Barony

Barony, a roguelike released in 2015, exhibits unusual performance scaling with the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination. The measured frame rates across resolutions and presets reveal a configuration that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at lower settings but shifts toward a more balanced load as graphical demands increase. The data set provides a clear picture of how this pairing behaves, with the RTX 4080 SUPER's immense compute capability frequently outpacing the Ryzen 5 3600's ability to feed it frames.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for this combination in Barony shows a pronounced drop as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop is highly dependent on the graphics preset. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 results in a reduction from 379.4 FPS to 237.3 FPS, a 37.5% decrease in average frame rate. Moving further to 3840x2160 yields 129.1 FPS, which is a 45.6% drop from the 1440p figure. This steep decline indicates that at 4K, the GPU is being pushed significantly harder, but the absolute frame rates remain exceptionally high for a roguelike title.

The scaling pattern at Low settings tells a different story. At 1080p Low, the system produces 477.8 FPS, which falls to 377.8 FPS at 1440p and then to 199.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 20.9%, which is smaller than the 46.7% drop observed when moving from 1440p to 4K. This non-linear behavior suggests that at lower resolutions, the CPU becomes a more significant limiting factor, as the GPU has ample headroom to render frames quickly but is constrained by the processor's ability to submit draw calls and update game logic.

The Ultra preset exhibits the most dramatic resolution sensitivity. The system achieves 271.1 FPS at 1080p, drops to 173.7 FPS at 1440p, and then falls to 92.6 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra figure is the lowest measured value in the entire data set, representing a 65.8% reduction from the 1080p Ultra score. This indicates that Barony's Ultra settings introduce a significant GPU workload, likely through increased shadow quality, post-processing effects, and texture filtering, which scales directly with pixel count. The data shows that 1080p and 1440p are well within the comfort zone for this hardware, while 4K Ultra approaches the lower boundary of what would be considered a high-refresh-rate experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this configuration, and its specifications explain the high frame rates observed. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, the card provides 736.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Barony's texture-heavy environments at any resolution. The GPU's boost clock of 2550 MHz, combined with its 10240 shading units, delivers raw compute throughput that keeps the frame rate high even at 4K Ultra, where the measured average is 92.6 FPS. The card's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 performance confirms its ability to handle the pixel shading workload required at 3840x2160.

The RTX 4080 SUPER's 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are not directly leveraged by Barony, which is a traditional rasterized roguelike, but the GPU's overall architecture still benefits the game through improved shader efficiency and geometry processing. The PassMark G3D score of 34245 places this GPU in the 88th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT with a score of 53489 (0.2% delta) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at 52086 (2.9% delta). This data confirms that the RTX 4080 SUPER is a top-tier part, but the measured FPS in Barony suggests that its full potential is rarely realized due to CPU limitations at lower resolutions.

At 4K High, the GPU is clearly the primary bottleneck, as the frame rate of 129.1 FPS is roughly one-third of the 1080p Low figure. The 16 GB VRAM capacity means there is no risk of running out of memory for textures, even at Ultra settings, which allows the GPU to operate without stuttering due to asset streaming. The 736.3 GB/s bandwidth ensures that texture fetches from VRAM do not become a constraint, a critical factor for a game that can have complex dungeon environments with many unique sprites and tile sets.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600, a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 3000 series, serves as the limiting factor in several of the measured scenarios. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz, combined with 32 MB of shared L3 cache, provide adequate single-threaded performance for Barony's game logic, but the data suggests that the CPU cannot keep pace with the GPU at lower resolutions. The 3DMark single-thread score of 696 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2124 indicate that while the processor is competent, it lacks the raw single-core speed of newer parts.

The CPU's 76th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18129, places it in a competitive position. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-11400, has an average score of 18150 with a delta of -0.1%, indicating that the two processors are essentially equivalent in synthetic workloads. However, in Barony, the CPU's inability to exceed roughly 477.8 FPS at 1080p Low suggests that the game's single-threaded update loop is a hard ceiling. The 12 threads are not fully utilized by Barony, which is typical for a roguelike that relies on deterministic turn-based logic and procedural generation rather than massive multi-threaded physics simulations.

The transition from 1080p Low (477.8 FPS) to 1440p Low (377.8 FPS) shows a 20.9% reduction, which is a smaller relative drop than the 47.4% reduction seen when moving to 4K Low (199.2 FPS). This pattern indicates that at 1440p Low, the CPU is still the primary bottleneck, as the GPU has enough headroom to render frames faster than the CPU can issue them. The 4K Low figure of 199.2 FPS demonstrates that even when the GPU is given more pixels to process, it still outpaces the CPU's frame generation capability. The 65W TDP of the Ryzen 5 3600 and its 7 nm process node suggest efficient operation, but efficiency does not translate into the high-frequency performance that Barony's engine appears to favor.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across presets, and the optimal choice depends on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 379.4 FPS, which is only slightly below the Medium preset's 430.6 FPS but significantly above the Ultra preset's 271.1 FPS. Given that High typically includes better texture filtering and shadow quality than Medium, the 51.2 FPS gap between High and Medium is a worthwhile trade-off for visual fidelity, while the 108.3 FPS difference between High and Ultra makes Ultra less attractive unless the user prioritizes maximum image quality over the high refresh rates that this hardware can otherwise achieve.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset stands out with 281.7 FPS, which is 44.4 FPS higher than High's 237.3 FPS. The Ultra preset at 173.7 FPS is still playable on high-refresh monitors, but the data suggests that Medium offers the best balance of visual quality and frame rate headroom. The 1440p Low preset achieves 377.8 FPS, but the visual compromises of Low settings in a game like Barony, where readability of tiles and sprites is crucial, may not be worth the additional frames. The 4K resolution presents a different calculus, where the High preset's 129.1 FPS is the most balanced option, as it is 36.5 FPS faster than Ultra's 92.6 FPS while providing better visuals than Medium's 145.3 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination holds a rank of 176 out of 1702 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the top 10.3% of all configurations evaluated. This ranking is notable because it is achieved despite the CPU being a relatively modest part compared to the GPU. The RTX 4080 SUPER's 88th percentile GPU ranking is significantly higher than the CPU's 76th percentile, suggesting that the combo's performance is dragged down by the processor's limitations.

The data indicates that this pairing is not perfectly balanced for Barony, as the GPU is often underutilized at lower resolutions. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (477.8 FPS) is nearly five times the 4K Ultra figure (92.6 FPS), demonstrating that the GPU's potential is only fully realized at higher resolutions or with more demanding presets. The rank of 176 out of 1702 shows that there are 175 combos that perform better, likely featuring newer CPUs with higher single-threaded performance that can better feed the RTX 4080 SUPER. However, for users targeting 4K High settings, this combo delivers 129.1 FPS, which is an excellent experience for a roguelike, and the overall ranking reflects that this is a high-performing configuration, even if not the absolute best.