Barony

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Barony shows a dramatic, non-linear scaling pattern as resolution increases, and this reveals exactly where the bottleneck sits. At 1080p with Low settings, the combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT delivers 505 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 319 FPS, a 36.8% reduction, while 4K Low lands at 167 FPS, which is 67.0% below the 1080p figure. This steep decline at lower settings is the clearest signal that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor as pixel count rises.

At the High preset, the pattern is even more telling. The 1080p result is 323 FPS, 1440p yields 204 FPS, and 4K produces 106 FPS. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 36.8%, nearly identical to the Low preset's drop. From 1440p to 4K, the reduction is 48.0%. These near-consistent proportional losses across resolutions indicate that the Radeon RX 7900 XT is scaling its workload predictably with pixel count, a hallmark of GPU-bound performance.

The Ultra preset tells the same story with slightly different numbers. At 1080p, it hits 231 FPS; at 1440p, it falls to 146 FPS (a 36.8% drop); and at 4K, it bottoms out at 76 FPS (a 67.1% drop from 1080p). The consistency of the 1080p-to-1440p drop across all four settings — 36.8% for Low, High, and Ultra, and 37.0% for Medium — is striking. This uniformity suggests that Barony's rendering workload at 1440p is almost purely a function of resolution, with no unexpected memory or bandwidth cliff appearing.

The jump from 1440p to 4K is where the scaling becomes more aggressive. For Medium settings, the drop is 47.7% (from 237 to 124 FPS); for High, it is 48.0%; and for Ultra, it is 47.9%. These near-identical 48% reductions across presets reinforce that at 4K, the RX 7900 XT is operating at its pixel-throughput limit. The GPU's 20 GB of GDDR6 memory and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth are clearly sufficient, as no preset shows an anomalous collapse that would indicate a VRAM capacity spillover.

What the data does not show is any sign of CPU limitation at high resolutions. If the i5-13400F were the constraint, the 1080p and 1440p numbers would converge or show smaller deltas as resolution increased, because the CPU's work per frame would dominate. Instead, every resolution step produces a proportional FPS loss, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario throughout. The 1080p Low result of 505 FPS, while impressive, is not a CPU ceiling; it is simply the GPU processing relatively few pixels very quickly. The 10-core, 16-thread processor, with its 4.60 GHz boost clock, has ample headroom here, as evidenced by the fact that even at 4K Ultra, the combo still manages 76 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing for Barony, and its specifications explain why the measured FPS scales so cleanly with resolution. The GPU is built on the Navi 31 chip with RDNA 3.0 architecture, featuring 5,376 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, and 192 raster output units. Its boost clock of 2394 MHz and game clock of 2025 MHz provide the raw compute throughput of 51.48 TFLOPS FP32, which is more than sufficient for a roguelike title from 2015.

The 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus delivers 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In Barony, this capacity is never stressed, as the largest memory requirement comes from 4K Ultra textures, and the FPS at that preset (76 FPS) is still well above playable thresholds. The min FPS recorded for 4K Medium is 105 FPS, and for 1440p Medium it is 202 FPS, suggesting that frame pacing remains stable even when the GPU is pushing 4K resolution. No min FPS data exists for Low, High, or Ultra presets, so those figures cannot be used for comparison.

The GPU's benchmark profile places it in the 55th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13,745. Its nearest rivals in the database — the AMD Radeon 660M (score 13,812, delta -0.5%), the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (score 13,821, delta -0.5%), and the AMD Radeon RX 570X (score 13,871, delta -0.9%) — are all within 1% of its average score. This clustering is unusual, as it suggests that the RX 7900 XT's average benchmark score is not representative of its gaming performance in Barony, where it achieves hundreds of FPS at 1080p. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5,623 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 71,068 are more indicative of its modern rendering capabilities.

In Barony specifically, the GPU's role is to handle the game's procedurally generated dungeons, which feature dynamic lighting and particle effects that scale with resolution. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the GPU is nowhere near its limit, producing 505 FPS. At 4K Ultra, it is clearly working harder, producing 76 FPS. The 6.6x reduction in FPS from that 1080p Low to 4K Ultra (505 to 76) is entirely attributable to the GPU's pixel processing workload, as the CPU's contribution per frame does not change with resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy of settings for this hardware combination, and the recommendation depends entirely on the target display resolution. For 1080p displays, every preset is playable, but the data suggests that Ultra is the sweet spot for visual fidelity without sacrificing responsiveness. At 1080p Ultra, the combo delivers 231 FPS, which is 28.5% lower than High's 323 FPS but still far above any competitive refresh rate. The gap between Medium (376 FPS) and High (323 FPS) is 14.1%, while the gap between High and Ultra is 28.5%. This non-linear scaling means that High offers the best balance of visual quality and headroom at 1080p, as it is only 14.1% slower than Medium but visually superior.

For 1440p, the recommendation shifts to High. The 1440p High result of 204 FPS is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate monitors, and it sits comfortably above the 146 FPS of Ultra. The difference between Medium (237 FPS) and High (204 FPS) is 13.9%, while High to Ultra is 28.4%. Given that Ultra at 1440p still produces 146 FPS, it is not a poor choice, but High provides a 39.7% FPS advantage over Ultra (204 vs 146) with only a modest visual downgrade. For competitive play where every frame matters, Low at 1440p delivers 319 FPS, but that preset likely sacrifices too much visual detail for the benefit.

At 4K, the data strongly favors High or Medium. The 4K High result of 106 FPS is playable on standard 60 Hz displays and even on some 120 Hz panels. The 4K Medium result of 124 FPS (with min FPS of 105) offers a 17.0% improvement over High, making it the better choice for those seeking higher frame rates at this resolution. The 4K Ultra result of 76 FPS is the only preset that dips near the 60 FPS threshold, and while it is technically playable, the 28.3% drop from High to Ultra (106 to 76) is significant. The 4K Low result of 167 FPS is unnecessarily fast for most displays and likely looks noticeably worse than Medium or High.

The overall recommendation across all resolutions is the High preset. It produces 323 FPS at 1080p, 204 FPS at 1440p, and 106 FPS at 4K. These numbers represent a balanced configuration that avoids the visual compromises of Low and Medium while not incurring the performance penalty of Ultra. For users with 4K 120 Hz displays, Medium is the recommended fallback, as its min FPS of 105 ensures consistent frame delivery above the 100 FPS mark.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achieved by this CPU-GPU combination in Barony?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 505, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to 1080p Ultra?

A: The 4K Ultra average FPS is 76, while 1080p Ultra averages 231 FPS. This represents a 67.1% reduction in FPS when moving from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings.

Q: Is the RX 7900 XT's 20 GB VRAM sufficient for Barony at 4K?

A: Yes. The 4K Medium preset records a min FPS of 105 and an average of 124, with no signs of memory-related stuttering or frame drops, indicating the 20 GB capacity and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth are more than adequate.

Q: Which preset offers the best FPS-to-visual-quality tradeoff at 1440p?

A: The High preset at 1440p averages 204 FPS, which is 39.7% faster than Ultra's 146 FPS while providing superior visuals compared to Medium's 237 FPS. High provides the best balance.

Q: What is the rank of this combination among all tested hardware in Barony?

A: This combo ranks 742nd out of 3,717 tested combinations, placing it in the top 20% of all configurations.

Q: Does the i5-13400F bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: No. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows consistent proportional drops across all settings, which is characteristic of GPU-bound performance. The CPU's 10 cores and 16 threads provide ample processing power.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F plays a supporting role in Barony, as the benchmark data indicates the GPU is the primary bottleneck at all tested resolutions. The processor features 10 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. Its Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, includes 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core. This configuration is more than adequate for a roguelike game that primarily relies on procedural generation and logic rather than complex physics simulations.

The CPU's benchmark scores confirm its capability. In Cinebench R23, it scores 22,604 in multi-core and 3,191 in single-core. Its Geekbench scores are 11,068 multi-core and 1,996 single-core. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7,314 and max-thread score of 7,307 indicate that the processor scales well with additional threads, though Barony's workload likely does not utilize all 16 threads fully. The PassMark single-thread score of 3,634 and multithread score of 25,032 place it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs.

The nearest CPU rivals, as listed in the database, show that the i5-13400F is competitively positioned. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS scores 25,284 (delta 0%), the Intel Core 5 120 scores 25,362 (delta -0.3%), and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D scores 25,365 (delta -0.3%). These deltas of less than 1% indicate that in synthetic benchmarks, the i5-13400F is virtually indistinguishable from these alternatives. In Barony, however, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic, and the measured FPS at 1080p Low (505) suggests the CPU is not a limiting factor even at extreme frame rates.

The CPU's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5, along with its dual-channel memory bus, provides flexibility. Its 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a mainstream choice. For Barony specifically, the CPU's single-thread performance is more relevant than its multi-thread capabilities, as roguelike games typically run their game logic on a primary thread. The i5-13400F's single-core Cinebench R20 score of 1,255 and Geekbench single-core score of 1,996 ensure that this thread has sufficient processing power to avoid becoming a bottleneck, which the FPS data confirms.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT in Barony is as follows:

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 505 FPS average
• Medium: 376 FPS average, with min FPS of 319 and max FPS of 432
• High: 323 FPS average
• Ultra: 231 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 319 FPS average
• Medium: 237 FPS average, with min FPS of 202 and max FPS of 273
• High: 204 FPS average
• Ultra: 146 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 167 FPS average
• Medium: 124 FPS average, with min FPS of 105 and max FPS of 143
• High: 106 FPS average
• Ultra: 76 FPS average

The only preset that records min and max FPS values is Medium, across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the range from 319 to 432 FPS shows a spread of 113 FPS, indicating some frame variability. At 1440p Medium, the range narrows to 202 to 273 FPS (a spread of 71 FPS), and at 4K Medium, it narrows further to 105 to 143 FPS (a spread of 38 FPS). This tightening of the frame time distribution at higher resolutions is consistent with the GPU becoming more consistently loaded, reducing the impact of brief CPU-side spikes.

The percentage differences between presets at each resolution follow a consistent pattern. At 1080p, Low to Medium is a 25.5% drop (505 to 376), Medium to High is 14.1% (376 to 323), and High to Ultra is 28.5% (323 to 231). At 1440p, the drops are 24.8% (319 to 237), 13.9% (237 to 204), and 28.4% (204 to 146). At 4K, they are 25.7% (167 to 124), 14.5% (124 to 106), and 28.3% (106 to 76). The remarkable consistency of these percentage drops across resolutions — approximately 25% for Low to Medium, 14% for Medium to High, and 28% for High to Ultra — suggests that each settings tier imposes a similar relative workload increase regardless of pixel count.

The resolution scaling within each settings tier is equally consistent. For Low settings, the drops from 1080p to 1440p and 1440p to 4K are 36.8% and 47.6% respectively. For Medium, they are 37.0% (376 to 237) and 47.7% (237 to 124). For High, 36.8% (323 to 204) and 48.0% (204 to 106). For Ultra, 36.8% (231 to 146) and 47.9% (146 to 76). This uniformity across all settings is a strong indicator of a well-behaved rendering pipeline that scales predictably with resolution, with no unexpected bottlenecks or memory limitations appearing at any configuration.