Barony

# Barony Combo Analysis: Intel Core i5-13400F + AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT

This combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT ranks near the very bottom of all tested configurations for Barony, sitting at position 3704 out of 3717 tested combos. That places this pairing in the 0.35th percentile of all systems benchmarked in this game, which is a striking result given the individual components' respectable standing in their respective product stacks. The data suggests that either Barony is exceptionally demanding in ways this hardware doesn't address well, or that the game's optimization profile punishes this particular architectural pairing. The measured frame rates across all resolutions and settings reinforce this bottom-tier ranking, with even the most favorable settings producing results that would struggle to satisfy players accustomed to smoother experiences.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 3704 out of 3717 tested combinations places it in the bottom 0.35% of all systems evaluated for Barony. This is a remarkably poor showing when you consider that the individual components aren't bottom-tier parts. The CPU sits in the 77th percentile when compared against all processors in the benchmark database, while the GPU falls in the 60th percentile of all graphics cards tested. Yet when paired together for this specific title, the combination produces results that are nearly at the very bottom of the barrel.

This suggests a fundamental mismatch between what Barony requires and what this hardware delivers. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (matching its average score with a deltaPct of 0), the Intel Core 5 120 (0.3% higher), the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (0.3% higher), and the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (0.4% lower). These are all competitive mid-range to upper-mid-range processors, and the i5-13400F holds its own in synthetic benchmarks. Similarly, the GPU's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (0.3% higher), AMD Radeon HD 7970M (0.4% higher), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (0.7% higher), and NVIDIA Tesla M4 (0.9% higher). The RX 7600 XT's average benchmark score of 17083 places it in the same general performance tier as these cards.

The discrepancy between the components' individual rankings and the combined performance in Barony points to a potential bottleneck or compatibility issue. The game may be heavily single-threaded, poorly optimized for certain GPU architectures, or constrained by some other factor not immediately apparent from the synthetic benchmarks. With a 16 GB VRAM buffer and a 128-bit memory bus running at 288.0 GB/s, the GPU has ample memory capacity but potentially limited bandwidth for this title's demands. The measured FPS data confirms that even at 1080p Low settings, the combo only achieves 96 FPS average, which is far from the kind of performance one would expect from a system ranking in the bottom 0.35% of all tested rigs.

Settings Recommendations

Examining the measured FPS across all settings presets reveals a clear hierarchy of playability. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 96 FPS average, which is the only setting that approaches what most players would consider smooth performance. The Medium preset at 1080p drops to 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS, which is playable but with noticeable frame time variance. High settings at 1080p produce 43 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 34 FPS.

The data suggests that Medium at 1080p represents the best balance between visual quality and playability for this combo. The 60 FPS average provides a baseline acceptable experience, and the minimum of 51 FPS indicates that even in demanding scenes, the frame rate doesn't collapse entirely. However, the jump from Medium to High costs 17 FPS (from 60 to 43), which is a substantial 28% performance hit for what is typically a modest visual improvement. Low settings are the only way to get meaningfully above 60 FPS, delivering 96 FPS, but this comes with significant visual compromises.

At 1440p, the situation becomes more challenging. Low settings produce 81 FPS average, Medium drops to 51 FPS, High to 36 FPS, and Ultra to 29 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p is borderline playable, but the minimum of 43 FPS suggests occasional dips that could be noticeable during intense gameplay moments. For 4K, only Low settings (64 FPS) provide a playable experience, while Medium (40 FPS) is marginal and High (28 FPS) and Ultra (23 FPS) are essentially unplayable for a roguelike where reaction times matter.

The pattern across all resolutions is consistent: Low settings provide the only path to comfortable frame rates, and Medium is the highest setting that remains viable at 1080p and 1440p. Given Barony's roguelike nature, where procedural generation and permadeath mean players need consistent, reliable performance, the Medium preset at 1080p appears to be the recommended configuration for this hardware combination.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K tells a revealing story about where the bottleneck lies in this system. At Low settings, performance drops from 96 FPS at 1080p to 81 FPS at 1440p (a 15.6% decrease) and then to 64 FPS at 4K (a 33.3% decrease from 1080p). This scaling pattern suggests that even at Low settings, the system is being pushed progressively harder as resolution increases, but the drops are not catastrophic.

At Medium settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 60 FPS at 1080p drops to 51 FPS at 1440p (15% decrease) and then to 40 FPS at 4K (33.3% decrease from 1080p). The High settings preset shows even steeper declines: 43 FPS at 1080p to 36 FPS at 1440p (16.3% decrease) and then to 28 FPS at 4K (34.9% decrease from 1080p). Ultra settings follow a similar pattern: 34 FPS at 1080p to 29 FPS at 1440p (14.7% decrease) and then to 23 FPS at 4K (32.4% decrease from 1080p).

The consistent pattern of roughly 15% drops from 1080p to 1440p and then another 15-19% drop from 1440p to 4K suggests that the GPU is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases. The frame rate scaling closely tracks the pixel count increases (1080p has approximately 2.07 million pixels, 1440p has 3.69 million, and 4K has 8.29 million), which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller performance differences between resolutions, as the CPU work would remain relatively constant while only the GPU load changes.

However, the fact that even at 1080p Low settings the system only achieves 96 FPS suggests that there might be some CPU limitation as well, or that Barony's engine has inherent performance ceilings. The CPU's single-thread benchmark scores (960 in 3DMark single-thread, 3191 in Cinebench R23 single-core) are respectable but not exceptional, and if Barony is heavily dependent on single-thread performance, this could explain the overall low frame rates across all settings.

FAQ

Q: Why does this combo rank so poorly in Barony when its individual components benchmark well?

A: The combo ranks 3704 out of 3717 tested configurations, yet the CPU is in the 77th percentile and the GPU in the 60th percentile of all parts tested. This discrepancy indicates that Barony's specific performance characteristics don't align well with this hardware pairing. The game may rely heavily on certain CPU features or GPU capabilities that this combination doesn't handle efficiently.

Q: What is the highest playable setting at 1080p?

A: Medium settings at 1080p produce a 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS. This is the highest preset that maintains a consistent 60 FPS baseline. High settings drop to 43 FPS average, which is a significant step down in smoothness.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Barony?

A: Only at Low settings does 4K become playable, with a 64 FPS average. Medium settings at 4K produce 40 FPS average, while High (28 FPS) and Ultra (23 FPS) are not viable for a game requiring responsive controls.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more limiting for this game?

A: The resolution scaling pattern (roughly 15% FPS drops from 1080p to 1440p, and another 15-19% from 1440p to 4K across all settings) suggests the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions. However, the relatively low frame rates even at 1080p Low (96 FPS) hint that the CPU may also be constraining overall performance.

Q: How does the RX 7600 XT compare to its nearest GPU rivals in overall benchmarks?

A: The RX 7600 XT's average benchmark score is 17083, placing it just below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (17208, 0.7% higher) and just above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17037, 0.3% lower) and AMD Radeon HD 7970M (17019, 0.4% lower).

Q: What memory bandwidth does the GPU have, and could it be a limiting factor?

A: The RX 7600 XT has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is relatively narrow for a 16 GB card, and in a game like Barony that may have specific memory access patterns, this bandwidth limitation could contribute to the poor performance.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT brings significant specifications to this pairing, including 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation units. The GPU's clock speeds are substantial, with a base clock of 1980 MHz, a game clock of 2470 MHz, and a boost clock of 2755 MHz. Memory runs at 2250 MHz with 18 Gbps effective speed, delivering that 288.0 GB/s bandwidth figure.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 60 places it in the middle of the pack for all graphics cards tested, and its average benchmark score of 17083 puts it in the same performance tier as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 and RTX 3070. The pixel rate of 176.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 352.6 GTexel/s indicate solid rasterization capabilities, while the FP32 performance of 22.57 TFLOPS shows competitive compute throughput.

However, in Barony, this GPU appears to struggle. The fact that the combo ranks in the bottom 0.35% of all tested systems suggests that the RX 7600 XT's architecture (RDNA 3.0, codenamed Hotpink Bonefish) may not be well-suited to this particular game engine. The 128-bit memory bus, while paired with 16 GB of VRAM, may not provide sufficient bandwidth for the game's texture streaming or scene complexity demands. The memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s, while not low in absolute terms, may be insufficient for the resolution scaling we observe in the data.

The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 compatibility suggest it should be capable of handling modern game APIs, but Barony's release in 2015 may predate optimizations for this generation of hardware. The RDNA 3.0 architecture's ray tracing cores (32 of them) and other modern features are likely underutilized in a game from this era, meaning the GPU's strengths may not align with what Barony actually needs.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F provides 10 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz. This Raptor Lake architecture processor, built on Intel's 10 nm process, includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and its PCIe Gen 5 implementation provides 16 lanes for GPU connectivity.

The CPU's benchmark results are solid for its class. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22604 and single-core score of 3191 demonstrate strong processing capabilities. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7314 and max-thread score of 7307 show that multi-threaded performance scales well. Single-thread performance, as measured by 3DMark (960) and PassMark (3634), is respectable but not elite.

In the context of Barony, the CPU's performance characteristics matter. If the game is heavily single-threaded, the i5-13400F's single-core performance could be a limiting factor. The boost clock of 4.60 GHz is decent, but not exceptional, and the 10-core/16-thread configuration may not be fully utilized if the game engine doesn't scale well across multiple cores. The CPU's percentile ranking of 77 places it above most processors, but for a game where even the best systems seem to struggle (given this combo's bottom-tier ranking), the CPU may not be able to compensate for other system limitations.

The CPU's nearest rivals in overall benchmark performance include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (matching score), Intel Core 5 120 (0.3% higher), AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (0.3% higher), and AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (0.4% higher). These rivals represent a mix of mobile and desktop processors, indicating that the i5-13400F's performance is typical for a mid-range desktop part in this generation.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured performance spans a wide range depending on settings. Low settings deliver 96 FPS average, which is the highest frame rate recorded for this combo in any configuration. Medium settings produce 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS. High settings drop to 43 FPS average, while Ultra settings fall to 34 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 36 FPS (37.5% decrease), while Medium to High costs 17 FPS (28.3% decrease), and High to Ultra costs 9 FPS (20.9% decrease).

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance decreases across all settings. Low settings produce 81 FPS average. Medium settings deliver 51 FPS average with a minimum of 43 FPS and maximum of 58 FPS. High settings drop to 36 FPS average, and Ultra settings fall to 29 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows consistent percentage drops: Low loses 15.6%, Medium loses 15%, High loses 16.3%, and Ultra loses 14.7%.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes increasingly marginal. Low settings produce 64 FPS average, which is the only 4K configuration above 60 FPS. Medium settings deliver 40 FPS average with a minimum of 34 FPS and maximum of 46 FPS. High settings drop to 28 FPS average, and Ultra settings fall to 23 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows: Low loses 21%, Medium loses 21.6%, High loses 22.2%, and Ultra loses 20.7%. The consistent percentage drops across settings and resolutions indicate a predictable scaling behavior, with the GPU becoming progressively more stressed as pixel count increases. The minimum frame rates recorded at Medium settings (51 FPS at 1080p, 43 FPS at 1440p, 34 FPS at 4K) provide insight into worst-case scenarios, and the maximums (69 FPS at 1080p, 58 FPS at 1440p, 46 FPS at 4K) show the ceiling of what this combo can achieve in less demanding scenes.