Barony

Barony, a roguelike released in 2015, presents an unusual benchmark scenario for a flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 pairing. The measured frame rates across resolutions and presets reveal a system that is overwhelmingly powerful for this title, with the data indicating that the limiting factor shifts dramatically depending on the settings chosen. The results show a clear hierarchy where lower resolutions and settings push the CPU to its limits, while higher resolutions and presets engage the GPU more substantially, yet still result in exceptionally high performance.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is telling about the workload distribution. At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 422.3 at 1920x1080 to 266.6 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 155.7 FPS, and then further to 139.4 at 3840x2160, a drop of 127.2 FPS from 1440p. This steep decline with each resolution step indicates that the game is becoming increasingly GPU-bound as pixel count rises. The transition from 1080p to 1440p shows a 36.9% reduction in frame rate, while the transition from 1440p to 4K shows a 47.7% reduction, illustrating that the RTX 4090's workload scales with pixel throughput.

The pattern is consistent across all presets. At Low settings, the frame rate falls from 665.4 at 1080p to 417.8 at 1440p, and then to 220.5 at 4K. The 4K result at Low is still higher than the 1080p Ultra result of 305.9 FPS, which demonstrates that the combination of resolution and preset has a compounding effect. The data shows that at 1080p and 1440p with lower presets, the frame rates are so high—exceeding 400 FPS in multiple instances—that the CPU is likely the primary limiter, as the GPU is not being fully saturated. At 4K, particularly with Ultra settings, the GPU becomes the dominant constraint, evidenced by the larger relative performance drops.

The most significant scaling bottleneck appears at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS is 101.6. This is a 66.9% reduction from the 1080p Ultra score of 305.9 FPS. This suggests that while the RTX 4090 is capable of handling the 4K resolution, the Ultra preset introduces effects that are particularly demanding on the GPU's compute and memory resources. The data indicates that for players targeting 4K, the Ultra preset is the only configuration where the GPU's full capabilities are consistently taxed, while at lower resolutions, the system is held back by other factors, likely the game engine's single-threaded nature or draw call overhead.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, with its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus and 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, is clearly not memory-constrained in Barony. The measured frame rates at 4K High (139.4 FPS) and 4K Ultra (101.6 FPS) are high, but the scaling from 1080p suggests that the GPU's raw compute power, rated at 82.58 TFLOPS FP32, is being utilized more heavily at higher resolutions. The GPU's boost clock of 2520 MHz is a key factor in maintaining these high frame rates, as roguelikes often have simple geometry but can be sensitive to fill rate and pixel throughput.

The RTX 4090's performance percentile of 91 versus all GPUs places it at the top tier, and its average benchmark score of 66473 is close to its nearest rivals, with the NVIDIA Tesla T4 being only 0.4% behind. This proximity in synthetic scores, however, does not translate to gaming performance, as the Tesla T4 is a data center part. In Barony, the GPU's role is more pronounced at 4K. The difference between 4K Low (220.5 FPS) and 4K Ultra (101.6 FPS) is 118.9 FPS, a 53.9% reduction, which is a larger percentage drop than the 46.4% reduction seen from 1080p Low (665.4 FPS) to 1080p Ultra (305.9 FPS). This indicates that the Ultra preset at 4K is the most demanding configuration for the GPU.

The RTX 4090's 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores do not appear to be a primary factor in this game, as Barony does not typically utilize ray tracing or DLSS features. The GPU's high pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are more relevant, as the game's 2D sprite-based rendering and procedural generation may rely on texture sampling and rasterization. The data shows that the GPU is not a bottleneck at 1080p or 1440p, as frame rates exceed 300 FPS on most presets, but it becomes the limiting component at 4K, especially with the Ultra preset.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor with a boost clock of 5.70 GHz, and its performance in Barony is largely dictated by its single-thread and multi-thread capabilities. The CPU's benchmark scores are high, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 59712 and a single-core score of 8430. However, the game's frame rates at 1080p Low (665.4 FPS) and 1440p Low (417.8 FPS) are so high that they likely exceed the engine's ability to feed the GPU, indicating a CPU limitation. The data suggests that at these settings, the CPU's single-thread performance, as evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 1292, is the primary constraint.

The 9950X3D's 128 MB of shared L3 cache is a significant asset for a roguelike, which often involves procedural generation and complex game state logic that can benefit from large caches. The CPU's percentile of 96 versus all CPUs and its average benchmark score of 71660, which is 1.8% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and 2.2% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700KF, confirm its top-tier status. However, in Barony, the CPU's multi-threaded performance is less critical than its single-thread speed. The difference between 1080p Low (665.4 FPS) and 1080p High (422.3 FPS) is 243.1 FPS, which is a 36.5% reduction, showing that even at 1080p, the preset affects the CPU workload.

The CPU's base clock of 4.30 GHz and boost of 5.70 GHz provide ample headroom for the game's logic. The data indicates that at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is the limiting factor, as the frame rates do not scale linearly with resolution. For instance, from 1080p Low to 1440p Low, the frame rate drops by 247.6 FPS, but from 1440p Low to 4K Low, it drops by 197.3 FPS, suggesting that the CPU's performance is saturated at the lower resolutions. The 9950X3D's performance in synthetic tests like Passmark's single-thread score of 4737 and Geekbench single-core score of 3401 are high, but the game's engine likely has a hard ceiling on frame rates due to its update loop.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 41st out of 1702 tested combos in Barony. This is a strong ranking, placing it in the top 2.4% of all configurations. The ranking is likely buoyed by the CPU's excellent single-thread performance and the GPU's ability to handle 4K resolutions without becoming a severe bottleneck. However, the rank is not higher, which suggests that other combinations, possibly with CPUs that have even higher single-thread clocks or GPUs with different architectures, might achieve marginally better frame rates in this specific title.

The combo's rank of 41 is notable because it indicates that while this is a top-tier system, there are 40 other combinations that perform better in Barony. Given the data, this could be due to the game's engine being more sensitive to certain CPU features, such as raw clock speed over cache size, or possibly to memory latency. The 9950X3D's 3D V-Cache is not listed in the fact pack, but its standard L3 cache of 128 MB is already substantial. The RTX 4090's rivals, such as the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56, which is 0.9% behind in average benchmark score, are not gaming parts, so the GPU is likely not the reason for the lower rank. The CPU's nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i7-14700KF which is 2.2% behind in average score, might offer better gaming performance due to different architectural strengths, but the data does not specify their individual game scores.

The measured FPS data shows that the combo achieves over 100 FPS at 4K Ultra and over 300 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This level of performance is exceptional for a roguelike, which typically does not demand high-end hardware. The rank of 41 suggests that in a game with such high frame rates, the differences between top combos are minimal, and the ranking may be influenced by small margins in benchmarking methodology. The data indicates that for this combo, the experience is consistently smooth, with no resolution or preset combination dropping below the 100 FPS threshold.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal settings for this combo depend on the target resolution. For 4K displays, the High preset at 139.4 FPS offers a balanced experience, providing a 27.2% higher frame rate than Ultra (101.6 FPS) while likely maintaining most visual fidelity. The Medium preset at 163.1 FPS is also a viable option, offering a 47.5% improvement over Ultra, but the drop to Low at 220.5 FPS is substantial and may not be necessary given the High preset's performance. For players who prioritize smoothness above all else at 4K, the Medium preset provides a significant margin over the 100 FPS baseline.

At 1440p, the High preset at 266.6 FPS is the recommended choice, as it offers a 28.9% improvement over Ultra (189.4 FPS) and is still well above any refresh rate limit. The Medium preset at 315 FPS is even faster, but the visual differences between Medium and High are often negligible in roguelikes, so High is the best compromise. At 1080p, the Ultra preset at 305.9 FPS is the best experience, as it provides the highest visual quality while still maintaining a frame rate that exceeds 300 FPS. The Low preset at 665.4 FPS is excessive and would not be noticeable on most displays.

The data shows that the Ultra preset is the most demanding, and it only provides a marginal visual benefit over High in most games. For this combo, the High preset is the sweet spot across all resolutions, as it delivers frame rates of 139.4 FPS at 4K, 266.6 FPS at 1440p, and 422.3 FPS at 1080p. The Medium preset is a fallback for 4K users who want higher frame rates, but the High preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance. The Low preset is only recommended for competitive play or for users with high-refresh-rate monitors at 4K, where the 220.5 FPS score is the highest achievable at that resolution.