Greedfall

# Greedfall with Intel Core i3-12100F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

This combo pairs a quad-core Alder Lake processor with a top-tier Ada Lovelace GPU, producing results that are heavily skewed toward GPU-bound performance at higher resolutions while exposing CPU limitations at 1080p. The data shows a system that can deliver playable frame rates across all tested settings, but the relationship between resolution and settings reveals a clear hierarchy in where the bottleneck shifts.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a consistent pattern across all three resolutions: the Low preset delivers the highest average frame rates, followed by Medium, High, and finally Ultra. At 1920x1080, Low produces 318 FPS average, Medium drops to 249 FPS, High falls to 226 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 145 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is substantial — 173 FPS — which indicates that the Ultra preset imposes a significant rendering load that even the RTX 4080 cannot fully overcome at this resolution.

For the best experience per the measured data, the High preset at 2560x1440 represents the optimal balance. It delivers 157 FPS average, which is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on modern monitors, while maintaining visual fidelity that Low and Medium lack. At 4K, the High preset yields 94 FPS average, which is still smooth for most displays, and the Medium preset at 88 FPS minimum offers a safety margin for demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 60 FPS average, which is technically playable but leaves no headroom for frame-time spikes.

The data suggests that High is the sweet spot for this game and this combination. At 1080p and 1440p, High produces frame rates that exceed 150 FPS, while at 4K it maintains nearly 100 FPS. Choosing Ultra at any resolution sacrifices significant performance — 81 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 34 FPS at 4K compared to High — for marginal visual gains that the benchmark data does not quantify as worthwhile. For users with high-refresh-rate 1080p or 1440p displays, Medium at 1440p (173 FPS average) also provides an excellent experience if they prefer higher settings headroom.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 brings 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU runs at a base clock of 2205 MHz with a boost clock of 2505 MHz, and its 9728 shading units process geometry at a pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 761.5 GTexel/s. The FP32 throughput of 48.74 TFLOPS indicates substantial raw compute capability that the game's engine can leverage for effects-heavy scenes.

In Greedfall, the GPU's memory capacity is unlikely to be a limiting factor. The game's texture loads at 4K Ultra would need to exceed 16 GB to cause issues, and the measured 60 FPS average at 4K Ultra suggests the GPU is compute-bound rather than memory-bandwidth-bound. The 716.8 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient to feed the 304 TMUs and 112 ROPs without stalling, as evidenced by the smooth scaling from 1080p to 1440p to 4K.

The RTX 4080's percentile ranking at 86 among all GPUs places it firmly in the high-end tier. Its nearest rivals include the RTX 4080 SUPER with a delta of 0.1% and the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X at -1.1%, meaning the 4080 is essentially matched with the SUPER variant in aggregate benchmarks. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6567 reinforces its DirectX 12 performance, which is relevant for a 2019 title that supports modern APIs. The Ada Lovelace architecture's 5 nm process from TSMC, with 45,900 million transistors on a 379 mm² die, provides the efficiency headroom to sustain boost clocks under sustained gaming loads.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a clear resolution scaling pattern that shifts the bottleneck from CPU to GPU as resolution increases. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 226 FPS average; at 1440p High, it drops to 157 FPS; and at 4K High, it falls to 94 FPS. This represents a 30.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 40.1% drop from 1440p to 4K. The diminishing returns at higher resolutions indicate that the GPU becomes the primary limiter as pixel count increases.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 318 FPS at 1080p, 220 FPS at 1440p, and 131 FPS at 4K. The 1080p Low result of 318 FPS is notably high, but the fact that it does not scale proportionally to 4K (which would theoretically be around 80 FPS if purely pixel-bound) suggests that the CPU is constraining the 1080p result. The 4K Low figure of 131 FPS is only 41.2% of the 1080p Low figure, which is close to the expected pixel-count ratio (4K has 4x the pixels of 1080p, so pixel-bound scaling would predict 25% of the FPS, or around 80 FPS).

This pattern indicates that at 1080p, the Core i3-12100F is the limiting component, preventing the RTX 4080 from reaching its full potential. At 4K, the GPU's rendering load dominates, and the CPU has enough headroom to keep up. The Medium preset shows the same trend: 249 FPS at 1080p, 173 FPS at 1440p, and 103 FPS at 4K. The minimum FPS values at Medium — 212 at 1080p, 147 at 1440p, and 88 at 4K — show that frame pacing remains consistent even under load, with the 4K minimum still comfortably above 60 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 254 out of 3703 tested combinations in Greedfall, placing it in the top 6.9% of all tested systems. This high percentile reflects the GPU's dominance in the overall ranking, as the RTX 4080's 86th percentile among GPUs outweighs the CPU's 68th percentile among processors. The combination of a mid-tier CPU with a top-tier GPU produces a system that excels in GPU-bound scenarios, which Greedfall's higher resolutions and settings represent.

The ranking suggests that this combo outperforms the vast majority of tested systems, even though the CPU is not a top-tier part. In the context of the 3703 combos, being at 254 means that only 253 other combinations produce higher average frame rates in this specific game. The data implies that for Greedfall, the GPU choice matters more than the CPU choice for overall ranking, as the game's engine scales well with GPU resources at higher settings.

The CPU's nearest rivals — the Intel Core 3 N355 (0% delta), Intel Core i5-9500 (0.3% faster), Intel Core 5 120UL (-0.7% slower), and Intel Core i7-1250U (1.1% faster) — all fall within a narrow performance band. This indicates that the i3-12100F's aggregate benchmark score of 13494 is positioned among mainstream desktop and mobile parts, yet the combo still ranks highly due to the GPU's contribution. The GPU's nearest rivals — RTX 4080 SUPER (0.1% faster) and AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (-1.1% slower) — show that the 4080 is essentially at parity with its closest competitor, further validating the high combo ranking.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor based on Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It runs at a base clock of 3.30 GHz with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, and its 12 MB of shared L3 cache provides adequate data locality for game workloads. The CPU's single-thread performance is strong for its class — the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1674 and Geekbench single-core score of 1932 indicate solid IPC — but its 4-core/8-thread configuration limits multithreaded throughput, as shown by the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11860.

In Greedfall, the CPU's role varies by resolution and settings. At 1080p Low, the 318 FPS average suggests the CPU is the limiting factor, as the RTX 4080 would likely produce higher frame rates if not constrained by the processor's ability to feed it draw calls. The PassMark multithread score of 14015 and 3DMark 16-thread score of 4051 indicate that the CPU can sustain moderate multithreaded loads, but its 4-core design means it cannot fully utilize the GPU's potential at lower resolutions.

At 4K, the CPU's limitations become less relevant. The 94 FPS average at High settings and 131 FPS at Low settings show that the GPU's rendering workload dominates, and the CPU has sufficient headroom to maintain frame delivery. The CPU's boost clock of 4.30 GHz helps in single-threaded game logic, and its 68th percentile ranking among all CPUs places it above average, which is sufficient for a game like Greedfall that was released in 2019 and does not demand extreme multithreading.

The CPU's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5, with a dual-channel bus, provides flexibility, though the benchmark data does not specify which memory type was used. The 58 W TDP indicates efficient operation, and the lack of integrated graphics means the RTX 4080 handles all rendering duties without competition for system resources.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest frame rates. Low settings deliver 318 FPS average, Medium delivers 249 FPS with a minimum of 212 FPS and maximum of 287 FPS, High delivers 226 FPS, and Ultra delivers 145 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 173 FPS, showing that settings choices have a massive impact at this resolution. The Medium preset's minimum of 212 FPS ensures that even the most demanding scenes stay well above 200 FPS, while Ultra's 145 FPS average is still smooth but leaves less headroom.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but begin to show the GPU's workload. Low settings produce 220 FPS average, Medium produces 173 FPS with a minimum of 147 FPS and maximum of 199 FPS, High produces 157 FPS, and Ultra produces 100 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p ranges from 30.8% at Low (318 to 220) to 31.0% at High (226 to 157), indicating consistent scaling. The Medium minimum of 147 FPS is still above 144 Hz, making it suitable for high-refresh displays.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low settings deliver 131 FPS average, Medium delivers 103 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS and maximum of 119 FPS, High delivers 94 FPS, and Ultra delivers 60 FPS. The 4K Ultra result of exactly 60 FPS suggests the game's engine or the GPU's performance cap is limiting the frame rate to this value. The Medium preset's minimum of 88 FPS provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, while High's 94 FPS average is suitable for 60 Hz displays with room for V-sync. The Low preset at 131 FPS is notably high for 4K, indicating that the game's low settings reduce GPU load enough for the RTX 4080 to stretch its legs even at this resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combo for this system?

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 at High settings provides 157 FPS average, which balances visual quality with high refresh rates. At 4K, High settings with 94 FPS average is the best choice for UHD displays, while 1080p High at 226 FPS is optimal for competitive play.

Q: Does the RTX 4080 bottleneck the Core i3-12100F?

A: At 1080p, the data suggests the CPU limits performance — the 318 FPS at Low settings is disproportionately high compared to 4K's 131 FPS, indicating the GPU is not fully utilized at lower resolutions. At 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes the primary limiter.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High in terms of performance?

A: Ultra delivers 145 FPS at 1080p, 100 FPS at 1440p, and 60 FPS at 4K, while High delivers 226 FPS, 157 FPS, and 94 FPS respectively. The performance cost of Ultra over High is 81 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 34 FPS at 4K.

Q: Is the 16 GB VRAM sufficient for Greedfall at 4K?

A: The benchmark data shows playable frame rates at 4K across all settings, with the lowest result being 60 FPS at Ultra. The 716.8 GB/s memory bandwidth and 256-bit bus are sufficient for this game's requirements, as no memory-related stuttering is indicated in the FPS data.

Q: What is the combo's ranking among all tested systems?

A: This combo ranks 254 out of 3703 tested combinations, placing it in the top 6.9% of all systems tested for Greedfall. This high ranking is driven primarily by the RTX 4080's strong performance, which ranks in the 86th percentile among all GPUs.

Q: How does the CPU's performance compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Core i3-12100F has an average benchmark score of 13494. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Core 3 N355 (0% delta), Intel Core i5-9500 (0.3% faster), Intel Core 5 120UL (-0.7% slower), and Intel Core i7-1250U (1.1% faster). All these processors fall within a narrow 1.8% performance band.