Archeage

# Archeage with Intel Core Ultra 5 125H + AMD Radeon 890M

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H paired with the AMD Radeon 890M integrated graphics produces a playable but not exceptional Archeage experience, with the data showing a clear ceiling imposed by the GPU rather than the CPU. Across twelve measured configurations spanning four resolutions and four quality presets, the combo delivers frame rates ranging from 11 FPS at 4K Ultra to 106 FPS at 1080p Low. The combination ranks 2448th out of 2761 tested combos in this game, placing it in the lower quartile, yet the 1080p Low and Medium results demonstrate that smooth gameplay is achievable with appropriate settings. The Radeon 890M, a 15 W integrated part with 1024 shading units and a 2900 MHz boost clock, consistently acts as the limiting factor, while the 14-core, 18-thread Meteor Lake CPU with a 4.50 GHz boost clock never appears to constrain performance in the measured data.

FAQ

Q: What is the best 1080p preset for Archeage with this combo?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers 83 FPS average with a minimum of 71 FPS and maximum of 96 FPS, making it the highest quality setting that maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. The High preset drops to 52 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 33 FPS average.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K resolution in Archeage?

A: Only at Low settings, where the average FPS is 35. At Medium, the average drops to 27 FPS with a minimum of 23 FPS, and High yields just 17 FPS average. Ultra at 4K produces an unplayable 11 FPS average.

Q: How does the Radeon 890M compare to its nearest rivals in raw GPU benchmarks?

A: The Radeon 890M scores 9210 on the average benchmark score, placing it 45th percentile among all GPUs. It is 0.1% behind the AMD Radeon Vega 8 (9221), 0.7% behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (9273), and 0.9% behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 (9294).

Q: What is the CPU's standing relative to comparable processors?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H has an average benchmark score of 27507, placing it in the 79th percentile among all CPUs. It is 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 (27535) and 0.3% behind both the Intel Core i5-12600K and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X (each 27578).

Q: What is the FPS difference between 1080p Low and 1080p Ultra?

A: The average FPS drops from 106 at Low to 33 at Ultra, representing a 73 FPS reduction or roughly 69% lower performance. The Medium preset sits at 83 FPS, while High reaches 52 FPS.

Q: Does the integrated GPU have dedicated VRAM?

A: No, the Radeon 890M uses System Shared memory for both memory size and type, with a System Shared bus width and System Dependent bandwidth. Its memory clock is also listed as System Shared.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows a clear sweet spot for this combo at 1920x1080 with the Medium preset. The 83 FPS average with a 71 FPS minimum provides smooth gameplay for an MMORPG, while the 96 FPS maximum indicates headroom for less demanding scenes. Moving to High at the same resolution drops the average to 52 FPS, which is still playable but leaves less margin for frame-time spikes in crowded areas typical of the genre. Ultra at 1080p falls to 33 FPS average, which is noticeably less fluid.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 67 FPS average and becomes the only viable option for responsive gameplay. Medium at 1440p produces 52 FPS average with a 45 FPS minimum, which may be acceptable for less action-oriented play but sits close to the threshold where input lag becomes noticeable. High at 1440p drops to 33 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 21 FPS average.

For 3840x2160, only Low is recommended at 35 FPS average. Medium at 4K yields 27 FPS average with 23 FPS minimum, which is marginal at best. High and Ultra at 4K produce 17 FPS and 11 FPS averages respectively, which are effectively unplayable.

The data suggests that players prioritizing frame rate should use 1080p Medium, while those wanting higher visual fidelity can drop to 1440p Low for a 67 FPS experience. The 1440p Medium preset at 52 FPS offers a compromise for users with adaptive sync displays. In all cases, the Ultra preset appears to exact a disproportionate performance cost relative to the modest quality gain, as evidenced by the 33 FPS result at 1080p versus 83 FPS at Medium.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance curve as resolution increases. At Low settings, the average FPS progresses from 106 at 1080p to 67 at 1440p and 35 at 4K. This represents a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 48% drop from 1440p to 4K. The scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario where pixel count directly determines frame rate.

At Medium settings, the averages are 83 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p, and 27 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 31 FPS or 37%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 25 FPS or 48%. This consistent proportional scaling across resolutions strongly indicates that the AMD Radeon 890M's compute throughput — 5.939 TFLOPS FP32 with a 185.6 GTexel/s texture rate — is the primary limiter.

High settings show 52 FPS at 1080p, 33 FPS at 1440p, and 17 FPS at 4K. Ultra settings show 33 FPS at 1080p, 21 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K. The ratio between 1080p and 4K averages is approximately 3:1 across all settings, which aligns with the 4:1 pixel count difference when accounting for other overheads. This near-linear scaling confirms that neither the CPU nor memory bandwidth introduces a bottleneck at higher resolutions; the GPU simply runs out of pixel throughput.

The 28 W TDP CPU with 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth appears sufficient to feed the GPU at all tested resolutions. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect to see diminishing FPS differences between 1440p and 4K, but the data shows consistent proportional drops, reinforcing the GPU-bound interpretation.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H and AMD Radeon 890M combination ranks 2448th out of 2761 tested combos in Archeage, placing it in the 11th percentile of all tested combinations. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU, which sits at the 45th percentile among all GPUs, whereas the CPU performs at the 79th percentile among all CPUs.

The combo's ranking relative to its component percentiles reveals a significant mismatch. The CPU's nearest rivals — the AMD Ryzen 7 5800, Intel Core i5-12600K, and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X — all score within 0.3% of the Ultra 5 125H in average benchmark scores, yet none of these would be paired with an integrated GPU in a typical system. The GPU's nearest rivals, including the AMD Radeon Vega 8 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, represent entry-level discrete or older integrated solutions.

The 2448th rank out of 2761 combos means that approximately 89% of tested configurations outperform this pairing in Archeage. This is consistent with the measured FPS data showing that only the 1080p Low and Medium presets achieve consistently smooth frame rates. The combination falls into a category where the integrated GPU's 15 W TDP and System Shared memory configuration fundamentally limit the experience, regardless of the CPU's relatively strong benchmark scores.

The gap between the combo rank and the GPU's 45th percentile suggests that Archeage may be particularly demanding on integrated graphics, or that the game's optimization favors discrete GPUs with dedicated VRAM. The System Shared memory bandwidth, listed as System Dependent, likely contributes to the lower-than-percentile performance in this specific title.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon 890M is built on the RDNA 3.5 architecture with a 4 nm process from TSMC, featuring 1024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 raster operation pipelines. Its 2900 MHz boost clock and 400 MHz base clock drive a peak FP32 throughput of 5.939 TFLOPS, with a texture rate of 185.6 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 92.80 GPixel/s. The GPU includes 16 ray tracing cores, though Archeage's 2014 release date suggests ray tracing is not a factor in these results.

The GPU's 15 W TDP and IGP slot width indicate it shares power and thermal budget with the CPU in a mobile package. The transistor count of 34,000 million on a 233 mm² die gives a density of 145.9M transistors per mm². The bus interface is PCIe 4.0 x8, and memory is entirely System Shared, with bandwidth listed as System Dependent — meaning performance scales with the host system's memory configuration.

In the measured Archeage results, the GPU's limitations are evident across all resolutions. The PassMark G3D score of 8076 and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 590 place this IGP at the 45th percentile among all GPUs. The DirectX 11 score of 73 and DirectX 12 score of 37 from PassMark suggest that the GPU handles older APIs better, which is relevant since Archeage's engine likely uses DirectX 11.

The GPU's performance in Archeage follows a pattern consistent with its compute capabilities. At 1080p Low, 106 FPS average represents near-maximum throughput for this IGP. The Medium preset at 83 FPS shows that moderate quality increases are affordable, but High at 52 FPS and Ultra at 33 FPS demonstrate diminishing returns. The 4K results — 35 FPS at Low and 11 FPS at Ultra — illustrate that the pixel throughput requirement exceeds what 5.939 TFLOPS can deliver at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are 106 FPS at Low, 83 FPS at Medium, 52 FPS at High, and 33 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset has a recorded minimum of 71 FPS and maximum of 96 FPS, providing the only complete frame-time data in the dataset. The 73 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p shows the significant cost of quality settings.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop to 67 FPS at Low, 52 FPS at Medium, 33 FPS at High, and 21 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 45 FPS and maximum of 60 FPS. The 1440p Medium result of 52 FPS exactly matches the 1080p High result, indicating that resolution and quality settings trade off nearly one-to-one.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 35 FPS at Low, 27 FPS at Medium, 17 FPS at High, and 11 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset records a minimum of 23 FPS and maximum of 32 FPS. The 4K Low result of 35 FPS is the only 4K configuration that approaches playability, and it still falls short of the 52 FPS achievable at 1440p Medium.

The data shows a consistent pattern: each resolution step costs roughly half the frame rate at equivalent settings. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Low cuts 106 FPS to 67 FPS, and moving from 1440p to 4K at Low cuts 67 FPS to 35 FPS. The same proportional relationship holds at Medium, High, and Ultra settings. This uniformity across presets confirms the GPU as the sole performance bottleneck.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H features 14 cores and 18 threads based on the Meteor Lake architecture, fabricated on Intel's 7 nm process. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz boosts to 4.50 GHz, with a 28 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 112 KB L1 per core, 2 MB L2 per core, and 18 MB shared L3. Memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth, connected via PCIe Gen 5.

CPU benchmark results show strong performance for a mobile processor. Cinebench R23 scores are 12804.5 multi-core and 1647.5 single-core, while Cinebench R20 shows 7161 multi-core and 1010 single-core. PassMark results include 21100 multi-thread, 3399 single-thread, 69986 integer math, 51670 floating point math, and 236209 data compression. The processor sits at the 79th percentile among all CPUs.

In Archeage, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU. The measured FPS scaling across resolutions shows no evidence of CPU limitation — if the CPU were the bottleneck, frame rates would not drop proportionally with resolution increases. The 14-core, 18-thread configuration with 4.50 GHz boost provides ample single-thread performance for an MMORPG's game logic and network processing, as evidenced by the 1647.5 Cinebench R23 single-core score.

The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score — AMD Ryzen 7 5800, Intel Core i5-12600K, and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X — are all desktop processors with significantly higher power envelopes. The Ultra 5 125H's ability to match them within 0.3% while operating at 28 W TDP demonstrates its efficiency. However, in Archeage, this CPU performance advantage is largely wasted because the Radeon 890M cannot translate additional CPU headroom into higher frame rates.

The 18 MB shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth provide sufficient memory throughput for the integrated GPU's System Shared memory architecture. The data suggests that memory bandwidth is adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming, as the FPS scaling remains consistent with GPU compute limits rather than memory bottlenecks.