Palworld

Palworld, a survival title released in January 2024, shows distinct performance scaling when paired with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets reveal a system with substantial headroom at lower settings, but the data also indicates that the game’s engine can become a limiting factor at higher resolutions and quality levels. This analysis examines the measured rows to determine the optimal settings configuration and the relationship between the CPU and GPU in this specific workload.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for this combination clearly indicates that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers an average of 226.6 FPS, which is a significant 50.8 FPS reduction from the Low preset’s 330.5 FPS but still substantially above the 175.9 FPS of the Ultra preset. The jump from High to Ultra at 1080p costs 50.7 FPS, whereas the jump from Medium to High costs 72.1 FPS, suggesting that High provides a better performance-to-visual-fidelity trade-off than Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the High preset maintains an average of 151.7 FPS, which remains highly playable for a survival title. The Medium preset achieves 193.3 FPS, but the difference between High and Ultra narrows to 39.9 FPS, indicating that the GPU is beginning to feel the load. For 3840x2160, High is the only sensible choice for a fluid experience, producing 83.6 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 63.0 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold that many users consider a minimum for smooth gameplay.

The Low preset, while achieving the highest frame rates at every resolution—330.5 FPS at 1080p, 238.5 FPS at 1440p, and 132.7 FPS at 4K—sacrifices visual quality that the RTX 5090 is clearly capable of rendering. Conversely, the Ultra preset consistently shows the largest performance penalty, with the most drastic drop occurring at 4K where it falls 20.6 FPS behind High. The data suggests that High is the sweet spot, delivering over 80 FPS even at 4K, which is a strong result for a demanding survival game.

FAQ

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

A: The High preset is recommended for 3840x2160, as it produces an average of 83.6 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 63.0 FPS, which is a 24.6% decrease, making High the more consistent choice for maintaining frame rates above 60 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K on the High preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 226.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 83.6 FPS at 3840x2160 with the High preset. This represents a 63.1% reduction in performance, indicating that the GPU is heavily taxed by the higher pixel count.

Q: Does the Low preset provide a significant advantage over Medium at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 238.5 FPS, while the Medium preset reaches 193.3 FPS. The difference is 45.2 FPS, or 23.4% faster for Low, but the Medium preset still offers a very high frame rate that is likely preferable for visual quality.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever playable at 4K with this combo?

A: Yes, the Ultra preset at 3840x2160 averages 63.0 FPS. This is playable for most users, but it is only 75.4% of the frame rate achieved on High, making High a more comfortable option for ensuring stable performance.

Q: How does the combo perform at 1080p on Ultra?

A: The system achieves an average of 175.9 FPS at 1920x1080 with the Ultra preset. This is well above the refresh rate of most monitors, showing that the CPU and GPU combination is not heavily stressed at this resolution.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 4K?

A: The Low preset averages 132.7 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 63.0 FPS at 3840x2160. This is a 69.7 FPS difference, or a 110.6% increase for Low, which highlights the extreme performance cost of the Ultra settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination ranks 19th out of 1718 tested combos in Palworld. This places it in the top 1.1% of all configurations tested, indicating excellent overall performance for this title. The high rank is primarily attributable to the RTX 5090’s raw graphics power, as the CPU’s role in this game appears secondary based on the scaling patterns.

The CPU itself sits in the 93rd percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 49062. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-14600K, which scores 49166 (a 0.2% difference), and the Intel Core i5-14600KF, which scores 49367 (a 0.6% difference). The AMD EPYC 4345P scores 49595, putting it 1.1% ahead, while the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H scores 48698, which is 0.7% behind. These small deltas show that the 5950X is competitively positioned among modern processors.

For the GPU, the RTX 5090 sits in the 94th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84306. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D (84241, a 0.1% difference), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile (84171, a 0.2% difference), and the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 (83209, a 1.3% difference). The NVIDIA CMP 40HX performs slightly higher at 85637, which is 1.6% ahead. The combination of a top-tier GPU and a high-end CPU yields a rank that reflects near-flagship performance in this specific game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across all settings. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptionally high across the board. The Low preset leads with 330.5 FPS, followed by Medium at 298.7 FPS, High at 226.6 FPS, and Ultra at 175.9 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra shows a 154.6 FPS drop, which is a 46.8% reduction, demonstrating that even at 1080p, the Ultra preset imposes a significant load on the GPU.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but lower. Low produces 238.5 FPS, Medium achieves 193.3 FPS, High delivers 151.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to 111.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 126.7 FPS, a 53.1% reduction. This resolution begins to show the GPU working harder, as the frame rate differences between presets grow more pronounced.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals a substantial performance hit. Low averages 132.7 FPS, Medium drops to 110.8 FPS, High reaches 83.6 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 63.0 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 69.7 FPS, a 52.5% reduction, but the absolute values are much lower. The jump from High to Ultra at 4K is particularly steep, costing 20.6 FPS, which suggests that the Ultra preset’s additional effects are disproportionately expensive at this resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 highlights the GPU’s dominance as the primary bottleneck. On the Low preset, the frame rate drops from 330.5 FPS at 1080p to 238.5 FPS at 1440p, a 27.8% decrease, and then to 132.7 FPS at 4K, a 59.9% decrease from 1440p. This steep decline is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where the number of pixels rendered has a direct impact on throughput.

On the High preset, the scaling is similar but with a slightly different curve. The transition from 1080p (226.6 FPS) to 1440p (151.7 FPS) represents a 33.1% drop, and from 1440p to 4K (83.6 FPS) a 44.9% drop. The consistent reductions indicate that the RTX 5090 is the limiting component, as the CPU’s 16 cores and 32 threads are not being saturated at these settings. The data shows that the 5950X’s Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 4.90 GHz, provides ample processing power to keep up with the GPU’s output.

The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic scaling, with a 36.4% drop from 1080p (175.9 FPS) to 1440p (111.8 FPS) and a 43.6% drop from 1440p to 4K (63.0 FPS). This pattern suggests that the game’s engine scales predictably with resolution, and the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s and 32 GB of GDDR7 memory are being utilized effectively. The limiting factor is clearly the graphics card’s rendering capacity, not the CPU.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, with 64 MB of L3 cache. In Palworld, the benchmark results indicate that the CPU is not the primary constraint, as evidenced by the consistent frame rate drops at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the frame rates are high enough that the CPU could potentially become a factor, but the data shows smooth scaling that aligns with GPU performance.

The 5950X’s multi-threaded capabilities are strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 38607 and a 3DMark max threads score of 11597. However, Palworld appears to be a title that favors single-thread performance, where the CPU scores 5450 in Cinebench R23 single-core. The game’s performance at 1080p Low (330.5 FPS) suggests that the CPU can handle high frame rates without bottlenecking, but the 46.8% drop to Ultra at 1080p indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor even at that resolution.

The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i5-14600K and i5-14600KF, show negligible benchmark score differences (0.2% and 0.6%, respectively), meaning that swapping the CPU would have minimal impact on Palworld’s performance. The data supports the conclusion that the RTX 5090’s 21760 shading units and 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute are the primary drivers of the measured frame rates, while the 5950X provides sufficient headroom to avoid becoming a bottleneck in this specific workload.