Counter-Strike 2

The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 produces a wide spread of frame rates in Counter-Strike 2, ranging from a low of 140.3 FPS at 4K Ultra to a high of 532.6 FPS at 1080p Low. The data indicates that this combination is capable of delivering extremely high performance, but the relationship between resolution, settings, and frame rate reveals where the bottleneck lies in this specific system.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable decline as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that decline is heavily influenced by the chosen preset. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 445.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 319.5 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of approximately 28%. Moving further to 3840x2160 yields 181.1 FPS, which is 59% lower than the 1080p result. This steep drop at 4K indicates that the RTX 5090's rendering load is scaling significantly with pixel count, suggesting the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1920x1080, the combo produces 532.6 FPS, while at 2560x1440 it achieves 463.7 FPS. The difference between these two resolutions is only 13%, which is far smaller than the gap seen at High settings. At 3840x2160 Low, the frame rate falls to 289 FPS, still a 46% drop from the 1080p figure. The relatively small gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings suggests that the CPU is holding the system back at these lower resolutions, preventing the GPU from fully stretching its legs.

Examining the Medium preset reveals a pattern closer to Low than High. The 1080p Medium result is 494.3 FPS, dropping to 424.1 FPS at 1440p and 238.9 FPS at 4K. The 14% reduction from 1080p to 1440p mirrors the Low preset behavior, reinforcing the notion that the Ryzen 7 3700X becomes the primary constraint when the GPU is not heavily loaded. The Ultra preset shows the most severe scaling, with 370.1 FPS at 1080p, 249.1 FPS at 1440p, and 140.3 FPS at 4K. The 62% drop from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings confirms that this preset places a substantial load on the RTX 5090, making the GPU the clear limiting component.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this CPU-GPU pairing achieves a combo rank of 87 out of 1632 tested combinations. This places the system in the top 5.3% of all tested pairings for Counter-Strike 2, which is consistent with the high frame rates measured across all resolution and settings combinations. The rank reflects the overall capability of the system, but it does not tell the full story about where the performance ceiling lies.

The Ryzen 7 3700X itself holds the 85th percentile among all CPUs tested in the database, with an average benchmark score of 28631. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-12600, which scores 28654 (a delta of -0.1%), and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT, which scores 28591 (a delta of 0.1%). These margins are negligible, meaning the 3700X is performing right in line with its direct competitors in synthetic benchmarks. The RTX 5090, meanwhile, sits in the 94th percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 84306. Its closest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, scores 84241, a delta of 0.1%. This indicates that the GPU is performing near the top of its class.

The gap between the CPU's 85th percentile and the GPU's 94th percentile suggests an imbalance. In Counter-Strike 2, this imbalance manifests as the CPU-bound behavior observed at lower resolutions. The combo's rank of 87 out of 1632 is strong, but it is likely held back by the CPU's inability to feed the GPU enough frames at 1080p and 1440p with lighter presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB202 chip fabricated on a 5 nm process. It carries 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The memory clock is rated at 1750 MHz, with an effective data rate of 28 Gbps. These specifications provide ample memory resources for Counter-Strike 2, which is not a particularly VRAM-intensive title, so the 32 GB capacity is unlikely to be a limiting factor in any of the measured scenarios.

The GPU's base clock is 2017 MHz with a boost clock of 2407 MHz. The shading units number 21760, with 680 texture mapping units and 176 raster output units. The pixel rate is 423.6 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 1,636.8 GTexel/s. In terms of compute, the card delivers 104.8 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 operations. These figures explain why the GPU can push high frame rates at 4K Ultra, where the rendering workload is substantial.

The benchmark data for the RTX 5090 shows a PassMark G3D score of 39650 and a PassMark GPU Compute score of 26756. These synthetic results align with the measured gaming performance, where the GPU demonstrates its strength in higher-resolution scenarios. The fact that the 4K Ultra result of 140.3 FPS is still well above playable thresholds indicates that the GPU has significant headroom, and the CPU is what prevents even higher scores at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear picture of how each preset performs at each resolution. At 1920x1080, the Low preset yields 532.6 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset. The Medium preset achieves 494.3 FPS, and High reaches 445.4 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 370.1 FPS. Given that the CPU is likely the limiting factor at this resolution, the choice of preset has a relatively modest impact on frame rate compared to the differences seen at higher resolutions.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset produces 463.7 FPS, Medium yields 424.1 FPS, High achieves 319.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 249.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is only 9%, while the gap between Medium and High is 25%. This suggests that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance at 1440p, as the jump to High incurs a significant frame rate penalty without a proportional visual benefit.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset delivers 289 FPS, Medium achieves 238.9 FPS, High drops to 181.1 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 140.3 FPS. The differences between presets are more pronounced at this resolution, with each step up in quality costing roughly 20-25% of the frame rate. For players prioritizing high refresh rates at 4K, the Medium preset appears to be the sweet spot, as it maintains a frame rate above 200 FPS while offering better visual fidelity than Low. The Ultra preset, while still playable, sacrifices too much performance for the marginal visual improvements it provides.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 532.6 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to 1080p Low?

A: The 4K Ultra result of 140.3 FPS is 73.7% lower than the 1080p Low result of 532.6 FPS, demonstrating the substantial impact of both resolution and settings on performance.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p, as the frame rate difference between Low (532.6 FPS) and Ultra (370.1 FPS) is relatively small compared to the differences seen at 4K, indicating the GPU is not fully utilized.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 87th out of 1632 tested combinations in Counter-Strike 2, placing it in the top 5.3% of all tested systems.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 3700X compare to its nearest rival?

A: The Ryzen 7 3700X has an average benchmark score of 28631, which is 0.1% lower than the Intel Core i5-12600's score of 28654, making the performance difference negligible.

Q: What is the best preset for 1440p gaming?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 yields 424.1 FPS, which is only 9% lower than Low but provides better visual quality, making it the recommended choice for this resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is a desktop processor from the 3000 series, built on the Zen 2 architecture with the Matisse codename. It utilizes a 7 nm process node manufactured by TSMC, containing 3,800 million transistors on a 74 mm² die. The CPU features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The thermal design power is 65 W, which is modest for an 8-core processor.

The cache hierarchy consists of 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and a shared 32 MB L3 cache. Memory support is limited to DDR4 with a dual-channel bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The CPU connects via PCIe Gen 4 with 24 lanes. It supports ECC memory, but does not include integrated graphics. The processor was released in 2019 with a launch MSRP of $329.

Synthetic benchmarks for the Ryzen 7 3700X include a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 19087 and a single-core score of 2694. The Geekbench multicore score is 8083, with a single-core score of 1672. In PassMark tests, the CPU achieves a multithread score of 22458 and a single-thread score of 2656. These scores indicate solid multi-threaded performance but relatively modest single-thread capability compared to newer processors.

In Counter-Strike 2, the CPU's role is evident from the resolution scaling analysis. At 1080p, where the GPU has less work to do, the frame rates across presets range from 370.1 to 532.6 FPS, with the CPU limiting the maximum achievable frame rate. The fact that the 1080p Low and Medium presets differ by only 7% suggests that the CPU is the bottleneck, as the GPU could likely render these scenes much faster if given the opportunity. The CPU's age, being from the Zen 2 generation, means its single-thread performance is a limiting factor in a game like Counter-Strike 2, which relies heavily on CPU performance for game logic and physics calculations.