Greedfall

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is a striking example of a high-end GPU constrained by a mid-range processor. In Greedfall, this combination lands at rank 142 out of 1705 tested combos, placing it in the top 8.3% of all systems tested. This is a strong position, but the data suggests the results are heavily influenced by the CPU, which sits at the 50th percentile of all tested CPUs and averages just 2305 in benchmark scores. The GPU, by contrast, is a top-tier part at the 88th percentile with an average score of 53610. This pairing produces playable, often excellent, frame rates, but the CPU's performance ceiling is the defining factor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 142 out of 1705 is impressive on its face, placing it well within the top tier of systems tested for Greedfall. However, this rank is a product of the immense power of the RTX 4080 SUPER, not the i5-9400. The GPU's benchmark average of 53610 puts it 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M. This is a massive performance surplus. The CPU, on the other hand, with an average score of 2305, is effectively a statistical tie with its nearest rivals: the Intel Core i3-10305 (0.2% faster) and Intel Core i3-1125G4 (0.2% faster). In essence, the system is a supercomputer's graphics card strapped to a mid-range, six-core processor from 2018. The combo's rank confirms how much the GPU can carry the load in this game, but the data also reveals that the 6-core, 6-thread i5-9400 is the bottleneck holding the system back from even higher placement.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows that the "High" preset is the sweet spot for this combination. At 4K, High yields 96.1 FPS, which is a smooth, highly playable experience. Dropping to Medium only increases the average to 104.3 FPS, a marginal 8.2 FPS gain that comes with a visual quality reduction. The "Ultra" preset is where the system struggles; at 4K it plummets to 57.7 FPS, a 40% drop from High and a clear indicator that the CPU cannot feed the GPU enough data for the heavy preset. The "Low" preset is unnecessary here. At 1080p, Low produces 269.7 FPS, but High already delivers a blistering 225.5 FPS. The performance headroom is enormous, and there is no scenario where sacrificing visual fidelity for a measly 44 FPS is worthwhile. For the best balance of image quality and performance, High is the clear recommendation across all resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic CPU bottleneck. At 1080p with High settings, the system produces 225.5 FPS. This drops by 31.8% to 153.8 FPS at 1440p, and then by another 37.5% to 96.1 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is a significant 57.7 FPS. This pattern, where performance scales down as resolution increases, is typical of a system where the CPU is the limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the i5-9400, with a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, is working at its absolute limit, struggling to issue draw calls fast enough to keep the RTX 4080 SUPER occupied. As the resolution increases, the workload shifts to the GPU, which has immense headroom thanks to its 736.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 52.22 TFLOPS of compute power. The GPU is barely breaking a sweat at 4K, while the CPU is still the one setting the pace. This means that the i5-9400 is the component that determines the maximum achievable frame rate in this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Here is the exact performance data for the Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER in Greedfall.

At 1920x1080, the system is overwhelmingly CPU-bound. The Low preset yields an average of 269.7 FPS, but this is only 19.6% higher than the High preset's 225.5 FPS. The Medium preset hits 244.7 FPS. The Ultra preset, however, drops significantly to 142.5 FPS, a 36.8% reduction from High, showing that the CPU cannot handle the additional simulation overhead.

At 2560x1440, the GPU begins to take on more work, and the scaling improves. The Low preset averages 219.9 FPS, while High drops to 153.8 FPS. Medium is at 171.8 FPS. The Ultra preset falls to 101.6 FPS. The gap between Low and High is now 30.1%, still a substantial difference, but the absolute numbers show the system is still capable of high refresh rate gaming at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is finally the primary workload driver, but the CPU still limits the top end. The High preset averages 96.1 FPS, which is very playable for a demanding action RPG. Medium achieves 104.3 FPS. Low reaches 130.1 FPS. The Ultra preset collapses to 57.7 FPS, making it the only preset in the dataset that dips below the 60 FPS threshold. This data confirms that for a smooth 4K experience, High settings are the maximum this pairing can handle.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing. It is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 10240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 ROPs. Its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides a massive 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for feeding the high-resolution textures in Greedfall at 4K. The GPU's boost clock of 2550 MHz and its 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power are more than sufficient to handle the game's demands. In fact, the benchmarks show that at 1080p, the GPU is so powerful that it is often idle, waiting for the CPU to provide more work. The GPU's 88th percentile ranking against all GPUs and its benchmark score of 53610, which is 2.9% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, underscore its high-end status. The 4080 SUPER is not the limiting factor in this system; its only job is to render frames as fast as the CPU can request them.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is the clear bottleneck in this configuration. This is a 6-core, 6-thread processor from the Coffee Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It has 9 MB of shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. Its benchmark scores are modest, averaging 2305, which places it at the 50th percentile of all CPUs. The data shows that in Greedfall, this CPU is simply not fast enough to keep up with the RTX 4080 SUPER. At 1080p with High settings, the system achieves 225.5 FPS, but this is likely close to the CPU's absolute maximum frame output. The significant performance drop to 142.5 FPS at Ultra settings suggests that the game's CPU-intensive calculations on that preset overwhelm the processor's capabilities. The i5-9400's 6 threads are a limiting factor in a modern game, and its 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth is a fraction of what the GPU can access. This CPU is holding the entire system back, preventing the GPU from delivering even higher frame rates.