Greedfall

Greedfall on the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 demonstrates a classic high-refresh-rate 1440p pairing that scales predictably across resolutions. The measured frame rates reveal a system where the GPU becomes the primary arbiter of performance as resolution increases, while the CPU’s substantial headroom ensures that even the lowest preset at 1080p remains fluid. The RTX 4070, with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, shows consistent behavior across the board, but the data indicates that the most balanced experience is found at 1440p with High settings, where the average of 123 FPS comfortably exceeds standard 100 Hz display demands without sacrificing visual fidelity. At 4K, the same settings yield a playable but less cushioned 73 FPS average, suggesting that users prioritizing resolution over speed should consider the Medium preset, which maintains a 81 FPS average with a recorded minimum of 69 FPS, ensuring smoother frame pacing than the Ultra preset’s 47 FPS average. The data set does not include frame time variance, but the spread between minimum and maximum FPS at Medium settings across all resolutions indicates a consistent performance envelope.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for settings optimization, with the Medium preset emerging as the most versatile choice for this combination. At 1080p, Medium delivers a 195 FPS average with a minimum of 166 FPS and a maximum of 224 FPS, which is only 53 FPS below the Low preset’s 248 FPS average but offers substantially better visual quality. Moving to 1440p, Medium produces a 135 FPS average with a minimum of 115 FPS and a maximum of 155 FPS, which is a 39% improvement over the High preset’s 123 FPS average while remaining well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. At 4K, Medium’s 81 FPS average with a 69 FPS minimum is the only preset besides Low that maintains an average above 75 FPS, making it the highest-quality option that avoids the sub-60 FPS territory occupied by Ultra’s 47 FPS average.

The data suggests that High settings are the optimal balance for users with 1440p displays, as the 123 FPS average is only a 9% reduction from Medium’s 135 FPS but provides notably richer lighting and texture detail typical of the High tier. However, for 4K users, the gap between High’s 73 FPS and Medium’s 81 FPS is more significant relative to the lower baseline, making Medium the recommended preset for 4K displays unless the user accepts the Ultra preset’s cinematic 47 FPS average. The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates at every resolution—248 FPS at 1080p, 172 FPS at 1440p, and 103 FPS at 4K—sacrifices too much visual fidelity for the gains, as the jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs only 53 FPS (21%) but represents a substantial upgrade in rendering quality. For competitive play where maximum frame rate is paramount, Low at 1080p is the only choice, but for the majority of Greedfall’s action RPG gameplay, Medium or High provides the best experience per the measured data.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070’s role in Greedfall is defined by its memory configuration and clock speeds, which directly influence the frame rate scaling observed in the measurements. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, the GPU achieves a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, a figure that becomes increasingly relevant as resolution rises and texture data demands more memory throughput. The core clocks—1920 MHz base and 2475 MHz boost—combined with 5888 shading units and 184 texture mapping units, produce a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s. These specifications translate to the measured performance deltas between presets: at 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 135 FPS (248 vs 113), a 54% reduction that reflects the GPU’s computational load scaling with render settings.

The GPU’s 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 46 ray tracing cores suggest headroom for modern effects, but Greedfall’s 2019 release data indicates the game does not heavily leverage these features. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra—47 FPS average—shows the GPU hitting a hard limit when all settings are maxed, likely due to memory bandwidth saturation on the 192-bit bus. In contrast, the 4K Low preset’s 103 FPS average demonstrates that when memory pressure is reduced, the GPU can maintain playable frame rates even at the highest resolution. The RTX 4070’s percentile rank of 81 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37648, places it in the upper tier, but its nearest rivals—including the RTX 4080 Mobile at 38135 (1.3% higher) and the RX Vega 56 at 37507 (0.4% lower)—show that the desktop card’s performance is tightly clustered with lower-power variants, reinforcing that the 12 GB memory size is the defining characteristic for 4K gaming rather than raw compute.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a consistent pattern of diminishing returns as resolution increases, with the GPU becoming the bottleneck at higher pixel counts. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 177 FPS at 1080p to 123 FPS at 1440p (a 31% reduction) and then to 73 FPS at 4K (a 41% reduction from 1440p). This scaling is steeper than the pixel count increase—1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p, yet the FPS only drops by 1.44 times, indicating that the CPU and memory subsystem still provide some headroom at 1440p. However, the 4K to 1440p transition shows a 1.69 times pixel increase with a 1.68 times FPS drop, suggesting the system has reached a GPU-bound state where adding pixels directly translates to lower frame rates.

The Low preset exhibits the most dramatic scaling, dropping from 248 FPS at 1080p to 172 FPS at 1440p (31% reduction) and then to 103 FPS at 4K (40% reduction from 1440p). This pattern mirrors the High preset’s scaling, indicating that the relative performance drop is consistent regardless of settings. The Medium preset shows the most controlled scaling, with a 39% reduction from 1080p to 1440p (195 to 135 FPS) and a 40% reduction from 1440p to 4K (135 to 81 FPS). The Ultra preset, however, demonstrates the steepest drops: from 113 FPS at 1080p to 78 FPS at 1440p (31% reduction) and then to 47 FPS at 4K (40% reduction from 1440p). This consistency across presets—roughly 30% per resolution step—confirms that the limiting component is the GPU’s memory subsystem, as the 12 GB GDDR6X buffer and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth become increasingly stressed as pixel count grows.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 achieves a combo rank of 912 out of 3703 tested configurations in Greedfall, placing it in the top 25% of all combos tested. This ranking is notable given that the GPU itself only holds the 81st percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU sits at the 95th percentile among all CPUs. The discrepancy between the individual component percentiles and the combo rank suggests that Greedfall’s performance is more dependent on GPU capability than CPU power, which aligns with the measured FPS scaling patterns. The combo rank of 912 means that 2791 other configurations outperformed this pairing, likely those equipped with higher-tier GPUs such as the RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX, but the fact that this combo still ranks in the top quarter indicates that the i9-14900K’s 24 cores and 32 threads prevent any CPU-induced bottlenecks from dragging the overall score down.

In the context of the GPU’s nearest rivals, the RTX 4070 sits between the Tesla P4 (0.1% higher average score) and the RX Vega 56 (0.4% higher), which are both significantly older architectures. This proximity in benchmark scores suggests that the RTX 4070’s performance is comparable to those cards in raw compute, but its 12 GB memory and Ada Lovelace architecture provide advantages in games like Greedfall that may not be fully captured by synthetic benchmarks. The CPU’s nearest rivals—the i9-14900KF at 0.3% lower average score and the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus at 0.6% lower—are effectively identical in performance, confirming that the i9-14900K’s 6.00 GHz boost clock and 36 MB of L3 cache are well-matched to the demands of modern games. The combo rank of 912 out of 3703, when viewed against these component-level benchmarks, indicates that the pairing is well-balanced, with neither component being a significant drag on the other.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K brings 24 cores and 32 threads to Greedfall, with a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz. This configuration, combined with 36 MB of shared L3 cache and a 125 W TDP, provides an enormous amount of processing headroom that the game does not fully utilize. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multicore score of 39399.5 and singlecore score of 2262.5 demonstrate its capability, but in Greedfall’s measured FPS, the CPU’s influence is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU is not yet the limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the 248 FPS average indicates that the CPU can feed the GPU with enough frames to reach over 240 FPS, which is near the practical limit for most displays. The fact that the 1080p High preset still achieves 177 FPS—a 29% drop from Low—shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck in this scenario, as the frame rate reduction is entirely attributable to the GPU’s increased workload.

The Passmark benchmarks reinforce this analysis, with the CPU achieving a multithread score of 58674 and a single-thread score of 4697, both of which are in the top percentiles. The CPU’s 95th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79097, places it far above the GPU’s 81st percentile, confirming that the GPU is the more limiting component in this pairing. The nearest rival data shows the i9-14900K is within 1.7% of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and 1.2% of the EPYC 7413, but these differences have no practical impact on Greedfall’s frame rates, as the game’s engine does not appear to scale with CPU threads beyond a certain point. The CPU’s role is therefore to ensure that the GPU is never starved of data, which it accomplishes handily—even at 1080p Low, the CPU sustains 248 FPS, leaving no doubt that the RTX 4070 is the sole determinant of performance in this game.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a 1440p display with this CPU/GPU combo?

A: The High preset at 2560x1440 delivers a 123 FPS average, which is only 12 FPS lower than Medium’s 135 FPS but offers better visual quality. For users who prioritize frame rate over graphics, Medium provides a 135 FPS average with a minimum of 115 FPS, ensuring no drops below 100 FPS.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Greedfall?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset achieves an 81 FPS average with a 69 FPS minimum, which is playable. The High preset drops to 73 FPS, and Ultra falls to 47 FPS, so users should stick to Medium or lower for a smooth 4K experience.

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

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 177 at 1920x1080 to 73 at 3840x2160, a 59% reduction. This indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the CPU’s performance headroom is not the constraint.

Q: Is the RTX 4070’s 12 GB of VRAM sufficient for Greedfall at 4K?

A: The measured data shows that the 12 GB GDDR6X memory is sufficient for the Medium preset at 4K, which achieves an 81 FPS average. However, the Ultra preset’s 47 FPS average suggests that the memory bandwidth (504.2 GB/s) becomes a limiting factor when all settings are maxed.

Q: How does the i9-14900K compare to its closest rival in CPU benchmarks?

A: The i9-14900K scores 79097 on average, which is 0.3% lower than the i9-14900KF (79371) and 0.6% lower than the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus (79574). These differences are within noise and have no measurable impact on Greedfall’s frame rates.

Q: What minimum FPS can be expected at 1440p Medium?

A: The data records a minimum of 115 FPS and a maximum of 155 FPS at 2560x1440 with Medium settings, with an average of 135 FPS. This indicates stable performance with no significant frame drops.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates span from 113 FPS on Ultra to 248 FPS on Low. The Medium preset produces a 195 FPS average with a minimum of 166 FPS and a maximum of 224 FPS, while High achieves 177 FPS. The 135 FPS gap between Low and Ultra demonstrates the full range of GPU scaling at this resolution, where the CPU’s 6.00 GHz boost clock ensures that even the highest frame rates are not CPU-limited. The Medium preset’s minimum of 166 FPS is notably close to the High preset’s average of 177 FPS, indicating that the step from Medium to High incurs a 18 FPS average penalty but no significant risk of frame drops below 150 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the average frame rates compress to a range of 78 FPS (Ultra) to 172 FPS (Low). The Medium preset delivers 135 FPS average with a minimum of 115 FPS and a maximum of 155 FPS, while High reaches 123 FPS. The 57 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is smaller than at 1080p, reflecting the GPU’s increasing workload. The Ultra preset’s 78 FPS average is still playable, but the 4K Ultra result of 47 FPS suggests that 1440p Ultra is the practical ceiling for this setting tier with this GPU.

At 3840x2160, the average frame rates range from 47 FPS (Ultra) to 103 FPS (Low). The Medium preset achieves 81 FPS with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 93 FPS, while High reaches 73 FPS. The 56 FPS gap between Low and Ultra is consistent with the 1440p scaling, confirming that the GPU is the dominant factor. The Medium preset’s minimum of 69 FPS is the only 4K measurement that stays above 60 FPS, making it the recommended preset for 4K displays. The Ultra preset’s 47 FPS average is the only measurement below 60 FPS across all resolutions and settings, indicating that this combination should avoid Ultra at 4K unless cinematic frame rates are acceptable.