Greedfall

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT pairing in Greedfall presents a fascinating study in bottleneck dynamics. The data shows a system that can deliver high refresh rate gameplay at 1080p, but whose performance curve reveals a clear shift in the limiting component as resolution climbs. This combination ranks 1266th out of 1705 tested combos, placing it in the lower-mid tier of the database, which suggests significant headroom for optimization or a mismatch in component tiers for this specific title.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average framerate achieved by this combo in Greedfall?

A: The highest average framerate recorded is 150.2 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 7900X compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 7900X has an average benchmark score of 50556, which is essentially tied with the Intel Core Ultra 5 235, showing a negligible delta of -0.1%. It also trails the AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT by -0.4% and the Intel Core i7-13850HX by -0.5%.

Q: What is the performance gap between the RX 6600 XT and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 in GPU benchmarks?

A: The RX 6600 XT's average benchmark score of 27985 is 0.9% lower than the RTX 3070's score of 28238, indicating that the NVIDIA card holds a slight synthetic performance edge.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the combo achieve its lowest average framerate?

A: The lowest average framerate is 26.4 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings.

Q: Does the CPU's multi-threaded performance stand out relative to its single-threaded performance?

A: Yes, the Ryzen 9 7900X excels in multi-threaded workloads. For instance, its Cinebench R23 multicore score is 43695, while its single-core score is 6168. This is a ratio of roughly 7:1, highlighting the 12-core/24-thread design's strength in parallel tasks.

Q: What is the measured average framerate difference between Low and Ultra settings at 2560x1440?

A: At 2560x1440, the average framerate drops from 107.9 FPS on Low settings to 50.7 FPS on Ultra settings, a difference of 57.2 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the Ultra preset is punishing for this hardware combination, particularly at higher resolutions. At 1920x1080, Ultra yields 66.4 FPS, which is playable, but the jump to 2560x1440 brings it down to 50.7 FPS, and at 3840x2160 it collapses to 26.4 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. The data implies that the Ultra preset introduces a rendering load that the RX 6600 XT cannot sustain at higher pixel counts.

The High preset appears to be the sweet spot for a balanced experience. At 1920x1080, it delivers a strong 110 FPS average, which is excellent for a smooth experience. Moving to 2560x1440, the average drops to 74.6 FPS, still comfortably within a playable range for most users. Even at 3840x2160, High settings manage a 48.2 FPS average, which is borderline but usable.

For users prioritizing framerate over visual fidelity, the Low preset offers the highest performance ceiling. The data shows 150.2 FPS at 1080p, 107.9 FPS at 1440p, and 60.1 FPS at 4K. The Medium preset provides a middle ground, with 119 FPS at 1080p and 80.3 FPS at 1440p, but its 4K performance of 48.2 FPS is identical to High settings, suggesting a potential CPU or driver limitation at that resolution rather than a pure GPU load issue. The benchmark results indicate that High settings offer the best trade-off between visual quality and performance across the board, with Medium being a viable alternative for those seeking a small framerate boost.

Resolution Scaling

The framerate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a significant dependence on resolution, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiting factor in this configuration. At High settings, the average framerate drops from 110 FPS at 1920x1080 to 74.6 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 32.2%. The further drop to 48.2 FPS at 3840x2160 represents a total decrease of 56.2% from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline suggests that the RX 6600 XT's rendering throughput is being saturated as pixel count increases.

The pattern is consistent across other settings. With Low settings, the framerate falls from 150.2 FPS at 1080p to 107.9 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 60.1 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows a drop of 44.3%, which is more pronounced than the 28.2% drop from 1080p to 1440p. This non-linear scaling is a hallmark of a GPU-bound scenario, where the cost of rendering additional pixels grows disproportionately.

Interestingly, at Medium settings, the 4K framerate of 48.2 FPS is exactly the same as the High setting at 4K. This anomaly suggests that at 3840x2160, the performance is no longer solely dictated by the GPU's shader load, but may be hitting a memory bandwidth or fill-rate limit. The RX 6600 XT's 256.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 64 ROPs appear to be the constraining factors at this resolution, as reducing the settings from High to Medium does not yield any additional performance.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1266 out of 1705 tested combinations places it in the 74th percentile, meaning it outperforms roughly 74% of tested setups but is outperformed by the top quarter. This ranking is surprising given the individual component scores. The Ryzen 9 7900X is a high-end CPU with a 93rd percentile ranking among all CPUs, and the RX 6600 XT sits in the 71st percentile among GPUs. The combination of these two should theoretically place the system higher, but the Greedfall specific results indicate a potential inefficiency in how this pairing scales.

The rank suggests that Greedfall may not be fully utilizing the CPU's capabilities, or that the GPU is holding the system back in a way that is more pronounced than in other games. The data implies that there are 439 other combos that achieve better performance in this specific title, which could include systems with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs. This suggests that for Greedfall, the GPU selection is more critical than the CPU, and the RX 6600 XT may be the weaker link in this pairing.

This ranking also highlights that raw synthetic benchmark scores do not always translate to in-game performance. While the CPU and GPU scores are individually respectable, their combined rank in this game indicates a mismatch in their performance classes for this workload, positioning the system as a mid-tier performer rather than a high-end one.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, with its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, is clearly the primary driver of the framerate differences seen across settings. The memory bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s is a likely bottleneck at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the identical 48.2 FPS at both High and Medium settings at 3840x2160. This suggests that the GPU's memory subsystem is saturated, preventing any gains from reducing shader load.

The GPU's clock speeds are notable, with a base clock of 1968 MHz and a boost clock of 2589 MHz. The high boost clock helps maintain performance at lower resolutions, where the GPU is not memory-limited. At 1920x1080, the framerates are high across all settings, indicating that the GPU has enough raw compute power to handle the game's demands when the pixel count is lower. The FP32 performance of 10.60 TFLOPS provides a baseline for its compute capability.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, as the data shows no catastrophic drops that would indicate memory swapping. However, at 4K, the combination of lower bandwidth and potential VRAM pressure likely contributes to the poor Ultra performance of 26.4 FPS. The GPU's position in the benchmark hierarchy, sitting 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti and 0.4% above the AMD Radeon R9 M395X, indicates it is a mid-range performer, which aligns with its in-game results at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a clear picture of performance across all presets. At 1920x1080, the average framerates are 150.2 FPS for Low, 119 FPS for Medium, 110 FPS for High, and 66.4 FPS for Ultra. This shows a 55.8% drop from Low to Ultra, indicating that the Ultra preset is particularly demanding.

At 2560x1440, the results are 107.9 FPS for Low, 80.3 FPS for Medium, 74.6 FPS for High, and 50.7 FPS for Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows an average reduction of about 28% across all settings, which is consistent with the increased pixel count. The Ultra setting sees a 23.6% drop from its 1080p value, slightly less severe than the other settings.

At 3840x2160, the framerates fall to 60.1 FPS for Low, 48.2 FPS for Medium, 48.2 FPS for High, and 26.4 FPS for Ultra. The most striking result is the lack of differentiation between Medium and High, which both produce the same average framerate. This is a strong indicator that the GPU's memory bandwidth is the limiting factor. The Ultra preset's 26.4 FPS is a 45.2% drop from the High preset's 48.2 FPS, showing that the Ultra settings introduce a massive computational load that this GPU cannot handle at 4K.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its benchmark scores are exceptional, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 43695 and a single-core score of 6168. This positions it as a top-tier CPU, with a 93rd percentile ranking among all CPUs.

Given its power, the CPU is unlikely to be the bottleneck in Greedfall at any resolution. The framerate drops observed when moving from 1080p to 4K are almost exclusively attributable to the GPU's rendering limitations. At 1080p, even the Ultra preset achieves 66.4 FPS, which is likely above the CPU's minimum frame pacing threshold. The CPU's high single-thread performance, evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 1093, ensures that game logic and draw calls are processed quickly.

The CPU's 64 MB of shared L3 cache and support for DDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s further reduce any potential CPU-side bottlenecks. In this configuration, the Ryzen 9 7900X provides ample headroom, meaning that if a more powerful GPU were installed, the system could likely achieve higher framerates without needing a CPU upgrade. The data suggests that the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with sufficient data, and it performs this task admirably, as evidenced by the consistently high framerates at lower resolutions where CPU overhead is more likely to surface.