Greedfall

# Greedfall with Intel Core i5-9400 + AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

This combination delivers a playable but uneven experience in Greedfall, with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT clearly dominating the workload at lower resolutions while the Intel Core i5-9400 becomes a more significant factor as settings climb. The measured data shows a system that can push well past 200 FPS at 1080p Low but drops to 47 FPS at 4K Ultra, indicating a substantial performance ceiling that shifts based on both resolution and quality preset.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, revealing a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. At High settings, average FPS falls from 177 at 1080p to 123 at 1440p and then to 73 at 4K — a cumulative reduction of roughly 59% from the 1080p baseline. The Low preset tells a similar story, with 248 FPS at 1080p dropping to 172 at 1440p and 103 at 4K. This scaling pattern indicates that the RX 9070 XT is the primary limiting component as resolution increases, with the CPU becoming less relevant at 4K where pixel throughput dominates.

The Medium preset offers the only complete min/max data in the measured results, showing a 4K range of 69 to 93 FPS with an average of 81, compared to 115 to 155 FPS at 1440p and 166 to 224 FPS at 1080p. The proportional drops between resolutions are relatively uniform, suggesting no sudden bottleneck transition. However, the Ultra preset shows the steepest absolute decline: 113 FPS at 1080p, 78 at 1440p, and just 47 at 4K. This 58% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings is nearly identical to the High preset's scaling, implying that the game's Ultra settings impose a consistent additional load regardless of resolution.

At 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is 135 FPS (248 vs 113), which narrows to 94 FPS at 1440p (172 vs 78) and further to 56 FPS at 4K (103 vs 47). This convergence at higher resolutions is classic GPU-bound behavior: when pixel count rises, the relative cost of quality settings diminishes because the GPU is already saturated. The data strongly suggests that for 4K gaming, the RX 9070 XT is the deciding factor, while at 1080p the CPU can still keep up with the GPU's output up to a point.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT brings substantial hardware to Greedfall, built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 48 chip manufactured on a 4 nm process. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for this 2019 title's texture and geometry demands. The GPU's boost clock of 2970 MHz and game clock of 2400 MHz represent the operational envelope, with the base clock at 1660 MHz. In practice, the measured FPS figures show the card rarely being challenged at 1080p, where even Ultra settings produce 113 FPS average.

The GPU's benchmark profile places it in the 55th percentile among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13543. Its nearest rivals in the database are surprisingly older parts — the AMD Radeon HD 7770M (deltaPct 0.1), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (deltaPct 0.2), and NVIDIA P106-090 (deltaPct 0.5) — all within 1% of its average score. This clustering suggests that the RX 9070 XT's synthetic benchmarks may not fully capture its gaming performance, or that the comparison pool skews toward legacy hardware. Regardless, the measured Greedfall results demonstrate the card's real-world capability.

The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 7260 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 65879 indicate strong API-level performance. The GPU's 4096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 128 ROPs provide the raw throughput for high-resolution rendering, with a pixel rate of 380.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 760.3 GTexel/s. The FP32 compute of 48.66 TFLOPS (with matching FP16 at 1:1 ratio) ensures the card can handle the game's lighting and particle effects without strain. At 4K Ultra, the 47 FPS average suggests the card is hitting its limits with this CPU pairing, but at lower settings it has ample headroom.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor from the Coffee Lake refresh generation, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It lacks hyper-threading, which means six physical cores handle all workloads. The 9 MB shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support (42.7 GB/s bandwidth) provide adequate data flow for a game like Greedfall, which is not particularly cache-sensitive. The CPU's percentile rank against all processors is 47, placing it near the median, with an average benchmark score of 2254.

In synthetic tests, the i5-9400 scores 6629 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 935 in single-core, while Geekbench shows 5141 multi-core and 1389 single-core. These numbers indicate a competent but not exceptional processor, especially when paired with a high-end GPU like the RX 9070 XT. The nearest rivals in the database — Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (deltaPct -0.2), Intel Core i7-10710U (deltaPct 0.3), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (deltaPct 0.4), and Intel Core i3-10305 (deltaPct -0.4) — all sit within 0.4% of its average score, showing the i5-9400 is right in the middle of a tightly packed cluster of similar-performing CPUs.

The CPU's role in Greedfall becomes apparent when examining the measured FPS scaling. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 248 FPS average, which is a very high frame rate that likely approaches the CPU's instruction throughput limit. The fact that 1080p Ultra (113 FPS) is less than half of 1080p Low (248 FPS) indicates the GPU is still the primary bottleneck even at 1080p, since the CPU would need to be severely limiting to cause such a dramatic settings-based swing. However, the 6-thread limitation could manifest in scenes with heavy NPC physics or AI, where the game's single-threaded performance (935 in Cinebench R23 single-core) becomes relevant.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset covers three resolutions and four settings levels, providing a thorough picture of performance. At 1080p, the system delivers 248 FPS average on Low, 195 FPS on Medium (with a range of 166 to 224), 177 FPS on High, and 113 FPS on Ultra. These figures show that the RX 9070 XT has substantial headroom at 1080p, with even Ultra settings maintaining well above 100 FPS. The Medium preset's min/max spread of 58 FPS (166 to 224) indicates some scene-to-scene variability, but the average remains strong.

Moving to 1440p, the averages are 172 FPS on Low, 135 FPS on Medium (115 to 155 range), 123 FPS on High, and 78 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Ultra at 1080p (113 FPS) to Ultra at 1440p (78 FPS) represents a 31% reduction, which is substantial but expected given the 78% increase in pixel count. The Medium preset shows a similar pattern, with the 1440p average of 135 FPS being 31% lower than the 1080p figure of 195 FPS. This consistency across settings suggests the GPU scaling is resolution-dominated rather than settings-dominated.

At 4K, the averages fall to 103 FPS on Low, 81 FPS on Medium (69 to 93 range), 73 FPS on High, and 47 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Ultra result of 47 FPS is the only sub-60 FPS average in the entire dataset, indicating that this combination is not suitable for maximum-quality 4K gaming. The 4K Low figure of 103 FPS shows the GPU can handle 4K if settings are reduced, but the gap between Low and Ultra at 4K (56 FPS) is smaller than at 1080p (135 FPS), confirming the GPU is the limiting factor at high resolutions.

The Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max data across all three resolutions. The 1080p range of 166 to 224 FPS (average 195), 1440p range of 115 to 155 FPS (average 135), and 4K range of 69 to 93 FPS (average 81) all show a similar spread of roughly 25-30% between minimum and average. This consistency indicates stable performance without thermal or power throttling issues.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT ranks 912th out of 3703 tested combos in Greedfall, placing it in the 75th percentile of all system pairings. This ranking is respectable but not top-tier, reflecting the fact that the i5-9400 is a mid-range CPU from 2018 while the RX 9070 XT is a high-end GPU from 2025. The 912th position out of 3703 means the system outperforms roughly three-quarters of all tested combinations, but it sits below the top 25% where more balanced or newer CPU-GPU pairings reside.

The ranking suggests that while the GPU is capable of producing high frame rates, the overall combo performance is dragged down by the CPU's limitations in certain scenarios. The measured FPS data supports this interpretation: at 1080p Low, the system hits 248 FPS, which is excellent, but the CPU's 6-thread configuration may cause occasional dips in CPU-intensive scenes that prevent the combo from climbing higher in the rankings. The gap between the 912th rank and the top tier likely reflects the CPU's inability to consistently feed the GPU at very high frame rates.

The combo's rank also indicates that the RX 9070 XT is not being fully utilized in Greedfall. The GPU's 55th percentile rank among all GPUs contrasts with the combo's 75th percentile rank among combos, meaning the pairing performs better than the GPU's individual percentile would suggest. This is likely because Greedfall is not an extremely demanding title, allowing the i5-9400 to keep up more easily than in newer, more CPU-intensive games.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Greedfall with this combo for a high refresh rate experience?

A: The 1080p Low preset delivers 248 FPS average, while 1440p Low achieves 172 FPS. For a 144Hz monitor, 1440p Medium at 135 FPS average is the sweet spot, as it provides a smooth experience with better visual quality than Low settings.

Q: Can this system handle 4K Ultra settings?

A: No. The measured 4K Ultra average is 47 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. To play at 4K, you would need to drop to High settings for 73 FPS average or Medium for 81 FPS.

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

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2254, which is within 0.4% of its closest rivals: the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (2259, -0.2% delta), Intel Core i7-10710U (2248, 0.3% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2246, 0.4% delta), and Intel Core i3-10305 (2264, -0.4% delta).

Q: What is the GPU's benchmark standing relative to other graphics cards?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT sits in the 55th percentile among all tested GPUs with an average benchmark score of 13543. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon HD 7770M (13536, 0.1% delta), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (13515, 0.2% delta), NVIDIA P106-090 (13470, 0.5% delta), and AMD Radeon Pro 555 (13407, 1% delta).

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 177 at 1080p to 73 at 4K, a reduction of 104 FPS or roughly 59%. This indicates the GPU becomes the dominant bottleneck at higher resolutions.

Q: Is the Medium preset's performance stable across resolutions?

A: Yes. The Medium preset shows consistent min/max ranges: 166-224 FPS at 1080p (average 195), 115-155 FPS at 1440p (average 135), and 69-93 FPS at 4K (average 81). The spread between minimum and maximum is similar at each resolution, suggesting stable frame pacing.