Barony

Barony is a roguelike that, on paper, should not stress modern hardware, yet the measured data for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination reveals a fascinating performance curve that is entirely dependent on the graphics preset selected. The benchmark results show a system capable of extreme frame rates, but the relationship between settings and resolution indicates that the game's engine presents unique bottlenecks that shift depending on the configuration. The data suggests that users should prioritize the High preset for the most balanced experience, as it offers a substantial performance ceiling without the severe frame rate collapses seen at Ultra, and it avoids the potential for CPU-bound instability that appears at Low settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for this combination shows a clear hierarchy across the four available presets, but the differences are not linear. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 607 FPS, which is the highest raw number recorded in the entire dataset. However, this figure should be interpreted with caution, as it represents a scenario where the GPU is likely idling and the workload has shifted entirely to the CPU. The jump from Low to Medium at this resolution results in a drop to 538 FPS, a decrease of 69 FPS, while High further reduces the average to 462 FPS. The Ultra preset, by contrast, collapses to 331 FPS, which is a massive 276 FPS lower than the Low setting. This pattern suggests that the Ultra preset introduces rendering features that are disproportionately expensive on this engine, potentially related to shadow or post-processing effects that do not scale gracefully with the raw power of the RTX 5090 D.

For the best experience, the Medium preset appears to be the optimal choice for most users. At 1920x1080, it delivers 538 FPS with a minimum frame rate of 458 FPS and a maximum of 619 FPS, indicating a stable and consistent performance envelope. The High preset at the same resolution offers 462 FPS, which is still exceptionally smooth, but the lack of a reported minimum frame rate in the data makes it harder to assess frame pacing consistency. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again shines, producing 340 FPS with a minimum of 289 FPS and a maximum of 391 FPS, while High produces 292 FPS. The story changes at 3840x2160, where the Medium preset delivers 178 FPS with a minimum of 151 FPS and a maximum of 204 FPS, while High drops to 152 FPS. The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution, as it produces the lowest averages: 109 FPS at 4K, 209 FPS at 1440p, and 331 FPS at 1080p. Despite these being playable numbers, the performance cost relative to the High preset is substantial, and the visual fidelity gain is unlikely to justify the frame rate penalty.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is a behemoth of a graphics card, featuring 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 render output units. It is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process node and packs 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a massive 1.79 TB/s of memory bandwidth. The card's raw compute capabilities are staggering, with an FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS and a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s. Despite this overwhelming GPU power, the benchmark data in Barony shows that the card is often underutilized, particularly at lower resolutions and settings. The base clock of 2017 MHz and boost clock of 2407 MHz are relatively modest for a flagship, but the sheer number of execution units compensates for the clock speed.

The GPU's role in this game becomes clear when examining the 4K results. At 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset, the average FPS is 109, which is a significant drop from the 152 FPS at High and the 178 FPS at Medium. This indicates that the Ultra preset is the only configuration where the RTX 5090 D is truly being pushed to its limits, likely due to the combination of high-resolution textures and advanced lighting effects that saturate the GPU's processing units. However, even at 4K Ultra, the card maintains a playable frame rate, showcasing its immense headroom. The data suggests that for a game like Barony, the GPU is rarely the limiting factor, and its 32 GB of VRAM is likely never fully utilized given the graphical simplicity of a roguelike title. The card's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks, such as the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT with a deltaPct of -1.6 and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB with a deltaPct of -2.4, are far less powerful, yet the performance gap in this game would be minimal due to the CPU bottleneck present at most settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a classic pattern of GPU dependency emerging as resolution increases, but with an unusual twist. At 1080p, the frame rates are extraordinarily high, with the Low preset hitting 607 FPS, Medium at 538 FPS, High at 462 FPS, and Ultra at 331 FPS. Moving to 1440p, these numbers drop to 457 FPS, 340 FPS, 292 FPS, and 209 FPS respectively. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a reduction of approximately 25% for Low, 37% for Medium, 37% for High, and 37% for Ultra. This consistent reduction for Medium, High, and Ultra suggests that the GPU is starting to take on more work, but the Low preset's smaller drop indicates that the CPU is still the primary bottleneck at that setting.

The jump from 1440p to 4K is where the GPU truly asserts its dominance. At 3840x2160, the Low preset drops to 239 FPS, a 48% reduction from 1440p, while Medium falls to 178 FPS (48% reduction), High to 152 FPS (48% reduction), and Ultra to 109 FPS (48% reduction). This uniform 48% reduction across all presets when moving from 1440p to 4K is a textbook indication that the GPU is now the limiting component entirely. The pixel count increase from 1440p to 4K is approximately 125%, and the frame rate halving aligns perfectly with the increased rendering load. This data indicates that at 1080p and 1440p, the Ryzen 5 5600's single-thread performance is holding back the RTX 5090 D, but at 4K, the GPU's massive compute resources are finally being fully utilized, resulting in a predictable and scaling behavior.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of tested combinations for Barony, this specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 46th out of 2,935 total combos. This places the system in the top 1.6% of all tested configurations, which is an exceptional result for a mid-range CPU paired with a flagship GPU. The high ranking is largely attributable to the extreme frame rates achieved at 1080p and 1440p, where the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads running at a boost clock of 4.40 GHz are sufficient to feed the GPU with enough data to maintain high performance. The combo's ranking would likely be even higher if the game were more GPU-intensive, as the RTX 5090 D's synthetic benchmark percentile of 92 places it in the top 8% of all GPUs, while the CPU's percentile of 74 places it in the top 26% of all CPUs.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks offer context for its performance. The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V has an average score of 20,454, which is a 0.1% delta from the Ryzen 5 5600's 20,468, indicating they are virtually tied in overall processing power. Similarly, the AMD Ryzen 5 8500G and AMD EPYC 9454P are within 0.2% of the 5600's score. This suggests that the CPU is performing as expected for its class, and its 74th percentile ranking reflects a solid mid-range standing. The combination's rank of 46 in Barony is impressive because it demonstrates that the system can achieve frame rates that rival configurations with much more expensive CPUs, purely because the game's engine does not require excessive multi-threaded performance to reach high FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, and manufactured on a 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, with a 32 MB shared L3 cache that is typical for the Ryzen 5 lineup. The CPU's synthetic benchmark scores show a balanced profile, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18,309 and a single-core score of 2,584. The 3DMark tests reveal a multi-threaded score of 5,641 and a single-thread score of 882. These numbers indicate that the CPU has strong single-thread performance, which is crucial for Barony, as the game's logic and entity updates are largely single-threaded.

In Barony, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p with the Low preset, where the frame rate reaches 607 FPS. This is an extreme scenario where the GPU is barely working, and the CPU is pushing the game's simulation to its limits. The fact that the frame rate increases from 607 FPS at Low to 538 FPS at Medium and then drops to 462 FPS at High shows that the CPU can maintain high frame rates even as the GPU load increases, but the Ultra preset's drop to 331 FPS indicates that the Ultra settings introduce CPU-side overhead that the 5600 cannot overcome. The CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient for this game, as evidenced by the 3DMark max-thread score of 5,659, which is nearly identical to the 16-thread score, suggesting that the game does not benefit from additional threads beyond what the CPU provides.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for this combination provides a comprehensive view of performance across all resolution and settings combinations. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 331 FPS, while the High preset produces 462 FPS, Medium produces 538 FPS with a minimum of 458 FPS and a maximum of 619 FPS, and Low produces 607 FPS. The 1080p results are characterized by extreme frame rates that far exceed the refresh rates of any consumer monitor, making them primarily useful for benchmarking rather than practical gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down but remains exceptionally high. The Ultra preset averages 209 FPS, High averages 292 FPS, Medium averages 340 FPS with a minimum of 289 FPS and a maximum of 391 FPS, and Low averages 457 FPS. The 1440p results still exceed the capability of most high-refresh-rate monitors, with even the Ultra preset providing a smooth experience on 144Hz displays. The Medium preset's minimum frame rate of 289 FPS ensures that there are no noticeable dips during intense gameplay moments.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates become more grounded but still impressive. The Ultra preset averages 109 FPS, High averages 152 FPS, Medium averages 178 FPS with a minimum of 151 FPS and a maximum of 204 FPS, and Low averages 239 FPS. The 4K results show that the system can handle 4K gaming with high settings, as the High preset's 152 FPS average is suitable for high-refresh-rate 4K monitors. The Medium preset's minimum of 151 FPS is particularly noteworthy, as it indicates that the frame rate remains stable even during the most demanding scenes. The Low preset at 4K still manages 239 FPS, demonstrating that the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of VRAM and massive bandwidth are more than sufficient for this game's graphical demands.