Barony

Barony, a 2015 roguelike, presents an unusual hardware challenge: its measured performance with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 shows extreme frame rates that shift the bottleneck dramatically across resolutions. The data indicates this combo is overwhelmingly powerful for this title, delivering playable, if not excessive, frame rates even at 4K Ultra settings. The primary takeaway from the benchmark results is that the system is never truly strained, but the scaling pattern reveals a clear transition from a CPU-bound state at 1080p to a progressively GPU-bound state at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic bottleneck shift, but at an unusually high performance ceiling. At 1920x1080, the average FPS across all settings are exceptionally high, ranging from 274 FPS on Ultra to 600 FPS on Low. This massive headroom indicates the CPU, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, is the primary limiting factor at this resolution; the GPU is not being fully utilized. The jump from 274 FPS at Ultra to 383 FPS at High and 446 FPS at Medium shows that as settings are lowered, the CPU's ability to process the game logic becomes the hard ceiling, preventing the GPU from pushing even higher frame rates.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain incredibly high, but the scaling pattern begins to change. The 1440p High average of 242 FPS is a 37% drop from the 1080p High average of 383 FPS. Similarly, the Ultra preset drops from 274 FPS at 1080p to 173 FPS at 1440p, a 37% reduction as well. This consistent percentage drop across settings suggests that the GPU is starting to become a more significant contributor to the performance equation, as the increased pixel count begins to add rendering load. However, the sheer magnitude of the numbers (242 FPS on High) still points to a system with immense untapped potential.

At 3840x2160, the GPU bottleneck becomes the dominant factor. The 4K High average of 126 FPS is a 48% reduction from the 1440p High score, and the 4K Ultra average of 91 FPS is a 47% reduction from its 1440p counterpart. This steeper decline in performance compared to the 1440p to 1080p transition confirms that the RTX 4080 is now working much harder to fill the 8.3 million pixels. The 4K Low setting still achieves 198 FPS, which shows that even at the highest resolution, the GPU can deliver a very high refresh rate experience when the visual load is lightened. The data shows a clear inflection point: the system is CPU-bound at 1080p, balanced at 1440p, and becomes increasingly GPU-bound at 4K, where the 16 GB of VRAM and 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth are put to serious use.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination ranks 244th out of 3717 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the top 7% of all systems tested. This high percentile placement is consistent with the raw hardware power of both components. The CPU alone sits in the 87th percentile compared to all other CPUs in the database, while the GPU is in the 86th percentile for all GPUs. In a game with relatively simple graphics like Barony, this hardware is overqualified, which is reflected in the high ranking.

When looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the Ryzen 7 7700's average benchmark score of 40081 is virtually identical to its closest competitors. It is only 0.1% faster than the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, 0.2% faster than the Intel Core 5 221E, 0.4% faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 270, and 0.6% faster than the Intel Core i9-13905H. These sub-1% differences are within the margin of error and indicate that the CPU's performance is well-matched with its peers, none of which would likely cause a significant change in the game's final ranking. Similarly, the RTX 4080's performance is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, with a delta of just 0.1%. The data suggests that this specific combo's rank is primarily a function of having a top-tier GPU and a high-end CPU, rather than a uniquely synergistic pairing.

The ranking itself is more evidence of the sheer power of the components than any game-specific optimization. Given that the game is from 2015, it does not utilize modern multi-core CPUs or advanced GPU features to their fullest extent. The high rank is therefore a direct result of the brute-force capabilities of the Ryzen 7 7700 and RTX 4080, allowing them to overwhelm the game's relatively modest computational demands. The 244th position out of 3717 combos means that 93.4% of all tested systems are slower, a statistic that underscores the top-tier nature of this pairing, even if the game itself does not require such hardware.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings is 383 FPS.

Q: Is the system more CPU-bound or GPU-bound at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the system is more GPU-bound. The frame rate drops significantly from 1440p (e.g., from 242 FPS to 126 FPS on High), indicating the graphics card is now the primary limiting factor.

Q: Which settings preset provides the highest average frame rate at 1440p?

A: The Low preset provides the highest average frame rate at 2560x1440, with a measured 379 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 4080's performance compare to its nearest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER?

A: The benchmark data shows the RTX 4080 is 0.1% faster than the RTX 4080 SUPER in average benchmark score, a negligible difference.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded for this combo in Barony?

A: The lowest average FPS recorded is 91 FPS, which occurs at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among all tested combinations?

A: This CPU and GPU combination ranks 244th out of 3717 tested combos in Barony.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across all resolution and settings combinations. The data shows a consistent hierarchy, with the Low preset always delivering the highest frame rates and the Ultra preset the lowest.

At 1920x1080, the performance is staggering. The Low preset achieves an average of 600 FPS. The Medium preset averages 446 FPS, with a minimum of 379 FPS and a maximum of 513 FPS. The High preset drops to an average of 383 FPS. The Ultra preset, while still incredibly fast, is the slowest at 1080p, with an average of 274 FPS. These numbers indicate that the CPU is the limiting factor, as even the most demanding preset is unable to push the GPU to its limits.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates are still extremely high but show a clear step down. The Low preset averages 379 FPS. The Medium preset averages 281 FPS, with a minimum of 239 FPS and a maximum of 324 FPS. The High preset averages 242 FPS. The Ultra preset rounds out the options with an average of 173 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows an average reduction of about 37-38% across all presets, which is a significant but expected cost for a 78% increase in pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the performance remains impressive but is now firmly in the field of high-refresh-rate 4K gaming. The Low preset delivers an average of 198 FPS. The Medium preset averages 147 FPS, with a minimum of 125 FPS and a maximum of 169 FPS. The High preset achieves an average of 126 FPS. The Ultra preset, the most demanding configuration, still manages a very playable average of 91 FPS. The data shows that even at 4K Ultra, this combo never drops below 60 FPS on average, making it a capable 4K gaming system for this title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 plays a crucial, albeit not always dominant, role depending on the resolution. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, the GPU has ample resources for Barony's textures and visual effects, even at 4K Ultra. The 716.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth provides the necessary throughput to feed the 9728 shading units and 112 ROPs, ensuring that pixel fill-rate is not a bottleneck. The GPU's boost clock of 2505 MHz and base clock of 2205 MHz are high for its class, contributing to its raw compute power.

The GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the GPU is held back by the CPU, as evidenced by the relatively small difference in FPS between the Medium (446 FPS) and Low (600 FPS) presets; the CPU cannot feed the GPU enough data to saturate it. However, at 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor. The 4K Ultra average of 91 FPS confirms the GPU's strength, as it represents a 67% reduction from the 1080p Ultra score of 274 FPS, reflecting the massive increase in rendering load. The GPU's 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores are present, but Barony, being a 2015 title, does not utilize these features, so their impact is minimal. The RTX 4080's performance is within 0.1% of its successor, the RTX 4080 SUPER, indicating that the card is performing at its expected level.

The GPU's 86th percentile ranking against all GPUs confirms its high-end status. Its average benchmark score of 54247 is nearly identical to the RTX 4080 SUPER's 54209, and it is 1.1% faster than the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X. The data suggests that in this game, the RTX 4080's main contribution is providing the raw horsepower to maintain high frame rates at 4K, a task it accomplishes with ease, ensuring that the visual experience is never compromised by a lack of graphics processing power.

Settings Recommendations

Given the extraordinary performance levels measured, the recommendation is straightforward: players should prioritize visual quality. The data shows that the Ultra preset is the best choice for almost all scenarios, as it provides a significant visual upgrade over the other presets while maintaining exceptionally high frame rates.

At 4K, the Ultra preset still averages 91 FPS, which is well above the standard 60 FPS target. For users with a 120Hz or 144Hz 4K display, the High preset, at 126 FPS, offers a better balance, pushing frame rates into a higher refresh rate territory while still delivering excellent visual fidelity. The Medium preset, at 147 FPS, is a viable option for those seeking to maximize refresh rates on a 144Hz monitor, but the visual compromise is not necessary given the hardware's capability.

At 1440p and 1080p, the Ultra preset is the definitive recommendation. At 1440p, it delivers 173 FPS, which is more than enough for any high-refresh-rate monitor. At 1080p, the 274 FPS average on Ultra is so high that it exceeds the refresh rate of most gaming monitors, making any other setting a pointless sacrifice in visual quality. The Low and Medium presets offer no tangible benefit in this context, as the frame rates they provide are already beyond the capabilities of most displays. The data strongly indicates that the Ultra preset provides the best experience, as the hardware has more than enough headroom to handle it without compromising on smoothness, making it the only setting that leverages the full potential of both the CPU and GPU.