Greedfall

Greedfall, the 2019 Action RPG, presents a compelling case study in how a high-end modern pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 handles a title from the previous console generation. The measured data across three resolutions and four quality presets shows a system with immense headroom, but also reveals distinct bottlenecks that shift depending on where you point it. The combo’s overall rank of 254 out of 3703 tested configurations places it firmly in the top tier of systems, though the game’s engine limitations and the CPU’s architecture create a performance curve that rewards specific settings more than others.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p and then to 4K illustrates a classic shift in workload. At 1920x1080, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is the clear limiting factor. The average frame rates are extraordinarily high, but the scaling is not linear with resolution. At High settings, the system produces 226 FPS at 1080p, which drops to 157 FPS at 1440p (a 30.5% decrease) and then to 94 FPS at 4K (a 40.1% decrease from 1440p). This steep drop-off from 1440p to 4K indicates that while the CPU is doing the heavy lifting at lower resolutions, the GPU is still robust enough to cause a significant shift when pixel count quadruples.

The pattern continues at Low settings, where the 1080p result of 318 FPS is astronomical. Moving to 1440p yields 220 FPS (a 30.8% drop), and 4K settles at 131 FPS (a 40.5% drop from 1440p). The percentage deltas are remarkably consistent across High and Low presets, suggesting that the engine’s rendering pipeline scales predictably with resolution. The sheer magnitude of the 1080p numbers, however, points to a CPU bottleneck that prevents the GPU from fully stretching its legs. The RTX 4080, with its 9728 shading units and 48.74 TFLOPS, is capable of far more, but the 14-core processor’s single-thread performance is the gatekeeper.

At 4K, the picture changes. The gap between 1080p and 4K at High settings is a massive 132 FPS, but the system still averages 94 FPS, which is highly playable. The data shows that the Ultra preset is the real stress test, producing just 60 FPS at 4K. This is the only scenario where the system dips below the 60 FPS threshold, and it highlights that the game’s Ultra settings include effects that are particularly punishing on the GPU’s memory subsystem and compute units. The 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS is exactly half of the 4K High result, indicating a dramatic jump in workload that the RTX 4080’s 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth struggle to maintain smoothly.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal experience is found at the High preset. At 1440p, High delivers 157 FPS, which is a 73% improvement over the 100 FPS of Ultra. This is a massive gain for what is typically a minor visual difference. The Medium preset at 1440p offers 173 FPS, which is only a 10% increase over High, but it also comes with minimum frame rates that are lower. The Medium preset’s minimum of 147 FPS at 1440p is still excellent, but the High preset’s average is so close that the visual uplift is worth the minor frame rate cost.

At 4K, High is the only sensible choice. The 94 FPS average at 4K High is smooth and responsive, while Ultra’s 60 FPS is borderline for a fast-paced Action RPG. The drop from High to Medium at 4K is only 9 FPS (from 103 to 94), which is negligible, but High is still the better pick for image quality. The Low preset is not recommended at any resolution, as it sacrifices too much visual fidelity for frame rates that are already excessive. At 1080p, even Ultra produces 145 FPS, which is above the refresh rate of most monitors, so players with high-refresh displays can opt for Ultra there without issue.

The data strongly suggests that the Ultra preset is poorly optimized or intended for future hardware. The 60 FPS result at 4K Ultra is a hard ceiling, and the 100 FPS at 1440p Ultra is not worth the visual gains over High. The best experience per the measured rows is unequivocally High at 1440p, which balances the CPU’s 3.50 GHz base clock and 5.10 GHz boost clock with the GPU’s 2505 MHz boost clock. This configuration avoids the CPU bottleneck at lower resolutions and the GPU saturation at higher ones.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 plays a dominant role in Greedfall, but its influence is most visible at 4K. The card’s 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is more than sufficient for this game, even at Ultra settings, but the 256-bit bus width and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth are the defining factors. The 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS suggests that the game’s texture streaming and shadow rendering algorithms are particularly memory-hungry, but the card’s 76 RT cores are likely underutilized, as Greedfall does not heavily implement ray tracing.

The GPU’s clock speeds—2205 MHz base and 2505 MHz boost—are high, but the performance scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that the card is not the primary bottleneck until the Ultra preset is engaged. At 1080p High, the 226 FPS result is likely CPU-limited, as the RTX 4080’s 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is far ahead of what the 14-core processor can feed it. The passmark G3D score of 34457 and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6567 confirm that this is a top-tier GPU, but Greedfall’s engine appears to favor raw fill rate over compute.

The GPU’s closest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, has an average benchmark score that is only 0.1% higher, indicating that the two cards are nearly identical in performance. The data shows that the RTX 4080’s 112 ROPs and 304 TMUs are more than adequate for this title, but the 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS is a hard cap that suggests the card’s power delivery is being throttled by the game’s draw calls. The GPU’s role is to provide a massive baseline of performance, but the game’s Ultra preset is designed to be a showcase that even this hardware cannot fully conquer at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 ranks 254th out of 3703 tested combos in Greedfall. This puts it in the top 6.9% of all configurations, which is an impressive position. However, the rank is more a reflection of the GPU’s raw power than the CPU’s contribution. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 48995 places it at the 90th percentile of all CPUs, but its nearest rivals—the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900—are within 0.5% of its score, indicating a highly competitive mid-to-high-end segment.

The combo’s rank is lower than what the GPU alone would suggest, because the CPU’s 14 cores and 14 threads (with no hyper-threading) can become a limiting factor in a game like Greedfall that is not heavily multithreaded. The GPU’s percentile of 86 is lower than the CPU’s 90, but the GPU’s raw performance is what drives the 4K results. The rank of 254 out of 3703 shows that there are 253 combos that perform better, likely featuring higher-end CPUs like the Intel Core i9 series or AMD Ryzen 9 X3D parts, which have better single-thread performance. The combo’s position is solid, but it is not a top-100 result because the CPU’s single-thread score of 4394 in Passmark is good but not exceptional.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz. The data shows that its role in Greedfall is to provide a high frame rate floor at lower resolutions, but it becomes a bottleneck as resolution drops. At 1080p Low, the 318 FPS result is likely at the engine’s limit, and the CPU’s 24 MB of L3 cache is being hammered. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32924 is strong, but the single-core score of 4648 is what matters for most game logic.

The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14600K, has an average score that is 0.8% higher, and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 is 0.5% higher. These are small margins, but in a game like Greedfall, even a 1% difference in single-thread performance can translate to a 5-10 FPS difference at 1080p. The CPU’s 3 nm process node and 17,800 million transistors give it efficiency, but the lack of hyper-threading means that the 14 threads are all physical, which helps with latency but limits total throughput in heavily threaded scenarios.

The CPU’s role is most evident in the 1080p to 1440p scaling. At 1080p High, the 226 FPS result is 69 FPS higher than the 4K High result, showing that the CPU is providing a massive headroom that the GPU cannot use at higher resolutions. The CPU’s Passmark multi-thread score of 38706 is solid, but the game’s reliance on a few fast cores is clear. The 5.10 GHz boost clock is crucial, and the CPU’s 102.4 GB/s memory bandwidth is adequate for feeding the GPU, but the game does not appear to be memory-bandwidth limited.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers exceptional performance across all presets. The Low preset averages 318 FPS, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. The Medium preset averages 249 FPS, with a minimum of 212 FPS and a maximum of 287 FPS, showing a stable frame time distribution. The High preset averages 226 FPS, which is only 9.2% lower than Medium, making High the clear choice for visual quality. The Ultra preset averages 145 FPS, which is a 36% drop from High, indicating that the Ultra preset’s additional effects are disproportionately expensive at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains excellent but shows the CPU’s influence waning. The Low preset averages 220 FPS, which is a 30.8% drop from 1080p. The Medium preset averages 173 FPS, with a minimum of 147 FPS and a maximum of 199 FPS, providing a smooth experience that is still well above 144 Hz. The High preset averages 157 FPS, which is a 9.2% drop from Medium. The Ultra preset averages 100 FPS, which is a 36.3% drop from High, mirroring the 1080p delta. The 1440p data shows a consistent pattern: Medium is 10% faster than High, and High is 57% faster than Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. The Low preset averages 131 FPS, which is a 40.5% drop from 1440p. The Medium preset averages 103 FPS, with a minimum of 88 FPS and a maximum of 119 FPS, showing that the frame rate can dip below 90 FPS in demanding scenes. The High preset averages 94 FPS, which is an 8.7% drop from Medium. The Ultra preset averages 60 FPS, which is a 36.2% drop from High. The 4K Ultra result is the only one that falls below 60 FPS, and it represents a hard performance ceiling for this combo. The data shows that at 4K, the High preset is the optimal balance, delivering 94 FPS with a visual quality that is almost indistinguishable from Ultra in most gameplay scenarios.