Archeage

The Intel Core i5-12400F paired with the Intel Arc B580 presents a peculiar case in Archeage, a 2014 MMORPG that is notoriously sensitive to single-thread performance and draw calls. The data indicates this pairing lands in the 22nd percentile of tested combos, ranking 1347 out of 1727. While the hardware is modern, the game’s engine and the specific workload of Archeage create bottlenecks that are not immediately obvious from raw benchmark scores. The following analysis breaks down how this combination behaves across resolutions and settings, based strictly on measured data.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS deltas reveal a clear trend: this combo is heavily GPU-bound at 4K but becomes increasingly CPU-bound as resolution drops. At 1080p Low, the system produces 121.8 FPS, which drops to 84 FPS at 1440p Low—a 31% reduction. Moving to 4K Low, the average falls to 48.3 FPS, another 42.5% drop. This scaling pattern suggests the Arc B580 is the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the frame rate roughly halves from 1080p to 4K on Low settings.

However, the scaling is much steeper when looking at Ultra settings. At 1080p Ultra, the combo manages 52.6 FPS, but this collapses to 34.6 FPS at 1440p Ultra (-34.2%) and then to 20.5 FPS at 4K Ultra (-40.8%). The 4K Ultra result is particularly telling—it is less than half of the 1080p Low score and barely playable. The data suggests that while the GPU handles the resolution jump, the Ultra preset’s additional effects (shadows, draw distance, post-processing) disproportionately tax the hardware, with the 4K Ultra figure (20.5 FPS) being the worst-case scenario across the entire test matrix.

The transition from Low to Medium at each resolution shows a modest penalty, but the jump to High is where the frame rate drops sharply. For example, at 1440p, Low yields 84 FPS, Medium yields 76.3 FPS (-9.2%), but High drops to 48.3 FPS (-36.7% from Medium). This non-linear scaling indicates that the High preset enables features that are far more demanding, likely related to the MMORPG’s dynamic lighting and particle effects, rather than simple texture resolution.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580’s specifications directly explain several of these results. With 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus delivering 456.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample headroom for Archeage’s textures at any resolution. The 80 ROPs and 160 TMUs provide a solid baseline, but the architecture’s real-world performance in older DX9/DX11 titles like Archeage is often limited by driver overhead. The card’s PassMark DirectX 11 score of 128 versus its DirectX 9 score of 183 hints that the older API path might be more efficient for this game, yet the raw data shows the card still delivers playable frame rates at 1080p.

The boost clock of 2670 MHz is high, and the 13.67 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is substantial. However, the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (20.5 FPS) suggests the GPU is not fully utilized due to the engine’s single-threaded draw call bottleneck. The card’s pixel rate of 213.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 427.2 GTexel/s are more than sufficient for a 2014 title, so the limiting factor is likely the CPU-side submission of draw calls. The Arc B580’s percentile rank of 66 among all GPUs is misleading here—in Archeage, the card behaves more like a mid-range solution, as evidenced by its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon 760M (deltaPct 0.1) rather than a discrete competitor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1347 out of 1727 places this pairing in the bottom 22% of all tested configurations. This is a surprisingly low position for hardware that individually scores well in synthetic benchmarks. The i5-12400F ranks in the 77th percentile among all CPUs, and the Arc B580 ranks in the 66th percentile among GPUs, yet their combined performance in Archeage is poor. The data indicates that the game’s engine does not scale well with the i5-12400F’s six P-cores and twelve threads, which is a common issue for MMORPGs from that era.

In comparison to the CPU’s nearest rivals, the i5-12400F scores 19,221 in the average benchmark, which is nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-8700K (19,210, deltaPct 0.1) and the Intel Core i5-1335U (19,167, deltaPct 0.3). The AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS is slightly ahead at 19,364 (deltaPct -0.7), and the AMD EPYC 7773X trails at 18,979 (deltaPct 1.3). These tiny deltas show that the CPU is not the primary differentiator in this combo’s low rank. Similarly, the Arc B580’s average GPU score of 23,021 is within 1% of the AMD Radeon 760M (22,999, deltaPct 0.1) and the NVIDIA P106-100 (22,950, deltaPct 0.3), and it trails the RTX 4060 (23,181, deltaPct -0.7) by less than a percent. This suggests that the combo’s low rank stems from the game’s specific engine behavior rather than a fundamental hardware deficiency.

FAQ

Q: Is this combo capable of 60 FPS at 1080p in Archeage?

A: Yes, but only on Low (121.8 FPS) and Medium (109.8 FPS) presets. At High settings, the average drops to 72.9 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 52.6 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the best resolution for this pairing if I want to play on High settings?

A: The data shows 1080p High yields 72.9 FPS, which is playable. At 1440p High, the average drops to 48.3 FPS, and at 4K High it falls to 32.1 FPS. Therefore, 1080p is the only resolution where High settings maintain a comfortable frame rate.

Q: How does the Ultra preset affect performance compared to High?

A: Ultra is significantly more demanding across all resolutions. At 1080p, Ultra (52.6 FPS) is 27.8% slower than High (72.9 FPS). At 1440p, Ultra (34.6 FPS) is 28.4% slower than High (48.3 FPS). At 4K, Ultra (20.5 FPS) is 36.1% slower than High (32.1 FPS).

Q: Is the 12 GB VRAM sufficient for 4K in this game?

A: The memory size is not the limiting factor. At 4K Low, the card produces 48.3 FPS, and at 4K High it produces 32.1 FPS. The bottleneck is not VRAM capacity but rather the GPU’s raw throughput and the engine’s CPU overhead, as evidenced by the steep drop to 20.5 FPS at Ultra.

Q: How does this combo compare to an RTX 4060 pairing?

A: The Arc B580’s average benchmark score is 23,021, which is 0.7% lower than the RTX 4060’s 23,181. In Archeage, this translates to a negligible difference in frame rates, as the deltaPct indicates the B580 is effectively on par with the RTX 4060 in synthetic tests, though the game’s specific bottlenecks may favor one over the other.

Q: Does the CPU hold back the GPU at 1080p?

A: The data suggests yes. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 121.8 FPS, but the i5-12400F’s single-thread score of 909 in 3DMark and 2,332 in Cinebench R23 indicates that the CPU’s single-core performance caps the frame rate in CPU-bound scenarios. The 4K Ultra result of 20.5 FPS shows the GPU is not the only constraint; the engine’s CPU usage pattern limits scaling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low settings produce an average of 121.8 FPS, Medium yields 109.8 FPS, High drops to 72.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 52.6 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 33.6%, which is the largest single-setting jump at this resolution, indicating that High enables demanding effects that Medium disables.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 84 FPS on Low, 76.3 FPS on Medium, 48.3 FPS on High, and 34.6 FPS on Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p on Low is a 31% reduction, but on Ultra it is a 34.2% reduction, suggesting the Ultra preset’s extra load is not purely resolution-dependent.

At 3840x2160, the results are 48.3 FPS on Low, 42.4 FPS on Medium, 32.1 FPS on High, and 20.5 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low result is identical to the 1440p High result (48.3 FPS), which shows that the GPU is capable of handling 4K if the settings are reduced. The 4K Ultra result (20.5 FPS) is the lowest score in the entire dataset, underscoring that this combo should avoid Ultra at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F has 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its L3 cache is 18 MB shared. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 16,518 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 2,332 in single-core. These numbers indicate a strong modern processor, but Archeage’s engine from 2014 relies heavily on single-thread performance and low-latency memory access. The CPU’s 3DMark single-thread score of 909 and 2-thread score of 1,699 suggest that the game’s main thread is the bottleneck when the GPU is not saturated.

The percentile of 77 for the CPU means it outperforms most processors overall, yet the combo rank of 1347/1727 shows that raw CPU power does not translate to Archeage performance. The nearest rivals, such as the i7-8700K with a deltaPct of 0.1, have similar average scores, confirming that the i5-12400F is not uniquely disadvantaged. The issue is that the game’s draw call submission does not scale with 12 threads; it is likely bound to a few threads. The boost clock of 4.40 GHz is high, but the game may not sustain it under load due to power or thermal limits, given the 65 W TDP. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the CPU can push 121.8 FPS, but this is the ceiling—further resolution reductions or setting changes would not yield higher frame rates, as the CPU’s single-thread performance becomes the limiting factor.