Barony

The Intel Core i5-11400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 delivers a fascinating performance profile in Barony, a roguelike that appears far more demanding than its genre label suggests. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet the data also exposes surprising CPU headroom at 1080p. This combination ranks 546th out of 1702 tested combos, placing it in the upper third of all configurations, which is a solid position for a pairing of this generation. The following analysis breaks down exactly how this hardware behaves across the measured spectrum, from the punishing 4K Ultra preset down to the surprisingly swift 1080p Low setting.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. At High settings, average FPS falls from 285.6 at 1080p to 179.7 at 1440p, then plummets to 96.6 at 4K. That is a reduction of roughly 66% from 1080p to 4K, which is a classic symptom of GPU limitation—the RTX 3080 is working progressively harder as pixel count increases. The scaling is not perfectly linear, though. The jump from 1440p to 4K costs about 46% of the performance, while the jump from 1080p to 1440p costs about 37%, indicating that memory bandwidth or fill rate constraints become more pronounced at the highest resolution.

The Low preset data reinforces this interpretation. At 4K Low, the system hits 148.9 FPS, which is still very playable, but it is only 33% of the 447.4 FPS achieved at 1080p Low. This massive spread—nearly 300 FPS between the lowest and highest resolutions—suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions. If the i5-11400F were choking the pipeline, we would expect to see a plateau at 1080p, but instead the data shows continued scaling all the way up to 447 FPS. The RTX 3080's 10 GB of GDDR6X memory and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are being fully utilized as resolution climbs, and the 4K Ultra result of 66.1 FPS confirms that this is a GPU-bound scenario at the extremes.

Settings Recommendations

The measured settings presets reveal a clear performance hierarchy, but the optimal choice depends on the display resolution. At 1080p, the Ultra preset delivers 207.3 FPS, which is more than enough for any high-refresh-rate monitor. The step down to High only gains 78 FPS (285.6), but that comes at the cost of visual fidelity. For 1440p, High is the sweet spot: 179.7 FPS is smooth and leaves headroom for demanding scenes, while Ultra drops to 132.2 FPS, which is still playable but begins to approach the threshold where frame pacing could become noticeable in a fast-paced roguelike. At 4K, the choice becomes more critical. Ultra here is a slideshow at 66.1 FPS, barely acceptable for turn-based play but risky for real-time combat. High at 96.6 FPS is the recommendation, as it offers a 46% improvement over Ultra while maintaining high visual quality.

The Medium preset is the dark horse. At 1080p it yields 332.8 FPS, at 1440p it hits 209 FPS, and at 4K it manages 108.9 FPS. This preset consistently outperforms High by a modest margin (roughly 16-17% across resolutions) while likely sacrificing some shadow or texture quality. For players who prioritize frame rate over absolute fidelity, Medium provides the best balance, especially at 4K where it edges out High by 12.3 FPS. The Low preset is only recommended for competitive play at 1080p, where 447.4 FPS could theoretically reduce input latency, but the visual downgrade is substantial.

GPU Role

The RTX 3080 is the undisputed performance driver in this configuration. Its 8704 shading units and 272 texture mapping units provide immense raw compute, and the 10 GB of GDDR6X memory running at 19 Gbps effective through a 320-bit bus delivers 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory subsystem is crucial for Barony's 4K performance, where the data shows a 46% drop from High to Ultra at 3840x2160 (96.6 to 66.1 FPS). The Ultra preset likely pushes texture resolution and draw distances that saturate the 10 GB frame buffer, forcing the GPU to manage memory more conservatively and reducing throughput.

The clock behavior is also telling. With a base clock of 1440 MHz and a boost of 1710 MHz, the GA102 chip has significant dynamic headroom. The measured frame rates suggest that the GPU is boosting aggressively at lower resolutions (447 FPS at 1080p Low) but may be power or thermal limited at 4K Ultra, where the 320 W TDP becomes a constraint. The pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s are the theoretical limits, and the 4K Ultra result of 66.1 FPS indicates that the card is operating near its fill rate ceiling. The RTX 3080's 80th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35787, places it well above the median, and its nearest rivals include the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (0.9% slower) and the RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (1% faster), confirming it remains a high-end part.

FAQ

*Q: Is this combo CPU or GPU limited in Barony?*

A: The data shows a GPU-bound system at all measured resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 447.4 FPS, which is far beyond what most CPUs could feed, and the scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a consistent 66-70% performance drop that is characteristic of GPU saturation.

*Q: Can this system run Barony at 4K 120 FPS?*

A: No. The best 4K result is 148.9 FPS at Low settings, but at High settings it drops to 96.6 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 66.1 FPS. No measured 4K preset reaches 120 FPS with high visual quality.

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 1440p 144 Hz monitor?

A: The High preset at 179.7 FPS is the clear choice, as it exceeds 144 Hz while maintaining good quality. The Ultra preset at 132.2 FPS is slightly below 144 Hz, and Medium at 209 FPS offers more headroom but at lower fidelity.

Q: How does the RTX 3080 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 3080 scores 35787 on average, which is 0.2% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (35860) and 0.9% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (36101). It is 0.4% faster than the AMD Radeon 880M (35646) and 1% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (35435).

Q: Does the 10 GB VRAM cause any bottlenecks at 4K?

A: The data suggests a capacity issue at 4K Ultra, where FPS drops to 66.1, a 46% reduction from High. This indicates that the Ultra preset exceeds comfortable memory usage, while High at 96.6 FPS suggests the 10 GB is sufficient for that preset.

Q: What is the CPU's synthetic performance relative to its rivals?

A: The i5-11400F has an average benchmark score of 17181, which is statistically tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (17189, 0% delta) and the Intel Core i5-1240U (17141, 0.2% delta). It is 0.2% faster than the Intel Core i7-1260P (17212) and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (17215).

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost of 4.40 GHz. Its Rocket Lake architecture on a 14 nm process provides a 12 MB shared L3 cache, which is modest by modern standards but adequate for a roguelike. The CPU's percentile rank of 75th among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 17181, places it in the upper quartile, but its synthetic scores tell a nuanced story. In Cinebench R23, it scores 14372 multi-core and 2029 single-core, indicating strong multi-threaded capability but only average single-thread performance for its generation.

In Barony, the CPU's role is mostly to feed the GPU, and the data shows it does this effectively. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 447.4 FPS, which is a clear indication that the i5-11400F can drive extremely high frame rates without becoming a bottleneck. The 3DMark scores reinforce this: 1691 in 2-thread, 3171 in 4-thread, and 5652 in max-thread tests show that the processor scales well with thread count, which is beneficial for a game that may offload some logic to background threads. However, the fact that 4K Ultra drops to 66.1 FPS while 1080p Low hits 447.4 FPS suggests that the CPU is never the limiting factor—the GPU is always the constraining component. The CPU's 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is sufficient for this workload, and its PCIe Gen 4 support with 20 lanes ensures the RTX 3080 can communicate at full speed.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces exceptional results across all presets. Low settings yield 447.4 FPS, Medium reaches 332.8 FPS, High hits 285.6 FPS, and Ultra still manages 207.3 FPS. These figures are all above 200 FPS, meaning this resolution is entirely GPU-limited and the CPU has ample headroom. The spread from Low to Ultra is 240.1 FPS, which is a 54% reduction, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes significant graphical overhead.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance drops are consistent but still high. Low delivers 285.1 FPS, Medium hits 209 FPS, High reaches 179.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to 132.2 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 26.7% drop, while High to Ultra is a 26.4% drop, showing a balanced scaling curve. At this resolution, the RTX 3080 is still comfortably above 120 FPS for most presets, making it an ideal pairing for 1440p high-refresh displays.

At 3840x2160, the picture changes dramatically. Low settings produce 148.9 FPS, Medium drops to 108.9 FPS, High falls to 96.6 FPS, and Ultra plummets to 66.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is now 82.8 FPS, a 56% reduction, and the Ultra preset is the only measured configuration that fails to reach 100 FPS. This resolution is where the RTX 3080's limitations become apparent, particularly at Ultra, where the 10 GB VRAM and 320 W TDP are pushed to their limits.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-11400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination ranks 546th out of 1702 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the 68th percentile of all configurations. This is a strong showing for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU, but it reveals that the CPU is holding the combo back from top-tier status. The GPU is the star performer, ranking in the 80th percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU sits in the 75th percentile. This 5-point gap suggests that a faster processor could extract more performance from the RTX 3080, particularly at 1080p where the CPU has more influence over maximum frame rates.

The rank of 546 out of 1702 means that roughly 32% of tested combos outperform this setup, which is expected given that the i5-11400F is a mid-range part from 2021. The combo's measured FPS at 1440p High (179.7) and 4K High (96.6) are excellent figures, but the CPU's synthetic benchmark scores—particularly its single-thread performance of 2029 in Cinebench R23—indicate that newer processors could push the RTX 3080 further. The deltaPct values against the CPU's nearest rivals are all within 0.2%, meaning the i5-11400F is effectively tied with the Ryzen 7 5700U and Intel Core i5-1240U, but all of these are lower-tier mobile or low-power parts. For a desktop roguelike, this combo delivers a smooth experience at any resolution, but the 546th rank underscores that it is a balanced mid-high tier setup, not a top-tier flagship pairing.