Palworld

# Palworld with Intel Core i5-12400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti delivers a high-refresh-rate capable Palworld experience at 1080p, but the data reveals a clear progression where the GPU becomes the dominant constraint as resolution climbs. This combo ranks 983rd out of 3,711 tested combinations, placing it in the top quartile of systems for this survival title, with the CPU sitting at the 72nd percentile among all processors and the GPU at the 83rd percentile among all graphics cards.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable but steep decline as resolution increases, with the gap between 1080p and 4K widening significantly at higher settings. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 154 FPS at 1920x1080 to 101 FPS at 2560x1440, then further to 56 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 35% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 64% reduction from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the RTX 3080 Ti's rendering workload scales heavily with pixel count.

The Low settings preset tells a different story about where the bottleneck lies. At 1920x1080 Low, the combo achieves 247 FPS average, which drops to 163 FPS at 2560x1440 and 90 FPS at 3840x2160. The 1080p Low result of 247 FPS is remarkably close to what a 6-core, 12-thread processor like the i5-12400 can feed, suggesting that at lower resolutions and settings, the CPU begins to limit the ceiling. The 4K Low figure of 90 FPS versus the 4K High figure of 56 FPS shows that even at 4K, reducing settings restores substantial performance, confirming the GPU is the primary limiter at this resolution.

Ultra settings produce the most dramatic scaling penalty. The 1920x1080 Ultra average of 117 FPS falls to 77 FPS at 2560x1440 and bottoms out at 43 FPS at 3840x2160. This 4K Ultra result is the only measured configuration that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, and it does so significantly. The Medium preset, which includes min and max FPS data, shows 200 FPS average at 1080p with a range of 170-230 FPS, 132 FPS at 1440p with a range of 112-152 FPS, and 73 FPS at 4K with a range of 62-84 FPS. The narrowing of the FPS range at higher resolutions indicates that frame pacing becomes more consistent when the GPU is fully utilized, whereas at 1080p the variance reflects CPU-side delivery limits.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti achieves a rank of 983 out of 3,711 tested combos in Palworld, placing it comfortably within the top 26.5% of all systems tested for this game. Given that the GPU ranks at the 83rd percentile overall and the CPU at the 72nd percentile, the combo's in-game ranking aligns closely with what these individual component percentiles would suggest — the system performs slightly below the GPU's standalone percentile but above the CPU's, reflecting Palworld's tendency to lean on graphics throughput.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks show how competitive the i5-12400 is in this pairing. The AMD EPYC 7643 scores 18,697 on average, a mere 0.1% ahead, while the Intel Core i7-1355U is 0.3% ahead at 18,730. The AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 sits 0.7% ahead at 18,811, and the Intel Core i3-14100F trails by 0.9% at 18,519. These sub-1% deltas indicate that the i5-12400 is in a tightly packed performance cluster, and the Palworld results reflect this: the CPU is rarely the differentiator in this combo's ranking, with the RTX 3080 Ti's 83rd percentile GPU standing doing most of the heavy lifting.

For the GPU, the nearest rivals in the database include the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 at 40,870 (0.8% ahead), the NVIDIA Tesla M40 24 GB at 41,707 (1.2% behind), and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 at 41,897 (1.7% behind). The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 trails by 2.0% at 40,377. These deltas show the RTX 3080 Ti is surrounded by capable cards, and its 83rd percentile ranking in the broader GPU pool translates into the strong but not top-tier frame rates observed in Palworld's measured data.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is built on the GA102 chip using Samsung's 8 nm process, with 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die. It operates with a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz, while its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory runs at 1188 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed across a 384-bit bus, yielding 912.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 186.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 532.8 GTexel/s, with FP32 and FP16 compute both rated at 34.10 TFLOPS.

In Palworld, the GPU's memory configuration appears sufficient across all measured settings, as no configuration exhibits signs of VRAM capacity-induced stuttering. The 12 GB frame buffer handles 4K Ultra without exceeding capacity, though the 43 FPS average at those settings suggests the compute and memory bandwidth are saturated rather than capacity-limited. The 912.4 GB/s bandwidth is a critical asset for this game, as the 4K Medium result of 73 FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS demonstrates that the memory subsystem can sustain consistent throughput even under heavy load.

The GPU's 83rd percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, combined with its 41,187 average benchmark score, places it ahead of the majority of cards in the database. However, the 4K Ultra result of 43 FPS indicates that Palworld's highest preset demands more than this card can deliver at 4K, while the same preset at 1080p achieves 117 FPS — a 2.7x increase that highlights how much headroom exists at lower pixel counts.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest frame rates across all settings. Low averages 247 FPS, Medium averages 200 FPS with a range of 170-230 FPS, High averages 154 FPS, and Ultra averages 117 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 47 FPS, from Medium to High costs 46 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 37 FPS. These increments are relatively uniform, suggesting that each settings tier imposes a similar rendering cost at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop to 163 FPS on Low, 132 FPS on Medium (range 112-152 FPS), 101 FPS on High, and 77 FPS on Ultra. The percentage reduction from 1080p is 34% for Low, 34% for Medium, 34% for High, and 34% for Ultra — a remarkably consistent scaling factor across all presets. This uniformity indicates that the GPU's workload scales linearly with pixel count at this resolution transition, with no single setting tier causing disproportionate degradation.

At 3840x2160, the results are 90 FPS on Low, 73 FPS on Medium (range 62-84 FPS), 56 FPS on High, and 43 FPS on Ultra. The reduction from 1440p is 45% for Low, 45% for Medium, 45% for High, and 44% for Ultra. The slightly larger percentage drop from 1440p to 4K compared to 1080p to 1440p reflects the additional memory bandwidth pressure at 4K, though the RTX 3080 Ti's 912.4 GB/s bandwidth mitigates what could be a more severe falloff.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 60 FPS as a baseline, the data shows that 4K Ultra is the only configuration that fails to meet this target, averaging 43 FPS. The 4K High preset at 56 FPS also falls short, though it is close. The 4K Medium preset at 73 FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS is the entry point for smooth 4K play. At 2560x1440, all presets exceed 60 FPS, with the Ultra preset at 77 FPS providing a comfortable margin above the threshold.

For 1080p users, every preset delivers well above 100 FPS, with even the demanding Ultra preset averaging 117 FPS. The Medium preset at 200 FPS with a range of 170-230 FPS represents the sweet spot for high-refresh-rate monitors, offering a substantial 46 FPS improvement over High while still maintaining a minimum above 170 FPS. The Low preset at 247 FPS is only beneficial for the most extreme refresh rate displays, and the visual trade-off likely outweighs the marginal gain for most players.

The overall recommendation across the measured data is Medium settings at 4K for a locked 60+ FPS experience, High settings at 1440p for a balance of visual quality and frame rate, and Ultra settings at 1080p for maximum fidelity without sacrificing smoothness. The Medium preset's recorded minimum FPS values — 170 at 1080p, 112 at 1440p, and 62 at 4K — indicate that this setting tier provides the most consistent frame delivery across all resolutions, making it the safest choice for stutter-sensitive play.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S family, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It features 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration and connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes. Its 65 W TDP and 72nd percentile ranking among all CPUs reflect a mainstream positioning that pairs sensibly with the high-end RTX 3080 Ti.

In Palworld, the CPU's influence is most evident at 1080p Low, where the 247 FPS average approaches the practical limit of what this processor can feed to the GPU. The 3dmark single-thread score of 910 and the passmark single-thread score of 3,456 indicate strong per-core performance, which matters for a game that likely has a primary simulation thread. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15,989 and single-core score of 2,257 show that the 6-core configuration provides ample headroom for the game's background tasks while maintaining strong single-thread responsiveness.

The CPU's nearest rival comparisons — all within 0.9% in average benchmark scores — confirm that the i5-12400 is not a bottleneck in this combo. The 4K Ultra result of 43 FPS is clearly GPU-bound, as the same CPU produces 117 FPS at 1080p Ultra, a 2.7x difference that can only be attributed to graphics load. The 12 threads handle the game's multithreaded workload effectively, with the 3dmark 16-thread score of 5,873 and max-thread score of 5,890 indicating near-perfect scaling beyond 8 threads, which suggests Palworld can utilize the full thread count without diminishing returns.