Barony

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination places 663rd out of 2,935 tested combos in Barony, putting it in the top quarter of all systems measured. This pairing of a 14-core Arrow Lake processor with an Ada Lovelace GPU delivers frame rates that are almost absurdly high for a roguelike title, making it a system that will never feel strained by this game’s demands. The data shows a configuration that is heavily overqualified for the task, but the measured results still reveal meaningful scaling patterns between settings and resolutions that are worth examining before you configure your own experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The 663rd rank out of 2,935 combos is a strong showing, placing this system comfortably in the upper echelon of tested configurations. In percentile terms, the CPU sits at the 90th percentile against all processors, while the GPU reaches the 81st percentile against all graphics cards. These are both high marks individually, and combined they produce a system that outperforms roughly 77% of all tested combos in Barony specifically. The rank is more a reflection of the hardware’s raw capability than any game-specific optimization, since Barony is not a graphically demanding title by modern standards.

Looking at the CPU’s nearest rivals puts its standing in perspective. The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G scores 49,196 on average, which is only 0.4% higher than the Core Ultra 5 245’s average benchmark score of 48,995. The AMD Ryzen 9 7900 sits at 49,228, a 0.5% advantage, while the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H trails by 0.6% with a score of 48,698. The Intel Core i5-14600K comes closest from below, scoring 48,618, which is 0.8% behind. These sub-1% deltas mean that in synthetic workloads, the Core Ultra 5 245 trades blows with a range of competing CPUs, and in a game like Barony, which is unlikely to stress all 14 cores heavily, the practical differences will be negligible.

For the GPU, the RTX 4070’s nearest rivals are similarly close. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 scores 37,628, just 0.1% higher than the RTX 4070’s average of 37,648. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is 0.4% ahead at 37,507, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile leads by 1.3% with 38,135. The AMD Radeon PRO W6400 trails by 1.3% at 37,157. These margins are tiny, and in real gaming scenarios, the RTX 4070’s feature set and driver maturity will matter more than the synthetic benchmark deltas. The measured FPS in Barony reflects this: the GPU is never the bottleneck at any resolution tested, even at 4K Ultra where the average frame rate stays well above playable thresholds.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data makes the settings recommendation straightforward: High is the sweet spot for this combo, and for most users, it will be the only preset worth considering. At 1080p High, the average frame rate is 299 FPS, which is already nearly three times the refresh rate of a standard 144Hz monitor. Moving to Medium drops the average to 349 FPS, but the visual quality loss in a game like Barony—which relies on clear readability of dungeon layouts and enemy silhouettes—is not worth the extra 50 FPS that you cannot see anyway. Low pushes to 469 FPS at 1080p, but that is pure headroom with no practical benefit.

Ultra is the only preset that shows any potential reason to avoid High, but even then, the numbers are strong. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 215 FPS, which remains far beyond what any current display can show. At 1440p Ultra, the average drops to 135 FPS, still comfortably above 120Hz displays, and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 71 FPS, which dips below the 144Hz threshold but remains perfectly playable on a 60Hz or 75Hz monitor. The trade-off between High and Ultra is minimal in this title because the game’s visual complexity is low, so the extra settings overhead does not translate into a perceptible quality jump.

For the best experience, High at 1440p is the recommendation. The data shows 189 FPS average at that preset, which is high enough to saturate any mainstream monitor while leaving enough headroom for minimum frame rate dips. The Medium preset at 1440p shows a minimum FPS of 187 and a maximum of 253, which tells you the frame time variance is small, but High will look better with essentially the same performance envelope. If you have a 4K display, High at 4K still delivers 99 FPS average, which is excellent for a roguelike that benefits from smooth camera movement and responsive input. Low settings are only relevant if you are chasing maximum frame rates for competitive play, but Barony is not a competitive shooter, so the visual clarity from High will serve you better.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a system where the GPU is doing most of the work at higher resolutions, but the CPU is not a limiting factor at any point. At High settings, the progression is 299 FPS at 1080p, 189 FPS at 1440p, and 99 FPS at 4K. That is a 37% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 67% drop from 1080p to 4K. These are large percentage losses, but they are starting from such a high baseline that even the 4K number remains excellent. The scaling pattern suggests that the RTX 4070 is being increasingly utilized as resolution rises, but it never reaches full saturation in this game because the overall load is light.

At Low settings, the scaling is even steeper in absolute terms: 469 FPS at 1080p, 296 FPS at 1440p, and 155 FPS at 4K. The 1080p number is likely hitting some engine-level frame cap or CPU limitation, because the GPU is nowhere near its limits at that resolution and preset. The fact that 1440p Low still produces 296 FPS and 4K Low produces 155 FPS shows that the GPU has plenty of headroom even at the lowest settings, and the CPU is capable of feeding it frames well beyond what any display can show.

The Medium preset provides the most complete data because it is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values. At 1080p Medium, the average is 349 FPS with a minimum of 296 and a maximum of 401. At 1440p Medium, the average is 220 FPS with a minimum of 187 and a maximum of 253. At 4K Medium, the average is 115 FPS with a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 132. The minimum-to-maximum spread narrows as resolution increases, which is typical: at higher resolutions, the GPU becomes more consistently the bottleneck, reducing frame time variance. At 1080p, the CPU or engine may cause occasional dips, but they are still far above any playability concern.

This scaling pattern indicates that the limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU at 4K, but neither ever becomes a real constraint. The Core Ultra 5 245 with its 5.10 GHz boost clock is more than enough to drive frame rates in the hundreds, and the RTX 4070 with its 2,475 MHz boost clock handles the pixel throughput at 4K without breaking a sweat. Barony is a CPU-light game, so the 14 cores and 14 threads are mostly idle, but the high single-core performance from the Arrow Lake architecture ensures that even the main game thread never becomes a bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings sweep shows a clear hierarchy. Low produces 469 FPS average, which is the highest number recorded in the entire dataset. Medium drops to 349 FPS with a minimum of 296 and a maximum of 401. High comes in at 299 FPS, and Ultra at 215 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 254 FPS, which is a 54% reduction in performance from the lowest to the highest preset. Even at the lowest point, 215 FPS is far beyond what any standard 1080p monitor can display, so the choice between presets at this resolution is purely about visual preference, not performance necessity.

At 2560x1440, the numbers scale down proportionally. Low yields 296 FPS, Medium delivers 220 FPS with a minimum of 187 and a maximum of 253, High produces 189 FPS, and Ultra drops to 135 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 161 FPS, a 54% reduction, which mirrors the 1080p scaling almost exactly. The 135 FPS at Ultra is still above 120Hz, making it a viable choice for high-refresh 1440p monitors, though High at 189 FPS gives you more headroom for frame time spikes without any visible quality loss.

At 3840x2160, the performance remains strong but begins to show the GPU working harder. Low averages 155 FPS, Medium averages 115 FPS with a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 132, High averages 99 FPS, and Ultra averages 71 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 84 FPS, a 54% reduction, consistent with the other resolutions. The 71 FPS at 4K Ultra is the lowest number in the entire dataset, but it is still well above the 60 FPS standard for console-like smoothness. If you own a 4K 60Hz monitor, you can run Ultra without any issues. If you have a 4K 120Hz display, High is the better choice, since it nearly doubles the Ultra frame rate while looking almost identical in a game with this art style.

The Medium preset at each resolution gives the most complete picture because it is the only one with min/max data. The minimum FPS values—296 at 1080p, 187 at 1440p, and 98 at 4K—are all well above 60, meaning there are no stutter or hitch scenarios in this game. The maximum values—401, 253, and 132 respectively—show that the system has consistent headroom even in the most demanding moments captured.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 is the workhorse of this combo for Barony, but it is never pushed anywhere near its limits. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, the card has a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for a game like Barony that likely uses well under 4 GB of VRAM at 1080p and possibly under 8 GB at 4K. The memory clock runs at 1,313 MHz with 21 Gbps effective speed, and the 5 nm Ada Lovelace chip with 35,800 million transistors provides 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The boost clock of 2,475 MHz is the figure that matters for gaming, and the data suggests it is hitting that boost frequently in Barony, since the frame rates are so high.

The GPU’s average benchmark score is 37,648, which places it at the 81st percentile against all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are all within 1.3% of its score, but in Barony, the RTX 4070’s advantage is more pronounced because of its efficient architecture. The 5 nm process node from TSMC allows the card to maintain high clocks without excessive power draw, though the 200 W TDP is not a figure you need to worry about for this game. The 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores are present, but Barony does not use ray tracing, so they remain idle during gameplay.

The VRAM capacity of 12 GB is generous for a game that has been out since 2015, and the GDDR6X memory type ensures that even at 4K Ultra, the memory bandwidth is not a constraint. The 64 ROPs and 184 TMUs handle the rasterization and texture work, and with a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s, the card can fill frames faster than the game can generate them. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra of 71 FPS is more likely limited by the game engine’s draw call efficiency than by the GPU’s raw throughput, since the same hardware produces 155 FPS at 4K Low, a 2.2x increase from a settings change alone.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is overkill for Barony, but its performance characteristics ensure that the GPU is never starved for data. This 14-core, 14-thread processor has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, and it is the boost clock that matters most for gaming. The Arrow Lake architecture on a 3 nm TSMC process with 17,800 million transistors delivers strong single-thread performance, which is what Barony depends on for its main game loop. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB L2 cache per core provide low-latency access to frequently used data, which helps maintain consistent frame pacing.

The CPU’s synthetic benchmarks show a well-rounded performer. In Cinebench R23, it scores 32,924 in multi-core and 4,648 in single-core. The single-core score is particularly relevant for gaming, and it is high enough that no game logic task will bottleneck the system. In PassMark, the multithread score is 38,706, and the single-thread score is 4,394. The data compression score of 400,942 and floating point math score of 120,548 indicate strong computational throughput, but these are not directly relevant to Barony’s workload.

The nearest CPU rivals are all within 0.8% of its average benchmark score, which means the Core Ultra 5 245 is essentially tied with a range of other mid-to-high-end processors. In Barony, the game is so light on CPU resources that any of these rivals would produce nearly identical results. The 14 cores are not fully utilized by a roguelike game, but the high boost clock ensures that the few threads that are active run at maximum speed. The 65 W TDP is modest, and the processor supports DDR5 memory on a dual-channel bus with 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than enough for the frame rates measured.

The CPU’s 90th percentile ranking against all processors reflects its general capability, but in this specific game, the percentile is almost meaningless because the game does not stress the processor. The measured FPS at 1080p Low of 469 is likely approaching an engine or API limit, not a CPU limit, since the Core Ultra 5 245 can sustain much higher single-thread throughput. The data shows that the CPU is not the limiting component at any resolution or setting in Barony, and the system’s 663rd rank out of 2,935 combos is more a reflection of the GPU’s mid-range standing than any CPU deficiency.