Barony

Barony is a roguelike that scales surprisingly well with high-end hardware, and the combination of the Intel Core i7-12700K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER lands in the top tier of tested configurations. Benchmark data places this combo at rank 297 out of 1702 tested combinations, putting it in the 83rd percentile of all pairings. That ranking reflects a system with no obvious bottleneck: the CPU’s 12 cores and 20 threads handle the game’s simulation logic, while the GPU’s 12 GB of VRAM and Ada Lovelace architecture push frame rates well past the refresh rate of most displays at every resolution tested. The data shows a machine that is overkill for Barony at 1080p, but which still delivers a smooth experience at 4K Ultra, making it a versatile choice for players who want max settings without compromise.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s position at 297 out of 1702 tested pairs places it ahead of roughly 83% of all CPU-GPU combinations evaluated for Barony. That is a strong result, but it is worth noting the context: Barony is not a demanding title by modern standards, so the ranking is more indicative of raw headroom than of a specific technical necessity. The CPU itself sits at the 89th percentile among all processors, and the GPU at the 84th percentile among all graphics cards, so this pairing is balanced at the higher end of the spectrum. The i7-12700K’s average benchmark score of 35684 puts it within 0.3% of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845, and 0.6% ahead of the Intel Core i7-13700T, showing that it competes directly with newer chips in synthetic tests. In practice, the measured frame rates in Barony suggest that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, while the CPU has more than enough headroom to feed the RTX 4070 SUPER at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is built on the 5 nm Ada Lovelace architecture, with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock of 1980 MHz boosts up to 2475 MHz, and the card’s 7168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines provide a strong raw compute base. The GPU’s FP32 throughput is 35.48 TFLOPS, and its 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores give it headroom for ray tracing and DLSS, though Barony does not appear to leverage those features in the measured results. The card’s average benchmark score of 42576 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA RTX A6000, which scores 42653, and slightly ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE at 42723. In Barony specifically, the GPU’s role becomes clear when looking at the frame rate scaling: at 1080p Low the combo hits 522.5 FPS, which is far beyond any display’s capability, while at 4K Ultra it drops to 79.2 FPS. That drop is more than a 6x reduction in frame rate, indicating that the GPU is being pushed much harder at higher resolutions, as expected.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel’s 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with 25 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core. The CPU’s 3DMark scores show a clear scaling pattern: 2065 in the 2-thread test, 4011 in 4-thread, 7202 in 8-thread, and 9979 in the max-thread test, which indicates that Barony’s workload benefits from additional cores up to a point, but that single-thread performance is also strong, as shown by the 1043 score in the single-thread test. In Cinebench R23, the chip scores 29241 multi-core and 4128 single-core, which places it in the top tier of desktop processors from its generation. For Barony, the CPU’s job is to keep the game’s logic and physics running without becoming a bottleneck. The data from the measured FPS suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU is the limiting factor, since the frame rate of 522.5 FPS is likely near the engine’s internal cap or the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls, rather than the GPU’s rendering capacity.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the RTX 4070 SUPER and i7-12700K produce frame rates that are effectively uncapped by the hardware. With Low settings, the average FPS is 522.5, which is a number that no current monitor can display. Medium settings drop that to 390.9 FPS, High settings to 334.6 FPS, and Ultra to 241 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 53.9% reduction in frame rate, but even the lowest number is far beyond what is needed for competitive play. At 1440p, the pattern is similar but with a tighter spread. Low settings yield 327.5 FPS, Medium 246.7 FPS, High 211.6 FPS, and Ultra 153.1 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 53.2%, almost identical to the 1080p scaling, which suggests that the bottleneck is shifting more toward the GPU as resolution increases, but the CPU is still keeping up. At 4K, the picture changes more dramatically. Low settings produce 171.5 FPS, Medium 131.1 FPS, High 112.3 FPS, and Ultra 79.2 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 53.8%, which is consistent with the other resolutions, but the absolute numbers are now low enough that the GPU is clearly the primary constraint, especially at Ultra where the frame rate dips below 80 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about which component is doing the heavy lifting. At Low settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p reduces the average FPS from 522.5 to 327.5, a 37.3% decrease, and then from 1440p to 4K it drops to 171.5, another 47.6% decrease. These are large percentage drops that align with the increase in pixel count: 1440p has 1.78 times as many pixels as 1080p, and 4K has 2.25 times as many pixels as 1440p. The fact that the FPS does not drop proportionally to the pixel count increase suggests that the CPU is still a factor at lower settings, holding the frame rate back at 1080p. At Ultra settings, the scaling is more consistent with a GPU-bound workload. The drop from 1080p (241 FPS) to 1440p (153.1 FPS) is 36.5%, and from 1440p to 4K (79.2 FPS) is 48.3%. These percentages are slightly smaller than the pixel count ratios, indicating that the CPU is still providing some headroom, but the GPU is clearly the limiting factor at 4K Ultra. The data shows that for players who want to run Barony at 4K with max settings, the RTX 4070 SUPER is the component to watch, as it delivers playable but not extreme frame rates.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-12700K a bottleneck for the RTX 4070 SUPER in Barony?

A: At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 522.5 FPS, which is likely CPU-limited, but at 4K Ultra the frame rate drops to 79.2 FPS, showing that the GPU becomes the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The CPU’s 12 cores and 20 threads provide ample headroom for this game.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 SUPER compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 42576, which is 0.2% lower than the NVIDIA RTX A6000’s 42653 and 0.3% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE’s 42723. The differences are within 1.6% of all four nearest rivals.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with High settings, the measured average FPS is 211.6. This is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate of most gaming monitors, so the experience will be very smooth.

Q: Does the CPU’s single-thread performance matter for Barony?

A: Yes, the i7-12700K scores 4128 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 1043 in 3DMark single-thread, which indicates strong per-core performance. This helps maintain high frame rates at low resolutions where the CPU is more likely to be the limiting factor.

Q: Is 12 GB of VRAM enough for Barony at 4K Ultra?

A: The data shows that at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo averages 79.2 FPS. The 12 GB GDDR6X memory with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for this game at 4K, as the frame rate remains playable.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all other tested combinations?

A: This pairing is ranked 297 out of 1702 tested combos, placing it in the top 17.5% of all CPU-GPU pairs tested for Barony. That is a strong result, though the game is not particularly demanding.