Counter-Strike 2

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Arc B570 pairing in Counter-Strike 2 delivers a dataset that reveals a dominant CPU and a GPU that scales predictably with resolution. Measured frame rates range from 49 FPS at 4K Ultra to 275 FPS at 1080p Low, with the combo ranking 2286 out of 2870 tested configurations. This analysis breaks down those numbers by component role, resolution scaling, and settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with High settings for this CPU/GPU combo in Counter-Strike 2?

A: The measured average FPS is 171 at 1920x1080 with High settings. This is well above the 144Hz refresh rate common in competitive displays, indicating smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 9950X3D compare to its nearest rival in synthetic CPU benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has an average benchmark score of 75779, which is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (75738) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (75716), and 0.4% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (75488). These are near-identical scores.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all tested graphics cards?

A: The Intel Arc B570 falls into the 65th percentile versus all GPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score is 20556, placing it 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534) and 0.1% behind the Intel Arc A750 (20582).

Q: Is the 10 GB VRAM a limiting factor at 4K resolution in this game?

A: The data shows performance drops significantly at 3840x2160, with average FPS falling to 63 on High and 49 on Ultra. While VRAM capacity is not directly tested, the 160-bit memory bus and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth are paired with 10 GB of GDDR6, and the frame rate decline suggests the GPU is the bottleneck at this resolution.

Q: What is the maximum measured FPS for this combo at 1440p?

A: The highest average FPS at 2560x1440 is 182 on Low settings. At Medium settings, the average is 151 FPS with a measured max of 174 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its single-threaded performance?

A: In Cinebench R23, the CPU scores 42018 in multicore and 2259 in singlecore. The multicore score is roughly 18.6 times the singlecore score, reflecting the 16-core, 32-thread configuration.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture, codenamed Battlemage, and represents the Arc 5 generation. It uses the BMG-G21 chip fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC, with 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die. The GPU operates at a fixed clock speed of 2500 MHz for both base and boost, with memory running at 2375 MHz (19 Gbps effective). The 10 GB GDDR6 memory is connected via a 160-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 380.0 GB/s. The GPU has 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, along with 18 ray tracing cores. Its compute capabilities include 11.52 TFLOPS for FP32 and 23.04 TFLOPS for FP16 (2:1 ratio). The card's pixel rate is 200.0 GPixel/s, and its texture rate is 360.0 GTexel/s. The TDP is 150 W, with a suggested PSU of 450 W, and it connects via PCIe 4.0 x8.

In Counter-Strike 2, the GPU's role becomes evident when examining the frame rate scaling across settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low (275 FPS) and Ultra (133 FPS) is substantial, a 142 FPS spread. This demonstrates that even at lower resolutions, the GPU's shading and ROP throughput are being taxed by higher quality presets. The GPU's PassMark G3D score is 14195, and its percentile versus all GPUs is 65, indicating it is a mid-range performer. The nearest GPU rival, the Intel Arc A750, scores 20582 on average, which is a 0.1% delta, meaning the B570 is statistically tied with its predecessor in general compute but shows different characteristics in gaming workloads.

The 4K results tell a clearer story about the GPU's limits. At 3840x2160, the average FPS drops to 102 on Low, 85 on Medium, 63 on High, and 49 on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 53 FPS, which is proportionally similar to the 1080p gap, but the absolute numbers are much lower. This suggests the GPU is the primary limiter at higher resolutions, as the CPU is powerful enough to feed frames at lower resolutions but cannot compensate for the GPU's fill rate and bandwidth constraints at 4K. The 380.0 GB/s bandwidth and 160-bit bus are likely contributors to the 4K bottleneck, as higher resolutions require more memory throughput for textures and framebuffer operations.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture with the codename Granite Ridge. It uses a 4 nm process at TSMC and has a total of 16,630 million transistors across a 2x 70.6 mm² die configuration. The base clock is 4.30 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.70 GHz. The CPU has a substantial cache hierarchy: 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 128 MB of L3 cache. This large L3 cache, typical of the X3D series, is crucial for gaming performance, as it reduces memory latency for frequently accessed data. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, with a memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and it has 24 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. The TDP is 170 W, and it uses the AMD Socket AM5. The CPU's percentile versus all CPUs is 95, placing it in the top 5% of all processors in the database.

In Counter-Strike 2, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p with Low settings, where the average FPS reaches 275. This high frame rate indicates that the CPU's single-thread performance and cache are sufficient to keep up with the game's simulation and draw call processing. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score is 4737, and its 3DMark single-thread score is 1292. The 3DMark 2-thread and 4-thread scores are 2549 and 4963, respectively, showing excellent scaling for lightly threaded workloads. Counter-Strike 2 is known to be CPU-bound in many scenarios, and the 128 MB L3 cache likely helps maintain high minimum frame rates, though the data does not include min FPS for all settings.

The CPU's multi-threaded performance is also strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42018 and a Geekbench multicore score of 26736. However, these scores are less relevant for Counter-Strike 2, which typically uses a limited number of threads. The CPU's nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755, has an average score of 75738, a 0.1% delta, making them virtually indistinguishable in synthetic benchmarks. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285 is 0.4% behind, which is still within a negligible margin. This means that for the average user, the 9950X3D offers no meaningful advantage over these rivals in CPU-bound scenarios, but its combination of high clocks and large cache is well-suited for competitive FPS games.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Arc B570 combination ranks 2286 out of 2870 tested combos in Counter-Strike 2. This places it in the lower half of all configurations, specifically in the 20th percentile of the tested pool (since 2286/2870 ≈ 0.797, meaning it outperforms about 20% of combos). This ranking is surprising given the CPU's top-tier status, but it is dragged down by the GPU's mid-range performance. The CPU is in the 95th percentile versus all CPUs, while the GPU is in the 65th percentile versus all GPUs. The combo's rank reflects the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions, where the CPU cannot overcome the graphics bottleneck.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU's average score of 75779 is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D. It is 0.3% higher than the AMD EPYC 8224P and 0.4% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285. These deltas are all under 0.5%, indicating that the 9950X3D is essentially tied with its closest competitors in aggregate CPU performance. For the GPU, the Arc B570's average score of 20556 is 0.1% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile and 0.1% lower than the Intel Arc A750. The GPU also sits 0.4% above the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M and 0.5% below the AMD Radeon R9 M390X. This places the B570 in a tight cluster of mid-range performers, with no single rival having a decisive advantage.

The combo's rank of 2286 out of 2870 suggests that while the CPU is elite, the GPU holds the system back in this particular game. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 275 FPS, which would rank much higher if isolated, but the 4K results (63 FPS on High, 49 FPS on Ultra) pull the overall ranking down. This is a classic example of a CPU-bottlenecked system at low resolutions transitioning to a GPU-bottlenecked system at high resolutions, with the combo's rank reflecting the average across all tested settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear pattern of scaling from 1080p to 4K across all settings. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 171 at 1920x1080 to 113 at 2560x1440, and then to 63 at 3840x2160. This represents a 34% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 44% drop from 1440p to 4K. At Low settings, the drop is from 275 FPS at 1080p to 182 FPS at 1440p (34% drop), and then to 102 FPS at 4K (44% drop). At Medium settings, the numbers are 229, 151, and 85 FPS, with drops of 34% and 44% respectively. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 133 FPS at 1080p to 88 FPS at 1440p (34% drop), and then to 49 FPS at 4K (44% drop).

This consistent scaling pattern indicates that the performance drop is primarily due to the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth limits. The percentage drop from 1440p to 4K is larger than the drop from 1080p to 1440p, which is expected because 4K has 2.25 times the pixels of 1440p, while 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p. The GPU's 380.0 GB/s bandwidth and 200.0 GPixel/s pixel rate are the likely constraints, as higher resolutions require more memory traffic and pixel processing.

The data suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller FPS drops when increasing resolution, since the CPU workload would remain constant. Instead, the FPS scales proportionally with pixel count, indicating that the GPU is the limiting component at 1440p and 4K. At 1080p, the CPU is likely the bottleneck, especially at Low settings where the GPU has less work to do, allowing the CPU's single-thread performance and large cache to push frame rates to 275 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for Counter-Strike 2 with the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Arc B570 is as follows:

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 275 FPS. The Medium preset averages 229 FPS, with a minimum of 194 FPS and a maximum of 263 FPS. The High preset averages 171 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 133 FPS. This shows a clear hierarchy where each higher preset reduces performance by a significant margin. The difference between Low and Medium is 46 FPS, between Medium and High is 58 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 38 FPS. The highest single measured value is 275 FPS at Low, which is well above the refresh rate of most monitors.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 182 FPS. The Medium preset averages 151 FPS, with a minimum of 129 FPS and a maximum of 174 FPS. The High preset averages 113 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 88 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across presets, with Low losing 93 FPS, Medium losing 78 FPS, High losing 58 FPS, and Ultra losing 45 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 129 FPS is notable because it remains above 120 FPS, which is important for high-refresh-rate 1440p displays. However, the High and Ultra presets fall below the 120 FPS threshold.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 102 FPS. The Medium preset averages 85 FPS, with a minimum of 72 FPS and a maximum of 97 FPS. The High preset averages 63 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 49 FPS. The 4K results show that the GPU is severely challenged, as even the Low preset cannot maintain 120 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 72 FPS suggests some frame pacing issues, but the average of 85 FPS is playable for casual gaming. The High preset at 63 FPS is borderline for smooth gameplay, and the Ultra preset at 49 FPS is below the 60 FPS standard for most users.

The overall pattern shows that the combo is best suited for 1080p gaming, where it can deliver high frame rates at competitive settings. At 1440p, it is capable of high refresh rates on Low and Medium settings, but falls short on High and Ultra. At 4K, it is not recommended for high-refresh-rate gaming, as even Low settings only achieve 102 FPS. The data also shows that the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience, with a minimum FPS that is within 20% of the average across all resolutions, indicating more stable frame times compared to other presets.