Barony

The Intel Core i7-13700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is an extremely high-end combination, and the benchmark data for Barony reflects that, though the game's roguelike nature means the numbers tell a story of brute force rather than nuanced optimization. This combo sits at rank 181 out of 1702 tested combinations, placing it comfortably in the top 11% of all systems measured. The data shows a system that obliterates 1080p and 1440p, and remains highly playable at 4K, but the scaling patterns reveal where the bottlenecks lie.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep, but not catastrophic, indicating a GPU that is still the primary driver at the highest resolution. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate falls from 261 FPS at 1920x1080 to 164.5 FPS at 2560x1440, a 37% reduction, and then further down to 87.8 FPS at 3840x2160, another 46.6% drop from the 1440p figure. This is a classic sign of the render resolution scaling with the GPU workload, as the RTX 5070 Ti's 896.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are taxed more heavily at each step up.

However, the scaling is not perfectly linear. At Low settings, the drop from 1080p (571.7 FPS) to 1440p (361.6 FPS) is a 36.8% decrease, but the drop from 1440p to 4K (187.7 FPS) is 48.1%. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU begins to exert more influence at 1440p, but the GPU still takes over as the limiting factor at 4K. In contrast, at High settings, the drops are 36.9% (1080p to 1440p) and 47.4% (1440p to 4K), showing a very consistent pattern where the GPU is the dominant constraint across all resolutions.

The most telling figure is the difference between Low and Ultra at each resolution. At 1080p, the gap is 310.7 FPS (571.7 vs 261); at 1440p, it is 197.1 FPS (361.6 vs 164.5); and at 4K, it narrows to 99.9 FPS (187.7 vs 87.8). This compression of the settings gap at higher resolutions reinforces that the RTX 5070 Ti is the limiting component at 4K, while at 1080p, the i7-13700K's 16 cores and 24 threads are more than capable of feeding the GPU, allowing the graphics card's raw power to shine.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 181 out of 1702, this pairing is in the 89th percentile of all tested systems for Barony. The data indicates that this is not a marginal performer; it is decisively an upper-tier setup. The CPU's percentile vs all CPUs is 93, and its average benchmark score of 47282 places it slightly ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 5945 (47527) by a 0.5% margin, and just behind the Intel Core i7-13700KF (47334) by 0.1%. This places the i7-13700K in a very tight cluster of high-end processors where performance differences are within noise.

The GPU's percentile vs all GPUs is 87, with an average benchmark score of 52086. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, scores a nearly identical 52085, showing a 0% delta. The AMD Radeon RX 7700S is 0.8% ahead, while the RTX A1000 is 2.5% behind. This means the RTX 5070 Ti is effectively a peer of the RTX 4080 in raw compute, which is a strong position. The combination of a top-7% CPU and a top-13% GPU yields a system that ranks better than 89% of the combos tested in this game, suggesting that Barony is not particularly sensitive to the slight differences between this CPU and its rivals, but rather benefits from the sheer scale of both components' capabilities.

Settings Recommendations

For a game like Barony, high frame rates are paramount for responsiveness, but the data shows that Ultra settings offer a significant visual upgrade with only a moderate FPS cost at 1440p and 4K. At 2560x1440, the jump from High (230.4 FPS) to Ultra (164.5 FPS) is a 28.6% reduction, but both are well above the threshold for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate monitors. At 4K, the drop from High (121.1 FPS) to Ultra (87.8 FPS) is a 27.5% reduction, and 87.8 FPS is still perfectly playable, though it may not saturate a 144Hz display.

The most balanced approach, based on the measured data, is to use High settings at 4K. This yields 121.1 FPS, which is a 38% improvement over Ultra's 87.8 FPS, while still providing a substantial visual quality gain over Medium's 141.7 FPS. The delta between High and Ultra is far larger in frame rate impact than the visual fidelity difference typically warrants in roguelike titles. At 1440p, Ultra is the right choice if you have a 144Hz or 165Hz monitor, as 164.5 FPS is still above those refresh rates. For 1080p, even Ultra at 261 FPS is essentially overkill, so you can max everything out without concern. The Low settings at 571.7 FPS (1080p) are only useful for competitive play where every millisecond matters, but the visual degradation is substantial.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The data provides a complete matrix of average FPS across four settings and three resolutions. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 571.7, Medium 429.2, High 365.3, and Ultra 261. At 2560x1440, the numbers are: Low 361.6, Medium 268.2, High 230.4, and Ultra 164.5. At 3840x2160, the performance drops to: Low 187.7, Medium 141.7, High 121.1, and Ultra 87.8.

The scaling between settings is consistent. From Medium to High, the FPS drops by roughly 14-15% at each resolution (e.g., 429.2 to 365.3 at 1080p). The jump from High to Ultra is more punishing, with a 28-29% decrease at all resolutions. This suggests that Ultra settings introduce a disproportionately heavy load, likely related to shadow quality or post-processing effects. The difference between Low and Medium is also notable, with a 24.9% drop at 1080p (571.7 to 429.2), but a 24.4% drop at 4K (187.7 to 141.7), indicating that Medium settings add a consistent level of GPU work regardless of resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the clear workhorse in this pairing, and its specifications explain the performance profile. With 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, it has a bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for Barony's texture and geometry demands at 4K. The GPU's 8960 shading units, 280 TMUs, and 96 ROPs provide a pixel rate of 235.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 686.6 GTexel/s. These figures directly correlate with the smooth scaling from 1080p to 4K, as the GPU is able to maintain high fill rates even when the pixel count quadruples.

The boost clock of 2452 MHz and base clock of 2295 MHz are relatively close, indicating good sustained performance. In synthetic benchmarks, the GPU scores 32974 in Passmark G3D and 231226 in Geekbench OpenCL, placing it in the 87th percentile. Its average benchmark score of 52086 is virtually identical to the RTX 4080, which confirms that this card has enough raw compute to handle Barony's Ultra settings at 4K, even if the frame rate drops to 87.8 FPS. The data suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as evidenced by the significant drop from 141.7 FPS at Medium to 87.8 FPS at Ultra.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K plays a supporting but crucial role, ensuring the GPU is never starved for data. With 16 cores (8 performance and 8 efficient) and 24 threads, it has ample parallel processing power. Its base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.40 GHz are high, and the 30 MB of shared L3 cache helps with game logic and asset streaming. The CPU's benchmark scores are strong: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 39000 and a single-core score of 5505, which are excellent for gaming workloads that often rely on a few fast cores.

The CPU's percentile vs all CPUs is 93, and its average benchmark score of 47282 is within 0.5% of its nearest rivals. This means that in Barony, the i7-13700K is not the bottleneck at any resolution. The evidence for this is the FPS scaling: if the CPU were limiting, we would see a plateau in FPS as resolution decreases. Instead, the FPS continues to climb dramatically from 4K to 1080p, reaching 571.7 FPS at Low settings. This indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at maximum speed, and the RTX 5070 Ti is the component that dictates the final frame rate. The CPU's 125W TDP and support for DDR4/DDR5 memory also make it a flexible platform, but the benchmark data confirms that its primary role here is to stay out of the way of the GPU's immense throughput.