Palworld

Palworld pairs an Intel Core i5-10400F with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, producing a dataset that is heavily skewed toward GPU-bound performance at higher resolutions but reveals CPU limitations at 1080p. The RTX 4080 SUPER, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process and 45,900 million transistors, carries 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The Core i5-10400F, a Comet Lake part on a 14 nm node, contributes 6 cores and 12 threads with a 2.90 GHz base clock and 4.30 GHz boost clock. Across twelve measured configurations—four settings at three resolutions—the data shows a clear hierarchy where Ultra settings at 4K strain the GPU, while Low settings at 1080p approach the CPU's practical ceiling.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows indicate that High settings at 1440p delivers the most balanced experience for this combo. At 2560x1440 High, the average FPS is 128.8, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while still providing the visual fidelity expected from a game like Palworld. Dropping to Medium at the same resolution yields 169.4 FPS, but the jump from High to Medium only gains 40.6 FPS, whereas the jump from High to Low doubles the frame rate to 209 FPS—suggesting diminishing returns in visual quality relative to the FPS gain. For users prioritizing maximum smoothness, 1080p Medium at 222.1 FPS is the sweet spot, as Low only improves to 239.2 FPS, a marginal 7.7% gain that sacrifices significant visual detail. Ultra settings are only viable at 1080p, where 148.4 FPS remains playable, but at 1440p Ultra drops to 97 FPS and at 4K Ultra falls to 53.8 FPS, which is below the ideal threshold for fast-paced survival gameplay. The data supports High as the default recommendation, with Medium as a fallback for higher refresh-rate displays.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER dominates this pairing, with its 16 GB VRAM and 736.3 GB/s bandwidth proving more than sufficient for Palworld at all tested settings and resolutions. The GPU's boost clock of 2550 MHz and base clock of 2295 MHz, combined with 10,240 shading units, drive the frame rates observed in the measured data. At 4K, the GPU is the primary limiter: High settings produce 72.8 FPS, Medium 92.7 FPS, and Low 113.1 FPS, showing a clear scaling curve as the GPU load decreases. The GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 816.0 GTexel/s texture rate handle Palworld's open-world rendering without bottlenecking at 1440p, where even Ultra settings sustain 97 FPS. However, the gap between 4K Ultra (53.8 FPS) and 4K High (72.8 FPS) indicates that the Ultra preset's additional effects—likely shadows and draw distances—impose a disproportionate cost on the Ada Lovelace architecture. The GPU's percentile rank of 88 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 53,610, places it just 0.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (53,489) and 2.9% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (52,086), confirming its high-end positioning. VRAM usage never becomes a concern in this dataset, as even 4K Ultra does not exceed the 16 GB capacity, allowing the GPU to focus purely on compute rather than memory swapping.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination achieves a combo rank of 169 out of 1,718 tested combos in Palworld, placing it in the top 10% of all pairings. The rank reflects the synergy between the i5-10400F's 6-core/12-thread configuration and the RTX 4080 SUPER's raw throughput. The CPU's average benchmark score of 14,168, with a percentile of 73 against all CPUs, sits within 1.2% of its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 (14,336), and 0.4% above the AMD EPYC 7552 (14,115). Meanwhile, the GPU's average score of 53,610 represents the dominant contributor to the combo's standing. The rank suggests that while the CPU is not top-tier—it trails the Intel Core i5-8500 by 1.1% in average score—the GPU compensates sufficiently to push this combo ahead of 1,549 other pairings. The data indicates that this combo is well-matched for Palworld's engine, which appears to favor GPU throughput over multi-core CPU scaling, as evidenced by the CPU's modest 4,324 Cinebench R20 multicore score relative to its 610 single-core score. A stronger CPU might improve 1080p results, but the combo rank shows that the RTX 4080 SUPER carries the pairing effectively at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 148.4 at Ultra settings to 239.2 at Low settings, with High at 195 and Medium at 222.1. The 1080p results show a compressed range—the difference between Low and Ultra is 90.8 FPS—indicating that the CPU begins to cap performance at this resolution. At 2560x1440, the spread widens: Low produces 209 FPS, Medium 169.4, High 128.8, and Ultra 97. The 1440p data reveals a more linear scaling with settings, as the GPU becomes the limiting factor. At 3840x2160, the values drop sharply: Low achieves 113.1 FPS, Medium 92.7, High 72.8, and Ultra 53.8. The 4K results show a near-linear progression from Ultra to Low, with each step down in settings providing roughly 20 FPS improvement, except for the Medium-to-Low jump which yields 20.4 FPS. The lowest measured value across all configurations is 53.8 FPS at 4K Ultra, which remains technically playable but falls short of the 60 FPS target. The highest measured value is 239.2 FPS at 1080p Low, which exceeds the refresh rate of most standard monitors. The average FPS figures are consistent across settings, with no single outlier suggesting a driver issue or thermal throttling.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals the balance between CPU and GPU load in this pairing. At Low settings, moving from 1080p (239.2 FPS) to 1440p (209 FPS) represents a 12.6% decrease, while moving from 1440p to 4K (113.1 FPS) represents a 45.9% decrease. The total drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 126.1 FPS, a 52.7% reduction. At High settings, the drops are more pronounced: 1080p (195 FPS) to 1440p (128.8 FPS) is a 33.9% decrease, and 1440p to 4K (72.8 FPS) is a 43.5% decrease, totaling 62.7% from 1080p to 4K. This pattern—where the 1080p-to-1440p drop is smaller at Low settings than at High—indicates that the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p Low, as the GPU has spare capacity that is not being utilized. At 1080p High, the GPU begins to take over, as evidenced by the larger percentage drop when moving to 1440p. The 4K scaling is consistently severe across all settings, with the GPU becoming the sole bottleneck. The data suggests that this combo is best suited for 1440p gaming, where the CPU still provides enough throughput to feed the GPU without the extreme performance penalty seen at 4K. At 4K, even Low settings drop to 113.1 FPS, which is 52.7% below the 1080p Low figure, confirming that the RTX 4080 SUPER, despite its high bandwidth, cannot maintain high frame rates at this resolution without reducing settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F plays a supporting role in Palworld, with its 6 cores and 12 threads providing adequate but not exceptional processing power. The CPU's 3DMark scores show a scalability pattern: 1,350 for 2 threads, 2,560 for 4 threads, 3,929 for 8 threads, and 4,748 for 16 threads, with max-threads at 4,735. This indicates that Palworld benefits from additional threads up to 8, but the 12-thread configuration does not yield a significant gain over 8 threads (4,735 vs 3,929 is a 20.5% improvement). The single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark and 1,453 in Cinebench R23 single-core suggests that the CPU's 4.30 GHz boost clock is sufficient for the game's primary thread. However, the 1080p data reveals CPU limitations: at Low settings, 1080p produces 239.2 FPS versus 209 FPS at 1440p, a difference of only 30.2 FPS, which is far smaller than the 4K drop to 113.1 FPS. This compression between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings indicates that the CPU's per-core performance, not the GPU, is capping frame rates. The CPU's 12 MB shared L3 cache and 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for Palworld's streaming needs, but the 14 nm Comet Lake architecture, with a 65 W TDP, does not provide the headroom seen in newer CPUs. The nearest rival data confirms the CPU's mid-range positioning: it is 0.4% faster than the AMD EPYC 7552 but 0.8% slower than the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C and 1.1% slower than the Intel Core i5-8500. In practical terms, the CPU delivers 239.2 FPS at 1080p Low, which is likely near its maximum output, while the GPU could theoretically push higher if paired with a stronger processor. The benchmark results indicate that for Palworld, the CPU is not a bottleneck at 1440p or 4K, but it does limit the combo's 1080p ceiling, making the RTX 4080 SUPER's potential slightly underutilized at that resolution.