Palworld

Palworld on the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile is a story of a CPU massively outclassing the GPU it is paired with. Benchmark results indicate this combination lands in the bottom half of tested configurations for this survival title — rank 2033 of 3711 — despite the processor sitting in the 95th percentile of all CPUs. The RTX 4070 Mobile, a 73rd-percentile GPU with an 8 GB GDDR6 frame buffer on a 128-bit bus, becomes the ceiling at every resolution, and the data makes that limitation plain.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data tells a consistent tale of GPU-bound behavior. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 180 FPS on Low, 146 on Medium, 112 on High, and 85 on Ultra. Move to 2560x1440 and those figures fall to 118, 96, 74, and 56 respectively — roughly a third of the frame rate gone at every settings tier. At 3840x2160 the numbers drop further: 66 on Low, 53 on Medium, 41 on High, and 31 on Ultra.

What matters here is the shape of the curve, not just its decline. A CPU-bound configuration shows nearly flat performance as resolution rises, because the processor — not the pixel pipeline — sets the pace. This pairing shows nothing of the sort. Frame rates fall steeply and proportionally with pixel count at every quality preset, which means the RTX 4070 Mobile's shader throughput, its 48 ROPs, and its 256.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth are all being saturated long before the Ryzen 9 8945HX breaks a sweat. The Medium preset frame-rate ranges reinforce this: at 1080p the spread is 124 to 168 FPS, and at 4K it compresses to 45 to 61 — the wider the resolution, the tighter the GPU's grip on the outcome.

The practical reading is straightforward. Native 4K Ultra at 31 FPS average is not a playable experience by most standards, and even 4K Medium at 53 FPS sits below a comfortable threshold for a fast-paced survival game. The 1440p tier is where this hardware finds its footing, with Medium delivering 96 FPS average and a 110 FPS ceiling. 1080p is entirely GPU-limited as well — 180 FPS on Low is respectable, but a CPU in the 95th percentile with a PassMark multithread score of 51405 would push far beyond that figure if the graphics silicon allowed it.

How This Combo Ranks

Rank 2033 out of 3711 tested combinations places this pairing below the midpoint in Palworld — a middling result that reflects entirely on the GPU half of the equation. The nearest rivals list for the RTX 4070 Mobile underlines why: its average benchmark score of 27435 is statistically tied with the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (27425, deltaPct 0), marginally ahead of the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell (27135, deltaPct 1.1), and slightly behind both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (27565, deltaPct -0.5) and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 (27839, deltaPct -1.5). Those are the performance neighborhoods this mobile Ada part occupies, and Palworld responds accordingly.

The CPU side is a different picture entirely. The Ryzen 9 8945HX's average benchmark score of 76212 puts it in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, effectively level with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (76155, deltaPct 0.1), the AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P (76492, deltaPct -0.4), the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX (76513, deltaPct -0.4), and even the desktop flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (75779, deltaPct 0.6). A processor trading blows with a Threadripper PRO and a 9950X3D is not the reason this combo ranks in the bottom half. In a game like Palworld, whose open-world survival workload spans rendering, physics, and asset streaming, the pairing is unbalanced: desktop-flagship-class compute strapped to a mobile GPU that matches a Radeon RX 6700 XT. The rank of 2033 is the GPU's verdict, not the CPU's.

FAQ

Q: Is Palworld playable at 4K on this hardware? A: Marginally. The data shows 3840x2160 averages of 66 FPS on Low, 53 on Medium, 41 on High, and 31 on Ultra. Medium is the highest preset with an average above 50, and its frame-rate range of 45 to 61 indicates dips below 50 during heavier scenes.

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for high frame rates? A: 1920x1080 on Medium is the sweet spot for balanced play, delivering 146 FPS average with a 124 to 168 range. For maximum smoothness, 1080p Low reaches 180 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU hold this pairing back? A: No. The Ryzen 9 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs and matches rivals including the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (deltaPct 0.6) and AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX (deltaPct -0.4). Benchmark data indicates the GPU is the limiting component at every resolution tested.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 Mobile compare to rival GPUs? A: Its average benchmark score of 27435 is dead even with the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (27425, deltaPct 0) and slightly behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (27565, deltaPct -0.5), placing it in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs.

Q: Is the 8 GB VRAM buffer a concern in Palworld? A: Potentially at 4K. The card carries 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The steep frame-rate drop at 3840x2160 — down to 31 FPS on Ultra — is consistent with the frame buffer and memory subsystem being pushed to their limits at that resolution.

Q: Where does this combo rank among tested Palworld configurations? A: Rank 2033 of 3711 tested combinations, below the midpoint — a reflection of the GPU pairing rather than CPU capability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured averages from the database.

At 1920x1080: Low delivers 180 FPS, Medium 146 FPS (minimum 124, maximum 168), High 112 FPS, and Ultra 85 FPS. This is the only resolution where every preset clears 80 FPS, and even here Ultra drops 53 percent of the Low-preset frame rate — evidence that quality settings, not the processor, govern the numbers.

At 2560x1440: Low averages 118 FPS, Medium 96 FPS (minimum 82, maximum 110), High 74 FPS, and Ultra 56 FPS. Medium remains firmly above 80 FPS at its floor, making 1440p Medium the strongest balanced configuration in the dataset. High at 74 FPS is playable but no longer fluid under demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160: Low manages 66 FPS, Medium 53 FPS (minimum 45, maximum 61), High 41 FPS, and Ultra 31 FPS. Only the Low preset stays above 60, and Ultra falls a third below the 60-FPS line. The Medium range of 45 to 61 shows frame times stretching considerably at native 4K.

The settings ladder is remarkably consistent at every resolution: each step up in quality costs roughly 20 to 30 percent of the average frame rate. That regularity is another signature of a GPU-limited configuration — the processor would introduce irregularities at lower resolutions if it were nearing its limits, and none appear.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 Mobile is built on the AD106 chip, Ada Lovelace architecture, a 5 nm TSMC process, 22,900 million transistors, and a 188 mm² die at a density of 121.8M transistors per mm². Its rendering resources include 4608 shading units, 144 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 36 RT cores, and 144 tensor cores, with a pixel rate of 81.36 GPixel/s, a texture rate of 244.1 GTexel/s, and 15.62 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput. Clocks run from a 1395 MHz base to a 1695 MHz boost, with memory at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective).

In Palworld, the relevant constraints are the memory subsystem and the pixel pipeline. The 8 GB GDDR6 buffer on a 128-bit bus yields 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth — a modest figure for 4K rendering, and the 4K results bear that out: 41 FPS on High and 31 on Ultra. The 48 ROPs and 81.36 GPixel/s pixel rate must also drive 3840x2160 output, and the steep resolution scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that fill-rate budget being exhausted. At 1080p, where pixel pressure eases, the card's 15.62 TFLOPS of shader throughput keeps Ultra above 80 FPS.

The card's cross-benchmark profile — a PassMark G3D score of 19587, Geekbench OpenCL at 109197, Vulkan at 108367, and a GPU compute score of 8399 — confirms a part in the 73rd GPU percentile, statistically tied with the Radeon RX 6700 XT. That is precisely the class of performance the Palworld measurements reflect: excellent at 1080p, solid at 1440p, strained at native 4K. The 115 W TDP of this mobile part also frames expectations — this is a power- and thermally-constrained design, and the 4K results show where those constraints bite.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 8945HX is a Zen 4 (Dragon Range) processor with 16 cores and 32 threads, a 2.50 GHz base clock, a 5.40 GHz boost clock, a 55 W TDP, and the AMD Socket FL1. It carries 64 KB of L1 and 1 MB of L2 cache per core, 64 MB of L3, DDR5 support over a dual-channel bus with 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and PCIe Gen 5 with 28 lanes from the CPU. It is fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm node with 13,140 million transistors across two 71 mm² dies.

For Palworld, the single-thread numbers matter most, and they are excellent: 607 in Cinebench R15 single-core, 2532 in R20, 6030 in R23, and 3907 in PassMark single-thread. A survival game with open-world traversal and physics-driven simulation leans on snappy per-core performance, and a 5.40 GHz boost on Zen 4 delivers it. The multi-core depth — 4305 in R15, 17939 in R20, 42713 in R23, and a PassMark multithread score of 51405, backed by a PassMark physics score of 2168 — covers background asset streaming and world simulation without breaking stride.

The verdict from the measured data: this CPU is never the bottleneck in Palworld on this pairing. Its 95th-percentile standing, its statistical tie with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (deltaPct 0.1) and proximity to the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (deltaPct 0.6), and the strictly GPU-shaped resolution scaling all point the same direction. Frame rates at 1080p Ultra cap at 85 FPS not because 16 Zen 4 cores cannot feed more, but because the RTX 4070 Mobile cannot render more. Pair this processor with a stronger GPU and the ranking of 2033 out of 3711 would climb accordingly; as tested, the 8945HX is a flagship-class engine idling behind a mid-tier mobile graphics part.