Barony

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Barony across the three target resolutions tells a clear story about system balance. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 137.3 FPS, which drops to 86.6 FPS at 2560x1440, and further to 48.8 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a substantial decline: moving from 1080p to 1440p cuts performance by roughly 37%, while the jump to 4K from 1440p nearly halves the frame rate again. This pattern strongly indicates that the AMD Radeon RX 570 is the limiting component as resolution increases, because the pixel throughput demand scales faster than the GPU’s fixed compute resources can accommodate.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p, the difference between Low (137.3 FPS) and Ultra (62.6 FPS) is a massive 74.7 FPS swing, showing that the GPU is heavily taxed by higher quality presets even at the lowest resolution. At 4K, the Ultra preset yields only 18.9 FPS, which is barely playable, while Low produces 48.8 FPS — a difference of 29.9 FPS. The fact that the 4K Low result is still below the 1080p Ultra result (48.8 vs 62.6 FPS) suggests that resolution scaling has a more profound impact on this GPU than settings scaling. The data implies that the RX 570’s 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth become bottlenecks when the frame buffer grows, regardless of how much the CPU can push.

Interestingly, the 2560x1440 Medium setting (62.5 FPS) almost exactly matches the 1920x1080 Ultra setting (62.6 FPS). This near-identical performance suggests that the GPU is hitting a compute or memory ceiling around that frame rate, independent of the specific combination of resolution and settings. It is a curious inflection point that hints at the architecture’s limits under load. The 4K Ultra result of 18.9 FPS is particularly telling — it is the only measured row below 30 FPS, and it indicates that this configuration is not viable for high-fidelity 4K gaming in Barony, even though the game is a roguelike with relatively modest demands.

FAQ

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

A: The highest measured average FPS is 137.3, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: How does the RX 570 perform at 4K in this game?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS ranges from 18.9 on Ultra to 48.8 on Low, with Medium at 33.4 and High at 32.1.

Q: Is there a significant difference between Medium and High settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the data shows 62.5 FPS for Medium and 53.8 FPS for High at 2560x1440, a gap of 8.7 FPS favoring Medium.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance more in Barony?

A: The resolution scaling data suggests the GPU is the primary limiter, as FPS drops consistently from 1080p to 4K even when settings are held constant.

Q: What is the combo’s rank among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combo ranks 1663 out of 1702 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom percentile.

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 1080p with High settings?

A: Yes, the measured average at 1920x1080 High is 86.6 FPS, which comfortably exceeds 60 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is a 14 nm Polaris 20 chip with 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units. Its base clock is 1168 MHz and boost clock is 1244 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, yielding 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The 4 GB GDDR5 frame buffer is a critical constraint in Barony, especially at higher resolutions and settings. The measured FPS data shows that the GPU’s performance collapses at 4K Ultra (18.9 FPS) compared to 1080p Low (137.3 FPS), a 118.4 FPS difference that cannot be attributed to CPU limitations alone.

The FP32 compute rating of 5.095 TFLOPS and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s provide theoretical context, but the actual game results reveal that the RX 570 is most comfortable at 1080p, where even Ultra settings stay above 60 FPS (62.6). At 1440p, the GPU struggles to maintain 60 FPS on High (53.8), but manages it on Medium (62.5). The 4K results are uniformly poor, with only Low settings approaching playability at 48.8 FPS. The nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark database — the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, NVIDIA Tesla M60, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile — all have average benchmark scores within 0.8% of the RX 570, but those scores come from synthetic tests like 3DMark Steel Nomad and Geekbench, not from Barony-specific measurements. The in-game data here suggests that the RX 570’s memory bandwidth and capacity are the limiting factors, as lowering resolution from 4K to 1080p has a larger effect on FPS than lowering settings from Ultra to Low.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings is playable. Low yields 137.3 FPS, Medium drops to 101.1, High to 86.6, and Ultra to 62.6. The delta between Low and Ultra is 74.7 FPS, indicating that the GPU has significant headroom at this resolution but is heavily taxed by the highest preset. At 2560x1440, performance scales down consistently: Low produces 86.6 FPS, Medium 62.5, High 53.8, and Ultra 38.6. The drop from Low to Ultra here is 48.0 FPS, a smaller absolute gap than at 1080p but still substantial. At 3840x2160, the results are much lower: Low averages 48.8 FPS, Medium 33.4, High 32.1, and Ultra 18.9. The spread from Low to Ultra is 29.9 FPS, but even the best 4K result (Low) is below the worst 1080p result (Ultra) by 13.8 FPS.

The data also reveals an interesting pattern when comparing settings across resolutions. The 1440p Low result (86.6 FPS) is identical to the 1080p High result (86.6 FPS), suggesting that the GPU can deliver the same frame rate when either resolution or settings are reduced by one step. Similarly, the 1440p Medium (62.5 FPS) nearly matches the 1080p Ultra (62.6 FPS). This equivalence implies a linear trade-off between pixel count and shading complexity for the RX 570. However, the 4K Medium (33.4 FPS) is much lower than the 1440p High (53.8 FPS), breaking that pattern and indicating that 4K demands more than just a proportional increase in rendering load — likely exceeding the 4 GB memory capacity.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal experience in Barony depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 62.6 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold and offers the best visual quality without sacrificing smoothness. If higher refresh rates are preferred, dropping to High yields 86.6 FPS, a 24.0 FPS improvement with only a modest visual step down. For 1440p, the Medium preset at 62.5 FPS is the sweet spot, as High drops to 53.8 FPS and Ultra to 38.6 FPS — both below the 60 FPS target. The Medium setting provides the best balance of fidelity and frame rate at this resolution. At 4K, no preset achieves 60 FPS; the best option is Low at 48.8 FPS, which is playable but not ideal. The data suggests that for 4K gaming, users should either accept Low settings or reduce the resolution to 1440p and use Medium for a smoother experience.

The fact that 4K Low (48.8 FPS) is slower than 1080p Ultra (62.6 FPS) indicates that resolution should be prioritized over settings when the GPU is constrained. For a roguelike like Barony, where precise inputs matter, a consistent 60 FPS at 1080p Ultra is preferable to a fluctuating 30-50 FPS at 4K Low. The Medium preset at 1440p offers a compromise that maintains 62.5 FPS while providing more detail than Low. Overall, the measured data points to 1080p Ultra or 1440p Medium as the best experiences, depending on monitor resolution and preference for visual clarity over raw frame rate.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF is a 14-core, 20-thread processor from the Core 14th Gen series, based on Raptor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with 24 MB of shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 32889 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 4643 in single-core, with a Geekbench multicore score of 15636 and single-core of 2778. Its percentile vs. all CPUs is 93, meaning it outperforms 93% of processors in the database. The nearest rivals in CPU benchmarks — the Intel Core i5-14600K, AMD EPYC 4345P, AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and Intel Xeon Gold 5318H — all have average scores within 1.4% of the i5-14600KF, showing that this is a very competitive chip.

In Barony, however, the CPU’s role appears secondary to the GPU. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (137.3 FPS) is high enough to suggest that the CPU can feed the GPU well at lower settings, but the sharp decline at 4K (48.8 FPS for Low) indicates that the RX 570 becomes the bottleneck. The i5-14600KF’s high single-core performance (4643 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is likely sufficient for Barony’s physics and game logic, as the frame rates at 1080p are not CPU-limited — even Ultra settings hit 62.6 FPS. The data does not show any scenario where the CPU is the limiting factor, as FPS scales inversely with resolution and settings, which are GPU-bound variables. The 14 cores and 20 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and streaming, but the game’s performance is governed by the GPU’s ability to render frames.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14600KF and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks 1663 out of 1702 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the bottom 2.3% of all systems. This low rank is surprising given the CPU’s strong performance (93rd percentile) and the GPU’s moderate standing (74th percentile among all GPUs). The rank suggests that the pairing is poorly optimized for this specific game, likely because the RX 570 is a 2017-era GPU (release date 2017-04-17) that was designed for 1080p gaming at a time when 4K was not feasible. The CPU, released in 2023, is far more capable than the GPU, and the bottleneck analysis confirms that the RX 570 holds back the system.

However, the rank should be interpreted with caution. The combo’s measured FPS at 1080p (86.6 on High, 137.3 on Low) is perfectly playable, and the low rank may reflect the fact that most tested combos use more powerful GPUs. The nearest rival GPUs — RTX 5060, RX 7700 XT, Tesla M60, and RTX 5070 Mobile — have similar average benchmark scores, but these are synthetic metrics that do not necessarily translate to Barony’s specific workload. The data implies that for this game, the CPU’s massive compute headroom is wasted because the GPU cannot keep pace, particularly at higher resolutions. The 1663rd rank out of 1702 combos is a stark reminder that a high-end CPU cannot compensate for an entry-level GPU in a graphics-bound scenario, even in a roguelike with relatively simple visuals.