Archeage

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a playable yet distinctly resolution-bound experience in Archeage. Across the measured resolutions, the data shows a clear pattern: the game’s framerate is heavily dependent on both the graphics preset and the pixel count, with the CPU’s substantial headroom keeping performance from collapsing at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a dramatic and consistent drop in average framerate across all four settings presets, revealing where the bottleneck shifts as pixel load increases. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 105 at 1080p to 70 at 1440p, then to 40 at 4K—a reduction of 33% from 1080p to 1440p and a further 43% from 1440p to 4K. This steep decline indicates that the RTX 3070’s rendering throughput is the limiting factor at higher resolutions, though the CPU still has ample reserve to feed frames.

The Low preset shows the most extreme scaling behavior. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 173 FPS average, which drops to 116 at 1440p and then to 67 at 4K. The 1080p-to-4K falloff here is 61%, a massive hit that underscores how the GPU’s compute and memory bandwidth are strained as resolution increases, even with minimal graphical effects. Medium settings follow a similar trajectory: 154 FPS at 1080p, 104 at 1440p, and 59 at 4K, with the 4K result representing a 62% reduction from the 1080p baseline.

Ultra settings exhibit the most severe scaling penalty. The average framerate plummets from 71 at 1080p to 48 at 1440p, and then to just 28 at 4K. This 4K Ultra result is the lowest recorded in the entire dataset, indicating that the combination of maximum visual fidelity and 4K resolution overwhelms the RTX 3070’s 8 GB VRAM and its 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. The data suggests that at 4K, regardless of preset, the GPU is the clear limiting component—the CPU’s 24 cores and 24 threads are never saturated, as evidenced by the fact that even the 4K Low result (67 FPS) is higher than many 1080p Ultra results from less capable pairings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip, carries 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is a double-edged sword for Archeage at high resolutions. The measured 4K Medium result includes a minimum FPS of 50 and a maximum of 68, suggesting that frametimes become inconsistent as the GPU approaches its VRAM and bandwidth limits. The 8 GB capacity appears adequate for 1080p and 1440p, where the data shows smoother performance, but at 4K Ultra the average of 28 FPS indicates the GPU is severely throttled by memory pressure rather than raw shader throughput.

The RTX 3070’s clock behavior—1500 MHz base and 1725 MHz boost—provides a solid foundation for the 5888 shading units. However, the benchmark results show that this compute potential is not fully realized at 4K. The gap between 4K High (40 FPS) and 4K Medium (59 FPS) is 19 FPS, a larger jump than the 11 FPS difference between 1080p High (105 FPS) and 1080p Medium (154 FPS). This nonlinear scaling indicates that as resolution increases, the GPU’s texture units (184 TMUs) and render output units (96 ROPs) become more critical, and the 20.31 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient to maintain high framerates when pixel shading demands soar.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 61 among all GPUs places it in the mid-range tier, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (0.7% ahead) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (1% ahead). This competitive positioning explains why the 4K results are playable but not exceptional—the RTX 3070 is not a top-tier 4K card, and the measured FPS reflects that. At 1080p, the GPU has enough headroom to push beyond 150 FPS on Medium and Low, but the Ultra preset at 71 FPS shows that even at lower resolutions, the card’s memory bandwidth becomes a constraint when textures and effects are maxed out.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting a smooth experience at 1920x1080, the Medium preset offers the best balance, with an average of 154 FPS and a minimum of 131 FPS. This preset provides a 49 FPS advantage over High (105 FPS) while only sacrificing visual fidelity that is marginal in fast-paced MMORPG combat. The 1080p Low preset hits 173 FPS, but the jump from Low to Medium (a 19 FPS penalty) is a worthwhile trade for improved graphics, as the minimum framerate remains well above the refresh rate of most monitors.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out as the sweet spot, delivering 104 FPS average with a minimum of 88 FPS. This is a 34 FPS improvement over High (70 FPS) and a 56 FPS improvement over Ultra (48 FPS). The 1440p Low preset reaches 116 FPS, but the visual downgrade is significant enough that the Medium preset’s 104 FPS—with a minimum that stays above 85—provides a more consistent competitive experience. Ultra at 1440p is playable at 48 FPS average, but the data shows it is only 4 FPS higher than the 4K Medium result, making it a poor efficiency choice.

For 3840x2160, the Low preset is the only recommendable option, with an average of 67 FPS. Medium drops to 59 FPS with a minimum of 50 FPS, which is borderline for smooth play, while High falls to 40 FPS and Ultra to 28 FPS—both unplayable for an MMORPG where responsiveness matters. The 4K Low result is 27 FPS higher than 4K Medium, indicating that dropping to minimal settings is the only way to achieve a stable framerate at this resolution. The data suggests that 4K gaming with this combo requires accepting low-fidelity visuals to maintain playability.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination ranks 1589 out of 3708 tested combos in Archeage, placing it in the 57th percentile of all configurations. This mid-pack ranking is somewhat paradoxical given the CPU’s high performance—the Ultra 9 290K Plus sits in the 96th percentile among all CPUs—but it is dragged down by the GPU’s more modest 61st percentile standing. The combo’s rank reflects that in Archeage, which is an older MMORPG title from 2014, the GPU is often the limiting factor, and a stronger graphics card would yield a higher overall ranking.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (0.2% ahead) and the AMD EPYC 4584PX (1.1% ahead), while the GPU’s rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (0.7% ahead). These small deltas suggest that the combo’s rank is not due to any single component being exceptionally weak, but rather the combination’s balance. The rank of 1589 out of 3708 indicates that a majority of tested combos—about 57%—deliver better or equal performance in Archeage, likely due to more powerful GPUs paired with slightly weaker CPUs.

The data shows that the combo’s ranking would improve substantially at lower resolutions, where the CPU’s strengths are more evident. At 1080p, the average FPS across all presets is 125.75, which is competitive with higher-ranked combos. At 4K, the average is 48.5 FPS, which is below the median for the top 1000 combos. This resolution-dependent performance means the combo’s rank is essentially a weighted average of its strong 1080p showing and weak 4K showing, with the latter pulling the overall rank down.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz, built on a 3 nm process with 36 MB of shared L3 cache. In Archeage, an MMORPG that is not heavily multithreaded, the CPU’s high single-thread performance is the primary asset. The PassMark single-thread score of 4823 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7303 indicate that the CPU can handle the game’s main thread with significant headroom, which is why the framerate scales so well at 1080p where the GPU is less taxed.

The CPU’s multicore capabilities are extensive—Cinebench R23 multicore scores 51731 and PassMark multithread scores 60860—but Archeage does not utilize this parallelism effectively. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 28, which is not a CPU limitation but a GPU one. The CPU’s 125 W TDP and DDR5 memory support with 115.2 GB/s bandwidth provide ample data throughput for the game’s world streaming, but the bottleneck remains on the rendering side.

The CPU’s 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs means it is capable of driving much higher framerates than the RTX 3070 can deliver. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 173 FPS, but this is likely limited by the GPU’s pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s rather than the CPU’s instruction throughput. The gap between the CPU’s potential and the GPU’s actual output is most evident at 4K, where even Low settings produce 67 FPS—a result that would be significantly higher with a stronger GPU. The CPU’s 24 threads provide no advantage in this title, but its single-thread performance ensures that the game never becomes CPU-bound, even at high framerates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers an average of 173 FPS on Low settings, 154 FPS on Medium (with a minimum of 131 and maximum of 177), 105 FPS on High, and 71 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset’s frametime consistency, as shown by the narrow 131-177 FPS range, indicates that the GPU is operating within its comfort zone at this resolution. The 1080p Ultra result of 71 FPS is 34 FPS lower than High, suggesting that the Ultra preset’s additional effects tax the GPU’s 8 GB memory significantly.

At 2560x1440, the measured averages are 116 FPS on Low, 104 FPS on Medium (minimum 88, maximum 119), 70 FPS on High, and 48 FPS on Ultra. The 1440p Medium result shows a wider frametime spread (88-119 FPS) compared to 1080p, indicating the GPU is working harder. The drop from 1080p Medium (154 FPS) to 1440p Medium (104 FPS) is a 32% reduction, while the drop from 1080p High (105 FPS) to 1440p High (70 FPS) is 33%, showing a proportional scaling penalty across presets.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 67 FPS on Low, 59 FPS on Medium (minimum 50, maximum 68), 40 FPS on High, and 28 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Medium result has the largest frametime variance in the entire dataset, with a 18 FPS gap between minimum and maximum, which suggests the GPU is on the edge of its memory capacity. The 4K High result (40 FPS) is only 12 FPS higher than the 4K Ultra result (28 FPS), indicating that the Ultra preset’s marginal visual improvements come at a disproportionate performance cost. The 4K Low result of 67 FPS is the only 4K preset that approaches playability, and it still represents a 61% reduction from the 1080p Low result of 173 FPS.