Barony

# Barony with Intel Core i9-14900K + Intel Arc B580

The Intel Core i9-14900K paired with the Intel Arc B580 produces a wide spread of frame rates across Barony's resolution and settings matrix, ranging from a 42 FPS average at 4K Ultra to 277 FPS at 1080p Low. This combination ranks 2,789th out of 3,717 tested combos in this game, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database, yet the measured results reveal a system that is heavily constrained by resolution and settings rather than by raw component capability. The data indicates a playable experience at most settings, with the most demanding configuration dropping below the 60 FPS threshold.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a dramatic performance curve that shifts the bottleneck from the CPU to the GPU as pixel count increases. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 177 FPS at 1920x1080 to 112 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 65 FPS, and then further down to 58 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 67% drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings, indicating that the Arc B580's rendering pipeline becomes the limiting factor as resolution climbs.

The Low settings row shows an even steeper absolute decline: 277 FPS at 1080p, 175 FPS at 1440p, and 91 FPS at 4K. The 186 FPS difference between 1080p and 4K at Low settings is the largest spread in the dataset, suggesting that at lower graphical complexity, the GPU is still the primary constraint, but the CPU's headroom allows for very high frame rates at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system is likely approaching the CPU's limit for this game, as the i9-14900K's 24 cores and 32 threads can feed the GPU faster than it can render at those settings.

Medium settings provide the only complete min/max data across all three resolutions. At 4K Medium, the average is 68 FPS with a min of 58 and max of 78; at 1440p Medium, the average rises to 130 FPS with a range of 111 to 150; at 1080p Medium, the average reaches 206 FPS with a spread of 175 to 237. The min FPS values at 4K and 1440p Medium (58 and 111 respectively) show that frame pacing remains consistent relative to the averages, with the min-to-average ratio around 85% in both cases.

Ultra settings produce the lowest results across the board: 42 FPS at 4K, 80 FPS at 1440p, and 127 FPS at 1080p. The jump from 4K Ultra to 4K High (42 to 58 FPS, a 38% increase) is smaller than the jump from 4K High to 4K Medium (58 to 68 FPS, a 17% increase), but the largest relative gain comes from dropping from Ultra to High at 1440p, where the average improves from 80 to 112 FPS, a 40% uplift. This pattern suggests that Ultra settings impose a heavy GPU load that scales disproportionately with resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and Intel Arc B580 achieves a rank of 2,789 out of 3,717 tested combos in Barony, placing it in the 25th percentile of all configurations. This is a modest standing for a system with a top-tier CPU, and the data suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing. The Arc B580 sits at the 68th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the i9-14900K is at the 95th percentile among all CPUs, indicating a significant imbalance where the processor's capabilities far exceed what the graphics card can utilize in this game.

Looking at the GPU's nearest rivals, the Arc B580's average benchmark score of 23,021 is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (23,061, a delta of -0.2%) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (22,895, a delta of 0.6%). The RTX 3080 scores 23,172, just 0.7% higher, which means the Arc B580 is effectively in the same performance tier as those GPUs despite being a newer architecture. This explains why the combo ranks relatively low: the CPU is doing far more work than the GPU can handle, and the overall frame rates are bound by the graphics card's throughput.

The CPU's nearest rivals show a similar tight grouping. The i9-14900K's average benchmark score of 79,097 is within 1.7% of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (77,740) and within 1.2% of the AMD EPYC 7413 (80,041). The Intel Core i9-14900KF scores 79,371 (-0.3%) and the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus scores 79,574 (-0.6%), confirming that the i9-14900K is squarely in the high-end CPU tier. However, this raw CPU power does not translate into a high combo rank in Barony because the game's performance at the resolutions tested is predominantly GPU-limited.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K brings 24 cores and 32 threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz. This architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process with a 125 W TDP, delivers strong single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 scores of 39,399.5 multi-core and 2,262.5 single-core. In Barony, a roguelike title that likely relies more on game logic and entity updates than on massive parallel rendering workloads, the CPU's high boost clock is the key asset for maintaining high frame rates at lower resolutions.

The benchmark data supports this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 277 FPS on average, which is a frame rate that would tax most CPUs' ability to issue draw calls and update game state. The i9-14900K's 6.00 GHz boost clock, combined with 36 MB of shared L3 cache, provides ample headroom for the game's single-threaded or lightly threaded workloads. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 4,697 and Geekbench single-core score of 2,655 are strong indicators that it can sustain high IPC in latency-sensitive tasks.

At 4K Ultra, where the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, the CPU's role diminishes. The 42 FPS average at that setting is far below what the i9-14900K could theoretically support, and the GPU's rendering load is the primary constraint. The CPU's 24 cores and 32 threads are likely underutilized at all settings in this game, given that the measured FPS at 1080p High (177) and even 1080p Ultra (127) do not approach the CPU's multi-threaded limits. The system's performance is therefore not limited by the processor in any configuration tested, but rather by the Arc B580's ability to fill pixels.

FAQ

Q: Does the Intel Core i9-14900K bottleneck the Intel Arc B580 in Barony?

A: No. The data shows the opposite: at 1080p Low, the system achieves 277 FPS, and the CPU's benchmark scores (95th percentile among all CPUs) far exceed the GPU's (68th percentile), indicating the GPU is the limiting component, not the CPU.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain 60 FPS or higher?

A: At 4K, only Medium (68 FPS) and Low (91 FPS) exceed 60 FPS, while High (58 FPS) and Ultra (42 FPS) fall below. At 1440p and 1080p, all settings including Ultra (80 FPS and 127 FPS respectively) maintain at least 80 FPS.

Q: How does the Arc B580 compare to the RTX 2080 in overall GPU benchmarks?

A: The Arc B580's average benchmark score is 23,021, which is 0.6% higher than the RTX 2080's 22,895, making them statistically equivalent in performance based on the database's aggregate metrics.

Q: Can this system handle Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the measured average at 1440p Ultra is 80 FPS, which is comfortably above 60 FPS. However, the 4K Ultra average of 42 FPS suggests that Ultra settings are only viable at 1440p or lower.

Q: What CPU score does the i9-14900K achieve in Cinebench R23 multi-core?

A: The i9-14900K scores 39,399.5 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, which is a strong result that places it in the top 5% of all CPUs in the database (95th percentile).

Q: Is there a significant FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: Yes, the difference is 150 FPS: Low averages 277 FPS while Ultra averages 127 FPS. This indicates a large GPU workload scaling at 1080p, with the CPU maintaining high frame rates even at Ultra.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580, built on the Xe2-HPG architecture (Battlemage generation), is the primary determinant of this combo's frame rates in Barony. It features 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, with a boost clock of 2670 MHz. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 456.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial for a card in this tier. The 5 nm process from TSMC packs 19,600 million transistors into a 272 mm² die, and the card's 190 W TDP is modest for the performance class.

The GPU's benchmark results show a mixed profile. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3,068, and its Geekbench Vulkan score is 109,672, while the OpenCL score is 92,821. PassMark G3D scores 15,748, with DirectX 11 at 128 and DirectX 9 at 183. These figures place the Arc B580 at the 68th percentile among all GPUs, and its nearest rivals are a mix of older and newer cards: the RX 580 2048SP, RTX 2080, RTX 3080, and P106-100, all within 1% of the Arc's average score. This suggests that the B580's raw compute is competitive with those cards, but its driver optimization for specific games like Barony may vary.

In Barony's measured results, the GPU's role is clear from the resolution scaling. At 4K, the pixel count is 8.3 million, and the Arc B580 delivers 58 FPS at High settings, which is a reasonable result for a card of this tier. The gap between 1440p High (112 FPS) and 4K High (58 FPS) reflects a 4.5x increase in pixels, and the frame rate drops by roughly half, indicating that the GPU is memory-bandwidth or fill-rate limited at 4K. The 456.0 GB/s bandwidth and 213.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are the likely constraints at higher resolutions, while at 1080p the GPU has more headroom relative to its memory throughput.

The Arc B580's 12 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for Barony, a 2015 roguelike that is unlikely to exceed even 4 GB at any settings. The memory amount is not a limiting factor in any of the measured configurations, and the card's 19 Gbps effective memory clock is adequate for the game's visual complexity. The GPU's performance at 1080p Ultra (127 FPS) shows that it can handle high settings at lower resolutions, but at 4K Ultra (42 FPS), the rendering workload overwhelms the card's compute and fill-rate capabilities.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings for this combo depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For 4K displays, Medium settings provide the best balance, with an average of 68 FPS and a minimum of 58 FPS. High settings at 4K average 58 FPS, which is right at the edge of the playable threshold, and the minimum is likely below 60 FPS, making Medium the safer choice for smooth gameplay. Low settings at 4K (91 FPS) are also viable, but the visual quality trade-off is significant for a game that may not have demanding effects.

At 1440p, the data supports High settings as the sweet spot, with an average of 112 FPS and no reported minimum below that. Medium at 1440p averages 130 FPS, but High offers a substantial visual upgrade for only an 18 FPS loss. Ultra at 1440p averages 80 FPS, which is still smooth, but the jump from High to Ultra costs 32 FPS, and the visual difference in a roguelike may not justify the performance hit. For competitive or high-refresh-rate play, Low at 1440p (175 FPS) is an option, but it is likely unnecessary given the High setting's strong performance.

For 1080p, all settings are playable, but Medium (206 FPS) and High (177 FPS) are the recommended options. Ultra at 1080p averages 127 FPS, which is still well above 60 FPS, but the 50 FPS drop from High to Ultra suggests diminishing returns. Low at 1080p (277 FPS) exceeds the refresh rate of most monitors, so it is only useful for extreme competitive play. The Medium settings row includes min/max data (175 to 237 FPS), indicating stable frame pacing that is ideal for consistent gameplay. Overall, the recommendation is Medium at 4K, High at 1440p, and High or Medium at 1080p, depending on whether visual fidelity or frame rate is prioritized.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the measured averages are as follows: Low delivers 91 FPS, Medium delivers 68 FPS with a range of 58 to 78, High delivers 58 FPS, and Ultra delivers 42 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 49 FPS, and the Medium setting's minimum of 58 FPS is the only recorded min at 4K, confirming that the GPU is stressed at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 175 FPS, Medium 130 FPS (min 111, max 150), High 112 FPS, and Ultra 80 FPS. The Medium range shows a 39 FPS spread, which is the widest at 1440p, while the other settings have no recorded min/max, suggesting they are either stable or the data was not captured.

At 1920x1080, the averages are: Low 277 FPS, Medium 206 FPS (min 175, max 237), High 177 FPS, and Ultra 127 FPS. The Medium setting's 62 FPS spread is the largest in the entire dataset, indicating more frame time variance at 1080p Medium, but the high averages keep this within smooth gameplay territory. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p is linear in terms of FPS loss: each step up from Low to Medium to High to Ultra costs 71, 29, and 50 FPS respectively, with the largest single drop occurring between Low and Medium.

Across all resolutions, the Ultra preset consistently yields the lowest FPS, and the gap between High and Ultra widens as resolution increases: 50 FPS at 1080p, 32 FPS at 1440p, and 16 FPS at 4K. This indicates that Ultra settings add a fixed GPU workload that becomes relatively smaller at higher resolutions due to other bottlenecks. The data shows that this combo is best utilized at 1080p or 1440p with Medium to High settings, where the i9-14900K's processing power and the Arc B580's rendering capabilities are more balanced.