Barony

Barony, a roguelike from 2015, proves to be surprisingly demanding at its upper limits when paired with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The measured frame rates reveal a system capable of extreme performance, yet the data shows that the choice of settings dramatically alters the experience, with the Ultra preset imposing a significant penalty at every resolution. The benchmark results indicate a clear hierarchy where the CPU, despite being a capable six-core part, becomes a limiting factor at lower resolutions, while the GPU's immense power dominates at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data for this combination strongly favors the High preset as the optimal balance for most users. At 1920x1080, High delivers 422.4 FPS, which is 120.1 FPS faster than the Ultra preset's 301.9 FPS, while offering a substantial visual upgrade over Medium's 493.5 FPS. The gap between High and Medium is 71.1 FPS, indicating that the visual fidelity gained from High is comparatively less costly than the jump from High to Ultra, which costs 120.5 FPS at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the High preset sustains 268.3 FPS, still far beyond the refresh rates of most monitors, while Ultra drops to 191.3 FPS. The loss from High to Ultra here is 77 FPS, a 28.7% reduction that suggests the Ultra settings introduce effects that are disproportionately taxing. For 4K, High produces 140.4 FPS, which remains comfortably playable, whereas Ultra falls to 101.2 FPS, a 39.2 FPS difference. The Low preset is only advisable for competitive play at extreme frame rates, as it reaches 595 FPS at 1080p, but the visual compromise is severe. The data implies that High is the intended sweet spot, providing a 397.2 FPS increase over Ultra at 1080p while maintaining a level of detail that justifies the performance cost.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant force in this pairing, with its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 384-bit bus providing a 1.01 TB/s bandwidth. This massive memory allocation is unlikely to be a bottleneck in Barony, a roguelike with relatively modest texture requirements, but it ensures headroom for any potential mods or future updates. The GPU's core clock boosts to 2520 MHz, and with 16384 shading units, its raw compute power is substantial, as reflected in its FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS.

The GPU's influence is most apparent at 4K, where the performance gap between Low and Ultra is 118.1 FPS (219.3 vs. 101.2). This scaling shows the RTX 4090 is actively engaged, with the higher settings increasing the demand on its rendering pipelines. The benchmark results indicate that the GPU is never the primary bottleneck at 1080p, as even at Ultra, the frame rate of 301.9 FPS is likely higher than what the CPU can consistently feed. The RTX 4090's percentile ranking of 91 vs. all GPUs confirms its elite status, and its average benchmark score of 66473 places it within 0.4% of the NVIDIA Tesla T4 and 0.5% ahead of the Tesla P40, showing it operates at the very top of the performance spectrum for this game's engine.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achievable with this CPU-GPU combo?

A: The highest measured average is 595 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset. This drops to 219.3 FPS at 4K with the same settings.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High delivers 268.3 FPS, while Ultra drops to 191.3 FPS. This represents a 77 FPS reduction, indicating Ultra's effects are computationally expensive.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's 24 GB of VRAM a limiting factor in Barony?

A: The 24 GB GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is far beyond what Barony requires. The data shows no indication of VRAM limitations, as performance scales consistently with settings.

Q: Which resolution shows the smallest performance difference between Low and Ultra?

A: The smallest absolute difference is at 1920x1080, where the gap between Low (595 FPS) and Ultra (301.9 FPS) is 293.1 FPS. At 4K, the gap narrows to 118.1 FPS, but the relative cost of Ultra increases.

Q: How does the CPU's single-core performance affect the game?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600G's single-thread score of 872 in 3dmark and 993 in Cinebench R20 suggests adequate single-core strength. The high frame rates at 1080p indicate the CPU can handle the game's logic, but it does cap performance below the GPU's potential.

Q: What is the performance cost of moving from High to Ultra at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, High produces 140.4 FPS, while Ultra produces 101.2 FPS. This is a 39.2 FPS drop, a 27.9% reduction, showing Ultra is less viable at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a clear progression. The Low preset yields 595 FPS, which is the peak performance. Medium reduces this to 493.5 FPS, a drop of 101.5 FPS. High further lowers it to 422.4 FPS, a 71.1 FPS decrease from Medium. Ultra is the most demanding, hitting 301.9 FPS, which is 120.5 FPS below High. The scaling from Low to Ultra is a 293.1 FPS loss, indicating the settings have a massive impact on the CPU-bound scenario.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats but with lower absolute numbers. Low sits at 419.1 FPS, Medium at 311.9 FPS, and High at 268.3 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium is 107.2 FPS, while the jump from High to Ultra (191.3 FPS) costs 77 FPS. The total spread from Low to Ultra is 227.8 FPS, showing that the GPU is shouldering more work as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the performance compresses. Low delivers 219.3 FPS, Medium 164.8 FPS, High 140.4 FPS, and Ultra 101.2 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 54.5 FPS, while High to Ultra drops 39.2 FPS. The overall range is 118.1 FPS, revealing that at 4K, the GPU is the primary driver of performance, and the settings have a more linear impact on frame rate.

Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a steep performance curve as resolution increases. At High settings, moving from 1080p to 1440p reduces the frame rate from 422.4 FPS to 268.3 FPS, a 36.5% drop. Stepping up to 4K further reduces it to 140.4 FPS, a 47.7% drop from 1440p. This scaling suggests that the GPU is beginning to become more relevant, but the CPU's limits are still visible at 1440p.

For the Low preset, the drop is equally pronounced: 595 FPS at 1080p falls to 419.1 FPS at 1440p (a 29.6% reduction) and then to 219.3 FPS at 4K (a 47.7% reduction from 1440p). The consistent percentage drops indicate that the game's rendering load scales predictably with pixel count. However, the absolute numbers show that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting component, as the GPU could likely render more frames if the CPU allowed. At 4K, the GPU's workload increases, and the frame rates align more closely with what the RTX 4090 can sustain, suggesting a shift in the bottleneck from the processor to the graphics card.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, is a capable processor, but it is clearly outclassed by the RTX 4090 in this context. Its base clock of 3.90 GHz and boost clock of 4.40 GHz, combined with 16 MB of L3 cache, provide adequate performance for Barony's systems. The benchmark scores show a single-thread score of 872 in 3dmark and a multicore score of 5455 in 3dmark_max_threads, which are respectable but not top-tier.

The CPU's role becomes evident when examining the 1080p results. At Low settings, the 595 FPS figure is likely near the CPU's maximum frame output for this game. The fact that Ultra at 1080p (301.9 FPS) is lower than High at 4K (140.4 FPS) might seem counterintuitive, but it indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is struggling to issue draw calls quickly enough, while at 4K, the GPU's rendering time becomes the dominant factor. The Ryzen 5 5600G's percentile rank of 78 vs. all CPUs places it near the Intel Core i7-11600H (0.2% faster) and the AMD EPYC 7713P (0.2% slower), confirming it is a mid-range part. In this pairing, the CPU is a bottleneck at lower resolutions, preventing the RTX 4090 from reaching its full potential, particularly at 1080p where the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra is 293.1 FPS, a gap that is more CPU-bound than GPU-bound.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of hardware is ranked 63rd out of 1702 tested combos for Barony, placing it in the top 3.7% of all configurations. This high ranking is almost entirely attributable to the RTX 4090's immense power, as the CPU is a comparative weak link. The data suggests that while this combo is excellent, it is not the absolute best, and the ranking implies that there are 62 other combinations that achieve higher average frame rates, likely featuring more powerful CPUs to pair with the top-tier GPU.

The rank of 63, despite the GPU being in the 91st percentile, highlights the CPU's limiting effect. If the Ryzen 5 5600G were replaced with a stronger processor, the combo's ranking would likely improve, as the GPU has headroom at 1080p and 1440p. The benchmark results show that at 4K Ultra, the combo produces 101.2 FPS, which is a solid result, but at 1080p Low, the 595 FPS is capped by the CPU's ability to process the game's logic. This ranking indicates that for users prioritizing maximum frame rates, the CPU is a significant consideration, and the RTX 4090's potential is not fully realized in this pairing.