Barony

Barony is a roguelike where frame pacing and fluidity directly affect how precisely you can react to traps, enemies, and environmental hazards. The measured data for the Intel Core i5-12400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 shows a combination that is heavily front-loaded toward high refresh rates at mainstream resolutions, but one that requires careful settings management to keep 4K playable. This pairing delivers a strong 1080p experience with headroom for high-refresh monitors, yet the gap between Low and Ultra settings at 4K reveals a GPU that is capable but not overpowered for the most demanding presets.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, indicating that the rendering load scales predictably with pixel count. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 445.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 280.7 FPS at 2560x1440 and then to 148.1 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 47% drop from 1440p to 4K. This scaling pattern suggests the GPU is the primary limiter at higher resolutions, as the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at lower pixel counts.

At High settings, the same trend holds: 281.4 FPS at 1080p, 181 FPS at 1440p, and 94.3 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 36%, while the drop to 4K is 48% relative to 1440p. Ultra settings show the most dramatic degradation, going from 200.3 FPS at 1080p to 129.7 FPS at 1440p and down to 64.5 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the only measured configuration that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, making it the least viable option for smooth gameplay.

The data indicates that 1440p is the sweet spot for this combo, offering more than double the 4K frame rate at every preset. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is less punishing than the jump to 4K, which confirms that the RX 9070’s 16 GB memory buffer and 256-bit bus are sufficient for 1440p but are taxed heavily by the 4K pixel workload.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of tested hardware combinations for Barony, this specific pairing ranks 550 out of 1702 combos. That places it in the upper third of all tested systems, which is a solid position for a mid-range CPU paired with a current-generation GPU. The combo rank reflects the balance between the i5-12400F’s six-core processing power and the RX 9070’s rasterization throughput, though it is not among the top-tier configurations that dominate the leaderboard.

The CPU itself sits at the 77th percentile among all tested processors, with an average benchmark score of 19221. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-8700K with an average score of 19210 and a delta of 0.1%, the Intel Core i5-1335U at 19167 with a 0.3% delta, and the AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS at 19364 with a -0.7% delta. These sub-1% differences indicate that the i5-12400F is in a tightly contested performance band where single-thread and multi-thread workloads yield nearly identical results.

For the GPU, the RX 9070 achieves the 79th percentile among all graphics cards, with an average benchmark score of 34780. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA A2 at 34866 (delta -0.2%), the NVIDIA Quadro GV100 at 34677 (delta 0.3%), the AMD Radeon HD 7970 at 34541 (delta 0.7%), and the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 at 34511 (delta 0.8%). These delta values are all within 1% of the RX 9070’s score, which is unusual for a modern GPU and suggests that the benchmark suite captures a narrow performance envelope.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for settings selection based on resolution. At 1080p, every preset delivers playable frame rates, but Low settings push the average to 445.4 FPS, which is excessive for most monitors. Medium at 331 FPS and High at 281.4 FPS both offer far more than enough headroom for 144Hz or 240Hz displays, while Ultra at 200.3 FPS still clears 200 FPS comfortably. For 1080p, High is the recommended preset because it balances visual fidelity with a frame rate that exceeds any practical refresh rate.

At 1440p, the same logic applies but with tighter margins. Low yields 280.7 FPS, Medium 210.2 FPS, and High 181 FPS, all of which are excellent for high-refresh gaming. Ultra drops to 129.7 FPS, which is still smooth but leaves less room for frame time spikes. High remains the sweet spot here, as it delivers 181 FPS while preserving most visual quality improvements over Medium.

At 4K, the decision becomes more critical. Low is the only preset that exceeds 120 FPS at 148.1 FPS, while Medium drops to 107.9 FPS and High to 94.3 FPS. Ultra at 64.5 FPS is borderline for a roguelike where precise timing matters, and it does not provide a consistently smooth experience. For 4K, Medium is the recommended setting, as it keeps the average above 100 FPS while offering better visual detail than Low. High is acceptable if you prefer image quality over frame rate, but Medium is the safer choice for maintaining responsiveness.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are uniformly high. Low averages 445.4 FPS, Medium averages 331 FPS, High averages 281.4 FPS, and Ultra averages 200.3 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 26% reduction, from Medium to High is a 15% reduction, and from High to Ultra is a 29% reduction. This indicates that Ultra has a disproportionately large performance cost relative to High.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 280.7 FPS, Medium averages 210.2 FPS, High averages 181 FPS, and Ultra averages 129.7 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 25%, from Medium to High is 14%, and from High to Ultra is 28%. The pattern mirrors 1080p, with Ultra again being the most expensive settings tier.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 148.1 FPS, Medium averages 107.9 FPS, High averages 94.3 FPS, and Ultra averages 64.5 FPS. The relative reductions are steeper: Low to Medium is 27%, Medium to High is 13%, and High to Ultra is 32%. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that approaches the 60 FPS line, making it a poor choice for consistent gameplay.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with 3584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 128 raster operation units. It operates with a base clock of 1330 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with a game clock of 2070 MHz. The memory subsystem consists of 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory capacity is substantial for a roguelike, allowing the GPU to cache large texture sets without stuttering.

The GPU’s pixel rate is 322.6 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 564.5 GTexel/s, which explains why the card handles 1080p and 1440p so effortlessly. The FP32 throughput of 36.13 TFLOPS is more than sufficient for the rendering demands of Barony, which is not a graphically intensive title by modern standards. The 56 ray tracing cores are present but unlikely to be utilized in this game, as roguelikes typically rely on rasterization techniques.

The RX 9070’s benchmark scores reinforce its position: a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290, Geekbench OpenCL score of 133741, and Vulkan score of 165532. The Passmark G3D score of 25381 and compute score of 14737 indicate a card that is strong in both rasterization and general compute tasks. However, the nearest rival data shows that it is not an outlier in performance, with delta values under 1% against several older or workstation-oriented cards.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F provides 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It is built on the Alder Lake architecture using a 10 nm process, with an 18 MB shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core. This configuration is adequate for Barony, which is not heavily multithreaded but still benefits from the CPU’s single-thread performance.

In single-threaded workloads, the i5-12400F scores 909 in 3DMark, 2332 in Cinebench R23, and 2221 in Geekbench. These scores place it in a competitive band with the Intel Core i7-8700K, which has a nearly identical average benchmark score. The multi-threaded results are also strong: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 16518, while 3DMark max threads scores 5912. These numbers confirm that the CPU is not a bottleneck at any resolution tested, as the frame rates scale consistently with GPU load.

The CPU’s 65 W TDP and 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes ensure that it can feed the RX 9070 without power or bandwidth limitations. The lack of integrated graphics is irrelevant for this discrete GPU configuration. The 77th percentile ranking among all CPUs, combined with the tight delta margins against its nearest rivals, indicates that the i5-12400F delivers consistent, predictable performance that pairs well with the RX 9070’s capabilities.