Greedfall

Greedfall, a 2019 Action RPG, presents an interesting study in hardware scaling when paired with the Intel Core i5-14600KF and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT. The measured FPS data reveals a component dynamic that shifts dramatically based on resolution and settings, offering a clear look at where the bottleneck lies in this particular system configuration.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and telling. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 151.5 FPS at 1920x1080 to 103.0 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 48.5 FPS. Pushing further to 3840x2160 yields just 63.2 FPS, meaning the transition from 1080p to 4K costs the system 88.3 FPS, or roughly 58% of its 1080p performance. This scale of decline points directly at the GPU as the primary limiter at higher resolutions.

The pattern holds across all settings. At Low, the system manages 205.9 FPS at 1080p, which is extraordinarily high, but that number plummets to 88.7 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1440p and 4K is particularly wide—52.3 FPS at Medium settings—which suggests the Radeon RX 7700 XT's 192-bit memory bus and 432.0 GB/s bandwidth are being saturated by the pixel throughput demanded at 3840x2160.

What is curious is the relative scaling between 1080p and 1440p. At Ultra settings, the difference is only 25.8 FPS (94.6 down to 68.8), while at Low settings the difference is 61.2 FPS (205.9 down to 144.7). This indicates that at lower settings, the CPU has more headroom to feed frames, but the GPU still becomes the wall as resolution climbs. The Intel Core i5-14600KF, with its 14 cores and 20 threads, appears more than capable of keeping up at 1080p, as evidenced by the 205.9 FPS Low result, but the RDNA 3.0 architecture of the RX 7700 XT is clearly the limiting factor once 4K is introduced.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain a 60 FPS average?

A: The data shows that 3840x2160 on High settings produces 63.2 FPS, just above the 60 FPS threshold. For a more comfortable margin, 2560x1440 on Medium delivers 115.3 FPS, and 1920x1080 on High achieves 151.5 FPS.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Ultra settings yield an average of 68.8 FPS, while High settings produce 103.0 FPS. This is a 34.2 FPS difference, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes a significant additional load on the GPU.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for the 4K performance drop?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the bottleneck at 4K. The RX 7700 XT has 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and a 192-bit bus, and the frame rate declines sharply from 1440p to 4K across all settings, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this setup?

A: The maximum measured average is 205.9 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only setting combination that breaks the 200 FPS barrier in the data.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 706th out of 1705 tested combinations in Greedfall, placing it in the upper half of all systems benchmarked for this game.

Q: Does the CPU's single-thread performance matter for this game?

A: The i5-14600KF has a boost clock of 5.30 GHz and a Geekbench single-core score of 2778. The high FPS at 1080p Low (205.9) suggests that single-thread performance is sufficient to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows show a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset delivers only 39.7 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay in an Action RPG. High settings at 4K bring that up to 63.2 FPS, a playable result, but Medium at 69.4 FPS offers a slightly better margin. For players prioritizing frame rate at 4K, Medium is the most balanced choice in the data.

At 2560x1440, the picture changes. High settings produce 103.0 FPS, which is excellent for a fast-paced action game. Medium is close at 115.3 FPS, but the jump to Ultra drops the average to 68.8 FPS, a 34.2 FPS penalty that may not justify the visual upgrade. The data suggests that High is the sweet spot at 1440p, offering a 49.8% improvement over Ultra while maintaining a triple-digit average.

At 1920x1080, even Ultra settings achieve 94.6 FPS, which is playable, but High at 151.5 FPS is substantially smoother. The Low preset at 205.9 FPS is the highest recorded, but this likely sacrifices too much visual quality for an Action RPG. Therefore, High is the recommended preset at 1080p based on the measured rows, as it provides a 60% boost over Ultra while remaining well above refresh rate requirements for most displays.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 706th out of 1705 tested combinations in Greedfall, which places it in the 41st percentile of all systems benchmarked. This is a middling result for a CPU that sits in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs and a GPU in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs. The ranking suggests that Greedfall is not particularly demanding on high-end hardware, meaning the i5-14600KF and RX 7700 XT are not fully utilized.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 30097 places it nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, which has a deltaPct of 0.0. This means the RX 7700 XT is essentially on par with that rival in synthetic tests, yet the combo ranking in Greedfall remains modest. The CPU, with an average benchmark score of 49367, is 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i5-14600K and 0.6% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, but these differences are negligible in real-world gaming. The data implies that the game's engine is the limiting factor, not the hardware, as the combo's rank is lower than what the individual component percentiles might suggest.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF is a 14-core, 20-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. In Greedfall, the CPU's role appears to be secondary to the GPU at higher resolutions, but it becomes more relevant at 1080p. The 205.9 FPS result at Low settings demonstrates that the CPU can feed frames at a very high rate, which is supported by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32889 and single-core score of 4643.

The 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache likely help with the game's asset streaming and AI calculations, common in Action RPGs. However, the benchmark data shows that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck in this system. At 4K, the FPS drops are consistent with GPU limitations, not CPU stalls. The processor's percentile of 93 versus all CPUs indicates it is a top-tier part, yet the combo's 706th rank out of 1705 suggests that the game does not heavily tax the CPU's capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 94.6 at Ultra to 205.9 at Low. The progression is linear: Low (205.9), Medium (163.3), High (151.5), and Ultra (94.6). The gap between Medium and High is only 11.8 FPS, while the drop from High to Ultra is 56.9 FPS, indicating a significant performance cost for the highest preset.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 68.8 (Ultra), 103.0 (High), 115.3 (Medium), and 144.7 (Low). The scaling is more compressed than at 1080p, with a 75.9 FPS difference between Low and Ultra. The High preset holds above 100 FPS, which is notable for a 1440p resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 39.7 (Ultra), 63.2 (High), 69.4 (Medium), and 88.7 (Low). The Ultra preset falls below 40 FPS, making it nearly unplayable, while even Low settings cannot reach 90 FPS. This data confirms that 4K is a stretch for the RX 7700 XT in this title, regardless of settings.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 32 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process by TSMC. It features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The boost clock of 2544 MHz and 35.17 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are substantial, but the 4K results suggest that the memory subsystem is the limiting factor.

At 4K Ultra, the GPU manages only 39.7 FPS, which is a 58% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result of 94.6 FPS. This steep decline is typical of a GPU that is bandwidth-constrained. The 192-bit bus is narrower than what many competitors use at this performance class, and the 12 GB VRAM, while sufficient for Greedfall, may be limiting at higher resolutions with texture-heavy settings.

The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 22547 places it in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rival, the RTX 5060, has an identical average score with a 0.0 deltaPct. However, the measured FPS in Greedfall shows that the RX 7700 XT can deliver high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K performance is underwhelming. The data suggests that for this game, the GPU's raw compute is sufficient, but its memory bandwidth and capacity are not ideal for 4K Ultra settings.