Greedfall

# Greedfall Performance Analysis: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

This combination of AMD's 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D and NVIDIA's RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a remarkable Greedfall experience, with measured frame rates that scale from a fluid 126 FPS at 1080p Ultra to a still-playable 52 FPS at 4K Ultra. The data reveals a system where the GPU consistently becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, while the CPU's substantial 128 MB L3 cache and high boost clocks keep the pipeline fed even at lower settings where frame rates exceed 270 FPS. Ranking 474th out of 2,938 tested combinations places this pairing in the top 16% of all systems tested in Greedfall, a strong showing for a game originally released in 2019.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop varies significantly depending on the quality preset selected. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 276 FPS at 1080p to 192 FPS at 1440p, a 30.4% reduction, and then to 114 FPS at 4K, a further 40.6% drop from the 1440p figure. This steep decline at lower settings strongly suggests that the RTX 4070 SUPER's rendering pipeline becomes the dominant bottleneck as pixel count rises, with the CPU's headroom being largely irrelevant once the resolution demands more from the GPU's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 7,168 shading units.

High settings tell a similar story with slightly less dramatic scaling: 197 FPS at 1080p drops to 137 FPS at 1440p (a 30.5% reduction), then falls to 82 FPS at 4K (a 40.1% drop from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and High presets — both hovering around 30% for the 1080p-to-1440p transition and 40% for the 1440p-to-4K transition — indicates that resolution scaling in Greedfall is largely independent of the visual complexity added by higher settings. This is characteristic of a game where the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth, measured at 504.2 GB/s, are the primary constraints at higher resolutions.

Medium settings exhibit the same proportional pattern: 217 FPS at 1080p, 151 FPS at 1440p (a 30.4% drop), and 90 FPS at 4K (a 40.4% drop from 1440p). The near-identical scaling percentages across Low, Medium, and High presets — all within a single percentage point of each other — suggest that Greedfall's engine applies resolution scaling in a highly linear fashion, regardless of the quality preset. This linearity implies that the RTX 4070 SUPER's compute resources, rather than any specific memory or cache hierarchy, are the determining factor in how frame rates scale with resolution.

Ultra settings present a different scaling curve, likely because the additional graphical features at this preset introduce new bottlenecks. The transition from 1080p Ultra at 126 FPS to 1440p Ultra at 87 FPS represents a 31.0% reduction, consistent with the other presets. However, the drop from 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra — from 87 FPS to 52 FPS, a 40.2% reduction — shows that even at the highest quality settings, the resolution scaling penalty remains remarkably consistent at around 40% for the jump to 4K. This uniformity across all presets points to a GPU that is well-balanced for this game, with no single resource (memory bandwidth, pixel throughput, or shader compute) becoming disproportionately stressed at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D brings substantial processing resources to Greedfall, with 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture codenamed Granite Ridge. The CPU's boost clock of 5.50 GHz, combined with a large 128 MB L3 cache, provides the kind of single-thread performance that older game engines like Greedfall's often rely upon. The benchmark data supports this: the CPU achieves a 3dmark single-thread score of 1,269 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6,739, figures that place it well above most competing processors for lightly threaded workloads.

The game's modest demands on CPU resources are evident when examining the frame rates at 1080p Low, where the system produces 276 FPS. At this resolution and settings combination, the GPU is not heavily taxed, yet the frame rate is still limited by the rendering pipeline rather than the CPU. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D's 3dmark 2-thread score of 2,512 and 4-thread score of 4,885 indicate strong performance in the low-thread-count scenarios that older titles typically present, while the 16-thread score of 12,490 and max-thread score of 13,795 show that even if Greedfall were to scale across more cores, the CPU has ample headroom.

The CPU's weighted percentile ranking of 91st among all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54,762, places it in the upper echelon of processors. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, scores 55,093 on average, a mere 0.6% difference, while the Intel Core i7-14700F trails by 2.1% with a score of 53,620. These tight margins among top-tier CPUs suggest that for Greedfall specifically, the choice of high-end processor makes little practical difference — the game simply does not push modern CPUs to their limits, as evidenced by the high frame rates at 1080p where CPU overhead would typically manifest.

The 4 nm TSMC process node and dual 70.6 mm² die design contribute to the CPU's efficiency, but more relevant to Greedfall is the 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth from dual-channel DDR5 support. This bandwidth ensures that the CPU can feed data to the GPU without becoming a bottleneck, even at the highest frame rates measured. The CPU's 120 W TDP and support for ECC memory are specifications that speak to its workstation-class positioning, though for gaming, the 5.50 GHz boost clock is the specification that matters most for frame pacing in a 2019-era RPG.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER serves as the primary determinant of Greedfall's performance across all measured configurations. Built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD104 chip at a 5 nm process node, this GPU packs 7,168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 80 raster operation units. The 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for 4K Ultra settings at 52 FPS but becomes increasingly stretched as resolution climbs.

The GPU's clock behavior shows a base clock of 1,980 MHz and a boost clock of 2,475 MHz, with memory running at 1,313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These clocks, combined with the 80 ROPs delivering a pixel rate of 198.0 GPixel/s, explain the consistent resolution scaling observed in the measured data. The texture rate of 554.4 GTexel/s and FP32 throughput of 35.48 TFLOPS provide ample compute for Greedfall's visual effects, likely including its distinctive art style and environmental details.

Benchmark results for the RTX 4070 SUPER show a 3dmark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,627 and a Passmark G3D score of 29,995, with the GPU ranking in the 83rd percentile among all tested graphics cards. Its average benchmark score of 43,223 places it in close competition with the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB (43,262, a 0.1% difference) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile (43,667, a 1.0% difference). These narrow margins against diverse competitors illustrate that the RTX 4070 SUPER sits at a sweet spot for 1440p gaming and entry-level 4K, which aligns with the measured Greedfall performance.

The GPU's 56 ray tracing cores and 224 tensor cores are present but likely underutilized in Greedfall, given the game's 2019 release date and the absence of modern ray tracing features in its engine. Instead, the traditional rasterization pipeline — the ROPs, TMUs, and shading units — carries the workload. The 220 W TDP and dual-slot cooler design are reasonable for this performance class, and the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface provides ample bandwidth for the 12 GB frame buffer, especially when compared to the CPU's PCIe Gen 5 support, which offers no practical advantage for this GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and RTX 4070 SUPER achieves a rank of 474 out of 2,938 tested combinations in Greedfall, placing it in the 83.9th percentile of all systems. This ranking is notably higher than the GPU's individual percentile ranking of 83rd among all GPUs, suggesting that the CPU pairing extracts additional performance from the graphics card in this specific game. Conversely, the ranking is lower than the CPU's 91st percentile standing, indicating that Greedfall's performance ceiling is set more by the GPU than the processor.

This 474th place ranking places the combo firmly in the upper tier of systems tested for Greedfall, though not at the very top. The gap between this ranking and the top combinations likely reflects the RTX 4070 SUPER's position as a mid-to-high-end GPU rather than a flagship, while the CPU's contribution ensures that the system does not lose performance to processor limitations at any resolution or settings combination. The data implies that users with higher-end GPUs would see improved rankings primarily through higher frame rates at 4K Ultra, where the RTX 4070 SUPER's 52 FPS result shows the most room for improvement.

The ranking also contextualizes the measured FPS figures: while 276 FPS at 1080p Low and 197 FPS at 1080p High are excellent results, systems ranked above this combo likely push those numbers even higher, particularly at 4K where the RTX 4070 SUPER's 12 GB memory capacity and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth become limiting factors. The 2,464 combinations ranked below this system demonstrate that this pairing outperforms the vast majority of tested hardware in Greedfall, making it a strong reference point for the game's performance expectations on modern mid-to-high-end hardware.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the full range of settings produces frame rates that far exceed the refresh rates of most displays. Low settings average 276 FPS, Medium averages 217 FPS with a minimum of 185 FPS and maximum of 250 FPS, High averages 197 FPS, and Ultra averages 126 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 54.3% reduction in frame rate, indicating that each settings tier adds meaningful visual complexity. The Medium settings' minimum of 185 FPS and maximum of 250 FPS provide a sense of the frame time variance, with the 65 FPS spread suggesting some scenes are significantly more demanding than others.

Moving to 1440p, the averages remain highly playable across all settings. Low produces 192 FPS, Medium averages 151 FPS with a minimum of 128 FPS and maximum of 173 FPS, High averages 137 FPS, and Ultra averages 87 FPS. The Medium settings at 1440p show a tighter 45 FPS spread between minimum and maximum compared to the 1080p Medium spread, which could indicate that the GPU is becoming more consistently utilized at this resolution. The Ultra setting at 87 FPS remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, making 1440p Ultra a viable option.

At 4K, the performance envelope narrows considerably. Low settings average 114 FPS, Medium averages 90 FPS with a minimum of 76 FPS and maximum of 103 FPS, High averages 82 FPS, and Ultra averages 52 FPS. The Medium settings at 4K show a 27 FPS spread between minimum and maximum, the smallest of any resolution, reinforcing the idea that the GPU is fully saturated at this resolution. The Ultra preset at 52 FPS falls below the 60 FPS standard, though it remains playable for those who prioritize visual quality over frame rate. The Low preset at 114 FPS shows that even at 4K, the RTX 4070 SUPER can deliver high refresh rate performance when settings are reduced.

Settings Recommendations

For 1080p displays, the Ultra preset at 126 FPS is the clear recommendation. This frame rate exceeds the refresh rate of most standard monitors while delivering the full visual experience Greedfall has to offer. Even the most demanding scenes, as indicated by the Medium settings' minimum of 185 FPS, would maintain smoothness at Ultra given the 126 FPS average provides a substantial buffer. Users with high refresh rate 1080p panels (240 Hz or higher) could consider High settings at 197 FPS to better utilize their display's capabilities, though the visual trade-off from Ultra may not be worth the 56% frame rate increase.

At 1440p, the Ultra preset at 87 FPS is the optimal choice for most users. This provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS while delivering maximum visual fidelity. The High preset at 137 FPS is attractive for those with 144 Hz displays, offering a 57.5% frame rate increase over Ultra while presumably maintaining most visual quality. The Medium preset at 151 FPS with a minimum of 128 FPS is the safest recommendation for competitive play or for users who prioritize frame rate consistency, as the minimum frame rate remains well above 60 FPS.

For 4K, the High preset at 82 FPS represents the best balance of visual quality and performance. The Ultra preset at 52 FPS dips below the 60 FPS threshold and may result in noticeable stuttering on 60 Hz displays, while the Medium preset at 90 FPS provides a 9.8% improvement over High with potentially reduced visual fidelity. The data suggests that High settings at 4K offer the best combination of image quality and smoothness, with Medium serving as a fallback for those who prefer higher frame rates. The Low preset at 114 FPS is viable for users with high refresh rate 4K displays, though the visual compromise is substantial.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Greedfall with this hardware?

A: The data shows 1440p Ultra at 87 FPS is the sweet spot, offering high visual quality while maintaining a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. At 1080p Ultra, the 126 FPS average is excellent, while 4K Ultra at 52 FPS falls below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 9900X3D compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X3D's average benchmark score of 54,762 is 0.6% lower than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF's 55,093, but 1.3% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K's 54,053 and 2.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-14700F's 53,620.

Q: Is the RTX 4070 SUPER's 12 GB VRAM sufficient for 4K in Greedfall?

A: Yes, the measured data shows playable frame rates at 4K across all settings, from 52 FPS at Ultra to 114 FPS at Low. The 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth appears adequate for the game's demands at 4K resolution.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: The measured data shows an average of 217 FPS with a minimum of 185 FPS and maximum of 250 FPS. This indicates consistent performance well above any standard display refresh rate.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems in Greedfall?

A: This combination ranks 474th out of 2,938 tested combos, placing it in the top 16.1% of all systems. This is slightly lower than the CPU's 91st percentile ranking but higher than the GPU's 83rd percentile ranking.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any resolution or settings?

A: The data suggests no CPU bottleneck occurs. Even at 1080p Low with 276 FPS, the frame rate continues to scale with resolution, indicating the GPU remains the limiting factor. The CPU's 5.50 GHz boost clock and 128 MB L3 cache appear more than sufficient for Greedfall's demands.