Barony

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 delivers a remarkably resilient performance curve in Barony, a title that clearly favors high refresh rates. The data shows that this combination handles 4K resolutions with surprising ease, while at 1080p it moves into territory typically reserved for more specialized esports hardware. The measured frames per second reveal a system that is consistently capable, though the scaling pattern between settings presets offers a clear picture of where the bottleneck lies.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a predictable but moderate decline in frame rates across all settings presets. At Ultra settings, the average FPS drops from 156 at 1080p to 98 at 1440p, and finally to 51 at 4K. This represents a 67% reduction in average frame rate when moving from the lowest tested resolution to the highest, which is a substantial but not catastrophic drop for a game of this genre.

The Low preset tells a different story. Here the system achieves 340 FPS at 1080p, 215 FPS at 1440p, and 112 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p results in a 37% performance loss, while moving from 1440p to 4K costs another 48%. This suggests that at lower settings, the rendering pipeline becomes increasingly demanding on the GPU as pixel count rises, but the absolute numbers remain high enough for smooth gameplay even at 4K.

Medium settings show a similar pattern, with 253 FPS at 1080p, 160 FPS at 1440p, and 83 FPS at 4K. The High preset delivers 217 FPS, 137 FPS, and 72 FPS respectively. The consistency of these drops indicates that Barony scales resolution in a linear fashion across presets, with the gap between 1080p and 1440p being proportionally similar to the gap between 1440p and 4K in most cases.

The most telling observation is that even at 4K Ultra, the system maintains an average of 51 FPS. This is playable, though it falls short of the 60 FPS target that many users consider the baseline for smooth performance. The data suggests that this game is not heavily GPU-bound at lower resolutions, as evidenced by the massive frame rates at 1080p, but the 4K Ultra results indicate that the RTX 4060's 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface become limiting factors when pushing maximum pixels.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 operates with a base clock of 1830 MHz and a boost clock of 2460 MHz. Its memory runs at 2125 MHz, effectively delivering 17 Gbps over a 128-bit bus, which produces a bandwidth of 272.0 GB/s. These specifications place the GPU in the 61st percentile of all graphics cards according to the benchmark data, with an average benchmark score of 17639.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark charts are the AMD Radeon HD 7790, which scores 17666 (a 0.2% delta), the AMD Radeon 780M at 17588 (0.3% delta), and the AMD Radeon Pro 560 at 17551 (0.5% delta). This clustering suggests that the RTX 4060 sits at a performance tier where small architectural differences translate into minimal real-world variation. The 5 nm process node and 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die provide the foundation for its 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory is a critical factor in Barony's 4K performance. At 4K Ultra, the frame rate drops to 51 FPS, which indicates that the GPU is struggling to manage both the geometry and texture data required at that resolution. The 272.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes a constraint when the pixel workload increases, as the GPU must fetch more data per frame to fill the higher-resolution frame buffer.

Interestingly, the GPU's passmark scores show a DirectX 11 score of 175 versus a DirectX 12 score of 76. This suggests that the card performs significantly better under older API workloads, which may explain why Barony, a game from 2015, runs so well at lower resolutions. The DirectX 9 score of 236 further reinforces this pattern, indicating that the GPU's architecture is well-suited to legacy rendering paths.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance on optimal settings for different priorities. For users seeking the highest possible frame rates, the Low preset at 1080p delivers 340 FPS average, which is the maximum measured in this dataset. This setting is ideal for competitive play or for users with high-refresh-rate monitors that can take advantage of such extreme frame pacing.

The Medium preset offers a compelling balance between visual fidelity and performance. At 1080p it delivers 253 FPS average with a minimum of 215 FPS and a maximum of 291 FPS. The minimum frame rate is particularly important here, as it indicates that the system rarely dips below the refresh rate of most gaming monitors. At 1440p, Medium delivers 160 FPS average with a minimum of 136 FPS, which remains well above the 120 Hz threshold that many modern displays support. Even at 4K, Medium maintains 83 FPS average with a minimum of 71 FPS, which is playable on displays with adaptive sync technology.

The High preset represents a moderate step up in visual quality with acceptable performance trade-offs. It delivers 217 FPS at 1080p, 137 FPS at 1440p, and 72 FPS at 4K. The 4K result drops below 75 FPS, which may introduce slight judder on 144 Hz displays, but remains suitable for 60 Hz panels.

Ultra settings are only recommended for users with 1080p displays, where the 156 FPS average keeps the experience fluid. At 1440p, the 98 FPS average is acceptable but not exceptional, while at 4K the 51 FPS average falls below the 60 FPS standard. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this combination, as it maintains high frame rates across all resolutions while presumably offering better visual quality than Low.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and RTX 4060 combination ranks 2000th out of 3717 tested combinations in Barony. This places it in the 46th percentile of all systems tested, meaning roughly 54% of combinations deliver higher frame rates in this specific game. This mid-pack ranking is somewhat surprising given the strong absolute performance numbers, but it reflects the fact that many other CPU-GPU pairings offer higher raw throughput.

The ranking becomes more meaningful when considering the CPU's overall benchmark position. The Core Ultra 7 265K sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70879. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon 6511P at 71051 (a -0.2% delta), the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 at 71370 (a -0.7% delta), the Intel Core i7-14700KF at 70163 (a 1% delta), and the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F at 69996 (a 1.3% delta). This indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this combination's Barony performance.

The GPU's 61st percentile ranking is notably lower than the CPU's 94th percentile, suggesting that the RTX 4060 is the constraining component in this pairing. The combo rank of 2000 out of 3717 reflects this imbalance, as systems with the same CPU but more powerful GPUs would naturally rank higher. The data indicates that upgrading the GPU would yield more significant frame rate improvements than upgrading the CPU in this specific configuration.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K brings substantial processing power to Barony, with 20 cores and 20 threads operating at a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. This Arrow Lake-S architecture chip, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC, features 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface provides ample data throughput for game logic and asset streaming. While Barony is primarily a GPU-bound title at higher resolutions, the CPU's performance becomes more relevant at 1080p where the frame rates exceed 300 FPS. The benchmark scores for the CPU are impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 35850 and a single-core score of 2020, indicating strong per-thread performance that benefits game physics and AI computations.

The CPU's 94th percentile ranking among all processors places it well ahead of the GPU's 61st percentile, and this discrepancy explains why the system maintains high frame rates even at 4K. The processor's 20 threads ensure that no core count limitation hampers frame pacing, and the high boost clock of 5.50 GHz minimizes latency in single-threaded game loops. The nearest CPU rival, the Intel Xeon 6511P, scores nearly identically at 71051 versus 70879, confirming that the 265K is performing at the expected level for its architecture.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 156 FPS with no reported minimum or maximum values. The High preset improves this to 217 FPS average, while the Medium preset achieves 253 FPS average with a minimum of 215 and a maximum of 291. The Low preset produces the highest result at 340 FPS average. These numbers indicate that the system is never CPU-limited at this resolution, as even the Ultra preset exceeds the refresh rate of most monitors.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Ultra preset drops to 98 FPS average. High settings maintain 137 FPS average, while Medium delivers 160 FPS average with a minimum of 136 and a maximum of 183. Low settings produce 215 FPS average. The proportional scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows that the GPU workload increases by approximately 78% for the same settings preset, which matches the pixel count difference between these resolutions.

At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset falls to 51 FPS average, which is the lowest measured result in the entire dataset. High settings achieve 72 FPS average, while Medium delivers 83 FPS average with a minimum of 71 and a maximum of 96. Low settings produce 112 FPS average. The 4K results show a more pronounced drop from 1440p than the drop from 1080p to 1440p, particularly at Ultra settings where the 98 FPS at 1440p falls to 51 FPS at 4K.

The medium settings at each resolution provide the most consistent frame time data, with the 4K result showing a minimum of 71 FPS and a maximum of 96 FPS. This 25 FPS spread indicates that the system handles complex scenes reasonably well, though the variance could be noticeable during intense gameplay moments. The 1080p Medium result shows a 76 FPS spread between minimum and maximum, which suggests more variability at lower resolutions where the CPU may occasionally become a factor.