Barony

Barony is a roguelike title from 2015, and this benchmark pairing of the Intel Core i5-14600K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER demonstrates extreme performance headroom, with the data showing a system that is far more likely to be limited by CPU logic at lower resolutions than by the GPU's rendering capabilities. The measured frame rates across all settings and resolutions are exceptionally high, indicating that this combination is designed for maximum refresh-rate displays.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core, 20-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, running on the Intel Socket 1700 platform. It operates with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, utilizing a 125 W TDP. The chip features a hybrid design with a 24 MB shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache, which contributes to its strong single-threaded performance, a critical factor for a game like Barony that relies on game logic updates.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-14600K achieves a single-core score of 4642 in Cinebench R23 and a multi-core score of 32881 in the same test. Its Geekbench results show 2803 for single-core and 15846 for multi-core, while PassMark scores include 4270 for single-thread and 38682 for multithread processing. These figures place the CPU in the 93rd percentile against all tested CPUs, indicating that its computational power is a significant asset.

The benchmark data for Barony shows a pattern where frame rates at 1080p are far higher than at 4K, but the sheer magnitude of the numbers—such as 599.5 FPS at 1080p Low—suggests that even at lower resolutions, the CPU is not a bottleneck in a traditional sense; rather, it is providing enough processing power to push the GPU to its limits. The processor's performance is closely matched by its nearest rivals, with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X scoring 49062 (a 0.2% delta) and the Intel Core i5-14600KF scoring 49367 (a -0.4% delta), showing that this CPU is at the top of its class for this title.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific combination of the Core i5-14600K and the RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 125th out of 1702 tested combos in Barony. This places it in the top 7.3% of all systems tested for this game, a strong result that underscores the high-end nature of the pairing. The ranking reflects not just the GPU's raw power but also the CPU's ability to feed it, as many lower-ranked combinations would likely be held back by less capable processors.

The data indicates that this combo outperforms the vast majority of alternatives, with only 124 other systems achieving higher average frame rates. This reflects the balance between the i5-14600K's strong single-core performance, which is crucial for the game's simulation, and the RTX 4080 SUPER's immense rendering capabilities. While the exact configurations of the 124 higher-ranked systems are not specified, the delta between this combo and the rest of the field suggests that it is a top-tier choice for Barony.

Given the game's 2015 release, it is not surprising that modern high-end hardware dominates the rankings. The combo's position at 125th out of 1702 confirms that it is a high-performance pairing, but also that there is a small group of even more powerful systems that edge it out, likely with more expensive CPUs or GPUs.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data reveals a clear scaling pattern as resolution increases, which provides insight into the system's bottleneck characteristics. At 1080p with High settings, the combo achieves 380 FPS, but this drops by about 36.7% to 240.5 FPS at 1440p, and further to 128.5 FPS at 4K. This substantial drop indicates that the GPU is becoming the primary limiting factor as resolution increases, with the CPU's performance headroom no longer being the constraint.

The scaling is even more pronounced at Low settings, where the 1080p result of 599.5 FPS falls to 377.6 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop) and then to 198.3 FPS at 4K (a 67% drop from 1080p). This pattern shows that at 1080p, the CPU is likely hitting its limits in terms of frame generation, but as the resolution climbs, the GPU's workload increases, and the system shifts to a GPU-bound state. The fact that 4K performance at Low settings (198.3 FPS) is still higher than 4K performance at High settings (128.5 FPS) confirms that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions.

This behavior is typical for a system with a powerful CPU and a high-end GPU: the CPU provides a massive ceiling for frame rates, but the GPU's pixel processing capabilities determine the final output as resolution increases. The data suggests that for Barony, this combo is well-balanced, with the CPU ensuring high minimum frame rates and the GPU providing scalable performance across resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured frame rates for this combo in Barony are exceptionally high across all settings. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 599.5 FPS on Low settings, 444.3 FPS on Medium, 380 FPS on High, and 276.1 FPS on Ultra. These numbers indicate that even at the highest quality settings, the system is far above the threshold for smooth gameplay on any current display.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain impressive: 377.6 FPS on Low, 280.2 FPS on Medium, 240.5 FPS on High, and 171.2 FPS on Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is noticeable but still leaves the system with more than enough performance for high-refresh-rate gaming. At 3840x2160, the results are 198.3 FPS on Low, 143.4 FPS on Medium, 128.5 FPS on High, and 89.8 FPS on Ultra.

The Ultra settings at 4K produce the lowest measured average FPS of 89.8, which is still above the 60 FPS threshold for most displays, but it shows that the game's most demanding settings can push this hardware. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is substantial (198.3 FPS vs. 89.8 FPS), highlighting the impact of quality settings on the GPU workload. Overall, the data shows that this combo is capable of running Barony at maximum settings with high frame rates, with the only compromise being the most demanding 4K Ultra configuration.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is a high-end graphics card based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, featuring 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. Its boost clock is 2550 MHz, and it contains 10240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, with 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores. This hardware configuration delivers a massive 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is reflected in its PassMark G3D score of 34245 and its 88th percentile ranking against all GPUs.

The GPU's performance in Barony is clearly demonstrated by the measured FPS data, which shows that it can handle the game's demands even at 4K resolution. The card's nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT with an average score of 53489 (a 0.2% delta) and the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M with a score of 53414 (a 0.4% delta), indicating that the RTX 4080 SUPER is at the very top of its performance tier.

The 16 GB of VRAM is more than sufficient for Barony, which is a game from 2015 and does not have demanding texture requirements, but it ensures that the system is future-proof for more modern titles. The GPU's high pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s are key to its ability to maintain high frame rates at 4K, as evidenced by the 128.5 FPS average at High settings. The data shows that the RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, providing the raw power needed to achieve the exceptional frame rates seen at all resolutions.