Barony

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT delivers a highly playable experience in Barony, with performance scaling that clearly identifies the GPU as the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The measured data shows a steep decline in frame rates as resolution increases, but the combination remains competitive, ranking in the 1285th position out of 1702 tested combos. This analysis breaks down the resolution scaling, component roles, and optimal settings based strictly on the measured FPS data.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and consistent across all settings presets, indicating that the rendering load scales heavily with pixel count. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 284.3 at 1920x1080 to 179.2 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 105.1 FPS, and then further to 94.1 at 3840x2160. This represents a 67% drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings. The pattern holds for High settings, where the average FPS drops from 182.3 at 1080p to 113.4 at 1440p, and finally to 62.1 at 4K — a 66% reduction. The scaling is slightly less severe at Ultra, with 128.2 FPS at 1080p falling to 79.8 at 1440p and 44.8 at 4K, a 65% reduction.

The magnitude of these drops, roughly two-thirds from 1080p to 4K regardless of preset, points directly to the GPU as the bottleneck. A CPU-limited scenario would show much flatter scaling across resolutions, as the processor's workload does not increase with pixel count. Here, the consistent percentage decline across all four presets suggests that the Radeon RX 5700 XT's rendering throughput is the limiting factor. The data indicates that at 1080p, the system has ample headroom — even Ultra settings exceed 120 FPS — but the GPU's capabilities are progressively saturated as resolution climbs. The 4K Ultra result of 44.8 FPS is the only sub-60 FPS measurement in the entire set, reinforcing that this resolution and preset combination pushes the hardware beyond its comfortable operating range.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 brings six cores and twelve threads to the system, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. This processor belongs to the Alder Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process, and its benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance. In Cinebench R23, it scores 15935 multi-core and 2249 single-core, while its PassMark multithread score is 18747 and single-thread is 3456. These figures place the CPU in the 77th percentile among all tested processors, with an average benchmark score of 19850.

In Barony, a roguelike genre title, the CPU's role is likely to be significant in managing game logic, procedural generation, and entity updates, but the measured FPS data shows it is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The CPU's nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-9700 with an average score of 19831 (0.1% higher) and the Intel Core i7-8700 at 19894 (−0.2%), indicating the i5-12400 sits in a tightly competitive band. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 284.3 FPS, which is far beyond what most displays can show, suggesting the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU well above typical refresh rates. The 12 threads provide ample parallel processing for the game's compute needs, and the high single-thread score of 2249 in Cinebench R23 suggests responsive per-thread performance, which is often critical for game logic. The fact that 4K performance scales down proportionally with resolution, rather than plateauing, confirms the CPU is not the primary constraint in this pairing.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is built on the Navi 10 chip using RDNA 1.0 architecture on a 7 nm process, featuring 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. Its clocks run at 1605 MHz base, 1755 MHz game, and 1905 MHz boost, with a pixel rate of 121.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s. The GPU's PassMark G3D score is 16277, placing it in the 68th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 24731. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile at 24763 (−0.1%) and the Intel Arc A350M at 24647 (0.3%), showing the RX 5700 XT is closely matched with these parts in synthetic benchmarks.

The GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 256-bit memory bus are sufficient for the resolutions tested, but the frame rate data shows its compute limits are reached at 4K. At Ultra settings, the GPU delivers 128.2 FPS at 1080p, 79.8 at 1440p, and 44.8 at 4K — a clear linear decline that tracks with pixel count. The memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s appears adequate, as there is no anomalous drop at higher resolutions that would indicate VRAM swapping or bandwidth starvation. The boost clock of 1905 MHz provides the peak performance headroom, but the data suggests that the raw shader throughput of 9.754 TFLOPS is the binding constraint at 4K Ultra. The transition from High to Ultra at 4K is particularly telling: 62.1 FPS to 44.8 FPS, a 28% performance hit, showing that the Ultra preset's additional effects are disproportionately expensive at this resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT ranks 1285th out of 1702 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. This rank reflects the GPU's age and position in the performance hierarchy; the CPU is comparatively strong, sitting in the 77th percentile, while the GPU is in the 68th percentile. The rank of 1285 suggests that many other combos achieve higher average FPS in this game, likely due to more recent GPU architectures with better raw throughput.

However, the measured data shows this combo is far from inadequate. At 1080p Medium, it delivers 209.5 FPS, which is excellent for competitive play. The rank is skewed by the inclusion of many high-end combos, but within the context of the 1702 total, this pairing provides a solid baseline. The CPU's nearest rivals are all within 0.4% of its average score, indicating the processor is not holding back the system, while the GPU's nearest rivals are similarly clustered, with the RTX A5000 Mobile just 0.1% ahead. This suggests that swapping either component to a direct rival would yield negligible performance changes. The combo's rank is therefore primarily determined by the GPU's absolute performance level, which is why 4K Ultra falls below 60 FPS while 1440p High remains playable.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal settings largely depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For 1920x1080, every preset is playable, with Low at 284.3 FPS, Medium at 209.5 FPS, High at 182.3 FPS, and Ultra at 128.2 FPS. For high-refresh-rate displays, Low or Medium settings will easily saturate a 144 Hz monitor, while Ultra remains viable for 120 Hz panels. The data shows that High settings at 1080p offer a reasonable balance, delivering 182.3 FPS while likely providing better visual fidelity than Medium.

At 2560x1440, the situation tightens. Ultra drops to 79.8 FPS, which is still playable but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes. High settings at 113.4 FPS provide a smoother experience, while Medium at 132 FPS is the sweet spot for 144 Hz monitors. Low at 179.2 FPS is available for maximum frame rates. The data suggests that High is the recommended preset for 1440p, as it maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS while preserving visual quality. For 3840x2160, only Low and Medium are viable, with 94.1 and 70.5 FPS respectively. High drops to 62.1 FPS, which is borderline, and Ultra falls to 44.8 FPS, which is below the standard playability threshold. The recommendation for 4K is Medium settings, which provides 70.5 FPS and keeps the experience smooth, whereas High risks frame drops in intense moments. Ultra should be avoided at 4K given the sub-45 FPS result. Overall, the data indicates that this combo is best utilized at 1080p or 1440p, where it can leverage its full performance without compromising frame rates.