Greedfall

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a top-tier combination for Greedfall, a 2019 Action RPG. The measured frame rates across all resolutions and settings show this system is built for high-refresh-rate play at 1080p and 1440p, while still delivering very smooth performance at 4K. This analysis breaks down exactly what those numbers mean, how the CPU and GPU share the workload, and which settings give you the best experience.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread desktop processor from the Core Ultra Series 2, built on a 3 nm process. It runs Arrow Lake Refresh architecture with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The CPU has a 125 W TDP, 36 MB of shared L3 cache, and supports DDR5 memory over a dual-channel bus with 115.2 GB/s bandwidth. Its 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs places it firmly in the enthusiast tier, and its average benchmark score of 93785 is essentially tied with the Intel Xeon 6520P (93786, 0% delta), while slightly ahead of the AMD EPYC 4564P (95183, -1.5%) and AMD EPYC 9175F (95615, -1.9%).

For Greedfall, this CPU is nowhere near the bottleneck. The game’s measured performance scales almost entirely with the GPU across settings, which is typical for an Action RPG from 2019 that does not push multi-threaded workloads hard. The 24 cores and 24 threads provide massive headroom, but the real story is the single-core performance. A Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2439 and a Passmark single-thread score of 5068 indicate strong per-thread throughput, which matters for game logic, physics, and draw call submission. Even at 1080p Low, where frame rates hit 359 FPS, the CPU keeps up without breaking a sweat — that number is far beyond what most displays can show, and it suggests the processor is not the limiting factor.

The L3 cache is 36 MB shared, which helps with keeping frequently accessed game data close to the cores. The 3 MB per-core L2 cache is also generous. Data compression and encryption scores from Passmark (804322 and 59097 respectively) are high, but those are not directly relevant to gaming. The key takeaway is that this CPU has both the core count and the single-thread speed to handle Greedfall at any settings, leaving the RTX 5090 to do all the heavy lifting. The boosted clock of 5.50 GHz is a clear advantage for frame generation and scene complexity, but benchmark results show that even at 4K Ultra, the 68 FPS average is dictated by the GPU’s rendering load, not the CPU’s ability to feed it.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo achieves at 1080p?

A: The highest measured average is 359 FPS at 1080p with Low settings. Medium settings produce 282 FPS, High produces 256 FPS, and Ultra drops to 164 FPS.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average frame rate is 68 FPS. This is the lowest measured result in the entire dataset, but it is still comfortably playable for a single-player action RPG.

Q: Is there a significant performance gap between 1440p and 4K at High settings?

A: Yes. At 2560x1440 High, the average is 178 FPS, while at 3840x2160 High, it drops to 106 FPS. That is a 72 FPS reduction, or roughly a 40% decrease, showing the GPU is heavily taxed by the higher pixel count.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded in any test?

A: The only measured min FPS values are for Medium settings: 240 FPS at 1080p, 166 FPS at 1440p, and 99 FPS at 4K. No min FPS data is available for Low, High, or Ultra settings.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090’s average benchmark score is 79842, with a percentile rank of 92 among all GPUs. It is 0.3% ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605) and 0.6% ahead of the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79396), while trailing the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (80959) by 1.4%.

Q: Does the CPU’s benchmark score align with its gaming performance here?

A: The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus has a 96th percentile CPU ranking and an average score of 93785, which is nearly identical to the Intel Xeon 6520P. In Greedfall, the CPU’s impact is minimal because frame rates scale with GPU load across resolutions, confirming it is not a limiting factor.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

For a 60 Hz or 120 Hz display at 4K, the High preset at 3840x2160 delivers 106 FPS average, which is a strong balance between visual quality and smoothness. Ultra at the same resolution drops to 68 FPS, which is still playable but sacrifices over a third of the frame rate for marginal visual gains. Medium at 4K offers 117 FPS with a minimum of 99 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh 4K monitors, but High’s 106 FPS is close enough that the visual upgrade is likely worth the 11 FPS difference. Low at 4K hits 149 FPS, but the visual compromise is severe for a game like Greedfall, which relies on atmospheric environments.

At 1440p, the data strongly favors High settings. The average is 178 FPS, which is ideal for 144 Hz or 165 Hz displays. Ultra at 1440p still manages 113 FPS, but High provides a 65 FPS advantage over Ultra while looking nearly as good in most scenes. Medium at 1440p is 196 FPS with a minimum of 166 FPS, which is overkill for most monitors and not worth dropping from High. Low at 1440p reaches 249 FPS, but again, the visual hit is not justified when High already exceeds 144 FPS.

At 1080p, every preset is playable, but the recommendation is High. The 256 FPS average at High is beyond the refresh rate of virtually all mainstream monitors, and it looks far better than Medium’s 282 FPS or Low’s 359 FPS. Ultra at 1080p gives 164 FPS, which is still excellent, but High offers a 92 FPS advantage with a negligible visual difference. For competitive play, Low’s 359 FPS is the maximum possible, but Greedfall is not a competitive shooter, so the extra frames do not matter. The best experience for most users is High at 1440p or 4K, depending on display resolution.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 90th out of 3703 tested combinations for Greedfall. That places it in the top 2.4% of all systems in the database, which is an outstanding result. The rank is based on measured frame rates across the tested resolutions and settings, and it reflects the raw power of both components. The RTX 5090’s 92nd percentile GPU ranking and the CPU’s 96th percentile ranking combine to produce a system that outperforms the vast majority of tested rigs.

The rank of 90 out of 3703 means there are 89 other combos that achieve higher overall scores, but those likely involve even more exotic hardware or overclocked configurations. For a stock setup with a 24-core CPU and a 32 GB GDDR7 GPU, this is near the top of the pyramid. The delta between this combo and the top-ranked systems is not shown, but the fact that it sits above 3613 other combos indicates that the RTX 5090’s massive 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth and 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance are being fully utilized. The CPU’s 5.50 GHz boost clock ensures that even at 1080p Low with 359 FPS, there is no CPU-induced frame cap.

It is notably the combo rank reflects the entire system, not just the GPU. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a 24-thread processor that scores 44253 in Cinebench R23 multicore, which is a strong result, but Greedfall does not scale with thread count beyond a few cores. The rank is thus more evidence of the GPU’s dominance. Still, the 90th position out of 3703 is a clear indication that users with this setup will not need to compromise on settings or resolution to enjoy the game.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The frame rate scaling across resolutions reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At High settings, the average FPS goes from 256 at 1080p to 178 at 1440p to 106 at 4K. That is a 30% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and another 40% drop from 1440p to 4K. The consistent reduction with each resolution increase indicates that the RTX 5090’s rendering pipeline is the limiting factor, not the CPU. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the 1080p score would be much lower relative to 1440p, since the CPU has less work to do at lower resolutions.

At Low settings, the pattern is even more pronounced. 1080p Low hits 359 FPS, 1440p Low drops to 249 FPS, and 4K Low is 149 FPS. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 110 FPS, and the 1440p to 4K drop is 100 FPS. This linear scaling is typical for a GPU that is being pushed harder as pixel count increases. The RTX 5090’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus width provide ample bandwidth, but the sheer number of pixels at 4K (3840x2160) is over 2.2 times that of 1440p (2560x1440), so the frame rate drops accordingly.

Ultra settings show the steepest decline: 164 FPS at 1080p, 113 FPS at 1440p, and 68 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is less than half of the 1080p Ultra result, which confirms that the GPU’s compute units are saturated. The CPU’s role is negligible here, as evidenced by the fact that at 1080p Low, the FPS is 359, which is far beyond what any current display can show, and it still does not cause a CPU bottleneck. If the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus were weak, the 1080p Low number would be capped at a lower value. Instead, it scales freely with the GPU’s capabilities, so the limiting component is clearly the RTX 5090’s ability to rasterize and shade pixels.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 359 FPS average. This is the highest frame rate in the entire dataset, showing the RTX 5090 is barely taxed at this resolution.
• Medium: 282 FPS average, with a minimum of 240 FPS and maximum of 325 FPS. The min FPS is still higher than most systems’ average at this resolution.
• High: 256 FPS average. This is the sweet spot for 1080p, offering solid visual quality while staying above 240 FPS.
• Ultra: 164 FPS average. Still very smooth, but the drop from High is significant.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 249 FPS average. This is close to the 1080p High result, indicating that the GPU has plenty of headroom.
• Medium: 196 FPS average, with a minimum of 166 FPS and maximum of 225 FPS. The min FPS is above 144 Hz, which is excellent for high-refresh monitors.
• High: 178 FPS average. This is the recommended setting for 1440p, as it comfortably exceeds 144 FPS.
• Ultra: 113 FPS average. Playable, but the visual upgrade over High is minimal for a 65 FPS cost.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 149 FPS average. This is surprisingly high for 4K, but Low settings remove many shading and texture effects.
• Medium: 117 FPS average, with a minimum of 99 FPS and maximum of 134 FPS. The min FPS is above 60, so there are no major stutters.
• High: 106 FPS average. This is the best balance for 4K, offering high detail while staying above 100 FPS.
• Ultra: 68 FPS average. This is the lowest measured result, but it is still above 60 FPS, making it playable on a standard 60 Hz display.

The data shows no min or max FPS values for Low, High, or Ultra settings, which means the only frame time variance data available is for Medium. At Medium, the 4K minimum of 99 FPS is reassuring, as it indicates the system does not experience severe frame drops even when the GPU is under heavy load. Overall, this combination delivers playable frame rates at every resolution and preset, with the only real trade-off being between visual fidelity and refresh rate headroom.