Greedfall

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates across resolutions reveal a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher settings, yet increasingly CPU-limited as resolution drops. At 4K Ultra, the combo delivers 65.7 FPS, while dropping to 4K High lifts performance to 104.7 FPS—a substantial 59% improvement. This gap between Ultra and High at the same resolution indicates that the Ultra preset imposes a severe rendering load that even the GeForce RTX 4090 cannot fully overcome, given its 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 1.01 TB/s memory bandwidth.

Moving from 4K to 1440p, the scaling pattern becomes more telling. At High settings, the jump from 104.7 FPS (4K) to 175.1 FPS (1440p) represents a 67% gain, closely matching the pixel count reduction from 8.3 million to 3.7 million pixels. This near-linear scaling suggests the GPU remains the primary limiter at High settings across these resolutions. However, at Low settings, the transition from 143.7 FPS (4K) to 242.8 FPS (1440p) yields only a 69% improvement—slightly less than the pixel ratio would predict—hinting that the AMD Ryzen 7 7700's 8 cores and 16 threads are beginning to constrain performance at lower graphical loads.

The 1080p results confirm this trend. At Low settings, the system reaches 352.1 FPS, but the jump from 1440p Low (242.8 FPS) to 1080p Low (352.1 FPS) represents a 45% gain against a 56% pixel reduction. This sub-linear scaling is a classic sign of CPU bottlenecking; the Ryzen 7 7700's single-thread score of 1049 in 3DMark and 4136 in Cinebench R23 single-core suggests it has ample headroom, but at 1080p Low, the rendering pipeline becomes so lightweight that the CPU's instruction throughput caps frame delivery. The same pattern appears at Medium settings: 274.7 FPS at 1080p versus 189.7 FPS at 1440p is a 45% gain, again falling short of the 56% pixel-count difference.

At Ultra settings, the GPU reasserts dominance. The 1080p Ultra result of 160.4 FPS versus 1440p Ultra's 113.7 FPS shows a 41% improvement, while 4K Ultra trails at 65.7 FPS—a 73% drop from 1080p Ultra. This steep decline at 4K Ultra reflects the RTX 4090's 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate being saturated by the combination of high resolution and maxed-out effects. The data indicates that for this title, the optimal balance between visual fidelity and frame rate lies at 1440p High or 1080p Ultra, where the GPU still has breathing room and the CPU can keep up with frame generation.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide clear guidance on preset selection. At 1080p, the High preset delivers 253.8 FPS, which is 93.4 FPS higher than Ultra (160.4 FPS) but only 20.8 FPS lower than Medium (274.7 FPS). Given that High typically includes most visual enhancements over Medium, the High preset at 1080p offers the best experiential sweet spot—it provides 58% of the performance headroom above Ultra while maintaining noticeably better image quality than Medium. The Low preset at 1080p reaches 352.1 FPS, but this is overkill for virtually any display and sacrifices too much visual detail for marginal competitive advantage in a single-player Action RPG.

At 1440p, the High preset's 175.1 FPS is the standout choice. It is 61.4 FPS ahead of Ultra (113.7 FPS) and only 14.6 FPS behind Medium (189.7 FPS), making it the most efficient tier in terms of performance-per-visual-fidelity. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 113.7 FPS, which is still smooth but represents a 35% penalty over High for what are typically subtle shadow and texture quality improvements in Greedfall. Medium at 1440p (189.7 FPS) offers diminishing returns over High, with only an 8% frame rate gain that most users would not notice on a 144Hz monitor.

For 4K, the situation is more constrained. High settings produce 104.7 FPS, which is the only preset that comfortably exceeds 100 FPS at this resolution. Medium drops to 113.9 FPS—wait, the data shows Medium at 113.9 FPS, which is actually 9.2 FPS higher than High. This is an anomaly worth noting: at 4K, Medium (113.9 FPS) outperforms High (104.7 FPS) by 8.8%, suggesting that High enables specific effects that disproportionately impact the RTX 4090's 128 RT cores or 512 tensor cores. Ultra at 4K plummets to 65.7 FPS, a 42% reduction from High—this preset should be avoided unless the user prioritizes maximum visual quality over playability. The recommendation for 4K is Medium, as it delivers 113.9 FPS with the least compromise between the Low (143.7 FPS) and High (104.7 FPS) extremes.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate achievable with this combo in Greedfall?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 352.1 at 1080p with Low settings. The system reaches 274.7 FPS at 1080p Medium and 253.8 FPS at 1080p High.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 bottleneck the Ryzen 7 7700 in this game?

A: At 4K Ultra, the GPU is the clear limiter (65.7 FPS), but at 1080p Low, the CPU appears to constrain performance. The scaling from 1440p Low (242.8 FPS) to 1080p Low (352.1 FPS) is only 45%, versus the 56% pixel reduction, indicating CPU-bound frame delivery at lower resolutions.

Q: How much performance is lost when enabling Ultra settings at 4K?

A: At 4K, Ultra delivers 65.7 FPS, which is 39 FPS lower than High (104.7 FPS) and 48.2 FPS lower than Medium (113.9 FPS). This represents a 42% penalty over High and a 58% penalty over Medium.

Q: Is 1440p High a better choice than 1080p Ultra for this system?

A: Yes. 1440p High achieves 175.1 FPS, which is 14.7 FPS higher than 1080p Ultra (160.4 FPS), while offering a higher native resolution. The data shows 1440p High provides both better image clarity and superior frame rates.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and High at 1440p?

A: Medium at 1440p delivers 189.7 FPS, while High delivers 175.1 FPS—a difference of 14.6 FPS or 8.3%. Given that High typically includes better textures and shadow quality, this small performance cost is often worth the visual upgrade.

Q: Does the Ryzen 7 7700's performance percentile correlate with its in-game results?

A: The CPU sits at the 91st percentile among all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 40,468. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H, scores 40,431 (0.1% delta), indicating the 7700 is well within its expected performance class for this game.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 53rd out of 1,705 tested combinations in Greedfall, placing it in the top 3.1% of all tested systems. This ranking is expected given the hardware pairing: the RTX 4090 sits at the 91st percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 66,473, while the Ryzen 7 7700 also holds the 91st percentile among CPUs with an average score of 40,468. The combination of two 91st-percentile components yields a top-3% overall ranking, demonstrating that Greedfall rewards both strong GPU compute and high single-thread CPU performance.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66,733 score, -0.4% delta) and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (67,097 score, -0.9% delta), though these are professional-grade cards not directly comparable to the consumer-focused RTX 4090 in gaming workloads. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H (40,431 score, 0.1% delta) and the Intel Core i9-13905H (40,712 score, -0.6% delta), showing that the 7700's performance is tightly clustered with other high-end processors.

In practical terms, the 53rd rank means that only 52 other hardware combinations in the database achieve higher average frame rates in Greedfall. Given that many of those combinations likely feature even newer or more expensive components, this combo represents a highly capable setup for this title. The measured FPS data confirms this ranking: at 4K High, the combo achieves 104.7 FPS, which is above the typically accepted 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and at 1440p High, it reaches 175.1 FPS, which exceeds most high-refresh-rate display capabilities.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 4 Raphael architecture, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. Its base clock of 3.80 GHz boosts to 5.30 GHz, providing strong single-thread performance that is critical for games like Greedfall that rely on a primary game thread. The CPU's 3DMark single-thread score of 1049 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4136 place it among the top-tier consumer processors for gaming workloads.

In Greedfall specifically, the CPU's role becomes more pronounced at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the system produces 352.1 FPS, which is 145% higher than the 4K Low result of 143.7 FPS. This dramatic scaling suggests that at 1080p, the CPU's 16 threads are adequately fed by the GPU, but the frame rates are so high that the CPU's instruction fetch and decode becomes the limiting factor. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 8484 and max-thread score of 8479 indicate that multi-threaded performance is nearly identical to 16-thread performance, meaning the CPU scales well with additional threads but does not gain much beyond 16 threads.

The CPU's 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are sufficient for Greedfall's open-world environments, which require frequent asset streaming and NPC AI updates. The PassMark data compression score of 405,084 and integer math score of 110,295 suggest strong general-purpose computing that benefits game logic and physics calculations. However, the PassMark single-thread score of 4063 (also listed as 4,063) indicates that while single-thread performance is strong, it is not the absolute fastest available, which explains why the system cannot fully saturate the RTX 4090 at 1080p Low.

The CPU's 91st percentile ranking and its tight clustering with rivals (all within 1.2% of its average score) show that the 7700 is a well-balanced choice for this game. The fact that the combo ranks 53rd overall, despite the CPU not being the absolute fastest in single-thread tasks, indicates that Greedfall benefits more from the GPU's raw compute power (82.58 TFLOPS FP32) than from extreme CPU clock speeds. The 5.30 GHz boost clock provides sufficient headroom for the game's main thread, while the 8 cores handle background tasks like asset streaming and AI without causing frame hitches.