Palworld

Palworld’s measured performance on the Intel Core i5-12400F and AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT combination reveals a system that scales predictably with resolution and settings, though the gap between the lowest and highest presets is dramatic. At 1080p, the data shows a wide spread from 223.8 FPS on Low to 103.4 FPS on Ultra, indicating that the CPU has plenty of headroom to feed the GPU at lower settings. The jump from 1080p to 1440p is severe in the Low preset, dropping from 223.8 FPS to 148.2 FPS, which is a 33.8% reduction. This suggests that the rendering load is shifting to the GPU as pixel count rises, but the system remains highly playable at all tested settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate deltas across resolutions are the clearest indicator of where the bottleneck lies. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Ultra settings, the average FPS falls from 103.4 to 69.4, a 32.9% decrease. At High settings, the same resolution change yields a drop from 136.5 FPS to 92.2 FPS, a 32.5% reduction. This consistent ~33% penalty suggests that the RX 7800 XT is the primary limiting factor at these resolutions, as the CPU’s 6-core/12-thread configuration is likely not saturated given the high frame rates at 1080p.

The transition from 1440p to 4K (3840x2160) is even more punishing. At High settings, the frame rate plummets from 92.2 FPS to 49.6 FPS, a 46.2% drop. At Medium settings, the decline is from 119.6 FPS to 67.5 FPS, a 43.6% reduction. The Low preset shows a similar pattern, falling from 148.2 FPS to 83.1 FPS, a 43.9% decrease. These figures indicate that at 4K, the GPU is severely taxed, and the 16 GB of VRAM and 624.1 GB/s bandwidth are being pushed hard, but the CPU is no longer the constraint. The system’s 619th rank out of 1718 combinations for this game confirms that it sits in the upper-mid tier of tested hardware pairings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for high-refresh-rate gaming with this setup?

A: At 1920x1080, the system delivers over 100 FPS on all presets, with Low reaching 223.8 FPS and Medium hitting 182.4 FPS. This makes 1080p the only resolution where the combination can consistently exceed 144 FPS on lower settings, ideal for competitive play.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core i5-12400F scores 19,221 in the average benchmark, which is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-8700K (19,210) and 0.3% higher than the Intel Core i5-1335U (19,167). It trails the AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS by 0.7% (19,364) but leads the AMD EPYC 7773X by 1.3% (18,979).

Q: Is the GPU’s synthetic performance competitive with its peers?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT has an average benchmark score of 32,619. This places it 0.2% ahead of the AMD FirePro S9300 X2 (32,540) and 0.7% ahead of the AMD FirePro S10000 (32,388). It is 0.4% behind the NVIDIA P104-100 (32,747) and 0.7% behind the NVIDIA T600 Mobile (32,849).

Q: What settings provide the most balanced experience at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset yields 92.2 FPS, which is smooth for most gameplay. The Medium preset offers 119.6 FPS, providing a significant frame rate boost with only a visual quality trade-off. Ultra drops to 69.4 FPS, which is still playable but less fluid.

Q: Can the system handle 4K gaming without major compromises?

A: At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 83.1 FPS, while Medium hits 67.5 FPS. High drops to 49.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 40.6 FPS. For 4K, sticking to Low or Medium is necessary to maintain frame rates above 60 FPS.

Q: What does the 3DMark Steel Nomad score indicate about DirectX 12 performance?

A: The GPU’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,157 aligns with its mid-range positioning. This synthetic test confirms the card’s capability for modern DirectX 12 titles, though Palworld’s real-world results vary by preset and resolution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 624.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for Palworld’s open-world streaming demands at 4K. The GPU’s boost clock of 2430 MHz and game clock of 2124 MHz are modestly high, but the data shows that the card’s raw throughput—37.32 TFLOPS FP32—is what drives the frame rates.

At 1080p Low, the GPU is not the bottleneck, as the 223.8 FPS result suggests the CPU is feeding frames efficiently. However, the 82.4% drop in performance from Low to Ultra at 1080p (223.8 FPS to 103.4 FPS) highlights how much the visual preset impacts the GPU’s workload. The card’s 96 ROPs and 240 TMUs handle texture and pixel shading effectively, but the 263 W TDP indicates it is a power-hungry part that needs adequate cooling. The GPU’s percentile rank of 76 versus all GPUs places it firmly in the upper echelon, but its nearest rivals in synthetic tests are older or workstation-class parts, showing that it competes well against the previous generation.

The 60 RT cores suggest ray tracing capability, but Palworld’s measured data does not include ray tracing metrics. Instead, the focus is on rasterization, where the card excels. The GPU’s 4K High result of 49.6 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, but this is a settings issue rather than a hardware deficiency, as dropping to Low nearly doubles the frame rate to 83.1 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy for optimizing the gameplay experience. At 1920x1080, the High preset at 136.5 FPS is the sweet spot for visual fidelity and smoothness, as it offers a 32.1% improvement over Ultra (103.4 FPS) while maintaining a high level of detail. For players prioritizing frame rate, Medium at 182.4 FPS is a solid choice, sacrificing some shadows and effects for a 33.6% boost over High.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset at 119.6 FPS is the recommended balance. It is 29.7% faster than High (92.2 FPS) and 72.3% faster than Ultra (69.4 FPS). The Low preset at 148.2 FPS is excessive for most displays, but it does provide headroom for high-refresh-rate monitors. For 4K, the Low preset at 83.1 FPS is the only way to stay above 60 FPS, while Medium at 67.5 FPS is acceptable for slower-paced exploration. High and Ultra at 4K are not recommended for consistent gameplay, as they fall below 50 FPS.

The data suggests that the Ultra preset provides diminishing returns across all resolutions. At 1080p, Ultra is only 24.2% faster than High in terms of frame rate penalty (103.4 vs 136.5), but the visual difference is often negligible. The i5-12400F’s 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 4.40 GHz boost clock are sufficient to avoid CPU bottlenecks, so the settings choice is purely a GPU load decision.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system’s performance is exceptional across all presets. The Low preset delivers 223.8 FPS, which is the highest recorded value in the entire dataset. Medium follows with 182.4 FPS, a 18.5% reduction from Low. High drops to 136.5 FPS, a 25.2% reduction from Medium. Ultra is the most demanding, averaging 103.4 FPS, which is a 24.3% reduction from High. The step-down from Low to Ultra is a 53.8% performance loss, highlighting the massive workload difference between the lowest and highest settings.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats but with lower absolute numbers. Low averages 148.2 FPS, which is still very high. Medium achieves 119.6 FPS, a 19.3% drop. High reaches 92.2 FPS, a 22.9% reduction from Medium. Ultra falls to 69.4 FPS, a 24.7% decrease from High. The resolution increase from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 33% performance at each preset, consistent with the increase in pixel count from 2.07 million to 3.69 million pixels.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is the clear bottleneck. Low averages 83.1 FPS, which is a 43.9% drop from 1440p Low. Medium achieves 67.5 FPS, a 43.6% reduction. High drops to 49.6 FPS, a 46.2% decrease. Ultra is the weakest result, averaging 40.6 FPS, a 41.5% reduction from 1440p Ultra. The 4K resolution has 8.29 million pixels, which is 2.25 times the 1440p count, and the frame rate scaling roughly matches this increase in workload, confirming that the RX 7800 XT’s 16 GB memory pool is being utilized but its compute units are saturated. The combination’s overall ranking of 619 out of 1718 for Palworld places it comfortably above the median, and the measured data supports that this is a capable 1080p and 1440p machine with limited 4K potential.