Barony

# Barony CPU/GPU Performance Analysis: Intel Core i7-14700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

The Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers exceptional performance in Barony, achieving triple-digit average frame rates at every tested resolution and settings combination. This combination ranks 650th out of 3,717 tested combos, placing it in the top 17.5% of all configurations, with the CPU and GPU both performing well above their respective hardware percentiles. Benchmark data confirms this pairing is overkill for Barony's roguelike rendering demands, yet the headroom ensures maximum visual fidelity without sacrificing smoothness.

FAQ

Q: What is the combo's overall rank in Barony among all tested hardware combinations?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination ranks 650th out of 3,717 tested combos, placing it in the top 17.5% of all configurations tested in the database.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 SUPER compare to its nearest GPU rivals in average benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER's average benchmark score of 43,223 is essentially tied with the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB (43,262, -0.1% delta), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile (43,268, -0.1% delta), and the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 (43,301, -0.2% delta). The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile leads by 1% with a score of 43,667.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded in Barony with this hardware combo?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 522 at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This drops to 239 FPS at Ultra settings for the same resolution, showing the performance scaling across presets.

Q: Does this combo maintain playable frame rates at 4K Ultra settings?

A: Yes. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo averages 79 FPS, which remains above standard 60 FPS thresholds. At High settings for the same resolution, average FPS rises to 110.

Q: How does the i7-14700K compare to its nearest CPU rivals in average benchmark scores?

A: The i7-14700K's average benchmark score of 69,355 is within 1% of all four nearest rivals: AMD EPYC 9115 (69,288, +0.1%), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515, -0.2%), AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875, -0.7%), and AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (69,996, -0.9%).

Q: What memory configuration does this CPU support, and does it matter for Barony?

A: The i7-14700K supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. Given the extremely high frame rates achieved in Barony, the memory type is unlikely to be a limiting factor for this game's performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, provides the graphical muscle for this configuration. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus delivers 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Barony's rendering demands, as evidenced by the consistently high frame rates across all resolutions. The GPU's 7,168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units work in concert to process the game's visual output efficiently.

At the core of the RTX 4070 SUPER's performance is its clock behavior: a base clock of 1980 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, with memory operating at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These clocks allow the GPU to achieve a pixel rate of 198.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 554.4 GTexel/s, with FP32 compute rated at 35.48 TFLOPS. In Barony, which is not a graphically demanding title by modern standards, these specifications translate to the GPU rarely being the bottleneck, even at 4K resolution. The data supports this: at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo still averages 79 FPS, indicating the GPU can handle the maximum settings at the highest resolution tested.

The GPU's benchmark percentile of 83rd among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 43,223, places it in the upper tier of graphics cards. Its nearest rivals in average score are all within 1% — the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB at 43,262, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile at 43,268, and the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 at 43,301, with the RTX 4090 Mobile slightly ahead at 43,667. This clustering indicates the RTX 4070 SUPER sits at a performance plateau where small benchmark differences don't meaningfully affect real-world gaming, particularly in a title like Barony where the GPU is rarely stressed to its limits.

The GPU's 220 W TDP and dual-slot design suggest it requires adequate cooling and power delivery, but its PCIe 4.0 x16 interface is more than sufficient for the bandwidth Barony needs. With DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 API support, the card is fully compatible with modern rendering pipelines, though Barony's engine likely doesn't exploit these features to their fullest potential.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, provides massive computational headroom for Barony. The CPU's architecture uses Raptor Lake-R design on a 10 nm process, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. This combination of high core count and high clock speed ensures that the CPU never becomes a limiting factor, even in the most demanding gameplay scenarios with many entities on screen. The 125 W TDP indicates this is a power-hungry processor, but its performance justifies the power draw.

The cache hierarchy — 80 KB L1 per core, 2 MB L2 per core, and 33 MB shared L3 — provides ample fast-access storage for game data. This is particularly relevant for roguelike games like Barony, which can involve complex procedural generation and pathfinding calculations. The CPU's benchmark results confirm its strength: a multi-core score of 33,440.5 in Cinebench R23 and a single-core score of 2,160, with Geekbench multi-core at 20,767 and single-core at 2,569. These scores place the CPU at the 94th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 69,355.

The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score are clustered tightly: the AMD EPYC 9115 at 69,288 (+0.1% delta), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X at 69,515 (-0.2% delta), AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX at 69,875 (-0.7% delta), and AMD Ryzen 7 9700F at 69,996 (-0.9% delta). This sub-1% spread means the i7-14700K is effectively performance-equivalent to these alternatives in synthetic benchmarks, and for Barony specifically, any of these CPUs would likely deliver identical frame rates given the same GPU.

The CPU's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5 with dual-channel configuration, combined with PCIe Gen 5 support (16 lanes from CPU), ensures the system has no data transfer bottlenecks. The integrated UHD Graphics 770 provides a fallback display output, though it's not relevant for gaming with the discrete RTX 4070 SUPER present. The CPU's launch MSRP is $409, and it remains in active production, indicating ongoing availability for system builders.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the i7-14700K + RTX 4070 SUPER delivers outstanding frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 522 FPS, Medium settings yield 388 FPS with a minimum of 330 and maximum of 446, High settings average 333 FPS, and Ultra settings still manage 239 FPS. These figures demonstrate that at 1080p, the combo is heavily CPU-bound at lower settings, with GPU limitations only appearing at Ultra where the frame rate drops by more than half compared to Low.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scaling is consistent. Low settings average 329 FPS, Medium settings produce 245 FPS (with minimum 208 and maximum 282), High settings average 210 FPS, and Ultra settings deliver 151 FPS. The resolution increase from 1080p to 1440p reduces frame rates by roughly 37-40% across settings, which is expected as pixel count increases by approximately 78%. The combo maintains excellent playability at this resolution, never dropping below 151 FPS even at maximum quality.

At 3840x2160, 4K resolution, the GPU begins to show its limits but remains highly playable. Low settings average 172 FPS, Medium settings produce 128 FPS (with minimum 109 and maximum 147), High settings average 110 FPS, and Ultra settings deliver 79 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows a more pronounced drop, with frame rates falling by approximately 48-52% across settings, consistent with the 2.25x pixel increase. The minimum FPS recorded at 4K Medium (109 FPS) still exceeds the maximum refresh rate of most standard monitors, confirming this combo provides smooth gameplay even in demanding scenarios.

The data pattern across all resolutions shows diminishing returns from settings reductions: at 1080p, Low is 2.2x faster than Ultra (522 vs 239 FPS), while at 4K, Low is 2.2x faster than Ultra (172 vs 79 FPS). This consistent scaling factor suggests the game's settings have a linear impact on GPU workload, with no resolution-specific bottlenecks emerging.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER achieves a rank of 650 out of 3,717 tested combos for Barony, placing it in the top 17.5% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the combined strength of both components, with the CPU at the 94th percentile among all CPUs and the GPU at the 83rd percentile among all GPUs. The gap between the combo's overall rank and the individual component percentiles suggests that other factors, such as memory configuration or driver optimization, may influence the final ranking.

Given the game's release date of 2015 and its roguelike genre, Barony is not a graphically intensive title by modern standards. The measured frame rates at 4K Ultra (79 FPS average) indicate that this combo has approximately 20% headroom above 60 FPS targets at maximum settings and resolution, while at 1440p and 1080p, the combo far exceeds any practical refresh rate requirements. The combo's rank of 650 suggests that many higher-ranked configurations likely use even more powerful GPUs, but for Barony specifically, the practical difference between this combo and those ranked higher would be imperceptible beyond 144Hz displays.

The CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores — including the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 7 9700F — would likely produce identical Barony performance when paired with the same GPU, as the game is not CPU-bound in any tested configuration. Similarly, the GPU's nearest rivals, such as the RTX 4090 Mobile, show less than 1% benchmark difference, which would translate to negligible FPS differences in Barony. The combo's strength lies in its balance: neither component bottlenecks the other at any tested resolution or settings level.

Settings Recommendations

For 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 displays, the Ultra preset is the clear recommendation. At 1080p, Ultra yields 239 FPS average, which exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all gaming monitors, and at 1440p, Ultra produces 151 FPS, still sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays. The visual quality improvement from Ultra settings over High is worth the frame rate trade-off at these resolutions, as the performance remains well above playable thresholds.

For 3840x2160 4K displays, the High preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance. At 110 FPS average, High settings provide a 39% improvement over Ultra's 79 FPS while maintaining the same resolution. The Medium preset at 4K produces 128 FPS with a minimum of 109 FPS, which may be preferable for users with 120Hz+ displays who prioritize smoothness over maximum visual quality. However, the High preset's 110 FPS average is sufficient for most 4K monitors, which typically cap at 60-144Hz.

For competitive play or maximum frame rates, the Low preset at 1440p (329 FPS) or 1080p (522 FPS) offers the highest possible responsiveness, though the visual degradation may not be justified given that even Ultra settings at these resolutions exceed 150 FPS. The Medium preset provides a balanced option, with 388 FPS at 1080p and 245 FPS at 1440p, though the jump from Medium to High costs only 55 FPS at 1080p and 35 FPS at 1440p, making High the sweet spot for most users. At 4K, the choice between Medium (128 FPS) and High (110 FPS) depends on display refresh rate: users with 120Hz displays should choose Medium for guaranteed headroom, while 60Hz users can safely select Ultra for maximum visual quality.