Barony

The Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a thoroughly playable experience in Barony, a roguelike that clearly favors high frame rates. The data shows a combination that scales predictably across resolutions, with the GPU becoming the primary limiting factor at 4K while the CPU holds its own at lower resolutions. This pairing lands at rank 2344 out of 2935 tested combos, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database, but the measured FPS numbers tell a more nuanced story than that rank alone suggests.

Resolution Scaling

The jump from 1080p to 1440p to 4K produces a predictable FPS curve, but the shape of that curve reveals where the bottleneck shifts. At 1080p Low settings, the combo produces 245 FPS average. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 154 FPS, a 37% reduction. The step to 4K Low yields 81 FPS, which is 47% below the 1440p figure and 67% below the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, where the Arc B570’s rendering pipeline becomes the ceiling.

At High settings, the same trend holds but with lower absolute numbers. The 1080p High average is 156 FPS, dropping to 99 FPS at 1440p (a 37% decline) and then to 52 FPS at 4K (a 47% drop from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and High settings indicates that resolution scaling is uniform, and the limiting component does not change character between those two presets.

Medium settings show a similar pattern: 182 FPS at 1080p, 115 FPS at 1440p, and 60 FPS at 4K. The min-to-max range at Medium is also recorded, showing 155-209 FPS at 1080p, 98-132 FPS at 1440p, and 51-69 FPS at 4K. These ranges tighten as resolution increases, which suggests that frame time variance is more controlled at higher resolutions where the GPU is more uniformly loaded.

Ultra settings present the most demanding scenario. The 1080p Ultra average is 112 FPS, which is still smooth for most displays. At 1440p Ultra, the average falls to 71 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it drops to 37 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the only measured configuration that falls below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, indicating that this combo is not suited for maximum fidelity at 4K in Barony.

What does this scaling say about the limiting component? The fact that 1080p Low reaches 245 FPS while 1080p Ultra only reaches 112 FPS shows that the GPU is heavily involved even at 1080p. If the CPU were the primary bottleneck, the FPS difference between Low and Ultra at the same resolution would be much smaller. Instead, the data shows a 54% FPS reduction from Low to Ultra at 1080p, which points to the Arc B570 as the dominant constraint across all settings.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture, codenamed Battlemage, and fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The chip, designated BMG-G21, packs 19,600 million transistors into a 272 mm² die. The GPU operates at a fixed clock of 2500 MHz for both base and boost, which is notable for its consistency—there is no boost variance to account for in performance analysis.

Memory configuration is a critical factor for this game’s results. The Arc B570 comes with 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, delivering 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In Barony, which is not a memory-bandwidth-heavy title, this proves sufficient. The 1080p High average of 156 FPS and 1440p High average of 99 FPS both benefit from this bandwidth level. At 4K High, the 52 FPS average suggests that while bandwidth is adequate, the raw compute throughput becomes the limiting factor.

The GPU’s compute specifications are modest but effective for this game. With 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, the B570 achieves a pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s. The FP32 throughput of 11.52 TFLOPS is what drives the actual game rendering. For Barony, a roguelike that does not use heavy geometry or advanced lighting, these figures translate to the measured FPS results. The 18 ray tracing cores are present but largely irrelevant for this title, as Barony does not appear to leverage RT features based on the performance data.

The GPU’s benchmark scores provide context for its placement. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 2649, while Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan scores are 83514 and 96844, respectively. The Passmark G3D score of 14195 and GPU Compute score of 7281 round out the picture. The B570 sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20556. Its nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.1), Intel Arc A750 (deltaPct -0.1), NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (deltaPct 0.4), and AMD Radeon R9 M390X (deltaPct -0.5). These deltas are all within 0.5%, meaning the B570 performs nearly identically to these four GPUs in aggregate benchmarks, despite their very different architectures and market positions.

In practical terms for Barony, the GPU’s VRAM capacity of 10 GB is never stressed at any measured setting. The game’s texture and asset demands are clearly below this threshold, as evidenced by the FPS scaling remaining smooth rather than exhibiting sudden drops that would indicate VRAM swapping. The 19 Gbps effective memory speed ensures that data feeding keeps pace with the shading units.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on Raptor Lake architecture, specifically the Raptor Lake-R refresh. It operates with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65W TDP. The CPU uses the Intel Socket 1700 platform and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration, though the specific memory type used in this test setup is not recorded in the data.

The cache hierarchy is substantial: 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. For Barony, a roguelike that typically involves procedural generation and simulation logic, the L3 cache size can influence how quickly the CPU can access frequently used game data. The 20 MB shared cache is adequate for this workload, as the measured FPS at 1080p Low (245 FPS) indicates the CPU is not holding back the GPU at lower resolutions.

The CPU’s benchmark results place it in the 83rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 32279. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840U (deltaPct 0.1), Intel Core i9-11900 (deltaPct 0.2), AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS (deltaPct -0.2), and Intel Core i7-12800H (deltaPct 0.5). These rivals span mobile and desktop segments, yet the i5-14400F performs within 0.5% of all of them in aggregate scoring.

In Cinebench tests, the i5-14400F scores 2181 in R15 multi-core and 307 in single-core. The R20 results are 9090 multi-core and 1283 single-core, while R23 shows 21645 multi-core and 3055 single-core. These scores indicate a strong single-threaded performance, which is directly relevant to Barony’s frame rate generation. The single-core scores, particularly the R23 single-core result of 3055, suggest that the CPU can feed the GPU efficiently even at high FPS targets. The Geekbench results of 11268 multi-core and 2058 single-core corroborate this.

Passmark tests reveal more about the CPU’s character. The multi-thread score of 25470 and single-thread score of 3701 are both solid. The integer math score of 81524 and floating point math score of 61319 indicate balanced compute capabilities. For Barony, which likely involves pathfinding and game logic updates each frame, the CPU’s single-thread performance is more relevant than its multi-thread capabilities, and the data supports this: the 1080p Low FPS of 245 is near the upper limit of what most displays can show, and the CPU is clearly capable of driving frame rates well above 200 FPS.

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent when examining the 4K results. At 4K Low, the FPS is 81, and at 4K High it is 52. These are significantly lower than the 1080p figures, and the drop is attributable to GPU limitation rather than CPU. If the CPU were the bottleneck at 4K, we would expect similar FPS numbers across Low and High settings, since the CPU workload does not change dramatically with graphics settings. Instead, the FPS drops by 36% from Low to High at 4K, confirming the GPU is the limiting component at that resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core i5-14400F and Intel Arc B570 ranks 2344 out of 2935 tested combos in Barony. This places it in the 20th percentile of all tested combinations, which might seem low given the FPS numbers. However, the rank reflects the entire database of combos, many of which include far more powerful GPUs or CPUs that push much higher frame rates.

The rank of 2344 is informative when compared to the individual component percentiles. The CPU sits at the 83rd percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs. The combo rank being lower than either individual percentile suggests that Barony is a game where the GPU matters more than the CPU, and the B570’s mid-tier positioning drags the overall combo rank down despite the CPU’s strong showing.

In practical terms, the combo rank matters less than the actual measured FPS for a player. A rank of 2344 out of 2935 sounds poor, but the data shows 1080p High at 156 FPS and 1440p High at 99 FPS, both of which are excellent for a roguelike that benefits from high refresh rates. The rank is skewed by the fact that many higher-ranked combos use flagship GPUs that achieve 300+ FPS at 1080p, which is beyond the refresh rate of most monitors anyway.

The deltaPct values for the GPU’s nearest rivals suggest that swapping the B570 for an RTX 3070 Mobile or Arc A750 would yield nearly identical performance in aggregate benchmarks, within 0.1% to 0.5%. This means the combo rank is not sensitive to small GPU changes—a different mid-tier GPU would likely produce a similar rank. Conversely, the CPU’s nearest rivals are also within 0.5%, so the combo’s ranking is stable against component substitutions within these performance bands.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this hardware in Barony?

A: The data shows 1440p High provides 99 FPS average, which is the highest resolution and quality setting that maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 112 FPS, so players prioritizing maximum quality at 1080p can use Ultra, but 1440p High offers a better balance of resolution and fidelity.

Q: Is 4K playable with this combo?

A: 4K is playable only at Low or Medium settings, with averages of 81 FPS and 60 FPS respectively. At High settings, 4K drops to 52 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 37 FPS, both of which are below the smoothness threshold for most players.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in this game?

A: The B570’s average benchmark score of 20556 is within 0.5% of the RTX 3070 Mobile (20534), Arc A750 (20582), Quadro M4000M (20480), and Radeon R9 M390X (20662). This suggests very similar performance in games like Barony that do not heavily favor one GPU architecture.

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

A: The data indicates no CPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 245 FPS, which is well above typical display refresh rates, and the FPS drops consistently as resolution increases, showing the GPU is the limiting factor across all settings.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the measured min-max ranges are 155-209 FPS at 1080p, 98-132 FPS at 1440p, and 51-69 FPS at 4K. The spread narrows as resolution increases, meaning 4K Medium has the tightest frame times relative to its average, which is 60 FPS.

Q: How does this combo’s rank in Barony compare to its component percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 2344 out of 2935, which is in the lower 20% of all tested combos. The CPU is in the 83rd percentile and the GPU in the 65th percentile, so the combo rank is lower than both, indicating that Barony is more GPU-intensive and the B570 holds the pairing back relative to its CPU potential.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings levels, providing a complete picture of performance across the spectrum.

At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the combo delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce an average of 245 FPS, which is the single highest figure in the entire dataset. Medium settings yield 182 FPS average, with a recorded range of 155 FPS minimum to 209 FPS maximum. High settings drop to 156 FPS average, and Ultra settings produce 112 FPS average. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 54% reduction in FPS, from 245 to 112, which is a significant span and confirms the GPU is being pushed harder at each quality level.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low settings average 154 FPS, which is still very smooth for competitive play. Medium settings average 115 FPS, with a range of 98 to 132 FPS. High settings average 99 FPS, just shy of the 100 FPS mark that many players target for high refresh rate monitors. Ultra settings average 71 FPS, which is the lowest 1440p result but still above 60 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p at each setting is consistent, hovering around 37-38% for Low, Medium, and High, and 37% for Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low settings average 81 FPS, which is playable but noticeably lower than the 1080p Low figure of 245 FPS. Medium settings average 60 FPS, with a range of 51 to 69 FPS. High settings average 52 FPS, which dips below 60 FPS and will show stutter on standard 60Hz displays. Ultra settings average 37 FPS, which is the weakest result in the dataset and not recommended for smooth gameplay. The 4K numbers show a 67% reduction from 1080p at Low settings, and a similar 67% reduction at High settings, confirming that the scaling is resolution-driven rather than setting-driven.

The Medium settings data is the only configuration with full min/max information recorded. At 1080p Medium, the range of 155-209 FPS shows a 54 FPS spread, indicating some frame time variance but within acceptable bounds. At 1440p Medium, the range narrows to 98-132 FPS, a 34 FPS spread. At 4K Medium, the range is 51-69 FPS, an 18 FPS spread. This tightening of the range as resolution increases suggests that at higher resolutions, the GPU is working at a more consistent utilization level, reducing frame pacing irregularities.

For players using this combo, the practical takeaways are clear. At 1080p, any setting level is playable, with even Ultra clearing 100 FPS. At 1440p, High is the recommended ceiling for consistent 100+ FPS, though Ultra at 71 FPS is still viable for players who prioritize visual quality over frame rate. At 4K, only Low and Medium settings are recommended, with Medium averaging exactly 60 FPS but dipping to 51 FPS at the minimum, so players with a 60Hz display should be prepared for occasional drops below refresh rate. The data overall shows a balanced mid-range combo that excels at 1080p and 1440p but should not be pushed to 4K Ultra expectations.