Greedfall

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination delivers exceptional performance in Greedfall, a 2019 Action RPG that remains demanding at high resolutions and settings. With measured frame rates ranging from 68 FPS at 4K Ultra to 359 FPS at 1080p Low, this pairing demonstrates both the immense raw power of the RTX 5090 and the substantial CPU headroom provided by the Ryzen 7 9850X3D. The data indicates that players can achieve smooth, high-refresh-rate gameplay across most settings, though the most demanding presets at 4K will test the limits of even this flagship hardware.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for this combination reveals a clear hierarchy across the four available presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 359 FPS, Medium produces 282 FPS, High reaches 256 FPS, and Ultra drops to 164 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is substantial, with Ultra delivering approximately 54% of the Low preset’s frame rate. However, even at Ultra, the 164 FPS average comfortably exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, making the highest quality settings viable for competitive or visually demanding play at this resolution.

Moving to 1440p, the pattern shifts slightly. Low produces 249 FPS, Medium achieves 196 FPS, High delivers 178 FPS, and Ultra falls to 113 FPS. The relative drop from Low to Ultra is similar to 1080p, but the absolute numbers remain high enough that Ultra is still playable, particularly for players with 120Hz or 144Hz displays. The Medium preset, with its 196 FPS average and a measured range of 166 to 225 FPS, offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance headroom at 1440p.

At 4K, the choice becomes more critical. Low delivers 149 FPS, Medium achieves 117 FPS, High reaches 106 FPS, and Ultra drops to 68 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that falls below the 100 FPS threshold, which may be noticeable on high-refresh-rate displays. For 4K gaming, the Medium preset provides the best experience, offering 117 FPS average with a minimum of 99 FPS and maximum of 134 FPS. This combination maintains smooth gameplay while delivering significantly better visual quality than Low, which at 149 FPS sacrifices too much graphical fidelity for a modest frame rate gain over Medium.

The High preset at 4K, at 106 FPS, represents a reasonable middle ground for players who prioritize visual quality over maximum frame rates. However, the data suggests that Medium at 4K is the sweet spot for this hardware combination, as it stays above 100 FPS average while the visual upgrade to High yields only a 9 FPS reduction. For players with variable refresh rate displays, any of the presets above Low at 4K will provide a playable experience, but those targeting 120 FPS or higher should stick with Medium or lower settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB202 chip manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The GPU contains 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, with a transistor density of 122.9 million per square millimeter. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory operates across a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, with 28 Gbps effective speed.

The GPU’s clock speeds are substantial: a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz. These frequencies, combined with 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster operation processors, translate to a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance reaches 104.8 TFLOPS, with FP16 matching at 104.8 TFLOPS (1:1). The RTX 5090 also includes 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores, though Greedfall’s engine from 2019 does not heavily leverage these features.

In benchmark tests, the RTX 5090 achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355, a Geekbench OpenCL score of 334,370, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 376,728. Its Passmark G3D score is 39,650, with a GPU compute score of 26,756. The GPU holds a 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79,842. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (avg score 79,605, delta 0.3%), the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (avg score 79,396, delta 0.6%), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (avg score 78,940, delta 1.1%), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (avg score 80,959, delta -1.4%).

The RTX 5090’s 32 GB VRAM capacity is far beyond what Greedfall requires, even at 4K Ultra settings. The game’s 2019 release date and its engine limitations mean that VRAM usage is unlikely to approach even half of this capacity at any resolution. Instead, the GPU’s raw compute power and memory bandwidth drive the high frame rates observed in the measured data. The 1.79 TB/s bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and memory transfers are not bottlenecks, even at 4K where pixel throughput demands are highest.

The GPU’s TDP is 575 W, with a suggested PSU of 950 W, and it uses a single 16-pin power connector. These power requirements are substantial, but the performance delivered justifies the power draw for enthusiasts. The card occupies a dual-slot form factor, measuring 304 mm in length, 137 mm in height, and 40 mm in width. Its PCIe 5.0 x16 interface provides ample bandwidth for data transfer, and the display outputs include 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D serves as the CPU in this configuration, built on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. The processor is manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC, containing 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die. Its TDP is 120 W, and it uses the AMD Socket AM5.

The CPU’s cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 96 MB of shared L3 cache. This large L3 cache is particularly beneficial for gaming workloads, as it reduces memory latency and improves data access patterns. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus, providing 89.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It also includes integrated Radeon Graphics, though the discrete RTX 5090 handles all rendering duties.

In CPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D achieves a Cinebench R15 multicore score of 3,551 and a single-core score of 343. Its Cinebench R23 results are 22,807 for multicore and 2,228 for single-core. Passmark tests show a multithread score of 41,318, a single-thread score of 4,704, and a physics score of 4,171. Additional Passmark results include data compression at 474,501, data encryption at 22,856, extended instructions at 39,272, find prime numbers at 435, floating point math at 81,998, integer math at 123,140, and random string sorting at 49,764. The CPU holds a 92nd percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 58,386.

The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M with an average score of 58,323 (delta 0.1%), the Intel Xeon w5-2545 with 58,504 (delta -0.2%), the Intel Core i9-14900 with 58,115 (delta 0.5%), and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 with 58,826 (delta -0.7%). These deltas are all within 1% of the 9850X3D’s score, indicating that this CPU sits in a highly competitive performance tier.

In Greedfall specifically, the CPU’s role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the frame rate reaches 359 FPS, which indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough draw calls and game logic updates to sustain extremely high frame rates. The 5.60 GHz boost clock and 96 MB L3 cache are particularly effective for this game, as Greedfall’s open-world environments require frequent data access and AI updates.

The 8-core, 16-thread configuration provides ample parallel processing for the game’s background tasks, while the high single-thread performance ensures that the main game loop does not become a bottleneck. The CPU’s 4.70 GHz base clock ensures consistent performance even under sustained loads, and the 120 W TDP allows for efficient thermal management.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 83rd out of 2,938 tested combos in Greedfall. This places it in the top 2.8% of all configurations tested, which is an impressive result given the sheer number of possible CPU and GPU pairings. The rank of 83 indicates that only 82 other combinations deliver higher average frame rates in this game, and those are likely to feature even more exotic hardware configurations.

The high ranking is expected given the individual performance of both components. The RTX 5090 sits at the 92nd percentile among GPUs, and the Ryzen 7 9850X3D also achieves a 92nd percentile among CPUs. When paired together, their combined strengths complement each other well, with the CPU’s large L3 cache and high boost clocks ensuring that the GPU is never starved for data.

The combo rank also reflects the game’s engine characteristics. Greedfall, released in 2019, does not utilize the latest graphics features like ray tracing or DLSS, which means that the raw rasterization performance of the RTX 5090 is the primary driver of frame rates. The CPU’s role is less critical than in more modern, CPU-intensive titles, but the 9850X3D’s strong single-thread performance prevents any bottleneck even at 1080p.

Compared to other combinations in the database, this setup’s 83rd rank out of 2,938 means it outperforms 2,855 other tested configurations. The delta between this combo and the top-ranked combinations is likely small, as the measured FPS at 1080p High reaches 256, which is already at the upper range of what most monitors can display. The ranking demonstrates that for Greedfall, this hardware pairing is near the top of the performance hierarchy.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows how the performance scales across three resolutions: 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160. At the High preset, frame rates drop from 256 FPS at 1080p to 178 FPS at 1440p, then to 106 FPS at 4K. This represents a 30% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 40% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The overall drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings is 59%, indicating that the GPU is becoming increasingly stressed as pixel count quadruples.

For the Low preset, the scaling is steeper. At 1080p, the frame rate is 359 FPS, dropping to 249 FPS at 1440p and 149 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 31% from 1080p to 1440p and 40% from 1440p to 4K, totaling a 58% reduction from 1080p to 4K. This pattern suggests that Low settings are still GPU-limited, as the CPU has ample headroom to push even higher frame rates at 1080p.

The Medium preset shows similar scaling, with 282 FPS at 1080p, 196 FPS at 1440p, and 117 FPS at 4K. The drops are 30% and 40% respectively, with a total reduction of 58% from 1080p to 4K. The Medium preset also includes minimum and maximum FPS data at each resolution, showing that the frame time variance remains consistent across resolutions.

Ultra settings produce the most significant scaling. At 1080p, the frame rate is 164 FPS, dropping to 113 FPS at 1440p and 68 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 31% and 40%, with a total reduction of 59% from 1080p to 4K. The fact that all presets show similar percentage drops from 1080p to 4K indicates that the GPU is the limiting component across all settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates at 1080p would not scale linearly with resolution changes.

The consistent scaling pattern across all four presets confirms that the RTX 5090 is the primary constraint in this configuration. At 1080p, the CPU can feed the GPU fast enough to reach 359 FPS on Low settings, but even at this extreme frame rate, the GPU is still the limiting factor. This confirms the Ryzen 7 9850X3D’s ability to keep pace with the flagship GPU, as most CPUs would struggle to provide draw calls at such high frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are as follows: Low settings deliver 359 FPS, Medium settings produce 282 FPS with a minimum of 240 FPS and maximum of 325 FPS, High settings achieve 256 FPS, and Ultra settings reach 164 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 195 FPS, which represents a 54% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest to highest quality preset.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates decrease across all settings. Low produces 249 FPS, Medium averages 196 FPS with a range of 166 to 225 FPS, High delivers 178 FPS, and Ultra achieves 113 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 136 FPS, a 55% reduction. The Medium preset’s minimum of 166 FPS ensures that even the most demanding scenes remain above the 144Hz refresh rate threshold.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops further. Low delivers 149 FPS, Medium averages 117 FPS with a minimum of 99 FPS and maximum of 134 FPS, High reaches 106 FPS, and Ultra falls to 68 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 81 FPS, a 54% reduction. The Medium preset at 4K maintains a minimum of 99 FPS, which is just below the 100 FPS mark but still provides smooth gameplay on most displays.

The frame rate data reveals that the Medium preset offers the most consistent performance across all resolutions, with measured minimums that are closer to the averages than other presets. At 1080p, Medium’s minimum of 240 FPS is 85% of its average, while at 1440p the minimum of 166 FPS is 85% of the average, and at 4K the minimum of 99 FPS is 85% of the average. This consistency indicates that Medium settings provide stable frame times, which is important for reducing input latency and visual stutter.

Ultra settings show the lowest frame rates at every resolution, with the 4K Ultra result of 68 FPS being the only configuration tested that falls below the 72 FPS threshold often considered the minimum for smooth console-like performance. However, even this result is playable on a 60Hz display, and the higher refresh rate options at lower settings provide ample flexibility for players with high-end monitors.

The data also shows that the jump from Low to Medium yields a significant frame rate reduction at all resolutions. At 1080p, the drop is 77 FPS (21%), at 1440p it is 53 FPS (21%), and at 4K it is 32 FPS (21%). This consistent percentage reduction suggests that the Medium preset introduces additional GPU load that scales linearly with resolution, while the CPU overhead remains manageable.

From Medium to High, the reductions are 26 FPS at 1080p (9%), 18 FPS at 1440p (9%), and 11 FPS at 4K (9%). The High preset adds visual improvements that cost a relatively small amount of performance, making it a viable option for players who want better image quality without sacrificing too much frame rate.

The largest drop occurs between High and Ultra, with reductions of 92 FPS at 1080p (36%), 65 FPS at 1440p (37%), and 38 FPS at 4K (36%). The Ultra preset imposes a substantial performance penalty, suggesting that it enables effects that are particularly demanding on the GPU, such as higher quality shadows, ambient occlusion, or post-processing filters. For players seeking the highest frame rates, avoiding Ultra is advisable, while those prioritizing visual fidelity can still achieve playable performance at 1080p and 1440p.