Greedfall

The pairing of the Intel Core i5-14600K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 produces a striking set of results in Greedfall, a 2019 Action RPG. The data reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet transitions into a more balanced state at 1080p where the CPU's capabilities become visible. The measured frames per second range from a demanding 70.6 at 4K Ultra to a fluid 362.3 at 1080p Low, illustrating the wide performance envelope of this combination.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data indicates that the "High" preset offers the most compelling balance between visual fidelity and performance across all tested resolutions. At 4K, the High preset delivers an average of 109.1 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over the 70.6 FPS seen at Ultra settings. This difference of 38.5 FPS represents a significant gain in smoothness without a proportional visual sacrifice, as High typically omits only the most demanding and least noticeable effects.

Moving to 1440p, the High preset achieves 181.4 FPS, while the Ultra setting drops to 116.3 FPS. The performance gap narrows at lower resolutions, but High remains the sensible choice. At 1080p, High produces 260.4 FPS, which is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate displays. The Medium preset, while slightly faster than High at every resolution (118.3 vs 109.1 at 4K, 198 vs 181.4 at 1440p, and 286.8 vs 260.4 at 1080p), offers diminishing returns in visual quality for the performance gained.

The Low preset provides the highest frame rates—150.2 at 4K, 249.4 at 1440p, and 362.3 at 1080p—but these come at the cost of the game's visual atmosphere. For a title like Greedfall, where environmental storytelling is crucial, the jump from Low to High is more impactful than the frame rate difference suggests. The Ultra preset, while visually the most complete, pushes the GPU hard, particularly at 4K where it drops below the 100 FPS threshold. Given the data, High is the recommended preset for a consistent experience, with Medium as a fallback for those prioritizing higher frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling with resolution. This GPU features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The memory clocks run at 1750 MHz, with an effective data rate of 28 Gbps. These specifications ensure that memory bandwidth is not a bottleneck, even at 4K with high-detail textures.

The GPU's clock speeds are a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz. The architecture, Blackwell 2.0, is built on a 5 nm process from TSMC, containing 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die. The sheer compute power, with an FP32 rating of 104.8 TFLOPS, is evident in the raw frame rates. In Greedfall, the GPU's role becomes increasingly critical as resolution increases. The transition from 1080p to 4K shows a predictable performance drop, which is the classic signature of GPU-bound workloads. The data suggests that at 4K, the RTX 5090 is the limiting factor, with its performance scaling almost linearly with the pixel count.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data across resolutions reveals a clear pattern of GPU limitation. Moving from 1080p High (260.4 FPS) to 1440p High (181.4 FPS) results in a 79 FPS drop, a 30.3% decrease. Further scaling to 4K High (109.1 FPS) from 1440p results in another 72.3 FPS drop, a 39.9% decrease. This escalating drop-off is characteristic of a system where the GPU is the primary constraint; as pixel count increases, the GPU's work increases disproportionately, and the frame rate falls accordingly.

At the Low preset, the pattern is similar but with a more pronounced drop. From 1080p Low (362.3 FPS) to 1440p Low (249.4 FPS) is a 112.9 FPS decrease, and from 1440p Low to 4K Low (150.2 FPS) is a 99.2 FPS decrease. The fact that even at Low settings the 4K resolution cannot maintain the frame rates seen at 1080p Low confirms that the RTX 5090 is being fully utilized. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect the frame rates at 1080p to be more similar to those at 1440p, as the CPU's workload is largely resolution-independent. The data shows a steady decline, indicating that the GPU is the bottleneck at all settings and resolutions tested.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 10 out of 1705 tested combos in Greedfall. This places it in the top 0.6% of all system configurations tested for this game. This rank reflects the strength of both components, but the data suggests it is the GPU that is driving this high placement.

The GPU's individual performance is exceptional, with a percentile rank of 94 among all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 84306 is within 0.1% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D and 0.2% of the RTX 5050 Mobile, its closest rivals. The CPU, while also highly capable, has a percentile rank of 93 among all CPUs. Its average score of 49166 places it merely 0.2% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 0.4% behind the Intel Core i5-14600KF. The high combo rank is therefore a result of pairing a top-tier GPU with a strong CPU, ensuring that neither component becomes a significant bottleneck in most scenarios.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K, with its 14 cores and 20 threads, plays a secondary but important role in this configuration. Its architecture, Raptor Lake, is built on a 10 nm process from Intel. The CPU has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 24 MB of L3 cache. This configuration provides strong single-threaded performance, which is crucial for game logic and physics.

In Greedfall, the CPU's role is more apparent at lower resolutions. The benchmark results show that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 362.3 FPS, a figure that is 112.9 FPS higher than at 1440p Low. This large gap suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with more frames than the GPU can render at higher resolutions. The CPU's single-threaded score of 4642 in Cinebench R23 and multi-threaded score of 32881 indicate a strong processor capable of handling the game's demands. However, the data shows that the game becomes GPU-bound quickly as resolution increases, meaning the CPU's performance headroom is not fully utilized at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the performance is exceptionally high across all presets. The Low preset yields an average of 362.3 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded in the entire dataset. The Medium preset produces 286.8 FPS, while High achieves 260.4 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 169 FPS, which is a significant 91.4 FPS reduction from High. This suggests that even at 1080p, the Ultra settings impose a heavy load on the GPU.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a clear decrease. The Low preset delivers 249.4 FPS, followed by Medium at 198 FPS, High at 181.4 FPS, and Ultra at 116.3 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 133.1 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional visual effects are costly. The High preset at 1440p is 79 FPS slower than at 1080p, a 30.3% reduction, which is expected given the increased pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is fully taxed, and the frame rates reflect this. The Low preset achieves 150.2 FPS, which is still smooth but is 212.1 FPS lower than the 1080p Low result. Medium produces 118.3 FPS, while High averages 109.1 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 70.6 FPS, which is the lowest recorded frame rate. This 4K Ultra result is 49.2% slower than the 4K High preset, demonstrating the massive performance impact of the Ultra settings at this resolution. The data shows a consistent and predictable scaling pattern, with the GPU being the clear limiting factor at 4K.