Barony

# Barony with AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a robust Barony experience across all tested resolutions, with the data showing a clear pattern: this combo is heavily GPU-limited at 4K, but at 1080p the CPU's strength becomes evident as frame rates climb to extremely high levels. The measured results span from 58 FPS at 4K Ultra to 385 FPS at 1080p Low, indicating that the combination can handle both demanding visual settings and high-refresh-rate play, depending on the resolution chosen. This analysis draws exclusively from the measured FPS data, the combo's rank among 2,935 tested configurations, and the component specifications provided.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial and reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 246 FPS at 1920x1080 to 155 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 81 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 37% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 48% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is steep, indicating that the RTX 3070's rendering throughput becomes the limiting factor as pixel count increases.

The pattern holds across all settings tiers. At Low settings, the drop from 385 FPS at 1080p to 243 FPS at 1440p and then to 127 FPS at 4K shows a similar trajectory—each resolution step roughly halves the headroom. At Medium settings, the figures are 287 FPS, 181 FPS, and 95 FPS respectively. Ultra settings produce the lowest absolute numbers: 176 FPS at 1080p, 111 FPS at 1440p, and 58 FPS at 4K.

What this scaling says about the limiting component is clear. At 1080p, even Ultra settings maintain 176 FPS, which is far above the threshold where most displays would cap. The CPU is doing its job efficiently at this resolution, allowing the GPU to push high frame rates. As resolution climbs to 4K, the GPU's pixel and texture processing rates become the bottleneck; the RTX 3070's 165.6 GPixel/s pixel rate and 317.4 GTexel/s texture rate are simply not enough to sustain high frame rates at 8.3 million pixels. The data shows that users targeting 4K will need to compromise on settings—dropping from Ultra to High nearly doubles the frame rate from 58 to 81 FPS, and Medium pushes it further to 95 FPS.

The transition from 1440p to 4K is particularly punishing, with frame rates dropping by roughly half at every settings level. This is consistent with the 2.25x increase in pixel count, and the GPU's memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s becomes a factor at 4K. The 8 GB GDDR6 frame buffer is adequate for this game, but the bandwidth limits how quickly textures and geometry can be fed to the rendering pipeline at high resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The Ryzen 7 9700F and RTX 3070 combination ranks 1,230 out of 2,935 tested combos in Barony. This places it in the upper-middle tier of the benchmark database, roughly at the 58th percentile of all tested configurations. The rank reflects the balance between a strong modern CPU and a mid-range GPU from the previous generation.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 69,996 places it in the 94th percentile against all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875, 0.2% lower), the Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163, 0.2% higher), the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515, 0.7% lower), and the Intel Core i7-14700K (69,355, 0.9% lower). This clustering shows that the 9700F is essentially at parity with top-tier desktop and mobile processors from the previous generation, meaning the CPU is not the weak link in this combo.

The GPU, however, is a different story. The RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 17,208 places it in the 61st percentile against all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17,083, 0.7% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17,037, 1% higher), the AMD Radeon HD 7970M (17,019, 1.1% higher), and the NVIDIA Tesla K40c (17,468, 1.5% lower). The RTX 3070 is competitive with these cards, but it is not in the top tier of GPUs. This GPU-centric limitation explains why the combo's overall rank is not higher; the CPU could support more performance, but the GPU caps the frame rates at higher resolutions.

The rank of 1,230 out of 2,935 suggests that many combos with stronger GPUs outperform this pairing in Barony, particularly at 4K where the GPU is most stressed. At 1080p, the combo's performance would likely rank much higher, as the CPU's single-thread score of 4,691 and multithread score of 36,470 keep the GPU fed without bottlenecking.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip, fabricated on Samsung's 8 nm process. It contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, with a transistor density of 44.4M per mm². The GPU has 5,888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, 96 raster output units, 46 ray tracing cores, and 184 tensor cores. These are the raw resources that determine the card's ability to render Barony's roguelike environments.

The memory subsystem consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective. For Barony, 8 GB is sufficient at the tested settings; the data shows no anomalies that would suggest memory capacity issues, even at 4K Ultra where the frame rate bottoms out at 58 FPS. The bottleneck at 4K is more likely the GPU's compute throughput rather than memory capacity.

The clock speeds are modest by modern standards: a base clock of 1500 MHz and a boost clock of 1725 MHz. This results in a FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS, with FP16 running at the same rate (1:1). The pixel rate is 165.6 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 317.4 GTexel/s. These figures are directly relevant to Barony's performance at higher resolutions; as resolution increases, the GPU must process more pixels and textures per frame, and these rates determine the ceiling.

The GPU's power draw is rated at 220 W TDP, with a suggested PSU of 550 W. It uses a dual-slot cooler and a single 12-pin power connector. The card measures 242 mm in length and 112 mm in height. These physical characteristics are typical for a mid-range card, and the 220 W TDP means it can be adequately cooled by most cases. The card supports PCIe 4.0 x16, which provides sufficient bandwidth for this game.

In the benchmark results, the RTX 3070 scores 22,214 in Passmark G3D and 11,195 in Passmark GPU Compute. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3,162, while Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan scores are 112,821 and 21,022 respectively. The DirectX 12 score in Passmark is 85, which is notably lower than the DirectX 11 score of 182, suggesting the card handles older APIs more efficiently. For Barony, a game released in 2015, this is relevant—the game may rely on DirectX 11 features, which the card processes more efficiently.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Barony?

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 385, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. At Medium settings, the average drops to 287 FPS, and at High settings it is 246 FPS.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo achieves an average of 58 FPS. This is the lowest measured result in the dataset, indicating that 4K Ultra is not a smooth experience for this pairing.

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

A: The combo ranks 1,230 out of 2,935 tested combos in Barony. This places it in the upper-middle tier of the benchmark database.

Q: What are the CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F has an average benchmark score of 69,996. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875, 0.2% lower), Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163, 0.2% higher), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515, 0.7% lower), and Intel Core i7-14700K (69,355, 0.9% lower).

Q: What are the GPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 has an average benchmark score of 17,208. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17,083, 0.7% higher), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17,037, 1% higher), AMD Radeon HD 7970M (17,019, 1.1% higher), and NVIDIA Tesla K40c (17,468, 1.5% lower).

Q: How much does the average FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 246 at 1920x1080 to 155 at 2560x1440, and then to 81 at 3840x2160. This represents a 67% reduction from 1080p to 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest performance. Low settings produce an average of 385 FPS, Medium settings yield 287 FPS (with a minimum of 244 and maximum of 330), High settings drop to 246 FPS, and Ultra settings still maintain 176 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is substantial—a 209 FPS difference—indicating that the GPU settings have a significant impact even at this resolution where the CPU is not the primary bottleneck.

At 2560x1440, the numbers scale down proportionally. Low settings average 243 FPS, Medium settings average 181 FPS (minimum 154, maximum 208), High settings average 155 FPS, and Ultra settings average 111 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 132 FPS, which is a smaller absolute gap than at 1080p but still significant. The Medium settings data shows a narrower range between minimum and maximum, suggesting more consistent frame pacing at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor. Low settings average 127 FPS, Medium settings average 95 FPS (minimum 80, maximum 109), High settings average 81 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 58 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 69 FPS, and even the Low setting does not reach the frame rates seen at 1080p. The 4K Medium data point is the only one with a recorded minimum and maximum in this resolution, showing a range of 29 FPS, which indicates some frame time variability.

The data across all resolutions shows a consistent pattern: each settings tier reduces the average FPS by roughly 20-30% from the previous tier. For example, at 1440p, the drop from Low to Medium is 62 FPS (243 to 181), from Medium to High is 26 FPS (181 to 155), and from High to Ultra is 44 FPS (155 to 111). This non-linear scaling suggests that certain settings have a larger impact on GPU load than others.

The minimum FPS values are only recorded for Medium settings at each resolution: 244 at 1080p, 154 at 1440p, and 80 at 4K. These minimums suggest that even in demanding scenes, the frame rate does not fall below playable thresholds except potentially at 4K Ultra, where the average of 58 FPS implies occasional dips below 50 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is a desktop processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It is manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process node, containing 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die. The CPU has 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. It supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and it supports ECC memory.

The cache hierarchy consists of 80 KB L1 per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. This is a moderate amount of L3 cache, but for Barony—a roguelike that likely has modest cache requirements—it is more than sufficient. The CPU's TDP is 65 W, which is low for an 8-core desktop processor, and it uses the AMD Socket AM5. It supports PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes from the CPU, and it has no integrated graphics, so the RTX 3070 is the sole display output.

In Passmark benchmarks, the 9700F scores 4691 in single-thread tests and 36,470 in multithread tests. The integer math score is 120,788, floating point math is 77,955, and extended instructions score is 33,688. The data compression score is 421,988, data encryption is 21,488, and random string sorting is 45,890. The find prime numbers score is 183, and physics score is 2,122. These results indicate strong all-around performance, with the single-thread score being particularly important for games like Barony that may not fully utilize multiple cores.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 69,996 places it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rivals are all within 1% of its score. This clustering shows that the 9700F is competitive with the best CPUs from the previous generation, but it does not offer a significant advantage over them. The CPU's boost clock of 5.50 GHz is high, which helps in single-threaded workloads, and the 4 nm process keeps power consumption low.

In Barony, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p, where the frame rates are high enough to expose any CPU limitations. The fact that the combo achieves 385 FPS at Low settings and 246 FPS at High settings at 1080p suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck at this resolution. The 8 cores and 16 threads provide enough parallelism for the game's logic, physics, and AI, while the high single-thread score ensures that the main game loop runs efficiently.

At 4K, the CPU's performance is largely irrelevant, as the GPU becomes the limiting factor. The data shows that the frame rate drops by roughly half from 1440p to 4K at every settings level, which is consistent with the GPU's pixel throughput limitations rather than any CPU constraint. The CPU's 32 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth are sufficient for feeding the GPU with data, even at 4K.

The CPU's launch MSRP is $289, and it was released on September 15, 2025. It has an unlocked multiplier, making it overclockable, and its part number is 100-000001902. The CPU's production status is Active, meaning it is currently available. For Barony, the 9700F provides more than enough processing power, and the data confirms that the RTX 3070 is the component that determines the frame rates at higher resolutions.