Barony

The Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 combination ranks 1412th out of 1702 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the lower portion of the database. This ranking reflects a pairing where a high-end 16-core processor is matched with a mid-range Turing-generation graphics card. The data indicates that this combo sits below the median for this specific roguelike title, suggesting that while the CPU is capable of feeding frames, the GPU becomes the limiting factor in more demanding scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 1412 out of 1702, this pairing falls into the bottom tier of tested systems for Barony. The percentile placement is notably low, indicating that most other CPU-GPU combinations in the database achieve higher average frame rates. This is not surprising given the GPU’s position in the overall hierarchy—the RTX 2060 sits at the 58th percentile among all GPUs—while the i7-13700K is a top-tier part at the 93rd percentile among CPUs. The discrepancy between these two percentiles highlights a significant bottleneck imbalance. Benchmark results show the CPU has an average benchmark score of 47282, while the GPU averages 16074. In a game like Barony, which is a roguelike with less demanding graphics than modern AAA titles, this imbalance means the system often leaves performance on the table, as the CPU’s potential is underutilized by the GPU’s output limits.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the Turing architecture and features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock runs at 1365 MHz with a boost clock of 1680 MHz. The memory operates at 1750 MHz, effectively 14 Gbps. The card includes 1920 shading units, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, along with 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores. In Barony, the GPU’s role is critical because the game’s frame rate scales significantly with resolution and settings. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 260.6 FPS, but this drops to 121.3 FPS at 1080p Ultra. The GPU’s 6 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the textures used in this roguelike, but the card’s raw compute power—6.451 TFLOPS FP32—becomes the ceiling when settings are raised. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS falls to 40.6, which is borderline playable but indicates the GPU is fully saturated. The RTX 2060’s nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7600S, scores 15996 on average, which is a 0.5% delta, showing this GPU is competitive with that mobile part, but both are mid-range by modern standards.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K is a 16-core, 24-thread processor based on Raptor Lake architecture, fabricated on a 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB L1 per core, 2 MB L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache. In Barony, the CPU’s role is less about raw multi-threaded throughput and more about maintaining high single-thread performance for game logic and physics. The CPU’s single-core benchmarks are strong, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5505 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2850. However, its multi-core scores—like 39000 in Cinebench R23—are far beyond what this game can utilize. The data shows that the CPU is not a limiting factor at lower resolutions; at 1080p Low, the system hits 260.6 FPS, which is close to the display refresh rate of most monitors. The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13700KF, has an average score of 47334, a negligible -0.1% delta, meaning the K-series chip with integrated graphics is essentially identical in performance. The EPYC 4364P and Ryzen 9 PRO 5945 are within 0.5% as well, confirming that the 13700K is positioned at the top of its performance class.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 260.6 FPS on Low, 194.2 FPS on Medium, 168.8 FPS on High, and 121.3 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show that the system is capable of high refresh rates at 1080p, with even Ultra settings clearing 120 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS drops to 163.6 on Low, 121.9 on Medium, 103.1 on High, and 73.8 on Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is significant but expected, with the Low setting still exceeding 160 FPS. At 3840x2160, the performance becomes more constrained: Low delivers 87.3 FPS, Medium 61.7 FPS, High 52.9 FPS, and Ultra 40.6 FPS. The data indicates that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and fill rate are the primary constraints at 4K, as the CPU’s performance headroom is ample. The transition from High to Ultra at 4K costs roughly 12.3 FPS, from 52.9 to 40.6, which is a 23% reduction, showing that the Ultra preset is punishing for this GPU. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 139.3 FPS, indicating that the GPU is not the bottleneck at lower settings, and the CPU is capable of pushing frame rates well beyond 200 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling analysis reveals how the bottleneck shifts as pixel count increases. From 1080p Low to 4K Low, the FPS drops from 260.6 to 87.3, a 66.5% reduction. This is a larger relative drop than from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra, which goes from 121.3 to 40.6, a 66.5% reduction as well. In both cases, the scaling is consistent, indicating that the GPU is the dominant limiting factor across all settings. However, the absolute numbers tell a more nuanced story. At 1080p Low, the system is likely CPU-bound, as the 260.6 FPS ceiling is close to what the i7-13700K can sustain in this game. At 4K Ultra, the GPU is clearly the constraint, with 40.6 FPS being a typical result for a GPU in the 58th percentile. The data shows that the CPU has a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 39000, which is 3.2 times higher than its single-core score of 5505, but Barony is not a multi-threaded title, so the extra cores provide little benefit. The bottleneck analysis is clear: at 1080p, the i7-13700K’s single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 1136) is sufficient to push high frame rates, but at 4K, the RTX 2060’s pixel rate of 80.64 GPixel/s and texture rate of 201.6 GTexel/s are overwhelmed. The scaling from 1440p to 4K on High settings is from 103.1 to 52.9 FPS, a 48.7% drop, which aligns with the increase in pixel count of 2.25 times, confirming that the GPU is scaling linearly with resolution and is the primary limiting component in this pairing.