Barony

Resolution Scaling

Barony is an exceptionally light load for this pairing, and the resolution scaling data makes that clear immediately. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER combo delivers very high frame rates even at 4K, which is unusual for most modern titles. The measured average frame rate at 3840x2160 on Ultra settings is 48 FPS, which is the only resolution/settings combination that dips below the 60 FPS threshold. This indicates that while the game does scale with resolution, the ceiling is high enough that the GPU only begins to show meaningful strain at the most demanding preset.

The pattern across resolutions shows a classic GPU-bound scaling curve at the higher settings. Moving from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra, the average frame rate drops from 145 FPS to 91 FPS, a reduction of approximately 37%. Continuing to 4K Ultra, the frame rate falls further to 48 FPS, another 47% drop from 1440p. This steep decline at Ultra settings confirms that the RTX 2070 SUPER's compute and memory throughput are the limiting factors when the visual load is maximized. The GPU's 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 9.062 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are being pushed hard at 4K Ultra.

At lower settings, the scaling story changes dramatically. The Low preset at 1080p yields an average of 316 FPS, while at 1440p it drops to 199 FPS, and at 4K it still maintains a robust 104 FPS. The relative drops here are smaller in percentage terms compared to Ultra, which suggests that at Low settings the system is beginning to hit other bottlenecks, likely related to the CPU or game engine's frame pacing. The fact that 4K Low (104 FPS) is more than double the frame rate of 4K Ultra (48 FPS) shows how much headroom exists in the game's rendering pipeline when shader complexity and texture filtering are reduced.

The Medium preset provides an interesting midpoint in the scaling analysis. At 1080p Medium, the average is 235 FPS with a minimum of 200 FPS and maximum of 270 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 148 FPS with a range of 126 to 171 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average is 78 FPS with a minimum of 66 FPS and maximum of 89 FPS. The consistency of these ranges, particularly the minimums staying well above 60 FPS at all resolutions, indicates that the system maintains smooth frame delivery even when the GPU is under heavier load.

Settings Recommendations

For players seeking the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, the Medium preset at 1440p is the standout choice from the measured data. It delivers an average of 148 FPS with a minimum of 126 FPS, ensuring that even the most chaotic roguelike encounters — where Barony's procedural generation can spawn dense enemy clusters — remain fluid. The 126 FPS minimum is comfortably above any common high-refresh-rate target, making this combination ideal for players with 144Hz displays.

At 4K, the Medium preset is also the most sensible recommendation. The 78 FPS average with a 66 FPS minimum keeps gameplay smooth on standard 60Hz displays, and the jump from 48 FPS at Ultra to 78 FPS at Medium represents a 63% performance gain. The visual difference between Medium and Ultra in a game like Barony, which features a stylized roguelike aesthetic rather than photorealistic graphics, is likely to be less noticeable than the frame rate improvement. The 66 FPS minimum at 4K Medium is the only measured minimum that approaches the 60 FPS threshold, so players with variable refresh rate monitors will have ample headroom.

The High preset offers a compelling alternative for those who prioritize image quality over raw frame rates. At 1440p High, the average of 127 FPS still provides excellent performance, and at 1080p High the 202 FPS average is more than sufficient for competitive play. However, at 4K High the average drops to 67 FPS, which is playable but leaves little margin for frame time spikes. Given the data, Medium at 4K is the safer recommendation than High, as the 78 FPS average provides a more comfortable buffer.

The Ultra preset is not recommended for any resolution in this title. Even at 1080p, the 145 FPS average, while high in absolute terms, represents a 38% reduction compared to Medium at the same resolution. The performance cost of Ultra settings does not justify the marginal visual improvements, especially when the RTX 2070 SUPER's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory could be a limiting factor at higher resolutions with Ultra textures. For the best experience, Medium at 1440p or 4K offers the optimal combination of smoothness and visual quality.

How This Combo Ranks

Among all tested combinations in Barony, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 2153rd out of 3717 combos. This places it in the lower half of all tested configurations, which is surprising given the absolute frame rates measured. The rank reflects the fact that many other combos, presumably featuring newer or more powerful GPUs, achieve even higher frame rates in this undemanding title. The 42nd percentile ranking indicates that while this combo is far from the bottom, there is substantial headroom above it.

The CPU itself is a strong performer in general benchmarks, with an average benchmark score of 51947 and a percentile rank of 91 against all CPUs. Its nearest rivals in the synthetic benchmark suite include the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX (delta -0.2%), AMD EPYC 8124P (delta -0.3%), Intel Core i9-13900F (delta 0.4%), and Intel Core i7-14700 (delta -0.7%). These deltas are all within 1% of the 5950X's score, indicating that the CPU is competitive with modern high-end parts despite being from an older generation.

The GPU's ranking is more modest, sitting at the 65th percentile against all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 20282. Its nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark suite are the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (delta -1%), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (delta -1.2%), Intel Arc B570 (delta -1.3%), and Intel Arc A750 (delta -1.5%). The tight clustering of these scores, all within 1.5% of the RTX 2070 SUPER, suggests that the GPU is evenly matched with these competitors in synthetic tests. However, the combo rank in Barony suggests that the game is not particularly demanding on the GPU, allowing even mid-range parts to achieve high frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the measured data shows a clear progression across settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 316 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset. Medium drops to an average of 235 FPS with a minimum of 200 FPS and maximum of 270 FPS. High follows at 202 FPS average, and Ultra trails at 145 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 171 FPS, demonstrating that the game's settings have a substantial impact on performance even at the lowest resolution.

Moving to 1440p, the frame rates remain high but show the expected reduction. Low averages 199 FPS, Medium averages 148 FPS with a range of 126 to 171 FPS, High averages 127 FPS, and Ultra averages 91 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at each setting is roughly consistent, ranging from a 35% reduction at Low to a 37% reduction at Ultra. This consistency indicates that the GPU is the primary scaling factor at these resolutions.

At 4K, the performance hierarchy remains the same but the margins tighten. Low averages 104 FPS, Medium averages 78 FPS with a range of 66 to 89 FPS, High averages 67 FPS, and Ultra averages 48 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only measured configuration that falls below 60 FPS, and the 48 FPS average suggests that the RTX 2070 SUPER is fully saturated at this resolution and settings level. The Medium preset at 4K, with its 66 FPS minimum, is the lowest recommended configuration for a smooth experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, based on the TU104 chip and Turing architecture, is the primary determinant of performance at higher resolutions and settings in Barony. The GPU's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for this game's texture requirements at 1080p and 1440p but may become a constraint at 4K Ultra. The measured frame rate drop from 91 FPS at 1440p Ultra to 48 FPS at 4K Ultra suggests that the GPU's raw compute throughput, rated at 9.062 TFLOPS FP32, is the limiting factor rather than memory capacity.

The GPU's boost clock of 1770 MHz and base clock of 1605 MHz are modest by modern standards, and the 215 W TDP reflects the power envelope of the 12 nm process node. The 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs provide a balanced configuration that handles Barony's pixel and texture work efficiently. The 40 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are present but unlikely to be utilized in this traditional roguelike, which does not feature ray tracing or DLSS support based on the available data.

The GPU's benchmark scores indicate solid overall performance, with a Passmark G3D score of 18169 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 90637. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1651 suggests that the GPU handles modern API workloads adequately. However, the percentile rank of 65 against all GPUs places it in the mid-range of the current landscape, and its nearest rivals in the benchmark suite are all within 1.5% of its average score, indicating that the RTX 2070 SUPER is well-matched against these contemporaries.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, with its 16 cores and 32 threads, is vastly overprovisioned for Barony's computational demands. The game's roguelike nature, which relies on procedural generation and turn-based or real-time tile-based logic, typically does not scale well beyond a few threads. The CPU's base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 4.90 GHz provide strong single-threaded performance, as evidenced by the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1614 and Geekbench single-core score of 2083.

The CPU's massive multi-threaded capabilities, shown by the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 26017 and Passmark multithread score of 45424, are largely irrelevant for this game. The evidence for this lies in the resolution scaling data: at 1080p Low, the system achieves 316 FPS, which is likely near the game engine's frame rate ceiling. The fact that 1440p Low still achieves 199 FPS and 4K Low achieves 104 FPS indicates that the CPU is not a bottleneck at these settings, as the frame rate scales consistently with GPU load.

The 5950X's 64 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth provide ample memory bandwidth for the game's data access patterns. The CPU's 91st percentile ranking against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 51947, places it among the top-tier processors. Its nearest rivals in the benchmark suite — the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX, AMD EPYC 8124P, Intel Core i9-13900F, and Intel Core i7-14700 — all score within 0.7% of the 5950X, confirming that the CPU's performance is still competitive with newer releases despite its 2020 launch date.

In Barony specifically, the CPU's role is to maintain a stable frame delivery floor. The measured minimums at Medium settings — 200 FPS at 1080p, 126 FPS at 1440p, and 66 FPS at 4K — show that the CPU can consistently feed the GPU without frame drops. The 3DMark single-thread score of 944 and 2-thread score of 1856 suggest that the CPU's per-core performance is sufficient to handle the game's simulation and logic threads without becoming a limiting factor. The CPU's performance is effectively a non-issue in this title, allowing the GPU to be the sole determinant of frame rates across the resolution and settings spectrum.