Palworld

Palworld, a survival title that launched in early 2024, presents a demanding open-world environment where creature collection and base building intersect with real-time combat. For the combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, the measured performance data reveals a system capable of delivering smooth gameplay at 1080p, but one that encounters significant challenges as resolution and graphical fidelity increase. The benchmark results show a clear narrative of GPU-bound limitations at higher resolutions, while the CPU provides a robust foundation that prevents bottlenecking at lower settings.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process node. It operates with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and can boost up to 4.60 GHz, featuring a 20 MB shared L3 cache. This configuration delivers substantial multithreaded performance, as evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21279 and a Geekbench multicore score of 10971. In the context of Palworld, which involves simulating a living world with numerous AI-driven creatures and physics interactions, this processing power is crucial for maintaining consistent frame pacing.

The CPU's performance percentile of 82 versus all CPUs indicates it sits comfortably above the median, and its average benchmark score of 25236 places it in close competition with the Intel Core i7-13620H, which scores 25201 and trails by a mere 0.1%. This proximity in synthetic benchmarks translates to real-world parity in CPU-intensive scenarios. Looking at the measured FPS data, at 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 149.4 FPS, suggesting the CPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution and setting combination. However, as settings increase to Ultra at 1080p, the frame rate drops to 74.3 FPS, a reduction that is more attributable to the GPU's workload than CPU limitations.

The processor's single-thread performance, scoring 3004 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 3634 in Passmark single-thread, ensures that the game's primary game logic thread is well-served. Palworld, like many modern titles, relies heavily on a few main threads for gameplay mechanics, and the i5-13400F's high boost clock of 4.60 GHz helps maintain responsiveness. The data indicates that in this pairing, the CPU is not a bottleneck until frame rates reach very high levels, such as the 149.4 FPS observed at 1080p Low, where the GPU still has headroom to render frames quickly enough to expose any potential CPU limitations.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

Within the comprehensive database of tested hardware combinations for Palworld, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER achieves a rank of 1266 out of 1718 total combinations. This places it in the lower-middle tier of all possible configurations, indicating that while it is a functional setup, it does not deliver top-tier performance in this specific title. The ranking reflects the GPU's position as a mid-range component from a previous generation, rather than any deficiency in the CPU.

The GPU's performance percentile of 63 versus all GPUs, coupled with its average benchmark score of 19774, contextualizes its capability. It sits close to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, which scores 19680 and is 0.5% behind, and slightly ahead of the older NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, which scores 19706 and is 0.3% behind. This suggests the RTX 2060 SUPER is performing as expected for its class. The combo's rank of 1266 signifies that a significant number of systems with more powerful GPUs, and potentially more balanced CPU-GPU pairings, will achieve higher frame rates in Palworld.

This ranking is not a verdict on playability, but rather a relative measure of performance headroom. The data shows that this combo is positioned to handle the game at 1080p with high settings reasonably well, but it will not compete with higher-end systems at 4K. The rank suggests that users of this hardware should temper expectations for high-refresh-rate 1440p or 4K gaming, as the system is likely to fall behind many others in the database for those scenarios. The 0.5% delta with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D, which scores 25365, further reinforces that the CPU is competitive with other mid-range options, but the overall combo rank is dragged down by the GPU's limitations.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data reveals a classic pattern of GPU-bound scaling as resolution increases. At 1080p High settings, the system produces an average of 93.5 FPS. Moving to 1440p High settings, performance drops to 62.3 FPS, a reduction of 33.4%. At 4K High settings, the frame rate plummets to 31.6 FPS, a further 49.3% decrease from the 1440p result. This steep decline directly correlates with the pixel count, which quadruples from 1080p to 4K, placing an exponentially larger burden on the GPU's rendering pipeline.

The RTX 2060 SUPER's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, becomes a limiting factor at higher resolutions. While this memory configuration is adequate for 1080p and even 1440p, the demands of 4K textures and higher resolution rendering can exceed its capacity, leading to the significant frame rate drops observed. The GPU's pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s are simply not sufficient to maintain high frame rates at 4K, where the sheer volume of pixels to process overwhelms the hardware.

This scaling behavior is also evident in the settings comparisons. At 4K, the difference between Low (53.2 FPS) and Ultra (26.1 FPS) settings is 27.1 FPS, showing that graphical settings have a profound impact at this resolution. In contrast, at 1080p, the difference between Low (149.4 FPS) and Ultra (74.3 FPS) is 75.1 FPS, but the absolute values are much higher, indicating that the CPU can still feed frames to the GPU at lower resolutions. The data clearly shows that this system is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where the GPU can keep up with the CPU's output, and that 4K gaming is only viable at the lowest settings for a playable experience.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

Q: What is the performance rank of the Intel Core i5-13400F and RTX 2060 SUPER combination in Palworld?

A: This combination ranks 1266 out of 1718 tested combos in the database, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all configurations tested for this game.

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

A: The Intel Core i5-13400F has an average benchmark score of 25236, which is effectively tied with the Intel Core i7-13620H, which scores 25201 and is just 0.1% behind. It is also 0.5% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D.

Q: What frame rate can one expect at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average frame rate at 1920x1080 with High settings is 93.5 FPS. This is a playable frame rate for most users, indicating good performance at this resolution.

Q: Is 4K gaming viable with this hardware configuration?

A: At 4K with High settings, the average frame rate is 31.6 FPS, which is generally considered below the threshold for smooth gameplay. Even at Low settings, the 4K average is only 53.2 FPS, so 4K is only borderline playable.

Q: How does the GPU's performance compare to the RTX 2070?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 19774, which is 0.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070's score of 19680, indicating nearly identical performance between the two cards.

Q: What is the GPU's memory configuration and why does it matter?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This capacity and bandwidth are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but can become a bottleneck at 4K with high detail settings.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using a 12 nm process node from TSMC, featuring 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die. It operates with a base clock of 1470 MHz and a boost clock of 1650 MHz, with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective and provides a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is a critical factor in Palworld, as the game's open world with numerous assets and draw distances can consume significant video memory.

The GPU's performance in Palworld is heavily influenced by its memory bandwidth and capacity. At 1080p, the system achieves 93.5 FPS on High settings and 123.6 FPS on Medium, demonstrating that the 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for these resolutions. However, the jump to 1440p High reduces performance to 62.3 FPS, and at 4K High, the frame rate drops to 31.6 FPS. This decline is indicative of the GPU being unable to fill the frame buffer quickly enough, as its pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s are overwhelmed by the increased resolution.

The GPU's compute capabilities, including 2176 shading units and an FP32 performance of 7.181 TFLOPS, are adequate for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) workloads, which Palworld supports. The presence of 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores suggests the card is capable of ray tracing and DLSS, though the measured data does not specify if these features were enabled. The observed performance suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER is a capable 1080p and entry-level 1440p card for this title, but its age, being released in 2019 and now end-of-life, means it struggles with the demands of 4K gaming in a modern, resource-intensive title like Palworld.