Greedfall

The pairing of AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1650 in Greedfall produces a classic bottleneck scenario, where the 12-core processor’s immense headroom is largely wasted by the entry-level GPU’s output limits. The measured data shows a system that is strictly bound by graphics performance at every resolution, with the CPU never approaching its potential in this Action RPG.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and revealing. At 1080p with High settings, the combo delivers 54.5 FPS, but this falls to 38 FPS at 1440p and plummets to 19.3 FPS at 4K. That represents a 64.6% reduction in performance from the lowest to the highest resolution tested, a pattern that points directly at the GTX 1650 as the limiting component. The GPU’s 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 128-bit bus are simply overwhelmed by the pixel count at 3840x2160.

The scaling behavior is consistent across all settings presets. Moving from 1080p to 4K at Low settings drops the average from 69.7 FPS to 31.9 FPS, while the Ultra preset falls from 33.7 FPS to 14.5 FPS. The largest absolute gap occurs at Low settings, where the 37.8 FPS difference between 1080p and 4K shows that even when graphical detail is minimized, the GPU’s raw throughput cannot keep pace with the resolution increase. This is a textbook case of a graphics-bound workload, where the CPU’s role diminishes as resolution rises.

Interestingly, the difference between 1080p and 1440p is far less punishing than the jump to 4K. At Medium settings, 1080p yields 55.5 FPS and 1440p yields 40.2 FPS, a 27.6% reduction. However, moving from 1440p to 4K at the same preset cuts the frame rate to 26.7 FPS, a 33.6% drop. The 4K resolution demands four times the pixel fill rate of 1080p, and the GTX 1650’s 53.28 GPixel/s pixel rate becomes the hard ceiling.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this specific pairing ranks 1643 out of 1705 combos for Greedfall, placing it in the bottom 4% of all systems evaluated. This poor standing is unsurprising given the GPU’s limitations, but it is notably low even for a budget-oriented pairing. The ranking reflects that the GTX 1650, which sits in the 43rd percentile of all GPUs, is a poor match for the demands of this game at higher resolutions.

The CPU’s high percentile ranking—90th among all processors—contrasts sharply with the combo’s overall position. The Ryzen 9 5900X’s average benchmark score of 39453 places it within 0.2% of the AMD EPYC 4245P and 0.9% ahead of the Intel Core i7-13700F. Yet all of that processing power contributes almost nothing to the final frame rates in Greedfall. The data suggests that swapping in a weaker processor would yield nearly identical results with this GPU.

The rank of 1643 out of 1705 indicates that most other tested combinations, even those with older or less capable CPUs, outperform this pairing because they pair their processors with more balanced graphics hardware. The GTX 1650’s 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is simply insufficient for modern Action RPGs at playable settings above 1080p, and the combo’s low rank reflects this fundamental mismatch.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is built on the Turing architecture with a TU117 chip manufactured on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It features 896 shading units, 56 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, with a base clock of 1485 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz. The memory configuration consists of 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, providing 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth. These specifications place the card in the 43rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 8713.

The GTX 1650’s closest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Mobile, which scores 8746 (0.4% higher), and the AMD Radeon 550X at 8749 (0.4% higher). The data shows this card is essentially performance-equivalent to those mobile and workstation parts, but it lacks the memory capacity and bandwidth needed for smooth 4K gaming. The 4 GB frame buffer is particularly problematic for Greedfall at 3840x2160, where the Ultra preset averages just 14.5 FPS.

The GPU’s pixel rate of 53.28 GPixel/s and texture rate of 93.24 GTexel/s are the key metrics determining its output. At 1080p, the card can maintain 69.7 FPS at Low settings, which is playable, but the 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient for the visual effects enabled at Ultra. The card’s 75 W TDP and lack of power connectors indicate its entry-level positioning, and the benchmark results confirm that it is designed for 1080p gaming at modest settings, not for high-resolution Action RPGs.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the resolution where this GPU is most capable, the results show a playable range across most settings. Low settings average 69.7 FPS, Medium hits 55.5 FPS, and High produces 54.5 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 33.7 FPS, which is below the smooth threshold for most players. The small gap between Medium and High suggests that the GPU’s shading units handle moderate detail levels efficiently, but the jump to Ultra overwhelms the 896 cores.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance falls below 60 FPS across the board. Low settings average 49.2 FPS, Medium drops to 40.2 FPS, and High yields 38 FPS. Ultra is nearly unplayable at 23.9 FPS. The 1440p resolution requires 78% more pixels than 1080p, and the GTX 1650’s fill rate cannot compensate. The difference between Low and High at this resolution is only 11.2 FPS, indicating that the GPU is already near its limits regardless of detail level.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor. Low settings average 31.9 FPS, Medium drops to 26.7 FPS, and High falls to 19.3 FPS. Ultra is a slideshow at 14.5 FPS. The 4K resolution exposes the card’s memory bandwidth bottleneck, as the 128.1 GB/s cannot feed the 896 shading units enough data to maintain playable frame rates. The step from 1440p to 4K cuts performance by roughly half at every settings level, confirming that this GPU is not viable for 4K gaming.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, manufactured on TSMC’s 7 nm process. It features a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz, with 64 MB of L3 cache. The processor’s benchmark scores are exceptional: it achieves 33150 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 4680 in single-core, with a PassMark multithread score of 39002. These results place it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs.

However, in Greedfall, the CPU’s role is almost entirely passive. The game’s measured frame rates are dictated by the GPU’s output, and the Ryzen 9 5900X never becomes a limiting factor at any resolution or settings level. The processor’s 12 cores and 24 threads are far more than this Action RPG requires, and the 4.80 GHz boost clock provides ample single-thread performance for game logic and physics calculations.

The data shows that the CPU’s 3DMark scores—9075 for 16 threads and 941 for single-thread—are irrelevant to the final frame rates. Even at 1080p with Low settings, where the GPU is least stressed and the CPU would theoretically matter most, the combo achieves 69.7 FPS. This is not a CPU-limited result; it reflects the GTX 1650’s maximum output. A processor with half the cores would likely produce identical numbers, as the GPU remains the bottleneck in every scenario tested.

The Ryzen 9 5900X’s nearest rivals in the database—the AMD EPYC 4245P and Intel Core i7-13700—show similar average scores, with deltas of 0.2% and -1% respectively. Yet none of this processing power translates into higher frame rates in Greedfall when paired with this GPU. The combo’s rank of 1643 out of 1705 confirms that the CPU is not the limiting factor; it is the graphics card that holds this pairing back.