Barony

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Barony shows a steep and consistent performance curve as resolution climbs from 1080p to 4K, but the shape of that curve reveals a system that is heavily CPU-limited at lower resolutions and gradually becomes GPU-bound only at the very top end. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces 663 FPS average, which drops to 418 FPS at 2560x1440 and then to 219 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 37% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a further 48% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is far from linear, indicating that the CPU is the primary constraint at 1080p, where the GPU is effectively idle-waiting for frame submissions.

The Medium settings curve tells a similar story but with a slightly different slope. At 1080p Medium, the average is 493 FPS, dropping to 311 FPS at 1440p and then to 163 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 37% and 48% respectively, which are nearly identical to the Low settings percentages. This consistency across settings levels suggests that the game's rendering pipeline at lower resolutions is bounded by the CPU's ability to feed draw calls, regardless of the graphical workload. The 12-core Intel Core i7-12700KF with its 5.00 GHz boost clock is clearly the ceiling here, not the RTX 4090's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

At Ultra settings, the picture changes. The 1080p Ultra average is 303 FPS, which drops to 191 FPS at 1440p (37% reduction) and then to 100 FPS at 4K (48% reduction). The relative scaling remains consistent, but the absolute numbers are much lower, suggesting that the Ultra preset introduces enough GPU work to start shifting the bottleneck. Still, even at 4K Ultra, the 100 FPS average is well above playable thresholds, and the GPU's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth never appears to be a limiting factor. The data indicates that this combo is overkill for Barony at any resolution below 4K, where the CPU becomes the bottleneck, and only at 4K does the GPU begin to matter meaningfully.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 in this configuration is operating far below its potential in Barony, as evidenced by the massive FPS headroom at lower resolutions. The GPU's 2235 MHz base clock and 2520 MHz boost clock, combined with 16384 shading units and 512 TMUs, provide enormous raw throughput, but the game's roguelike genre and relatively simple geometry mean that much of this hardware sits idle. The 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are present but largely unused in a game that does not employ ray tracing or DLSS-heavy workloads. The 176 ROPs and 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate are sufficient to handle the 4K Ultra 100 FPS average without breaking a sweat.

The VRAM situation is similarly unremarkable for this title. The 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus is far more than Barony requires, even at 4K Ultra. The measured FPS numbers show no evidence of texture thrashing or memory bandwidth limitations, as the 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is more than adequate for the game's asset streaming. What the data does show is that the RTX 4090's performance ceiling is so high that even at 4K Ultra, the bottleneck shifts to the CPU's single-thread performance, which is where the 3dmark_single_thread score of 1043 and the passmark_single_thread score of 3984 become relevant.

The GPU's benchmark results corroborate its position: the passmark_g3d score of 38194 and the 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12 score of 9223 place it in the 88th percentile against all GPUs. Yet in Barony, the 4K Ultra to 4K Low spread (100 FPS to 219 FPS) shows that even the most demanding settings only utilize a fraction of the card's capability. The takeaway is that the RTX 4090 is not the constraint in this system for Barony; it is the enabler that allows the CPU to dictate performance at every settings level.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 131 out of 3717 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the top 3.5% of all configurations. That rank is impressive, but the gap between this combo and the absolute top performers is not due to GPU horsepower — it is due to CPU single-thread performance. The i7-12700KF's nearest rivals in CPU benchmark scores are the Intel Core i7-13700T (avgScore 35403, deltaPct -0.1), the Intel Core i5-13600T (avgScore 35305, deltaPct 0.2), the Intel Core 5 213PE (avgScore 35428, deltaPct -0.2), and the Intel Core i7-12700K (avgScore 35287, deltaPct 0.2). All of these are within 0.2% of the i7-12700KF's average benchmark score of 35365, meaning that swapping to any of these CPUs would produce nearly identical Barony results.

The rank of 131 out of 3717 indicates that there are 130 combos that achieve higher FPS in Barony, and the data suggests those combos likely feature CPUs with even higher single-thread performance. The i7-12700KF's 3dmark_single_thread score of 1043 and geekbench_singlecore score of 2255 are strong, but not class-leading for this game. The combo rank is also influenced by the fact that the RTX 4090, while ranking 88th percentile among GPUs, is paired with a CPU that is only 85th percentile among all CPUs. This mismatch means that the GPU is not the differentiator in Barony; the CPU is. In a game where the 1080p Low FPS of 663 is nearly triple the 4K Ultra FPS of 100, the ranking reflects the CPU's ability to drive high frame rates rather than the GPU's raw rendering power.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Barony?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 663 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is followed by 493 FPS at 1080p Medium and 423 FPS at 1080p High.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 bottleneck the i7-12700KF in Barony?

A: No. The data shows the opposite: at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is the limiting factor. For example, 1080p Low yields 663 FPS, while 1440p Low yields 418 FPS — a 37% drop that is consistent with CPU-bound behavior.

Q: How does the combo rank compare to other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 131 out of 3717 tested combinations in Barony, placing it in the top 3.5% of all configurations tested.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Medium and Ultra settings at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, Medium settings produce an average of 163 FPS (with min 138 and max 187), while Ultra settings produce an average of 100 FPS. That is a 63 FPS difference, or 39% lower performance at Ultra.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM ever a limiting factor in Barony?

A: No. The measured FPS data shows no evidence of VRAM limitations at any resolution or settings level. The 24 GB of GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is far more than the game requires, even at 4K Ultra.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The only settings with recorded minimum FPS values are Medium: 138 FPS at 4K, 264 FPS at 1440p, and 419 FPS at 1080p. All other settings did not have min FPS recorded in the data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full measured FPS dataset for this combo in Barony is as follows. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 663 FPS, Medium delivers 493 FPS (min 419, max 567), High delivers 423 FPS, and Ultra delivers 303 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 360 FPS, which is 54% of the Low value, indicating that the CPU is the primary constraint across all settings at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 418 FPS for Low, 311 FPS for Medium (min 264, max 358), 267 FPS for High, and 191 FPS for Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across all settings: Low drops 37%, Medium drops 37%, High drops 37%, and Ultra drops 37%. This uniformity strongly suggests that the bottleneck remains the CPU at 1440p, and the GPU's increased workload does not yet saturate the RTX 4090.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 219 FPS for Low, 163 FPS for Medium (min 138, max 187), 140 FPS for High, and 100 FPS for Ultra. The drop from 1440p to 4K is also consistent at 48% across all settings. The 4K Ultra average of 100 FPS is the lowest recorded, but it is still well above the 60 FPS threshold that most games target. The Medium settings at 4K show the only min/max range in the dataset, with a spread of 49 FPS (138 to 187), which indicates some frame time variance but nothing that would cause perceptible stuttering.

Across all resolutions and settings, the highest FPS is 663 (1080p Low) and the lowest is 100 (4K Ultra). The data shows that the CPU's single-thread performance, as indicated by the 3dmark_single_thread score of 1043 and the cinebench_r15_singlecore score of 410, is the dominant factor in determining FPS at 1080p and 1440p, while the GPU begins to contribute at 4K but still does not become the full bottleneck.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF plays the decisive role in this combo's Barony performance, as the data consistently shows CPU-bound behavior at 1080p and 1440p. The 12-core, 20-thread processor with a 3.60 GHz base clock and 5.00 GHz boost clock is architecturally Alder Lake-S, built on Intel's 10 nm process. Its 25 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core are well-suited to the game's logic-heavy roguelike gameplay, which relies heavily on procedural generation, pathfinding, and entity updates rather than complex graphics rendering.

The CPU's benchmark scores provide context for its Barony performance. The 3dmark_single_thread score of 1043 and the cinebench_r23_singlecore score of 4071 indicate strong single-thread capability, which is critical for a game that likely has a primary game thread. The passmark_single_thread score of 3984 and geekbench_singlecore score of 2255 corroborate this. The multi-thread scores — 3dmark_max_threads of 9983, cinebench_r23_multicore of 28838, and passmark_multithread of 34092 — show that the CPU can handle background tasks without impacting game performance, but Barony does not appear to scale with core count beyond a few threads.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 85 against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35365, places it in the upper echelon, but its nearest rivals are all within 0.2% of its score. This means that the i7-12700KF's Barony performance is representative of a broad class of high-end CPUs, and the 131st rank out of 3717 combos is driven by the CPU's single-thread performance rather than its core count. The 5.00 GHz boost clock is the key specification for Barony, as the game's frame rate at 1080p Low (663 FPS) and 1080p Medium (493 FPS) demonstrates that the CPU can generate frames far faster than the GPU needs to render them.

The i7-12700KF's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5, with a dual-channel memory bus, is a relevant factor for Barony, as the game's data structures benefit from low-latency memory access. However, the measured FPS data does not show any memory-related performance cliffs, suggesting that the CPU's cache hierarchy is sufficient for the game's working set. The CPU's multiplier is unlocked, allowing for overclocking, but the data provided is for the stock configuration. The CPU's launch MSRP is $384, and it was released on 2021-11-03, with a production status of Active.

In summary, the i7-12700KF is the performance driver in this combo for Barony. The RTX 4090 is more than capable of rendering any settings the CPU can feed it, but the CPU's single-thread performance ceiling, as measured by its 1043 3dmark_single_thread score, is what ultimately determines the 1080p and 1440p FPS. At 4K, the GPU starts to play a larger role, but even then, the CPU's 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures that the combo never dips below 100 FPS average at Ultra settings. This is a system where the CPU is the star of the show, and the GPU is merely ensuring that nothing holds it back.