Barony

Barony is the anti-benchmark in our library, and that is exactly what makes its numbers interesting. Turning Wheel's first-person roguelike has been quietly running on everything since 2015, and our measured data confirms the reputation: across 3,717 tested CPU and GPU combinations, the average system records 170 FPS at 1080p Ultra, 107 FPS at 1440p Ultra, and 56 FPS at 4K Ultra. The fastest combinations reach 724 FPS at 1080p Low. The slowest, genuine museum hardware, still manages 33 FPS at 1080p Ultra. There is no hardware crisis here. What there is instead is a useful reference point: Barony shows what a game looks like when the engine gets out of the way, and it answers a question a lot of PC owners quietly ask, which is whether their machine is fine. For this game, it almost certainly is.

A custom engine with 2015 priorities

Barony runs on a custom C++ engine built on SDL2 and OpenGL, written by a small team with a clear goal: a first-person dungeon crawler that feels like the genre's classics and runs anywhere. The world is built from chunky, low-poly voxel-style geometry, textures are deliberately simple, and the renderer does a fraction of the work a modern AAA engine does per frame. The consequence shows directly in our data. At 1080p the game is so light that the limiting factor is usually your frame cap or your monitor, not any component in your case.

When Barony does load something, it loads the CPU first. The engine is essentially single-threaded: dungeon generation, monster AI, trap logic, item simulation, and in co-op the host's world state all run through one main thread. In practice this means per-core speed matters a little and core count barely matters at all. A modern budget quad-core is already far past the point of diminishing returns. The GPU, meanwhile, mostly cares about resolution. At 1080p almost anything with a video output can feed it; only at 4K does the graphics card become a real variable, which the 56 FPS average reflects. Memory demands are modest too: the game itself uses a few gigabytes at most, and 8 GB systems run it without complaint. The only memory advice that applies here targets integrated graphics users, where dual-channel RAM meaningfully feeds the shared GPU, and even then Barony is one of the most forgiving games you could pick for an iGPU.

1080p: high-refresh territory for everyone

A 170 FPS average at 1080p Ultra puts Barony in rare company for our database: this is a game where the typical gaming PC is not chasing 60, it is feeding a 144Hz monitor with headroom left over. If you have any discrete graphics card from the last several generations and a CPU from the same era, 1080p Ultra is a solved problem, full stop.

The more interesting reading is at the edges of the table. The ceiling, 724 FPS at 1080p Low, is what flagship hardware does when the engine is allowed to sprint, and it tells you the renderer's cost per frame is nearly nothing on modern silicon. The floor, 33 FPS at 1080p Ultra, comes from the weakest combinations in our 3,717-combination table: decade-old dual-cores, first-generation integrated graphics, the kind of hardware that has no business running modern games at all. Even that hardware crosses 30 FPS at the highest preset. For context, a 33 FPS minimum at Ultra would be a respectable result for a demanding AAA release; here it is the worst case we could find.

The practical takeaway for 1080p is that settings and spending debates are settled. If you are shopping for the best graphics card for Barony at this resolution, the honest answer is the one already in your machine. The only 1080p decision worth making is a frame cap: uncapped, the engine will happily render several hundred frames per second you cannot see, which costs power and can introduce coil whine on some cards. Cap it to your refresh rate and enjoy a game that sips electricity.

1440p and 4K: where the one real GPU decision lives

At 2560x1440 the average drops to 107 FPS at Ultra, and the shape of the data barely changes. That is still above the 100 FPS line on typical hardware, still comfortably high-refresh on a mid-range card, and still not a resolution that requires planning. A 1440p 144Hz monitor is a realistic pairing for mainstream builds, which is something we can say about very few pages on this site.

At 3840x2160 the average lands at 56 FPS at Ultra, and this is the only place in Barony where a hardware decision genuinely exists. Fifty-six is close to 60, which means the average machine sits right at the boundary: mid-range cards hold 4K60, entry-level discrete cards and older hardware dip below it. If your goal is 4K Ultra at a locked 60, a modern mid-range GPU is the requirement, and anything from the current or previous generation at that tier clears it without drama. Below that tier, small settings cuts close the gap instantly, because the game has very little to cut.

One note for shoppers coming from heavier games: Barony has no DLSS or FSR support, and it does not need any. Upscaling exists to recover performance from expensive renderers; this renderer is not expensive. If you are below 60 at 4K, dropping one lighting setting does what upscaling would, with no image reconstruction involved. Driver-level scaling remains an option if you insist, but it is a solution in search of a problem here.

Settings: the shortest guide we have written

Most settings guides on this site run long because modern games hide enormous costs behind innocent-looking toggles. Barony is the opposite. The menu is short, the costs are small, and the honest advice fits in a paragraph. Run Ultra, or the highest preset your version offers, at whatever resolution your monitor uses. If you are on hardware weak enough to care, cut the fancy lighting and shadow options first; the visual enhancements added over the game's long update life are where most of the GPU cost lives, and the art direction survives without them because the chunky geometry and moody darkness do the heavy lifting. View distance and detail sliders touch the CPU side slightly; on genuinely old processors, trim them second. Texture quality costs almost nothing on any card with 2 GB of VRAM or more, so leave it up. Competitive players in heavier games cut settings for visibility and frame times; here the incentive barely exists. Set a frame cap at your refresh rate and you are done.

What hardware do you need?

Our tier lists usually separate hardware by what a game punishes. Barony punishes nothing, so the tiers describe something different: how much headroom you are buying past the point of sufficiency.

Entry level (old dual-core or early quad-core, 8 GB RAM, integrated or legacy graphics): 1080p at reduced settings, living near the 33 FPS floor of our measured data on the oldest hardware, and climbing the moment you cut lighting. This is one of the few games where a decade-old office PC or a hand-me-down laptop is a legitimate way to play.

Mid-range (modern 6-core CPU, 16 GB of dual-channel DDR5 or DDR4, GTX 1660 or RX 6600 class card): right around the measured averages, roughly 170 FPS at 1080p Ultra and 107 FPS at 1440p Ultra, which means a 144Hz monitor is fully fed at both resolutions. If you are planning a budget gaming PC build and Barony is anywhere on your list, this tier is the natural target, and it costs about what one AAA-ready graphics card costs.

High-end (fast modern CPU, strong upper-tier GPU): well past both averages, in 240Hz territory at 1080p and 1440p with tuned settings, and comfortably above the 56 FPS average at 4K Ultra. A 240Hz monitor becomes a sane purchase here, though honesty applies: this is a grid-based dungeon crawler, and the extra frames are luxury, not advantage.

Flagship (top CPU and GPU): the 724 FPS ceiling at 1080p Low lives here, along with 4K at triple-digit frame rates. Buy this tier for the other games in your library. Barony will not know the difference, and neither will you.

Laptops and handhelds: the friendliest page in our library

Most game pages carry a warning about laptops. This one carries an invitation. Barony's demands map almost perfectly onto what laptops are good at: light single-thread load, trivial GPU work at native panel resolutions, a small storage footprint, and runs that work in short sessions. Any gaming laptop from the last several years plays it at panel resolution without the fans spinning up. Integrated-graphics thin-and-lights handle it too: Intel Iris Xe and recent Radeon iGPUs run 1080p at high settings, and even older Intel UHD graphics manage with the lighting turned down, which is where the dual-channel memory note from earlier actually matters, since single-channel RAM starves those older iGPUs.

Handheld PCs deserve special mention because Barony suits them so well. The game has full controller support, short runs that fit portable sessions, and a performance profile that leaves the battery budget for the screen rather than the chip. On a Steam Deck or a similar handheld it runs at high frame rates with power draw to spare, and co-op works the same as on desktop. If a laptop is the machine you are checking this page for, stop worrying. If that laptop is genuinely old, the 33 FPS floor in our data was measured on hardware in that class, and the settings section above covers the two toggles that fix it.

Streaming and content creation

Barony is a co-op game, which means it generates the kind of clips people stream: accidental deaths, friendly fire, betrayal over loot. The good news for a streaming setup is that the game leaves almost the entire machine free for the broadcast. This produces a rare situation in our streaming guidance: CPU x264 encoding is actually affordable here. On a modern 6- or 8-core processor, x264 at a medium preset costs a slice of the headroom Barony never touches, and it produces the best per-bit quality for a game whose dark scenes and simple geometry compress cleanly.

That said, the hardware encoder remains the low-effort answer. NVENC on GeForce cards or AMF on Radeon produces a clean 1080p60 stream at negligible cost, and it removes the one configuration step that tends to go wrong. Either path works; that is the point. The only advice specific to this game concerns bitrate and light. Barony is dark, and dark scenes punish low bitrates with visible banding in the shadows. Give the encoder 6 to 8 Mbps at 1080p, or use your platform's higher tier if you have it, and consider a small in-game brightness lift for the stream even if you play darker yourself. For recording and video editing, the footage is undemanding: modest bitrates edit smoothly on any machine that can play the game, and a channel built around Barony runs on hardware that would choke on AAA capture. A workstation this is not.

Common problems and fixes

Rubber-banding and desync in co-op: this is networking, not hardware. The host's machine runs the world simulation, so a weak host CPU or a poor connection shows up as lag for everyone in the party. Let the player with the strongest PC and the best upload speed host, and prefer wired connections. No graphics setting touches this.

Low FPS on an old integrated GPU: cut the fancy lighting and shadow options first, then resolution. The floor of our table, 33 FPS at Ultra, was measured on hardware in exactly this class, so there is always headroom available in the settings menu.

Coil whine or fan noise despite a light game: uncapped frame rates. An engine rendering hundreds of frames per second, up to the 724 FPS ceiling in our data, works the GPU harder than a heavy game held at a cap. Set the limiter to your refresh rate in-game or in the driver.

Fullscreen or alt-tab oddities: an SDL2-era engine shows its age in window management. Borderless or windowed mode fixes most of it instantly.

Workshop or mod trouble after updates: a content problem, not a performance one. Verify files, check mod load order, and remember that a modded dungeon still runs on the same forgiving engine.

Upgrade priorities

Here is a sentence you will not read often on this site: do not upgrade your PC for Barony. The data leaves no room for interpretation. A machine that fails this game fails everything, and a machine that passes it is done. A CPU upgrade is the last thing this game will ever ask of your wallet, because the engine's one busy thread runs happily on anything modern. If your system genuinely struggles, meaning it sits near the 33 FPS floor of our table, you are working with hardware old enough that any modern replacement part transforms it, and the sensible spend is a used mid-range card or a basic current platform, not anything new and expensive.

If you are building fresh and Barony is one of many games on the list, build for the heaviest game on that list and let Barony ride along. Two general-purpose upgrades still earn a mention because they improve everything, this game included: an NVMe SSD, which makes the whole machine feel newer even if Barony's load times were never long, and enough RAM in a proper dual-channel configuration, which matters most in exactly the budget and integrated-graphics machines where many Barony players live. Past that, if money must move, put it in the monitor. The average PC in our data already feeds 144Hz at 1080p in this game. A high-refresh display is the one purchase that changes the experience on hardware you already own.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can my PC run Barony?

A: Almost certainly yes. The average across 3,717 tested combinations is 170 FPS at 1080p Ultra, and the slowest combination we have ever measured still manages 33 FPS. If your machine runs a modern operating system, it runs this game.

Q: Is Barony CPU or GPU intensive?

A: Neither, by modern standards. When the engine works hard it leans on a single CPU thread for simulation, and the GPU only becomes a real variable at 4K, where the average is 56 FPS. Any gaming CPU and any discrete GPU from recent years are more than sufficient.

Q: How much RAM does Barony need?

A: 8 GB is comfortable. The game itself uses only a few gigabytes. If you play on integrated graphics, two sticks in dual channel matter more than total capacity, because the iGPU shares system memory.

Q: Does Barony support DLSS or FSR?

A: No, and it does not need to. Upscaling recovers performance from expensive renderers; this one is cheap. Lowering a single lighting setting does the same job with no reconstruction artifacts.

Q: Can I play Barony on a laptop without a dedicated GPU?

A: Yes. Recent Intel Iris Xe and Radeon integrated graphics run 1080p at high settings, and older integrated GPUs manage with lighting reduced. It is also an excellent handheld PC game thanks to controller support and tiny power draw.

Q: Why is my FPS capped well below what this page says my hardware should do?

A: Check the in-game frame limiter, vsync, and your monitor's actual refresh rate setting in the operating system, in that order. On a system as fast as Barony allows, the cap you configured is almost always the limit you are measuring.

Barony's place in 2026

Eleven years after release, Barony occupies a niche nobody else has filled: a first-person roguelike with real co-op, real depth, and a hardware appetite from another era. The updates never stopped, the DLC races and classes kept the runs fresh, and the community around it is the kind that forms when everyone can actually join, including friends on ancient laptops and hand-me-down desktops. That inclusivity is a design achievement as much as a technical one.

For this site, Barony's page serves a different purpose than most. Nobody lands here mid-build trying to choose between two graphics cards. People land here to confirm what they already suspect, that their machine is fine, or to find out whether some genuinely old hardware has one more dungeon left in it. The data answers both groups clearly. With a 170 FPS average at 1080p Ultra, 107 at 1440p, 56 at 4K, and a floor of 33 FPS on the slowest hardware across 3,717 combinations, Barony is as close to universally playable as a PC game gets. Spend your hardware budget on the demanding games. Spend your time in this one.