Barony

# AMD Ryzen 7 9700X + Intel Arc B570 — Barony Benchmark Analysis

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a distinctive performance profile in Barony, a roguelike title that scales heavily with both CPU and GPU resources depending on resolution and preset. Measured FPS data across three resolutions and four quality settings reveals a system capable of high refresh rates at 1080p, solid 1440p performance, and playable 4K only at lower presets. The combination ranks 2344 out of 2935 tested combos in this game, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which is notable given the individual component standings: the CPU sits at the 86th percentile against all CPUs, while the GPU holds the 65th percentile against all GPUs.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to run Barony with this CPU-GPU combo?

A: Based on measured average FPS, 1920x1080 is the strongest resolution, delivering 156 FPS at High settings, 182 FPS at Medium, and 245 FPS at Low. At 2560x1440, High settings still maintain 99 FPS, while 3840x2160 drops to 52 FPS at High — playable but noticeably lower.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Arc B570's average benchmark score is 20556, which is 0.1% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534), 0.1% lower than the Intel Arc A750 (20582), 0.4% higher than the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480), and 0.5% lower than the AMD Radeon R9 M390X (20662). The GPU sits at the 65th percentile against all GPUs.

Q: What is the CPU's synthetic benchmark standing relative to its nearest rivals?

A: The Ryzen 7 9700X has an average benchmark score of 37943, placing it 0.1% above the Intel Core i9-14901E (37911) and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (37904), 0.3% above the Intel Core 5 211E (37829), and 0.4% above the AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P132 (37804). It ranks at the 86th percentile against all CPUs.

Q: Does the combo rank differently in Barony than its component percentiles suggest?

A: Yes. While the CPU is at the 86th percentile and the GPU at the 65th percentile individually, the combo ranks 2344 out of 2935 combos in Barony, which is approximately the 20th percentile. This suggests Barony's specific workload does not favor this pairing as strongly as synthetic benchmarks would indicate.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded across all tested configurations?

A: The lowest minimum FPS recorded is 51 FPS, occurring at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. The next lowest minimum is 98 FPS at 2560x1440 Medium, and the highest minimum is 155 FPS at 1920x1080 Medium.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High across resolutions?

A: At 1080p, Ultra delivers 112 FPS versus 156 FPS for High — a 44 FPS gap. At 1440p, Ultra gives 71 FPS versus 99 FPS for High. At 4K, Ultra produces 37 FPS versus 52 FPS for High, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes a substantial additional load at every resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 1920x1080, High produces 156 FPS average, which comfortably exceeds the refresh rate of most standard monitors. At 2560x1440, High maintains 99 FPS, still smooth for competitive play. Even at 3840x2160, High yields 52 FPS, which is playable for a roguelike genre where reaction times matter but not to the extent of fast-paced shooters.

The Medium preset provides a slight uplift: 182 FPS at 1080p, 115 FPS at 1440p, and 60 FPS at 4K. The minimum FPS data available for Medium shows 155 FPS at 1080p, 98 FPS at 1440p, and 51 FPS at 4K, indicating that frame pacing remains stable even at the higher resolutions. For users prioritizing consistency, Medium at 4K offers 60 FPS average with a 51 FPS minimum, which is a safer choice than High's 52 FPS average with no reported minimum.

The Low preset is only recommended for users targeting maximum frame rates: 245 FPS at 1080p, 154 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. While these numbers are impressive, the visual quality reduction typically outweighs the benefit unless the user has a very high refresh rate display or requires absolute minimum input latency.

The Ultra preset is the least favorable option in this dataset. At 1080p it produces 112 FPS, which is 44 FPS lower than High. At 1440p, Ultra drops to 71 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 37 FPS — below the threshold typically considered smooth. Given that High outperforms Ultra by a significant margin at every resolution, the Ultra preset appears to introduce rendering features that disproportionately tax the Intel Arc B570 without proportional visual benefit in this title.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 reveals a pattern consistent with a GPU-bound workload at higher resolutions, but with CPU headroom evident at 1080p. At High settings, the progression is 156 FPS at 1080p, 99 FPS at 1440p, and 52 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 57 FPS (a 36.5% reduction), while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 47 FPS (a 47.5% reduction). This accelerating decline as resolution increases indicates that the GPU becomes progressively more limiting at higher pixel counts.

At Low settings, the same progression shows 245 FPS at 1080p, 154 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 91 FPS (37.1%), and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 73 FPS (47.4%). The similar percentage drops between High and Low settings suggest that the scaling behavior is consistent regardless of preset, which points to a resolution-driven bottleneck rather than a settings-driven one.

The Medium preset, which is the only configuration with min and max FPS data, shows 182 FPS average at 1080p with a 155 FPS minimum and 209 FPS maximum. At 1440p, the average is 115 FPS with a 98 FPS minimum and 132 FPS maximum. At 4K, the average is 60 FPS with a 51 FPS minimum and 69 FPS maximum. The spread between minimum and maximum FPS narrows as resolution increases: 54 FPS at 1080p, 34 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. This narrowing suggests that at lower resolutions, CPU-side frame generation creates more variance, while at 4K the GPU is the consistent bottleneck.

The data indicates that at 1080p, the system is not fully GPU-bound — the CPU's strong single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 1280, passmark_single_thread score of 4654) allows frame rates to exceed what the GPU alone might sustain, but the diminishing returns at higher resolutions confirm the GPU's 10 GB memory and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth become the limiting factors as pixel count increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are as follows: Low settings deliver 245 FPS, Medium delivers 182 FPS (with a minimum of 155 FPS and maximum of 209 FPS), High delivers 156 FPS, and Ultra delivers 112 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 133 FPS, representing a 54.3% reduction from the Low preset's peak performance.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 154 FPS, Medium at 115 FPS (minimum 98 FPS, maximum 132 FPS), High at 99 FPS, and Ultra at 71 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap narrows to 83 FPS, a 53.9% reduction — nearly identical to the 1080p scaling pattern, which reinforces that the GPU's relative performance across presets is consistent.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to: Low at 81 FPS, Medium at 60 FPS (minimum 51 FPS, maximum 69 FPS), High at 52 FPS, and Ultra at 37 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap is now 44 FPS, a 54.3% reduction. The consistency of this reduction percentage across all three resolutions — 54.3%, 53.9%, and 54.3% — suggests that the Ultra preset imposes a fixed additional rendering cost relative to Low, which is characteristic of settings like ambient occlusion or shadow quality that scale linearly with resolution.

The Medium preset's min-max data provides additional insight. At 1080p, the 155-209 FPS range indicates frame times vary by roughly 35%, which is typical for a roguelike with procedurally generated environments that can produce variable geometry complexity. At 1440p, the 98-132 FPS range narrows to 34 FPS spread. At 4K, the 51-69 FPS range narrows further to 18 FPS spread, confirming that at 4K the GPU is saturated and frame time variance is minimized.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570's specifications directly inform its measured performance in Barony. The GPU features 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, yielding 380.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Its base and boost clocks are both 2500 MHz, with memory clocked at 2375 MHz (19 Gbps effective). The GPU contains 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units, with 18 ray tracing cores. Its FP32 compute throughput is 11.52 TFLOPS.

In synthetic benchmarks, the Arc B570 achieves a 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12 score of 2649, a geekbench_opencl score of 83514, and a geekbench_vulkan score of 96844. Its passmark_g3d score is 14195, and its passmark_gpu_compute score is 7281. The GPU's percentile standing against all GPUs is 65th, placing it in the mid-range tier.

The measured FPS data suggests that Barony is not particularly demanding on GPU compute, as even at 4K Low the GPU sustains 81 FPS. However, the Ultra preset at 4K drops to 37 FPS, indicating that certain Ultra-specific effects heavily tax the GPU's fill rate or memory bandwidth. The 10 GB VRAM capacity is likely sufficient for this title at all tested resolutions, given that the game is from 2015 and does not require large texture pools.

The GPU's 150 W TDP and 450 W suggested PSU rating are consistent with its mid-range positioning. The PCIe 4.0 x8 bus interface could theoretically limit performance in memory-bandwidth-heavy scenarios, but the measured data does not show anomalous scaling that would indicate bus saturation.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge codename) built on TSMC's 4 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The processor includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a cinebench_r23_multicore score of 20485 and a cinebench_r23_singlecore score of 2211. Its geekbench_multicore score is 17906, geekbench_singlecore is 3023, and passmark_multithread is 37161. The 3dmark scores reveal strong multi-threaded scaling: 9824 at 16 threads, 8184 at 8 threads, 4869 at 4 threads, 2525 at 2 threads, and 1280 at single thread. This scaling pattern indicates efficient thread utilization up to 8 cores, with diminishing returns beyond that.

In Barony, the CPU's role appears most significant at 1080p, where the frame rates exceed 200 FPS at Low settings. The 245 FPS at 1080p Low suggests the CPU can feed the GPU faster than the GPU can render at higher resolutions. However, the fact that 1080p Ultra drops to 112 FPS while 1440p High maintains 99 FPS indicates that the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck as pixel count and settings increase.

The CPU's 86th percentile ranking against all CPUs confirms it is a high-end processor, and its 0.1% to 0.4% advantage over its nearest rivals in average benchmark scores reflects a tightly competitive field. However, the combo's 2344 rank out of 2935 in Barony suggests that this game does not fully utilize the CPU's capabilities, or that the GPU's mid-range positioning limits the overall combination.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X + Intel Arc B570 combination ranks 2344 out of 2935 tested combos in Barony, placing it at approximately the 20th percentile of tested systems. This ranking is notably lower than what the individual component percentiles would suggest — the CPU at the 86th percentile and GPU at the 65th percentile would typically imply a combo ranking in the 70th-80th percentile range if components contributed independently.

The discrepancy between component percentiles and in-game ranking indicates that Barony's performance characteristics favor different hardware configurations. The game's roguelike genre, originating from a 2015 release, may not benefit from the Ryzen 7 9700X's advanced Zen 5 architecture to the same degree as newer, more CPU-intensive titles. The measured FPS data supports this: even at 1080p Low, the system achieves 245 FPS, which is high but not exceptional for a game of this era.

The GPU's 65th percentile standing is more aligned with the combo's overall ranking. The Arc B570's nearest rival, the Intel Arc A750, has a nearly identical average benchmark score (20582 versus 20556, a 0.1% difference), yet the B570's 10 GB memory and 380 GB/s bandwidth should theoretically handle Barony's requirements with ease.

The combo's ranking suggests that the system is not poorly balanced per se, but rather that other tested combinations — likely those with higher-end GPUs paired with mid-range CPUs — achieve better Barony-specific performance. The 4K Ultra result of 37 FPS is the weakest data point, indicating that the GPU is the limiting factor at the highest settings, while the 1080p Low result of 245 FPS demonstrates that the CPU can push well beyond typical display refresh rates when the GPU is not stressed.

For users considering this combination for Barony specifically, the data shows that the system is most effective at 1080p and 1440p with High settings, where it delivers 156 FPS and 99 FPS respectively. The 4K experience is limited to Low or Medium settings for playable frame rates, and Ultra should be avoided at all resolutions due to the significant performance penalty.