Palworld

Palworld with the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER presents a fascinating study in bottleneck dynamics. The data shows a high-refresh-rate monster at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K remains comfortably playable. This pairing leverages a budget quad-core CPU with a top-tier GPU, and the measured results reveal exactly where each component's limits lie.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows offer a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 149 FPS, which is excellent for fast-paced survival gameplay. However, the jump to Medium yields 256 FPS, a massive 71.8% improvement over Ultra, and Low pushes that to 316 FPS. Given that the RTX 4080 SUPER is more than capable of driving high refresh rates, the data suggests that Medium at 1080p is the sweet spot for competitive play, as it maintains a massive frame rate cushion while still providing a substantial visual upgrade over Low.

Moving to 2560x1440, the story becomes more nuanced. The Ultra preset averages 98 FPS, which is smooth for most displays. High settings produce 130 FPS, representing a 32.7% uplift over Ultra, while Medium achieves 169 FPS, a 72.4% improvement. For a 144Hz monitor, High is the recommended preset, as it keeps the average comfortably above the refresh rate threshold while preserving much of the visual fidelity. Medium is the fallback for those who prioritize maximum smoothness, but the 39 FPS difference between High and Medium is less critical than the 32 FPS gap between Ultra and High.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 4080 SUPER begins to show its limits. Ultra averages just 55 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for many 4K displays. High settings improve this to 72 FPS, a 30.9% increase, making it the minimum viable preset for a locked 60 FPS experience. Medium pushes further to 94 FPS, which is a 70.9% improvement over Ultra and provides the best balance for high-refresh 4K gaming. Low reaches 115 FPS, but the visual compromise is likely too severe for a 4K panel. The recommendation across all resolutions is to start with Medium and adjust upward only if the frame rate headroom allows, as the measured data consistently shows Medium as the most efficient preset in terms of FPS per setting tier.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the undisputed star of this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured performance. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, the card offers 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This is crucial for Palworld's large open-world environments, which can rapidly fill VRAM with textures and geometry. The 16 GB capacity ensures that even at 4K Ultra, the card is unlikely to hit a memory ceiling, allowing the benchmark results to reflect pure compute capability rather than memory starvation.

The GPU's clock behavior is also telling. The base clock runs at 2295 MHz, boosting to 2550 MHz under load. This 2550 MHz boost clock, combined with 10240 shading units, produces 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. These raw numbers translate directly to the observed FPS scaling. At 1080p Low, the card achieves 316 FPS, indicating that the GPU is far from saturated and is instead being held back by the CPU. As resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU's workload scales, and the FPS drops proportionally, showing the card's compute resources being progressively more utilized.

The RTX 4080 SUPER's 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are present in the specifications, but Palworld's benchmark results do not isolate ray tracing or DLSS performance. The measured data shows pure rasterization performance. The card's 285.6 GPixel/s pixel rate and 816.0 GTexel/s texture rate are the key metrics for this game's fill-rate demands. The 379 mm² die, built on TSMC's 5 nm process, houses 45,900 million transistors, and the 320 W TDP is a clear indicator of the power envelope required to sustain these clocks. The 700 W suggested PSU is a practical guideline for system builders, though the benchmark data itself does not report power draw.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K Ultra settings?

A: No. The measured data shows an average of 55 FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. To reach a stable 60 FPS at 4K, you must drop to High settings, which averages 72 FPS.

Q: What is the best preset for a 144Hz 1440p monitor?

A: High settings at 2560x1440 produce an average of 130 FPS, which is close to the 144Hz target but not always above it. Medium settings, averaging 169 FPS, provide a more consistent experience above the refresh rate, with minimums recorded at 143 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 197 at 1920x1080 to 72 at 3840x2160 on High settings. This represents a 63.5% reduction in frame rate, illustrating the significant GPU workload increase at higher resolutions.

Q: Is the RTX 4080 SUPER bottlenecked by the Core i3-12100F?

A: The data suggests yes at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 316 FPS, while at 1080p Medium it drops to 256 FPS. The GPU is so fast at 1080p that the CPU's 4 cores and 8 threads become the limiting factor, preventing the GPU from reaching even higher frame rates.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded across all tested settings?

A: The lowest minimum FPS reported is 79, which occurs at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. This is the only resolution and preset combination with a recorded minimum below 100 FPS, aside from the Ultra presets which do not report a minimum.

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

A: The combo ranks 308th out of 3711 tested combinations, placing it in the top 8.3% of all tested systems for this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings tiers.

At 1920x1080, the lowest tested resolution, the combo delivers exceptional speed. Low settings produce an average of 316 FPS, the highest figure in the entire dataset. Medium settings average 256 FPS, with a minimum of 218 and a maximum of 294, showing a tight frame time distribution. High settings drop to 197 FPS average, while Ultra settings average 149 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 167 FPS, indicating that the GPU has massive headroom at this resolution and the CPU is the primary constraint.

The 2560x1440 results show a more balanced workload. Low settings average 208 FPS, Medium averages 169 FPS with a minimum of 143 and a maximum of 194, High averages 130 FPS, and Ultra averages 98 FPS. The 110 FPS spread between Low and Ultra is smaller than at 1080p, reflecting the increased GPU load. The Medium preset's minimum of 143 FPS is notable, as it suggests the system can maintain a high refresh rate even during demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low settings average 115 FPS, Medium averages 94 FPS with a minimum of 79 and a maximum of 108, High averages 72 FPS, and Ultra averages 55 FPS. The 60 FPS spread between Low and Ultra is the smallest of all resolutions, confirming that the RTX 4080 SUPER is working near its full capacity. The Medium preset's minimum of 79 FPS is the lowest recorded minimum in the entire dataset, indicating that even this powerful GPU struggles to maintain high frame rates at 4K during complex scenes.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 308 out of 3711 tested combinations places it in the top 8.3% of all systems tested in Palworld. This is a strong showing, especially considering the CPU's modest specifications. The ranking reflects the overwhelming influence of the RTX 4080 SUPER, which is in the 86th percentile of all GPUs based on average benchmark scores. The GPU's 34245 Passmark G3D score and 54209 average benchmark score are the primary drivers of this high ranking.

The CPU's contribution to this rank is more nuanced. The Core i3-12100F sits in the 68th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13494. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core 3 N355 (13492, 0% delta) and Intel Core i5-9500 (13452, 0.3% delta), showing that it performs competitively with older mid-range processors. However, its 4 cores and 8 threads limit its ability to feed the RTX 4080 SUPER at lower resolutions, as evidenced by the 1080p results where the GPU's potential is not fully realized.

The ranking indicates that for Palworld, this combination is highly capable despite the CPU's theoretical weaknesses. The game appears to be GPU-bound at higher resolutions, where the combo's rank is likely higher, while at 1080p, the CPU bottleneck may drag the rank down compared to combos with more powerful processors. The 3711 total combos tested provide a broad comparison base, and finishing in the top 308 reflects the GPU's brute force.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process. Its base clock of 3.30 GHz and boost clock of 4.30 GHz are competitive for single-threaded workloads, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1674. This single-thread performance is crucial for Palworld, which likely relies heavily on a few primary threads for game logic and physics.

The CPU's 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache provide adequate data locality for the game's working set. The 3dmark single-thread score of 893 and 2-thread score of 1659 indicate strong per-core performance. However, the 4-thread score of 2859 and 8-thread score of 4026 reveal that scaling beyond 4 threads is minimal, with the max-thread score of 4023 nearly identical to the 8-thread result. This suggests that the CPU's 4 physical cores are saturated early, and hyper-threading provides little additional benefit for this workload.

The data shows that the CPU's role is to maintain a minimum frame rate floor rather than push maximum FPS. At 1080p, the combo achieves 316 FPS on Low, which is likely near the CPU's maximum throughput for this game. The fact that dropping settings from Medium to Low at 1080p only improves FPS from 256 to 316 (a 23.4% gain) suggests that the CPU is already near its limit at Medium settings. At higher resolutions, the CPU has more headroom, as the GPU takes longer to render each frame, giving the CPU time to prepare the next one.

The CPU's 58 W TDP and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory make it a flexible choice for budget builds. The 3dmark 16-thread score of 4051, despite only having 8 threads, indicates that the CPU's thread scheduler is efficient, but it cannot overcome the physical core limit. For this pairing, the CPU is the clear bottleneck at 1080p, but it becomes adequate at 1440p and 4K, where the GPU's workload dominates. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (55 FPS) is likely limited by the GPU, not the CPU, as the CPU's single-thread performance is sufficient to feed the GPU at that frame rate.