Greedfall

Greedfall, the 2019 action RPG from Spiders, presents an interesting case study in hardware scaling when paired with an Intel Core i5-12400F and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The dataset reveals a configuration that is heavily GPU-bound at lower resolutions but shifts toward a more balanced, and ultimately GPU-limited, state as resolution increases. The measured performance demonstrates that while the RTX 4090 is capable of delivering extremely high frame rates, the demands of Greedfall’s Ultra settings can still bring even this flagship card to its knees.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data shows a clear and predictable pattern as resolution climbs. At 1080p, the system is almost certainly limited by the CPU, as the RTX 4090 is capable of producing extraordinarily high frame rates that outpace what the i5-12400F can feed it. Moving from 1080p Low to 4K Low, the average frame rate drops from 353.3 FPS to 146.9 FPS, a reduction of 206.4 FPS. This is a massive drop, but the absolute numbers remain high, underscoring the raw power of the GPU.

The scaling becomes more dramatic when examining the High settings. At 1920x1080 High, the system achieves 253.1 FPS. Stepping down to 2560x1440 High reduces this to 172.7 FPS, a 31.8% decrease. The subsequent jump to 3840x2160 High yields 106.3 FPS, another 38.5% reduction from the 1440p figure. This steep decline indicates that the rendering load is expanding rapidly with pixel count, placing an increasing burden on the GPU.

The behavior at Ultra settings is particularly telling. The transition from 1080p Ultra (163.5 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (111 FPS) represents a 32.1% drop, but the move from 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra is even more severe, falling to 66.7 FPS, a 39.9% reduction. This suggests that 4K Ultra is hitting a performance wall where the GPU’s compute and memory resources are thoroughly saturated. The delta between Low and Ultra settings scales with resolution as well. At 1080p, the difference is 189.8 FPS (353.3 vs. 163.5), while at 4K, it narrows to 80.2 FPS (146.9 vs. 66.7). This compression at higher resolutions confirms that the GPU becomes the limiting component, and the headroom for higher frame rates is constrained by the graphics card’s absolute performance limits.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 plays the dominant role in this configuration, and its specifications explain the observed results. The card is built on the AD102 chip using a 5 nm process from TSMC, with a die size of 609 mm². It features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. The base clock is 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz. The memory operates at 1313 MHz with 21 Gbps effective speed. These specifications allow the card to push Greedfall to very high frame rates, especially at 1080p and 1440p, but the Ultra settings at 4K expose its limits.

The card’s raw compute power is substantial. With 16,384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs, the RTX 4090 can process geometry and textures at a blistering pace. The 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are not particularly relevant for Greedfall, which is not a ray-traced title, but they contribute to the overall feature set. The FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS and the pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s provide a theoretical ceiling that aligns with the measured frame rates.

However, the data suggests that the 24 GB memory buffer is not the limiting factor in this game. Greedfall is not known for having extremely high VRAM requirements, and at 4K Ultra, the game is likely bottlenecked by the GPU’s shader and ROP throughput rather than its memory capacity. The steep drop from High to Ultra settings at 4K (from 106.3 FPS to 66.7 FPS) indicates that the Ultra preset introduces effects or draw distances that are computationally expensive. The 450 W TDP and the triple-slot cooler are necessary to sustain these clocks under load, but the benchmark results show that even with this power envelope, 4K Ultra is a challenging target.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p with High settings?

A: The system achieves an average of 253.1 FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings. This is a very high frame rate, indicating that the CPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution.

Q: How does the frame rate change from 1440p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: At 2560x1440 Medium, the average FPS is 191.6. Moving to 3840x2160 Medium, the average FPS drops to 111.9. This represents a 41.6% reduction in performance when scaling up to 4K.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 able to maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra?

A: Yes, but barely. The measured average FPS for 3840x2160 Ultra is 66.7, which is above the 60 FPS threshold but leaves little headroom. This suggests that the GPU is heavily loaded at this setting.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset yields an average of 241.8 FPS, while the Ultra preset yields 111 FPS. The difference is 130.8 FPS, representing a 54.1% reduction in frame rate when moving from Low to Ultra.

Q: How does the i5-12400F’s performance compare to its nearest rival?

A: The Intel Core i5-12400F has an average benchmark score of 19221, which is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-8700K’s score of 19210. It is also 1.3% higher than the AMD EPYC 7773X’s score of 18979.

Q: What is the GPU’s percentile ranking among all tested GPUs?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score is 66473, which places it 0.5% above the NVIDIA Tesla P40’s score of 66127.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is ranked 44th out of 1705 tested combos in Greedfall. This places it in the top 2.6% of all configurations tested. The high ranking is primarily driven by the GPU’s exceptional performance, as the RTX 4090 is in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. The CPU, while not the absolute fastest, is still in the 77th percentile of all CPUs, and the data shows that it is sufficient to avoid being a major bottleneck at higher resolutions.

The ranking suggests that this combo is one of the more capable setups for Greedfall, but it is not the absolute best. The rank of 44 implies that there are 43 other combinations that deliver higher average FPS in this specific game. Given that the RTX 4090 is near the top of the GPU hierarchy, the configurations that beat this one likely pair it with a faster CPU, such as a higher-end 13th or 14th generation Intel processor or a top-tier AMD Ryzen chip. The i5-12400F’s 6 cores and 12 threads are adequate for gaming, but the data indicates that it may hold back the RTX 4090 at 1080p, where frame rates are exceedingly high.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table details the exact average FPS for each resolution and settings combination tested.

| Resolution | Settings | Avg FPS |

|---|---|---|

| 1920x1080 | Low | 353.3 |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 276.4 |

| 1920x1080 | High | 253.1 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 163.5 |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 241.8 |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 191.6 |

| 2560x1440 | High | 172.7 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 111.0 |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 146.9 |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 111.9 |

| 3840x2160 | High | 106.3 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 66.7 |

The data shows that the system is capable of exceeding 300 FPS at 1080p with Low settings, which reflects the RTX 4090’s power. However, the Ultra preset at 4K drops to 66.7 FPS, which is less than a fifth of the 1080p Low result. The scaling is not linear, and the cost of Ultra settings increases with resolution. The gap between High and Medium at 4K is only 5.6 FPS (106.3 vs. 111.9), suggesting that the High preset is not significantly more demanding than Medium. The jump to Ultra, however, is a 37.6% drop from High, indicating that the Ultra preset enables a level of detail that is particularly taxing on the GPU. This makes the Ultra setting a questionable choice for 4K gaming, as the visual fidelity gain may not justify the substantial frame rate penalty.