Barony

Barony is a roguelike that, despite its genre, exhibits heavy GPU scaling across the tested resolution and settings matrix when paired with the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and AMD Radeon RX 570. The measured frames per second (FPS) data reveals a system that is consistently capable at 1080p but becomes progressively strained as pixel count rises. This combination ranks 1630th out of 1702 tested combos in this game, placing it in the lower percentile of available hardware pairings, yet the absolute numbers show a playable experience at lower resolutions and settings.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a dramatic and predictable collapse in frame rate, indicating that the rendering load is scaling almost linearly with pixel count. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 89.0 at 1080p to 54.1 at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 39%. Moving further to 4K at 3840x2160 yields only 30.3 FPS, which is a 66% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline suggests that the Radeon RX 570's fillrate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints at higher resolutions, not the CPU.

The scaling pattern is consistent across all quality presets. At Low settings, the frame rate falls from 139.7 FPS at 1080p to 85.4 FPS at 1440p, and then to 45.9 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows the most severe degradation, dropping from 62.2 FPS at 1080p to 39.2 FPS at 1440p, and finally to a barely playable 21.8 FPS at 4K. The fact that even Low settings cannot maintain 60 FPS at 4K is telling: the RX 570's 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for the demands of 8.3 million pixels, regardless of how much the CPU is unburdened.

Notably, the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, the delta between Low and Ultra is 77.5 FPS (139.7 vs 62.2). At 1440p, that gap narrows to 46.2 FPS (85.4 vs 39.2), and at 4K it shrinks to 24.1 FPS (45.9 vs 21.8). This convergence indicates that at higher resolutions, the GPU becomes so saturated that the extra work from higher quality settings has diminishing relative impact; the pixel throughput limit dominates over shader complexity.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 provides 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. Its benchmark scores show a strong multicore profile, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 11186 and a single-core score of 1579. The Passmark multithread score of 13160 and a single-thread score of 2239 indicate balanced performance for a 2018-era desktop processor. In the context of Barony, the CPU's role appears to be secondary at best, given that the game's FPS scales so heavily with resolution changes.

At 1080p Low, the system achieves 139.7 FPS, which is high enough that the CPU is likely still providing headroom. However, the drop to 4K Low at 45.9 FPS cannot be attributed to the processor, as the thread count and clock speeds are unchanged. The Ryzen 5 2600's 16 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support at 46.9 GB/s are adequate for feeding the GPU, but they do not become the limiting factor in this pairing. The percentile rank of 77th among all CPUs suggests it is a competent, mid-range part, yet the measured FPS shows that it is not the bottleneck.

The nearest rivals for the CPU, such as the Intel Core i5-1345U with a delta of -0.4% and the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U with +0.6%, have nearly identical average benchmark scores (19691 and 19508, respectively). This indicates that the Ryzen 5 2600 is in a performance band where small differences in synthetic scores do not translate into meaningful FPS changes in Barony. The game's logic, being a roguelike, may be more dependent on single-thread latency, but the single-core Cinebench R23 score of 1579 is not exceptional enough to suggest a CPU-bound scenario at any tested resolution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is the clear dominant factor in this benchmark set. With a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz, it operates with 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. Its memory configuration of 4 GB GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus yields 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for high-resolution textures. The GPU's benchmark scores, including a Geekbench OpenCL score of 32084 and a Vulkan score of 42752, place it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, but its nearest rivals are significantly newer parts.

The nearest rival data is striking: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 has a delta of +0.2% (avg score 30109), and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT also shows +0.2% (avg score 30097). Despite the RX 570's end-of-life production status and 14 nm process node, its average benchmark score of 30158 is statistically indistinguishable from these modern cards. However, this synthetic parity does not hold in Barony's real-world FPS, where the 4 GB VRAM limit becomes apparent at 4K Ultra, producing only 21.8 FPS.

The GPU's pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s are the theoretical limits that the measured FPS reflects. At 1080p, the card can push 89.0 FPS on High, indicating it is not fully saturated. But at 4K, the same settings yield 30.3 FPS, which is consistent with the 4x increase in pixel count overwhelming the ROP and memory subsystems. The FP32 performance of 5.095 TFLOPS is modest by modern standards, yet it is sufficient for a roguelike's visual effects at lower resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable with this hardware combo?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 139.7, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: Is this system capable of 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, which yields 85.4 FPS. Medium settings produce 67.7 FPS, while High and Ultra fall short at 54.1 FPS and 39.2 FPS, respectively.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance compare to its multicore performance?

A: The Ryzen 5 2600 scores 1579 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 11186 in multicore, showing a typical 7:1 ratio that indicates strong parallel scaling but modest per-core speed.

Q: What is the GPU's VRAM capacity and does it limit performance?

A: The RX 570 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 21.8, suggesting that both VRAM capacity and bandwidth are limiting factors at extreme resolutions.

Q: How does this combo rank against all tested hardware in Barony?

A: It ranks 1630th out of 1702 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 5% of all configurations for this game.

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

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings achieve 139.7 FPS while Ultra drops to 62.2 FPS, a difference of 77.5 FPS that highlights the GPU's sensitivity to shader complexity.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates its strongest performance. Low settings reach 139.7 FPS, Medium drops to 101.6 FPS, High produces 89.0 FPS, and Ultra falls to 62.2 FPS. All presets except Ultra are comfortably above 60 FPS, making 1080p the recommended resolution for smooth gameplay. The 77.5 FPS spread between Low and Ultra indicates that the RX 570 has headroom at this resolution, and users can prioritize visual fidelity without sacrificing playability, though Ultra is borderline at 62.2 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the performance envelope tightens. Low settings still deliver 85.4 FPS, and Medium maintains 67.7 FPS, both above the 60 FPS threshold. High settings drop to 54.1 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast action, while Ultra falls to 39.2 FPS, requiring compromises. The delta between Low and Ultra shrinks to 46.2 FPS, showing that the GPU is beginning to strain. For a consistent 60 FPS experience, users should stay at Medium or lower.

At 3840x2160, the system is largely out of its depth. Low settings produce 45.9 FPS, Medium yields 35.0 FPS, High manages 30.3 FPS, and Ultra drops to 21.8 FPS. None of these averages reach 60 FPS, and even the lowest preset falls below 50 FPS. The 24.1 FPS gap between Low and Ultra is the smallest of any resolution, confirming that pixel throughput is the dominant constraint. This resolution is only viable for turn-based or slower-paced gameplay, as the frame rate is insufficient for competitive or reaction-heavy scenarios.