Counter-Strike 2

The benchmark data for Counter-Strike 2, captured with an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at 4K but transitions into a CPU-limited state as resolution drops. The measured average FPS across a sweep of quality presets and resolutions provides a clear picture of where the bottleneck shifts, and the results underscore the extreme headroom this combination offers for esports titles.

Resolution Scaling

The most striking pattern in the measured FPS is the dramatic scaling from 1080p to 4K, which is heavily influenced by the preset selected. At the High preset, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is substantial — from 466.1 FPS down to 304.7 FPS, a reduction of roughly 35%. Moving from 1440p to 4K High yields a further decline to 174.7 FPS, meaning the 4K result is less than half of the 1080p figure. This steep curve is characteristic of a system where the GPU is being taxed more heavily at higher resolutions, but the absolute numbers remain far above refresh-rate thresholds for most displays.

The Low preset tells an even more revealing story. At 1080p Low, the system pushes an extraordinary 745.5 FPS. At 1440p Low, that drops to 491.3 FPS, and at 4K Low, it settles at 275.6 FPS. The scaling here is steep, but the fact that 4K Low still exceeds 275 FPS indicates that even at the lowest settings, the RTX 4090 is not being fully saturated at 1080p — the CPU is the limiting factor at that resolution. The gap between 1080p Low (745.5 FPS) and 1440p Low (491.3 FPS) is a 34% reduction, while the gap between 1440p Low and 4K Low is a 44% reduction, showing that the GPU load is ramping up significantly as pixel count increases.

The Medium preset follows the expected trajectory, with 620.3 FPS at 1080p, 411 FPS at 1440p, and 228.9 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset, however, presents the most interesting case for bottleneck analysis. At 1080p Ultra, the system delivers 359.1 FPS; at 1440p Ultra, it drops to 239.3 FPS; and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 133.8 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p Ultra is a 33% reduction, which is consistent with the other presets, but the 4K Ultra result is the lowest recorded across the entire dataset. This suggests that at Ultra settings, the combination of high resolution and maximum graphical fidelity is finally stressing the GPU to a point where it becomes the definitive limiting component, even with a flagship card like the RTX 4090.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the primary driver of the high FPS figures, and its specifications explain why the system performs so well at 4K. The GPU features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. This memory capacity and bandwidth are far beyond what Counter-Strike 2 requires at any of the tested settings, meaning VRAM is not a limiting factor in any scenario. The card’s 16,384 shading units and 512 texture mapping units allow it to process the game’s geometry and textures with ease, while its 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are largely idle in this title, as CS2 does not heavily utilize ray tracing or DLSS in the benchmark data provided.

The clock speeds are also noteworthy. The RTX 4090 has a base clock of 2235 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These high clocks, combined with the massive shader count, yield a pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s. In practical terms, the data shows that the GPU is only fully utilized at 4K Ultra, where the 133.8 FPS average indicates a heavy workload. At 1080p Low, the 745.5 FPS result is likely capped by CPU performance, as the GPU has ample headroom to render far more frames if the CPU could feed it data faster. The GPU’s 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is a theoretical peak, but the measured results suggest that in CS2, the card is never the bottleneck until the resolution and settings are pushed to their maximum.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X is the component that enables such high frame rates at lower resolutions. This 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache per core provide low-latency access to frequently used data, which is critical for a game like Counter-Strike 2 that relies on rapid, frame-over-frame consistency. The CPU’s single-thread performance is particularly relevant here, and its Geekbench single-core score of 3353 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4459 indicate strong per-core capability.

The data supports the interpretation that the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p. The jump from 1080p Low (745.5 FPS) to 1440p Low (491.3 FPS) is not proportional to the pixel count increase, which suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is delivering frames as fast as it can, and the GPU is waiting. The 3dmark single-thread score of 1280 and the PassMark single-thread score of 4654 further illustrate that the 9700X has excellent single-core performance, but even the best consumer CPUs have a ceiling in game logic and draw call processing. At 4K, the CPU’s role diminishes as the GPU becomes the bottleneck, but the fact that 4K Low still achieves 275.6 FPS shows that the 9700X is not holding back the RTX 4090 even at that resolution. The CPU’s 89th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36029, places it in the upper echelon, and its nearest rivals — the Intel Core i5-14500HX (0.2% higher score) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (0.6% lower score) — are all within a 1% margin, meaning the 9700X is competitively positioned for this workload.

How This Combo Ranks

In the aggregate ranking of tested CPU+GPU combinations for Counter-Strike 2, this pairing of the Ryzen 7 9700X and RTX 4090 sits at rank 38 out of 1,632 combos. This places it in the top 2.3% of all tested configurations, which is a strong result but not the absolute top. The high rank is driven primarily by the GPU’s raw power, as the RTX 4090 is the most capable consumer graphics card in the dataset, with a 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 66473. The CPU’s 89th percentile ranking is also high, but the combination does not reach the top tier because some other CPUs may provide even higher single-thread performance, which is critical for CS2 at lower resolutions.

The rank of 38 suggests that there are 37 other combinations that outperform this one in the game’s measured FPS. Given that the RTX 4090 is the top GPU, the difference likely comes down to CPU choice. A processor with a higher single-thread score than the 9700X’s 3353 Geekbench single-core result could potentially push 1080p FPS even higher. However, the margin is likely small, as the 9700X’s nearest CPU rivals are all within 0.8% of its average score. The data shows that this combo is exceptionally well-balanced for CS2, with the GPU providing massive headroom for 4K gaming and the CPU ensuring that 1080p and 1440p frame rates remain in the hundreds.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The highest average FPS is 745.5, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low preset.

Q: At which resolution and settings does this combo deliver the lowest FPS?

A: The lowest average FPS is 133.8, recorded at 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-thread performance compare to its multi-thread performance?

A: The CPU scores 3353 in Geekbench single-core and 17002 in Geekbench multi-core. Its Cinebench R23 scores are 4459 single-core and 31588 multi-core, indicating strong performance in both areas, but single-thread capability is more relevant for CS2.

Q: Is the RTX 4090’s 24 GB VRAM a limiting factor in this game?

A: No, the 24 GB of GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is far more than CS2 requires at any tested setting, so VRAM capacity does not constrain performance.

Q: What is the combo’s rank among all tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 38th out of 1,632 total tested CPU+GPU combinations for Counter-Strike 2.

Q: Why does the FPS drop so much from 1080p Low to 4K Low?

A: The FPS drops from 745.5 at 1080p Low to 275.6 at 4K Low, a 63% reduction. This indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting factor, while at 4K, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck as it must render four times the pixels.