Barony

Barony, a roguelike released in 2015, exhibits unusual performance scaling on the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination. The measured frame rates across resolutions and settings reveal a workload that is remarkably forgiving on modern hardware, with the primary bottleneck shifting in unexpected ways as resolution and graphical fidelity change.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K demonstrates that Barony's engine is heavily CPU-bound at lower resolutions, with the GPU only becoming a significant factor at the highest settings. At 1080p with Low settings, the system produces 664.1 FPS, which is an exceptionally high figure indicating that the CPU is the limiting component at this point. Moving to 2560x1440 at Low settings yields 417.7 FPS, a drop of 37.1% from the 1080p result, while at 4K Low the system still delivers 222.6 FPS, representing a 66.5% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern suggests that even at 4K Low, the game is not fully GPU-bound, as a pure GPU limitation would typically show a larger relative drop between 1440p and 4K.

The scaling becomes more pronounced when examining the Ultra preset. At 1080p Ultra, the system achieves 304.6 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, this drops to 193.1 FPS, a 36.6% decrease, and at 4K Ultra, the system produces 101.4 FPS, a 66.7% reduction from the 1080p figure. The similarity in percentage drops between Low and Ultra presets across resolutions indicates that Barony's rendering pipeline scales consistently, but the absolute numbers suggest that the Ultra preset at 4K is the first configuration where the RTX 4090's capabilities are genuinely stressed. The GPU's benchmark data supports this interpretation, as its Passmark G3D score of 38194 places it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, yet the measured performance at 4K Ultra still maintains triple-digit frame rates.

The data also reveals an interesting anomaly when comparing High and Medium presets. At every resolution, the High preset outperforms the Medium preset, with the gap widening as resolution increases. At 1080p, High delivers 426 FPS versus 496.7 FPS for Medium, but at 4K, High produces 143.1 FPS while Medium achieves 165.6 FPS. This suggests that the High preset may be utilizing a different rendering path that is more efficient for the specific hardware configuration, or that the Medium preset contains a specific setting that disproportionately impacts performance on this architecture.

FAQ

Q: Does the RTX 4090 become the bottleneck at any tested configuration?

A: The data indicates the GPU becomes a meaningful limiter only at 4K Ultra, where the system produces 101.4 FPS. At all other tested settings and resolutions, frame rates remain above 143 FPS, which suggests the CPU or engine constraints dominate performance.

Q: How much faster is the Ultra preset compared to the High preset at 4K?

A: The Ultra preset is actually slower, producing 101.4 FPS versus 143.1 FPS for High at 4K. This represents a 29.1% performance penalty for the additional visual features in Ultra settings.

Q: What is the performance difference between the Core Ultra 7 265K and its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Core Ultra 7 265K has an average benchmark score of 79102, which is 0.2% below the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF (79240) and 0.2% below the Intel Core i9-14900KF (79245). The gap expands to 0.9% against the Intel Core i9-14900K (79824).

Q: Is the RTX 4090's performance consistent with its synthetic benchmark ranking?

A: The GPU's 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs aligns with its measured performance in Barony. Its average benchmark score of 66473 is 0.4% below the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66733) and 0.5% above the NVIDIA Tesla P40 (66127), indicating that it sits in a tightly contested performance band.

Q: What frame rate can be expected at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average frame rate at 2560x1440 with High settings is 269.2 FPS, which provides substantial headroom for high-refresh-rate displays.

Q: How does the CPU's single-threaded performance relate to Barony's results?

A: The Core Ultra 7 265K achieves a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7060 and a Passmark single-thread score of 4904. These results, combined with the high frame rates at 1080p Low (664.1 FPS), indicate that the CPU's strong single-thread performance is leveraged effectively by Barony's engine.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance for optimizing the experience across different display configurations. For 4K displays, the High preset delivers 143.1 FPS, which comfortably exceeds the 100 FPS threshold that many users consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 101.4 FPS, still playable, but the 29.1% performance penalty compared to High is substantial for what is likely a marginal visual improvement in a roguelike title. The Medium preset at 4K offers 165.6 FPS, representing a 15.7% improvement over High, but the Low preset at 222.6 FPS is likely unnecessary given that High already provides excellent performance.

At 1440p, the situation is more relaxed. The Ultra preset produces 193.1 FPS, which is well above the refresh rate of most 1440p monitors, and the High preset at 269.2 FPS provides additional headroom. The Medium preset at 309.6 FPS and Low at 417.7 FPS show diminishing returns, as the game becomes increasingly CPU-bound. For 1080p users, even the Ultra preset at 304.6 FPS exceeds the capabilities of virtually all displays, making settings selection purely a matter of visual preference rather than performance necessity.

The data suggests that the High preset represents the optimal balance for most users, as it consistently outperforms Medium while presumably offering better visual quality than the Medium preset's configuration. The anomaly of High exceeding Medium at all resolutions indicates that the High preset may inadvertently disable a particularly demanding setting or feature that the Medium preset enables, making High the recommended choice for both visual fidelity and performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates its peak performance ceiling. The Low preset achieves 664.1 FPS, the highest measured result across all configurations. Medium follows at 496.7 FPS, High at 426 FPS, and Ultra at 304.6 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 54.1% reduction in frame rate, indicating that the Ultra preset introduces significant additional rendering work even at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the results scale predictably. Low produces 417.7 FPS, Medium 309.6 FPS, High 269.2 FPS, and Ultra 193.1 FPS. The relative gap between presets narrows compared to 1080p, with the difference between Low and Ultra being 53.8%. This consistency suggests that the CPU remains the primary limiter at 1440p, as the GPU has sufficient headroom to handle the increased pixel count without substantially altering the performance hierarchy.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to exert more influence. Low achieves 222.6 FPS, Medium 165.6 FPS, High 143.1 FPS, and Ultra 101.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra expands to 54.4%, and the absolute numbers indicate that the RTX 4090 is now the limiting factor at the higher settings. The 4K Ultra result of 101.4 FPS is the only measured configuration that falls below the 143 FPS threshold, marking this as the most demanding scenario in the test matrix.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090's specifications provide context for its performance in Barony. The GPU features 16384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 render output units, along with 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides a memory bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s, which is more than sufficient for a roguelike title released in 2015. The GPU's clock speeds are listed as a base of 2235 MHz and a boost of 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective).

The GPU's synthetic benchmark results indicate strong overall performance, with a Passmark G3D score of 38194 and a Passmark GPU compute score of 26613. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9223, Geekbench OpenCL score of 317684, and Geekbench Vulkan score of 270615 all point to a high-performance part. However, Barony's results suggest that the GPU's capabilities are not fully utilized at most settings, as the CPU-bound nature of the game limits frame rates well below what the RTX 4090 could theoretically deliver.

The GPU's VRAM capacity of 24 GB is far beyond what Barony requires, as the game's release date of 2015 predates the era of high VRAM consumption. The 384-bit memory bus and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are similarly excessive for a game of this era, but they ensure that memory bandwidth never becomes a bottleneck. The GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate are more than adequate for the game's rendering demands. The fact that the system achieves 222.6 FPS at 4K Low and 101.4 FPS at 4K Ultra demonstrates that the RTX 4090 is the correct component for this task, even if its full capabilities are only exercised at the most demanding settings.