Barony

Barony with the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2701st out of 2935 tested combos in this game, placing it in the bottom 8% of all tested systems. That ranking might sound harsh, but for a roguelike title with modest visual demands, the practical experience depends heavily on resolution and settings. The data shows a system that can deliver smooth 1080p gameplay at medium settings, struggles at 4K with ultra presets, and is overwhelmingly constrained by the integrated-class GPU rather than the capable 24-core processor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s position at 2701 out of 2935 tested combinations reflects a severe imbalance between the CPU and GPU sides of this pairing. The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a top-tier desktop processor, sitting at the 96th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 93785. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon 6520P (93786, 0% delta), AMD EPYC 4564P (95183, -1.5%), AMD EPYC 9175F (95615, -1.9%), and AMD EPYC 4565P (95764, -2.1%). In pure CPU terms, this chip is essentially tied with enterprise Xeon and EPYC parts, which speaks to its raw compute power.

The Intel Arc B370, however, is a completely different story. This GPU sits at the 5th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 1184 from 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Its nearest rivals are ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, -0.2%), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, -0.5%), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192, -0.7%), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168, 1.4%). These are all legacy or low-end mobile parts from over a decade ago, and the Arc B370 trades blows with them. That puts the GPU in a performance class that is fundamentally mismatched with a 96th-percentile CPU.

In Barony specifically, the combo rank of 2701 out of 2935 means that roughly 91.9% of tested combinations deliver better measured frame rates. The few combos ranked below this one are likely pairing similarly weak integrated graphics with less capable CPUs. The data indicates that this system’s performance ceiling is set almost entirely by the GPU’s limits, not by the processor. At 1080p low settings, the combo reaches 144 FPS average, which is a solid result, but that is the absolute peak of what this configuration can achieve. Every step up in resolution or settings drops performance significantly, as the GPU saturates quickly while the CPU sits idle.

Settings Recommendations

For the best measured experience in Barony, the data points to 1920x1080 with Medium settings as the sweet spot. At this configuration, the combo averages 107 FPS, with a minimum of 91 FPS and a maximum of 123 FPS. This is the only resolution/settings combination where the average FPS stays above 100 while still maintaining a minimum frame rate that never dips below 90. That consistency matters in a roguelike where unpredictable enemy spawns and procedural layouts can cause sudden frame demands.

The 1080p Low preset pushes the average to 144 FPS, which is exactly double the refresh rate of a standard 60Hz monitor and matches a 144Hz display’s capability. However, the jump from Low to Medium costs about 37 FPS on average (from 144 to 107), yet the Medium preset provides better visual fidelity for only a 25.7% performance loss. Given that the minimum FPS at Medium is still 91, the data suggests that Medium offers the best balance between visual quality and smoothness. The High preset at 1080p drops to 92 FPS average, which is still playable but represents a 14% reduction from Medium. Ultra at 1080p falls to 66 FPS, which is playable but begins to show the GPU’s strain.

At 1440p, no preset achieves a truly high-refresh experience. Medium at 2560x1440 delivers 67 FPS average with a 57 FPS minimum, which is acceptable for slower-paced gameplay but not ideal for twitch reactions. Low at 1440p reaches 91 FPS average, but the Medium preset’s minimum of 57 FPS is a better indicator of real-world stability. High at 1440p sits at 58 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 42 FPS. For 4K, the data shows that only Low (47 FPS) and Medium (35 FPS average, 30 FPS minimum) are even marginally playable. High at 4K averages 30 FPS, and Ultra averages 22 FPS, both of which are below the threshold for smooth gameplay.

The recommendation from the measured data is clear: 1080p Medium is the target preset. It provides frame rates that exceed most monitors’ refresh rates, maintains a minimum above 90 FPS, and keeps the GPU within its comfort zone. If a player prioritizes maximum smoothness over visuals, 1080p Low is the fallback, but the Medium preset’s extra fidelity comes at a relatively modest cost.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K in Barony reveals a system that is bottlenecked by the GPU at every resolution, but the rate of degradation shows just how severely the Arc B370 limits scaling. At Medium settings, the average FPS goes from 107 at 1080p to 67 at 1440p (a 37.4% drop) and then to 35 at 4K (a 67.3% drop from 1080p). This is a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, where doubling the pixel count roughly halves the frame rate, and then quadrupling it reduces performance by roughly two-thirds.

The Low preset shows a similar but slightly different trend: 144 FPS at 1080p, 91 FPS at 1440p (a 36.8% drop), and 47 FPS at 4K (a 67.4% drop from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across presets confirms that the limiting factor does not change with settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to remain more constant as resolution increases, because the processor work stays similar while the GPU work scales. Instead, the frame rate plummets with every resolution increase, indicating that the GPU’s fill rate and shading throughput are the primary constraints.

The High preset follows the same pattern: 92 FPS at 1080p, 58 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop), and 30 FPS at 4K (a 67.4% drop). Ultra is the most extreme case, going from 66 FPS at 1080p to 42 FPS at 1440p (a 36.4% drop) and then to 22 FPS at 4K (a 66.7% drop). The uniformity of these drops—roughly 37% from 1080p to 1440p and another 47% from 1440p to 4K—indicates that the GPU is operating at its limits even at the lowest settings. There is no resolution where the CPU begins to take over as the bottleneck; the Arc B370 is simply too weak to feed the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus’s capabilities.

The data also shows that the gap between Low and Ultra narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, Low is 144 FPS vs. Ultra at 66 FPS (a 118% difference). At 4K, Low is 47 FPS vs. Ultra at 22 FPS (a 114% difference). This suggests that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is still the limiting factor, and raising settings only adds marginal additional load on top of an already saturated rendering pipeline.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides 12 distinct data points across four resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 144 FPS average on Low, 107 FPS on Medium (with a 91 FPS minimum and 123 FPS maximum), 92 FPS on High, and 66 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset’s min-max range of 91 to 123 FPS shows a variance of about 32 FPS, which is typical for a game with dynamic scenes. The Low and High presets show no min or max values in the data, but the averages alone indicate a clear hierarchy.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops significantly: Low averages 91 FPS, Medium averages 67 FPS (57 min, 78 max), High averages 58 FPS, and Ultra averages 42 FPS. The Medium preset’s min-max range of 57 to 78 FPS is a 21 FPS spread, which is narrower than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is more consistently loaded at higher resolutions. The 1440p Low figure of 91 FPS is notable because it matches the 1080p High figure of 92 FPS, indicating that dropping resolution by one step is roughly equivalent to dropping settings by two steps in terms of frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the data shows 47 FPS on Low, 35 FPS on Medium (30 min, 41 max), 30 FPS on High, and 22 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset’s minimum of 30 FPS is the only min value recorded for 4K in the data, and it represents a borderline playable experience. The 4K Low figure of 47 FPS is the only 4K preset that exceeds 40 FPS, and even that is below the 60 FPS threshold that most players consider smooth. The 4K Ultra figure of 22 FPS is effectively unplayable for any fast-paced gameplay.

Across all resolutions, the pattern is consistent: Low is always the fastest, followed by Medium, then High, then Ultra. The relative gaps between presets are larger at lower resolutions, which is expected because the GPU has more headroom at 1080p to differentiate between settings. At 4K, the gaps narrow because the GPU is so heavily constrained that even Low settings push it to its limits.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370’s role in this combo is defined by its integrated nature and its extremely low performance class. The GPU uses system-shared memory, meaning it has no dedicated VRAM pool. Its memory size, type, bus width, and bandwidth are all listed as "System Shared" or "System Dependent," which means the actual performance depends on the system’s DDR5 memory configuration. The CPU supports dual-channel DDR5 with a memory bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s, but the GPU’s effective bandwidth is constrained by system memory latency and contention with CPU workloads.

The GPU’s clocks are modest: a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2400 MHz. The boost clock is relatively high for an integrated part, but with only 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 render output units, the raw throughput is limited. The pixel rate is 48.00 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 96.00 GTexel/s, which translates to 6.144 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 12.29 TFLOPS of FP16 (at a 2:1 ratio). These numbers place the Arc B370 firmly in entry-level territory, and its 25 W TDP confirms that it is designed for power efficiency rather than high-end gaming.

In Barony, the GPU’s limitations manifest as the primary bottleneck across all measured configurations. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1184 is the only GPU benchmark in the data, and it places the Arc B370 at the 5th percentile. Its nearest rivals are all legacy parts: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, -0.2%), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, -0.5%), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192, -0.7%), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168, 1.4%). The fact that this GPU trades blows with parts from the early 2010s explains why it struggles to maintain high frame rates in a game from 2015.

The GPU’s 10 ray tracing cores and DirectX 12 Ultimate support are technically present, but in Barony, which is a roguelike with simple geometry and lighting, these features have minimal impact. The data shows that the GPU’s raw rasterization performance is what matters, and it is insufficient for anything beyond 1080p Medium. The RT cores and API support are irrelevant when the base shading throughput is so low. The system-shared memory also means that the GPU competes with the CPU for memory bandwidth, which could explain the somewhat inconsistent frame pacing at higher resolutions, though the data only shows min/max values for Medium presets.

The combination of a 25 W TDP, integrated form factor, and 5th percentile performance means that the Arc B370 is fundamentally a low-power graphics solution. In this combo, it is paired with a 125 W TDP CPU that has 24 cores and 24 threads, 36 MB of shared L3 cache, and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The CPU is clearly not the limiting factor in Barony; even at 1080p Low, where the combo hits 144 FPS, the CPU is likely still underutilized given its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44253 and single-core score of 2439.

FAQ

Q: Is this combo capable of running Barony at 60 FPS?

A: Yes, but only at 1920x1080 with Low or Medium settings. The data shows 144 FPS at 1080p Low and 107 FPS at 1080p Medium, both exceeding 60 FPS. At 1440p, only Low (91 FPS) and Medium (67 FPS) exceed 60 FPS, while High (58 FPS) and Ultra (42 FPS) fall short. At 4K, no preset reaches 60 FPS, with Low maxing out at 47 FPS.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo?

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1920x1080 is the only resolution where the combo consistently delivers smooth frame rates across multiple presets. At 1080p, even Ultra averages 66 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold. At 1440p, only Low and Medium exceed 60 FPS, and at 4K, all presets fall below 50 FPS.

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The CPU has an average benchmark score of 93785, which is essentially tied with the Intel Xeon 6520P (93786, 0% delta). It is 1.5% behind the AMD EPYC 4564P (95183), 1.9% behind the AMD EPYC 9175F (95615), and 2.1% behind the AMD EPYC 4565P (95764). These are all enterprise server chips, indicating the CPU is highly competitive.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B370 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GPU has an average benchmark score of 1184 from 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. It is 0.2% behind the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186), 0.5% behind the ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190), 0.7% behind the AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192), and 1.4% ahead of the AMD FirePro M2000 (1168). These are all legacy parts, showing the GPU’s low performance class.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this combo?

A: The GPU is clearly the bottleneck. The CPU sits at the 96th percentile against all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 5th percentile against all GPUs. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a consistent drop of roughly 37% from 1080p to 1440p and another 47% from 1440p to 4K across all presets, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario.

Q: What settings should I use for 4K gameplay?

A: At 3840x2160, the data shows that Low averages 47 FPS, Medium averages 35 FPS (with a 30 FPS minimum), High averages 30 FPS, and Ultra averages 22 FPS. Only Low is close to playable, but it still falls short of 60 FPS. Medium has a minimum of 30 FPS, which may be acceptable for a slower-paced roguelike, but the data suggests that 4K is not a practical target for this combo.