by the GPU’s rasterization limits.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows that Archeage scales with resolution in a predictable manner for a GPU-bound scenario, but with a notable caveat at the top end. From 1080p to 1440p, the average frame rate drops by approximately 32% across all settings. From 1440p to 4K, the drop is more severe: roughly 45% for Medium, 45% for High, and 46% for Ultra.

The Low preset is the outlier. From 1080p Low (309.7 FPS) to 1440p Low (210.1 FPS), there is a 32.2% drop. However, from 1440p Low to 4K Low (116.6 FPS), the drop is 44.5%. This non-linear scaling suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU is the primary limiting component. The Ryzen 7 9700X’s single-thread score of 4,459 in Cinebench R23 and its 3DMark single-thread score of 1,280 are sufficient to drive the RTX 5090 to 309.7 FPS, but the engine’s draw call overhead prevents it from going higher.

As resolution increases, the GPU’s workload becomes the dominant factor. The 4K Medium result of 107.3 FPS versus the 1080p Medium result of 273 FPS represents a 60.7% reduction, which is nearly proportional to the pixel count increase. This indicates a healthy GPU-bound scaling regime at Medium settings. The Ultra preset, however, shows a more complex story: the 1080p Ultra result of 128 FPS is only 46.9% of the 1080p Medium result, but at 4K, Ultra (47.1 FPS) is 43.9% of Medium (107.3 FPS). This suggests that Ultra settings introduce a fixed CPU-side cost that becomes less relevant as the GPU takes over at higher resolutions. The limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p Low to the GPU at 4K Ultra, with the crossover occurring around the Medium and High presets at 1440p, where the frame rates of 186.8 FPS and 126.3 FPS respectively indicate a balanced workload distribution.