Barony

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 delivers a wide spread of performance across Barony’s four settings presets, with average frame rates ranging from 48 FPS at 4K Ultra to 315 FPS at 1080p Low. The data shows that the choice of preset is critical for matching the display’s refresh rate, as the gap between Low and Ultra widens dramatically as resolution increases. For users targeting a 60 FPS baseline, the 4K High preset provides a comfortable margin, while 1440p and 1080p users have enough headroom to select higher quality settings without sacrificing smoothness.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows reveal a clear hierarchy: Ultra is the most demanding preset at every resolution, followed by High, then Medium, with Low being the least taxing. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset yields an average of 48 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold commonly associated with smooth gameplay; the Medium preset at the same resolution produces 77 FPS, and High reaches 66 FPS. Given that High at 4K maintains an average above 60 FPS while offering a substantial visual upgrade over Medium, it represents the best balance for 4K displays. The Low preset at 4K reaches 104 FPS, but the visual compromise is steep for a roguelike where readability of the dungeon environment matters.

Moving to 2560x1440, all four presets clear the 60 FPS mark, with Medium at 148 FPS and High at 127 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p delivers 91 FPS, which is still well above the 60 FPS baseline and provides the highest fidelity option for users with 144 Hz monitors who prefer visual quality over raw speed. For 1920x1080, the data indicates that even Ultra achieves 144 FPS, making it viable for high-refresh-rate displays; however, the Medium preset at 235 FPS and High at 201 FPS offer more headroom for competitive play. The optimal recommendation depends on the display: for 1080p 144 Hz panels, Ultra is the best experience; for 1440p 144 Hz panels, Medium or High are safer choices; and for 4K 60 Hz panels, High is the recommended preset.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9060’s memory configuration and clock speeds directly influence the frame rates observed in Barony. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s, with a base clock of 1700 MHz, a boost clock of 2990 MHz, and a game clock of 2400 MHz. The 8 GB frame buffer appears sufficient for the tested settings, as the data shows no min FPS anomalies that would suggest memory capacity throttling, even at 4K Ultra where the average drops to 48 FPS. The RDNA 4.0 architecture, built on a 4 nm process with 29,700 million transistors, delivers a pixel rate of 191.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 334.9 GTexel/s, which are the raw throughput figures that scale with resolution.

The GPU’s compute capabilities, measured at 21.43 TFLOPS for FP32, are reflected in the benchmark scores, including a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 3322 and a Passmark G3D score of 17631. In the context of Barony, the GPU’s role becomes more pronounced at higher resolutions; the frame rate drop from 1080p High (201 FPS) to 4K High (66 FPS) demonstrates a 67% reduction, which aligns with the pixel count increase. The RX 9060’s 64 ROPs and 112 TMUs handle the roguelike’s geometry and texture work, but the data suggests that at 4K Ultra, the GPU reaches its limit, as the average falls below the 60 FPS threshold. Compared to its nearest rivals, the RX 9060’s average benchmark score of 16014 places it 0.7% below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (16129) and 1% above the AMD Radeon RX 7700 (15852), indicating a tight grouping in general compute performance that carries over to gaming scenarios.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF provides substantial processing headroom for Barony, as evidenced by its high multi-threaded scores. With 12 cores and 20 threads, the CPU runs at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, built on the Alder Lake architecture with a 10 nm process. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3, which helps maintain low-latency access to game data. The CPU’s benchmark results are strong: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 28838, Geekbench multicore scores 14367, and Passmark multithread scores 34092, with a single-thread Passmark score of 3984.

In Barony, the CPU’s role is evident when comparing frame rates across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the average FPS reaches 315, which is a high enough value to suggest that the CPU is not the primary limiter, as the GPU can push frames at a rapid pace. The fact that 1080p Ultra still achieves 144 FPS further indicates that the 12700KF’s single-thread performance, measured at 1043 in 3DMark single-thread and 4071 in Cinebench R23 single-core, is sufficient to feed the RX 9060 even at lower resolutions where CPU overhead typically becomes more visible. The CPU’s 125 W TDP and unlocked multiplier allow for sustained performance, and its 85th percentile ranking among all CPUs places it in the upper tier, though its nearest rivals show a negligible delta: the i7-13700T is 0.1% higher in average score, the i5-13600T is 0.2% higher, and the i7-12700K is 0.2% higher.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo?

A: The highest average frame rate is 315 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset.

Q: At which resolution and preset does the combo fail to reach 60 FPS?

A: At 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset, the average frame rate drops to 48 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the RX 9060 compare to its nearest GPU rival in average benchmark score?

A: The RX 9060 has an average benchmark score of 16014, which is 0.7% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti’s score of 16129.

Q: What is the CPU’s multi-threaded performance in Cinebench R23?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700KF scores 28838 in Cinebench R23 multicore.

Q: Is the 8 GB VRAM on the RX 9060 sufficient for the tested settings?

A: The data shows no min FPS values that would indicate memory capacity issues; the lowest min FPS recorded is 66 at 4K Medium, while the average at 4K Ultra is 48 FPS, suggesting the frame buffer is adequate for these presets.

Q: What is the combo’s rank among all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 1704 out of 2935 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how the workload shifts between CPU and GPU. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 201 at 1080p to 127 at 1440p (a 37% reduction), then further to 66 at 4K (a 48% reduction from 1440p). This pattern indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting component as resolution increases, because the CPU’s performance headroom remains constant while the pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K. The Low preset shows a similar trend: 315 FPS at 1080p, 199 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop), and 104 FPS at 4K (a 48% drop from 1440p). The consistent percentage drops across presets suggest that the scaling is resolution-bound rather than settings-bound, meaning the RX 9060’s fill rate and bandwidth dictate the upper limits.

For the Ultra preset, the decline is steeper: 144 FPS at 1080p, 91 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop), and 48 FPS at 4K (a 47% drop from 1440p). This shows that Ultra at 4K pushes the GPU to its limits, as the average falls below 60 FPS. The data indicates that the CPU, with its 20 threads and high boost clock, is not the bottleneck even at 1080p Low where the frame rate exceeds 300 FPS; if the CPU were limiting, the 1080p to 1440p drop would be smaller. Instead, the proportional scaling across all settings points to the GPU as the primary constraint, with the RX 9060’s 288.0 GB/s bandwidth and 191.4 GPixel/s pixel rate defining the ceiling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers the following average frame rates: Low presets produce 315 FPS, Medium produces 235 FPS with a minimum of 199 FPS and a maximum of 270 FPS, High produces 201 FPS, and Ultra produces 144 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 171 FPS, showing a 54% reduction when moving to the highest settings. At 2560x1440, the averages are 199 FPS for Low, 148 FPS for Medium (min 126, max 170), 127 FPS for High, and 91 FPS for Ultra. The 1440p results show a tighter relative spread, with Ultra being 54% lower than Low, consistent with the 1080p pattern. At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 104 FPS for Low, 77 FPS for Medium (min 66, max 89), 66 FPS for High, and 48 FPS for Ultra. The 4K data reveals that even the Low preset stays above 100 FPS, but Ultra falls below the 60 FPS threshold, making High the highest playable preset at this resolution.

The min FPS data, available only for the Medium preset at each resolution, shows that the 1% lows scale similarly: 199 FPS at 1080p, 126 FPS at 1440p, and 66 FPS at 4K. These minimums are 15-17% lower than the respective averages, indicating stable frame pacing without severe stutters. The absence of min/max data for other presets limits further analysis, but the available numbers suggest that the Medium preset offers a reliable experience across all resolutions, with the 4K Medium average of 77 FPS providing a solid margin above the 60 FPS baseline.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and AMD Radeon RX 9060 ranks 1704 out of 2935 combos, placing it in the 58th percentile of all tested systems. This rank reflects the overall performance across the measured settings and resolutions, with the combo demonstrating strong 1080p and 1440p capabilities but struggling at 4K Ultra. The CPU’s 85th percentile ranking among all CPUs (average benchmark score 35365) suggests that the processor is a high-performing component, while the GPU’s 59th percentile ranking (average benchmark score 16014) indicates that the graphics card is the weaker link in this pairing. The combo’s rank of 1704 is thus more heavily influenced by the GPU’s mid-tier positioning, as the CPU would be capable of supporting a more powerful graphics card without becoming a bottleneck.

The nearest GPU rivals reinforce this assessment: the RX 9060’s average score is nearly identical to the RTX 3060 Ti (within 0.7%) and the RX 7700 (within 1%), meaning that swapping in any of these GPUs would likely produce similar frame rates in Barony. The CPU’s nearest rivals show even smaller deltas, with the i7-13700T and i5-13600T within 0.2% of the 12700KF’s average score, suggesting that the CPU choice has minimal impact on the combo’s ranking. The data implies that for users seeking higher 4K performance, upgrading the GPU would yield more significant gains than upgrading the CPU, as the 12700KF already provides ample headroom for the RX 9060’s output.