Greedfall

Greedfall is an Action RPG from 2019 that scales heavily with both CPU and GPU, and this particular pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 produces a wide range of frame rates depending on how you configure it. The data shows a system capable of extreme high-refresh 1080p play, but one that requires careful settings management to maintain smooth performance at 4K. This analysis breaks down the measured results to show where the bottlenecks lie and how to get the most out of the hardware.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake Refresh architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. Its base clock is 2.10 GHz, but it boosts up to 5.40 GHz, which is critical for gaming performance. In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU scores 35,443 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 5,003 in single-core, placing it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs tested. Its average benchmark score is 54,097, which puts it just 0.6% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 1.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, while being 1.2% ahead of the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 and 1.7% ahead of the AMD EPYC 7313P.

For Greedfall, the CPU's high boost clock is the most relevant trait. The game's logic and physics calculations benefit from strong single-thread performance, and the 5.40 GHz boost ensures that the processor keeps up with the GPU at lower resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the system hits 353.8 FPS, which is an extremely high frame rate that demands a CPU capable of feeding frames quickly. The 20 cores and 28 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and any multi-threaded game systems, but the single-core speed is what prevents the CPU from becoming a limiting factor in this title. The data indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is doing its job effectively, as the frame rates scale consistently with settings changes, suggesting no CPU-bound stutter or cap is being hit.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the flagship of the GeForce 40-series, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process. It packs 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs, along with 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores. The GPU has 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz, and the memory runs at an effective 21 Gbps. The card's raw compute power is substantial, with an FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS, and it scores 38,194 in Passmark's G3D benchmark, placing it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 66,473 makes it nearly identical to the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (0.4% faster) and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (0.9% slower), while being 0.5% faster than the Tesla P40 and 1.3% faster than the Quadro P6000.

In Greedfall, the RTX 4090's 24 GB of VRAM is far more than the game requires, even at 4K Ultra. The bottleneck is not memory capacity but raw rasterization throughput. The boost clock of 2520 MHz is what drives the high frame rates seen at 1080p, but the data shows that the GPU's performance headroom is enormous. At 4K Ultra, the system drops to 65.9 FPS, which is a significant fall from the 105.9 FPS at 4K High. This indicates that the Ultra preset introduces effects that are particularly demanding on the GPU's shader units and memory bandwidth. The 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth is sufficient for most scenarios, but the jump from High to Ultra at 4K shows a 40 FPS loss, suggesting that the Ultra settings include heavy post-processing or shadow effects that tax the GPU's compute units.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of scaling from 1080p to 4K, with the GPU becoming the dominant bottleneck as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 353.8 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 241.5 FPS, a loss of 112.3 FPS, and then to 4K Low it falls further to 143.8 FPS. This scaling shows that even at Low settings, the GPU is being pushed harder as pixel count rises. The relative drops are consistent: 1440p is roughly 31.7% slower than 1080p, and 4K is roughly 40.5% slower than 1440p at Low settings.

At High settings, the pattern holds but the absolute numbers are lower. The system hits 252.9 FPS at 1080p, 174.7 FPS at 1440p, and 105.9 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are similar, but the frame rates are lower across the board. The most interesting data point is the Ultra preset. At 1080p Ultra, the system manages 161.6 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, it drops to 110.1 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 65.9 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Ultra is a 40.3% drop, which is steeper than the Low preset's drop. This suggests that the Ultra preset is not just increasing resolution-dependent effects but also adding load that scales super-linearly with pixel count. The data points to a system where the CPU is not the limiter at any resolution; instead, the GPU's fill rate and compute throughput are what determine the final frame rate. At 1080p, the frame rates are so high that the CPU's 5.40 GHz boost clock is likely the ceiling, but at 4K, the GPU is clearly the sole constraint.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the High preset at 1440p offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, hitting 174.7 FPS. This is a high enough frame rate for smooth gameplay on high-refresh monitors, and the visual quality is only one step below Ultra. The data shows that at 1080p, High runs at 252.9 FPS, which is excellent for competitive play, but at 4K, High drops to 105.9 FPS, which is still playable but not ideal for fast-paced action. The Medium preset at 1440p runs at 192.2 FPS, which is 17.5 FPS faster than High, but the visual quality difference is likely noticeable.

The Ultra preset is the most demanding, and the data suggests it should be avoided at 4K, where it only manages 65.9 FPS. This is below the 70 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for a smooth experience in an Action RPG. Even at 1440p, Ultra runs at 110.1 FPS, which is playable but not significantly better than the 174.7 FPS at High. The performance cost of Ultra is substantial: at 4K, it is 40 FPS slower than High, a 37.8% reduction. For this game, the High preset appears to offer the most efficient use of the hardware's capabilities. The Low preset at 4K runs at 143.8 FPS, which is technically the best frame rate at that resolution, but the visual quality is likely too poor to recommend for a game that emphasizes atmosphere and environment. The recommendation is to use High at 1440p for the best experience, or High at 1080p if maximum frame rate is the priority.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Core i7-14700F and RTX 4090 ranks 50th out of 1,705 tested combos in Greedfall. This places it in the top 2.9% of all configurations tested, which is an impressive result. The ranking reflects the raw power of both components, but it also indicates that there are 49 other combos that achieve higher frame rates in this game. The data does not specify which components those combos use, but given that the RTX 4090 is the fastest consumer GPU available, the higher-ranked systems likely use even stronger CPUs, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, which is 1.1% faster in synthetic benchmarks than the i7-14700F. The gap in CPU performance may translate to higher frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios at 1080p, where the i7-14700F's single-core score of 5,003 in Cinebench R23 might be the limiting factor.

The rank of 50 out of 1,705 is a strong showing, but it is not the top. The measured FPS data shows that at 4K Ultra, the system only hits 65.9 FPS, which is below the 70 FPS mark that many gamers target. This suggests that even with a top-tier GPU, the Ultra preset in Greedfall is poorly optimized or extremely demanding. The combo's rank is likely boosted by its exceptional 1080p performance, where it achieves over 350 FPS at Low settings, but the 4K Ultra result drags the overall ranking down. The percentile data supports this: the CPU is in the 94th percentile and the GPU is in the 91st percentile, but the combo rank of 50 out of 1,705 means it is outperformed by a small number of systems that likely combine the RTX 4090 with a faster CPU for 1080p scenarios.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the system achieves 353.8 FPS on Low, 276 FPS on Medium, 252.9 FPS on High, and 161.6 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a 77.8 FPS drop, while the jump from High to Ultra is a 91.3 FPS drop, showing that Ultra is disproportionately more expensive than the step from Medium to High.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates are 241.5 FPS on Low, 192.2 FPS on Medium, 174.7 FPS on High, and 110.1 FPS on Ultra. The scaling from Low to Medium is a 49.3 FPS drop, while High to Ultra is a 64.6 FPS drop. The pattern is consistent: Ultra is the most punishing preset, and the gap between High and Ultra widens as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the results are 143.8 FPS on Low, 113.9 FPS on Medium, 105.9 FPS on High, and 65.9 FPS on Ultra. This is the only resolution where no preset reaches 150 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls below 70 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K at High is 68.8 FPS, which is a 39.4% reduction. At Ultra, the drop from 1440p to 4K is 44.2 FPS, a 40.1% reduction, confirming that the Ultra preset's cost scales with resolution. The data clearly shows that the system's performance is strongly resolution-dependent, with 1080p being CPU-limited at low settings and 4K being GPU-limited across all settings. The 4K Low result of 143.8 FPS reflects the RTX 4090's raw power, but the 4K Ultra result of 65.9 FPS demonstrates that even the most powerful GPU can be brought to its knees by aggressive settings.