Barony

Barony is a roguelike that clearly rewards high refresh rates, and the Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 delivers an exceptionally wide spread of frame rates depending on how you configure it. The measured data shows this combo is never slow, but the gap between its best and worst settings is massive, spanning from a low of 66.3 FPS at 4K Ultra to a high of 452.5 FPS at 1080p Low. This range indicates a system that is heavily influenced by both resolution and preset choice, making it a flexible but demanding pairing for competitive play.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. At 1080p High, the combo produces 288.2 FPS, which falls to 180.2 FPS at 1440p and then down to 96 FPS at 4K. That is a 66.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K, showing that the GPU is being pushed progressively harder as pixel count rises. The same pattern holds at Ultra settings, where 208.3 FPS at 1080p drops to 131 FPS at 1440p and then to 66.3 FPS at 4K. The scaling is not perfectly linear, but it is consistent: each step up in resolution costs roughly a third to a half of the previous frame rate.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is doing much of the heavy lifting. The jump from 452.5 FPS at Low to 288.2 FPS at High is significant, but even the highest 1080p preset stays well above 200 FPS, indicating the processor has headroom to feed the GPU. At 4K, however, the GPU becomes the limiting factor. The difference between 4K Low (149.6 FPS) and 4K Ultra (66.3 FPS) is 55.7%, which is a much larger relative gap than the 36.2% drop seen at 1080p between the same presets. This is classic GPU-bound behavior: when the render resolution climbs, the RTX 3080's raw throughput determines the ceiling, and the CPU's role diminishes.

For players targeting high refresh rates, 1440p appears to be the sweet spot. The High preset delivers 180.2 FPS, which is well beyond what most 144Hz monitors can display, while Medium hits 211.4 FPS. At 4K, the combo still manages a playable 96 FPS on High, but the Ultra preset falls below the 70 FPS threshold that many would consider smooth for a fast-paced roguelike. The scaling data indicates that this system is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming, with 4K reserved for those who prioritize visual fidelity over raw responsiveness.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 44557 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 6290 in single-core, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs tested. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-14700K, which scores nearly identically, and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, which is only 0.4% faster in average benchmark score. This places the 14700KF at the top tier of desktop processors, and the Barony results reflect that strength.

In this game, the CPU's high single-core performance is likely what allows the framerate to reach such extreme heights at lower resolutions. The jump from 452.5 FPS at 1080p Low to 287 FPS at 1440p Low is a 36.5% drop, which is less severe than the 50.9% drop seen when moving from 1080p High to 1440p High. This suggests that at Low settings, the game's logic and physics are still being processed quickly enough to keep up with the GPU, even as resolution increases. The 5.60 GHz boost clock gives the processor the raw speed needed to handle the roguelike's turn-based and real-time hybrid mechanics without becoming a bottleneck.

The multi-core performance also matters, as Barony can spawn numerous entities and procedural effects simultaneously. A Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44557 indicates ample headroom for any background tasks or game engine threads, and the 33 MB of shared L3 cache helps reduce latency when accessing frequently used data. However, the data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor at 4K, where the GPU's workload dominates. At 4K Ultra, the framerate drops to 66.3 FPS, which is far below what the CPU could theoretically support, confirming that the RTX 3080 is the constraining component at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured presets provide a clear hierarchy of performance, and the best choice depends on whether the player prioritizes framerate or visual quality. At 1080p, the High preset delivers 288.2 FPS, which is more than enough for any high-refresh monitor. Moving to Ultra drops the framerate to 208.3 FPS, a 27.7% reduction that many players would not notice given the already high baseline. The Medium preset at 334.3 FPS offers a marginal gain over High but sacrifices some visual fidelity for an extra 46 FPS, which is unlikely to matter on a 240Hz display.

At 1440p, the High preset is the recommended target. It produces 180.2 FPS, which is sufficient for 144Hz and 165Hz monitors, and it avoids the steep performance hit of Ultra, which falls to 131 FPS. The Medium preset at 211.4 FPS is an option for those who want to stay above 200 FPS, but the visual difference between Medium and High is often more noticeable in a roguelike with dense UI elements and particle effects. For players with 240Hz monitors at 1440p, Low at 287 FPS is the only way to fully saturate the display, but the graphical compromises are significant.

At 4K, the situation is more constrained. The High preset at 96 FPS is the best balance, as it stays above the 60 FPS threshold while providing solid detail. The Ultra preset at 66.3 FPS is playable but dips close to the edge of smoothness, and the Medium preset at 109.4 FPS offers a better framerate with slightly reduced shadows and textures. The Low preset at 149.6 FPS is the only way to reach high refresh rates at 4K, but it strips away much of the game's atmosphere. For most players, 4K High is the sweet spot, as it delivers a playable framerate without sacrificing the visual quality that makes the game's procedurally generated dungeons engaging.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combos, this pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 518th out of 1702 combos. That places it in the 30th percentile of all tested configurations, which is a solid mid-tier result for a system with a high-end CPU and a previous-generation GPU. The rank reflects the fact that the RTX 3080, while still capable, is no longer at the top of the GPU hierarchy, and the combo's overall performance is limited by the graphics card's 10 GB of memory and Ampere architecture.

The CPU's individual standing is much higher than the combo's overall rank. The 14700KF sits in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 70104 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-14700K and within 0.4% of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X. This means the processor is not the weak link in this configuration. The GPU, by contrast, sits in the 80th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35787. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which is 0.9% faster, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile, which is 1% slower. This places the RTX 3080 in a crowded mid-to-high tier, and the combo rank of 518 reflects a system that is balanced but not exceptional by current standards.

The rank also indicates that many newer or more powerful combos are ahead of this one, particularly those with RTX 40-series cards or newer AMD GPUs. However, the measured FPS data shows that this combo still delivers excellent performance in Barony, especially at 1080p and 1440p. The rank is a general metric across all games, but the specific results here show a system that is well-suited for this title, even if it does not top the overall charts.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is based on the Ampere architecture and features 8704 shading units, 272 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operation units. It has a base clock of 1440 MHz and a boost clock of 1710 MHz, with 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, providing 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's FP32 compute is rated at 29.77 TFLOPS, and it supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, which enables features like ray tracing and variable rate shading. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 25086 in Passmark G3D and 4407 in 3DMark Steel Nomad, placing it in the 80th percentile of all GPUs.

In Barony, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. At 1080p, the framerate is so high that the GPU is likely not fully utilized, as evidenced by the 452.5 FPS at Low settings. This is well above what even the fastest monitors can display, and it suggests that the CPU is keeping pace. At 1440p, the GPU starts to show its limits, with the Ultra preset dropping to 131 FPS. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, as the framerate scales almost directly with the number of pixels being rendered.

The 10 GB of VRAM is sufficient for Barony at all tested settings, as the game is not particularly memory-intensive. However, the GDDR6X memory's high bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s helps maintain consistent framerates even when the game loads large textures or complex procedural geometry. The RTX 3080's boost clock of 1710 MHz is modest compared to newer cards, but the architecture's efficiency allows it to deliver strong performance in this title. The GPU's 68 ray tracing cores are not heavily utilized in Barony, as the game does not feature real-time ray tracing, but the raw rasterization power is more than adequate.

The GPU's performance relative to its rivals is tight. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is only 0.9% faster in average benchmark score, and the Radeon Pro Duo is 0.2% slower. This means the RTX 3080 is still a competitive option for games like Barony, where the framerate is more dependent on raw fill rate and shader throughput than on advanced features. The data confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, but at lower resolutions, the combo's high CPU performance ensures that the RTX 3080 is never starved for data.