Barony

The Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers extraordinary performance in Barony, a roguelike title that proves far less demanding than its genre peers. The measured data shows this combination ranks 131st out of 3,717 tested combos, placing it in the top tier of configurations for this game. This pairing of a 10-core, 16-thread Alder Lake processor with the flagship Ada Lovelace GPU produces frame rates that exceed the refresh rates of virtually all consumer displays, even at maximum settings and 4K resolution.

The benchmark results reveal a system that is almost entirely GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU's strong single-thread performance ensures that even at 1080p, where the graphics card has less work to do, the processor keeps up without becoming a bottleneck. The data indicates that this is a configuration built for maximum headroom, capable of handling future content updates or more demanding scenarios within the game without breaking a sweat.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates a classic pattern where the GPU becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 663 FPS at 1920x1080 to 219 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of 67%. This steep decline is expected, as the number of pixels being rendered quadruples from 1080p to 4K, placing a proportionally larger load on the RTX 4090's 16,384 shading units and 512 texture mapping units.

Moving from 1440p to 4K at Low settings shows a 48% performance drop, from 418 FPS to 219 FPS. The trend continues across all settings presets. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 423 FPS at 1080p to 267 FPS at 1440p, then to 140 FPS at 4K. This represents a 37% decline from 1080p to 1440p and a 48% decline from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is not perfectly linear, which suggests that at 1080p, the system is partially limited by the CPU's ability to feed the GPU, even with its 3.70 GHz base clock and 4.90 GHz boost clock.

The Ultra preset exhibits the same pattern, with 303 FPS at 1080p, 191 FPS at 1440p, and 100 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops here are 37% and 48% respectively, matching the High preset scaling almost exactly. This consistency indicates that the RTX 4090's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are not causing any unusual bottlenecks at higher resolutions; the performance degradation is purely a function of pixel count.

At Medium settings, which is the only preset with recorded minimum and maximum frame rate data, the 4K results show a minimum of 138 FPS and a maximum of 187 FPS, with an average of 163 FPS. At 1440p, the range expands to 264-358 FPS with an average of 311 FPS, and at 1080p, the range is 419-567 FPS with an average of 493 FPS. The variance between minimum and maximum frames is relatively narrow, indicating stable performance without significant frame pacing issues.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data clearly shows that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions, providing substantial visual quality improvements over Low and Medium without the steep performance cost of Ultra. At 4K, High delivers 140 FPS, which is 40% faster than Ultra's 100 FPS, while still being 16% slower than Medium's 163 FPS. This positions High as the sweet spot for 4K gaming on this hardware.

For players targeting 1440p, the High preset's 267 FPS is more than triple the refresh rate of standard 144Hz monitors, making it an excellent choice. The jump from Medium to High costs 44 FPS at this resolution (311 to 267), while the jump from High to Ultra costs 76 FPS (267 to 191). The diminishing returns from High to Ultra are clear, as the visual differences in a roguelike game like Barony are unlikely to justify a 29% frame rate reduction.

At 1080p, even the demanding Ultra preset achieves 303 FPS, which exceeds the capabilities of all but the most specialized esports displays. The High preset at 423 FPS and Medium at 493 FPS are essentially academic at this resolution, as both far exceed practical display refresh rates. However, the Low preset's 663 FPS demonstrates the absolute ceiling of this configuration, showing what the RTX 4090 can achieve when pixel shading requirements are minimized.

The data suggests that Ultra settings are only advisable for players who prioritize maximum visual fidelity over frame rate headroom, as the 100 FPS at 4K is still playable but represents a significant drop from the smooth 140 FPS of High. For most users, the High preset at any resolution will provide the best combination of visual quality and performance, with the 4K High result of 140 FPS being particularly attractive for high-refresh-rate 4K displays.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant component in this configuration, and its specifications explain the extraordinary frame rates observed. Built on the 5 nm TSMC process with 76,300 million transistors, this GPU features 16,384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. The boost clock of 2520 MHz, combined with the 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate and 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate, provides the raw computational power needed to maintain high frame rates even at 4K resolution.

The GPU's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for a roguelike game like Barony. The measured data confirms that memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor, as the frame rate scaling from 1440p to 4K follows the expected pixel count ratio rather than showing any bandwidth-related stalls. The memory clock speed of 21 Gbps effective ensures that even the most texture-heavy scenes in the game can be streamed without issue.

The RTX 4090's 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores are present but largely irrelevant for this title, as Barony does not appear to utilize these features based on the performance characteristics. The GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power provides ample headroom for the game's rendering requirements, and the benchmark results show that the GPU is the primary performance driver at 4K, where the CPU's role diminishes.

The GPU's performance percentile of 88 versus all other GPUs, combined with its average benchmark score of 60,347, places it in the upper echelon of graphics cards. Its nearest rivals, such as the Intel Arc Pro A60 with a score of 60,326 and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 60,140, are within 0.3% of its average score, indicating that the RTX 4090's dominance in synthetic benchmarks translates well to real-world gaming performance in Barony.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12600KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination ranks 131st out of 3,717 tested configurations in Barony, placing it in the 96th percentile of all tested combos. This is an exceptional ranking that reflects the high-end nature of both components. The CPU's individual percentile of 79 against all CPUs and the GPU's percentile of 88 against all GPUs combine to place this pairing well above the median configuration.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 27,799 places it in close competition with several notable rivals. The Intel Core i9-10900K scores 27,872, just 0.3% higher, while the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D scores 27,896, also 0.3% higher. The AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE scores 27,712, which is 0.3% lower than the i5-12600KF. These near-identical scores indicate that the CPU is competitive with higher-tier processors from both Intel and AMD, despite being a mid-range offering.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 60,347 is similarly competitive, with the Intel Arc Pro A60 matching it exactly at 60,326 (0% difference) and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 slightly behind at 60,140 (0.3% difference). The AMD Radeon Pro W6600M leads the RTX 4090 by 2.5% with a score of 61,896, while the AMD Radeon PRO V710 trails by 2.9% with 58,657. These narrow margins in synthetic benchmarks translate to the measured FPS results, where the RTX 4090 delivers performance that is consistently above 100 FPS even at the most demanding settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate this combo achieves in Barony?

A: The highest recorded average frame rate is 663 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo delivers an average of 100 FPS, which is the lowest average across all tested configurations.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 267 FPS while Ultra achieves 191 FPS, a difference of 76 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any resolution?

A: The data suggests partial CPU limitation at 1080p, where the frame rate scaling from Low to Ultra is less than the GPU's full potential, but the CPU's 4.90 GHz boost clock keeps performance above 300 FPS even at Ultra.

Q: What is this combo's ranking among all tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 131st out of 3,717 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the top 4% of all configurations.

Q: Which settings preset provides the most consistent performance at 4K?

A: Medium settings at 4K show a minimum of 138 FPS and a maximum of 187 FPS, with an average of 163 FPS, representing the most stable performance among the 4K presets with recorded variance data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates are 663 FPS for Low, 493 FPS for Medium, 423 FPS for High, and 303 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset at this resolution has a recorded minimum of 419 FPS and maximum of 567 FPS, showing a range of 148 FPS between the lowest and highest frames. This demonstrates that even at 1080p, the RTX 4090 has sufficient headroom to maintain extremely high frame rates regardless of settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average frame rates are 418 FPS for Low, 311 FPS for Medium, 267 FPS for High, and 191 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 264 FPS and maximum of 358 FPS, with a range of 94 FPS. The performance drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across settings, averaging around 37% reduction, which aligns with the 1.78x increase in pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the average frame rates are 219 FPS for Low, 163 FPS for Medium, 140 FPS for High, and 100 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset at this resolution has a minimum of 138 FPS and maximum of 187 FPS, with a range of 49 FPS. The relatively narrow range at 4K indicates that the GPU is more consistently loaded at this resolution, with less variance between individual frames compared to lower resolutions.

The total spread from the most demanding configuration (4K Ultra at 100 FPS) to the least demanding (1080p Low at 663 FPS) is 563 FPS, representing a 6.6x performance difference. This wide range gives players complete flexibility to prioritize either visual quality or raw frame rate, depending on their display capabilities and personal preferences.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12600KF provides the computational foundation for this configuration, and its specifications are well-matched to the demands of Barony. With 10 cores and 16 threads, this Alder Lake processor offers substantial multi-threaded capability, while its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.90 GHz deliver strong single-threaded performance. The 20 MB of shared L3 cache, along with 1.25 MB L2 and 80 KB L1 per core, ensures that frequently accessed game data remains close to the processing cores.

The CPU's benchmark results show a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 23,391 and a single-core score of 3,302, which are strong figures for a mid-range desktop processor. The Geekbench multi-core score of 12,137 and single-core score of 2,157 further confirm the CPU's balanced performance profile. The PassMark multi-thread score of 27,575 and single-thread score of 3,925 indicate that the CPU can handle both heavily threaded workloads and latency-sensitive single-threaded tasks effectively.

In Barony, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions where the GPU is less burdened. The frame rate difference between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings is 245 FPS (663 to 418), which is a 37% reduction. However, the difference between 1440p and 4K at Low settings is 199 FPS (418 to 219), a 48% reduction. This suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is contributing to frame rate generation, and its performance ceiling prevents the GPU from reaching even higher frame rates.

The CPU's 10 nm process node and 125 W TDP, with support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, make it a versatile and efficient choice for gaming. Its percentile ranking of 79 against all CPUs places it above the majority of processors on the market, and its nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i9-10900K and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, all score within 0.3% of the i5-12600KF's average benchmark score of 27,799. This indicates that the CPU is not a weak link in this configuration, and its performance is well-balanced with the RTX 4090's capabilities.