Greedfall

Greedfall is an Action RPG from 2019 that, on this hardware pairing, delivers a wide performance envelope depending on resolution and settings. The data shows the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination is capable of high refresh rates at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K Ultra remains the only configuration that drops below 60 FPS. The measured results indicate a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions, with CPU headroom that only becomes apparent at 1080p Low.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 4K gaming with this combo?

A: At 3840x2160, the High preset delivers an average of 94 FPS, which is the most balanced option. Ultra drops to 60 FPS average, while Medium and Low produce 103 FPS and 131 FPS respectively. High provides a substantial visual upgrade over Medium with only a 9 FPS penalty, making it the recommended choice for 4K.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has an average benchmark score of 84003, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K at 83807. It also leads the AMD EPYC 4584PX by 1.1% and the AMD EPYC 9135 by 1.2%, while trailing the AMD EPYC 7F72 by 1.3%.

Q: What is the performance difference between the RTX 4080 and its closest GPU rival?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 has an average benchmark score of 54247, which is 0.1% higher than the RTX 4080 SUPER at 54209. It outperforms the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X by 1.1%, the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB by 2.6%, and the AMD Radeon 8060S by 2.7%.

Q: Does the RTX 4080 have enough VRAM for Greedfall at maximum settings?

A: The RTX 4080 features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus with 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. The measured data shows that at 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 60, which indicates the memory capacity is sufficient, but the GPU's compute limits are the primary constraint at this setting.

Q: What is the highest FPS achievable with this hardware at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with the Low preset, the combo reaches an average of 318 FPS. The Medium preset produces 249 FPS, High produces 226 FPS, and Ultra produces 145 FPS. The Low preset shows the maximum CPU-limited ceiling for this pairing.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations for Greedfall?

A: The combo ranks 254th out of 3703 tested combinations. This places it in the top 6.9% of all tested hardware pairings for this game, indicating strong overall performance relative to the broader database.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience across all resolutions, the High preset offers the most compelling balance of visual fidelity and performance. At 4K, High averages 94 FPS, which is 34 FPS higher than Ultra and only 9 FPS lower than Medium. The jump from Medium to High is modest in cost but typically represents a significant visual improvement in shadow quality, texture filtering, and draw distance. For players prioritizing smoothness over absolute fidelity at 4K, Medium at 103 FPS is a viable alternative, but High remains the sweet spot.

At 1440p, the High preset averages 157 FPS, which is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on modern monitors. The Ultra preset at 100 FPS is also playable and provides the maximum visual quality without dipping below 100 FPS. For competitive play or maximum smoothness, the Low preset at 220 FPS is available, but the visual degradation is substantial. Medium at 173 FPS offers a good middle ground for those who want high refresh rates with moderate visual quality.

At 1080p, the situation is reversed: the CPU becomes the limiting factor at lower settings. Low averages 318 FPS, Medium 249 FPS, and High 226 FPS. Ultra drops to 145 FPS, which is the first setting where the GPU load becomes significant at this resolution. For 1080p users, the High preset at 226 FPS provides an excellent balance, as it is still far beyond any display refresh rate currently available. The Ultra preset at 145 FPS is the choice for those who want maximum visual quality and still have a high refresh rate display. The data strongly suggests that High is the optimal preset at every resolution, as it maintains high frame rates while avoiding the steep performance penalty of Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, but with interesting nuances at lower settings. At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 226 at 1080p to 157 at 1440p (a 30.5% decrease), and then to 94 at 4K (a 40.1% decrease from 1440p). This consistent drop across resolutions indicates that the RTX 4080 is the primary bottleneck at this setting, as the CPU has sufficient headroom to feed the GPU at all three resolutions.

At the Low preset, the scaling is more dramatic. The average FPS goes from 318 at 1080p to 220 at 1440p (a 30.8% drop), and then to 131 at 4K (a 40.5% drop). The 1080p Low result of 318 FPS suggests the CPU is nearing its limit, as the GPU is not heavily taxed at such low settings. However, the fact that 1440p Low still produces 220 FPS indicates the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has substantial single-thread performance headroom.

The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 249 FPS at 1080p, 173 FPS at 1440p (a 30.5% drop), and 103 FPS at 4K (a 40.5% drop). The Ultra preset is the most resolution-sensitive, with 145 FPS at 1080p, 100 FPS at 1440p (a 31.0% drop), and 60 FPS at 4K (a 40.0% drop). The consistent percentage drops across settings and resolutions confirm that the RTX 4080's performance scales predictably with pixel count, and the CPU is not introducing any resolution-dependent bottlenecks.

The only exception to this pattern is the 1080p Low result of 318 FPS, which is disproportionately high compared to the 1440p Low result. This suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU is able to push the GPU to its absolute maximum, and the 1440p and 4K results are purely GPU-limited. In practical terms, this means the system is well-balanced for Greedfall, with the GPU being the limiting factor at all resolutions above 1080p Low.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 ranks 254th out of 3703 tested combos for Greedfall. This places the pairing in the top 6.9% of all configurations in the database, which is a strong result for a game released in 2019. The rank reflects the system's ability to maintain high frame rates at 4K, which is the most demanding scenario tested.

The CPU's percentile ranking against all processors is 96, meaning it outperforms 96% of all CPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 84003 places it just ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (83807, 0.2% delta) and the AMD EPYC 4584PX (83090, 1.1% delta). The GPU's percentile ranking is 86, with an average benchmark score of 54247, which is nearly identical to the RTX 4080 SUPER (54209, 0.1% delta). This near-tie with the SUPER variant suggests the standard 4080 is an exceptionally well-binned part.

The combo rank of 254 out of 3703 is notable because both components are near the top of their respective categories. The CPU ranks in the 96th percentile, and the GPU in the 86th percentile, yet the combination still falls outside the top 200. This suggests that other combos with slightly lower-tier CPUs but equal or better GPUs may achieve similar or better results in Greedfall, as the game is not particularly CPU-intensive at higher resolutions. The fact that the combo ranks 254th rather than higher is likely due to the GPU being the limiting factor at 4K, where the RTX 4080's performance is the primary constraint.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the dominant component in this pairing for Greedfall. Its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for this game's textures and assets. The GPU's base clock is 2205 MHz with a boost clock of 2505 MHz, and its memory runs at 1400 MHz (22.4 Gbps effective). The chip is AD103 on the Ada Lovelace architecture, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 45,900 million transistors.

The GPU's compute capabilities include 9728 shading units, 304 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. It has 76 ray tracing cores and 304 tensor cores, which support the DirectX 12 Ultimate API (12_2) that Greedfall can leverage. The FP32 performance is 48.74 TFLOPS, and the texture rate is 761.5 GTexel/s. These specifications translate directly to the measured FPS results: at 4K Ultra, the GPU delivers 60 FPS average, which is the minimum playable threshold. The fact that 4K High produces 94 FPS indicates that the Ultra preset imposes a significant additional load, likely from higher shadow resolution and ambient occlusion quality.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate its gaming performance. It scores 34457 in Passmark G3D and 20671 in Passmark GPU Compute. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 6567. The Geekbench OpenCL score is 214739, and the Vulkan score is 263779. These synthetic results place the RTX 4080 in the 86th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54247. The nearest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, is essentially tied at 54209 (0.1% delta), while the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X is 1.1% lower and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB is 2.6% lower.

The VRAM capacity of 16 GB is not a limiting factor in Greedfall, as the game's maximum memory usage at 4K Ultra is well within this budget. The GPU's memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s is also sufficient, as the resolution scaling data shows consistent performance drops that are characteristic of compute-bound rather than memory-bound scenarios. The pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s and the texture rate of 761.5 GTexel/s are the key metrics for this game, and the measured FPS values reflect a GPU that is well-matched to the demands of Greedfall at all settings except 4K Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset yields an average of 318 FPS, which is the highest result in the entire dataset. Medium produces 249 FPS with a minimum of 212 and a maximum of 287, showing a tight frame time distribution. High averages 226 FPS, and Ultra drops to 145 FPS. The 1080p results show a clear progression: each step up in settings costs roughly 25-30% of the previous setting's performance, with the Ultra preset taking the largest hit due to its additional GPU load.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 220 FPS, which is still exceptionally high. Medium produces 173 FPS with a minimum of 147 and a maximum of 199, indicating some frame time variance but still very smooth gameplay. High averages 157 FPS, and Ultra drops to 100 FPS. The 1440p results show that even at Ultra, the system maintains triple-digit frame rates, making this resolution the sweet spot for players who want both high visual quality and high refresh rates. The gap between High (157 FPS) and Ultra (100 FPS) is 57 FPS, which is the largest absolute difference between any two adjacent settings at any resolution, highlighting the significant cost of Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 131 FPS, which is still above 120 FPS and demonstrates the GPU's raw capability. Medium produces 103 FPS with a minimum of 88 and a maximum of 119, showing that the frame rate occasionally dips below 90 FPS during demanding scenes. High averages 94 FPS, and Ultra drops to exactly 60 FPS. The 4K results are the most critical for understanding the system's limits: Ultra is the only configuration that fails to maintain 60 FPS on average, and even at Medium, the minimum FPS of 88 suggests some scenes can be demanding. The High preset at 94 FPS average is the most consistent option for 4K, as it provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS while offering most of the visual benefits of Ultra.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, providing insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p, the range is 212 to 287 FPS, a spread of 75 FPS. At 1440p, the range is 147 to 199 FPS, a spread of 52 FPS. At 4K, the range is 88 to 119 FPS, a spread of 31 FPS. This narrowing spread at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU becomes more consistently loaded as pixel count increases, reducing the impact of CPU-side frame time spikes. The data also shows that the Low and High presets do not have recorded minimum or maximum values, suggesting they were measured with less variance or the data collection did not capture those metrics.