Counter-Strike 2

Counter-Strike 2 presents a demanding workload for the Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the Intel Arc B370, with benchmark results showing significant performance scaling challenges as resolution increases. The data indicates that this combination ranks near the bottom of tested configurations, placing 2642nd out of 2870 combos, which suggests a fundamental bottleneck that becomes more pronounced at higher graphical loads. The measured FPS across resolutions reveals a system that can handle competitive play at lower settings but struggles to maintain smooth frame rates when both resolution and visual fidelity are pushed.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep performance drop when moving from 1080p to 4K, with the scaling pattern heavily favoring the lowest settings at every resolution. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 162 FPS, but this falls to 107 FPS at 1440p and further to 60 FPS at 4K—a decline of 34% from 1080p to 1440p and another 44% from 1440p to 4K. This steep drop-off suggests that the Intel Arc B370's rendering capabilities are the primary limiting factor, as the frame rate reduction is far more severe than what would be expected from a CPU-bound scenario.

The High settings preset shows a similar but slightly less dramatic scaling pattern, with 100 FPS at 1080p dropping to 66 FPS at 1440p and 37 FPS at 4K. This represents a 34% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 44% reduction from 1440p to 4K, nearly identical percentages to the Low preset. The consistency of these percentage drops across different settings levels indicates that the GPU is being saturated in a uniform way, with the pixel count being the dominant variable rather than the complexity of the scene.

Ultra settings reveal the most constrained performance, with 78 FPS at 1080p falling to 52 FPS at 1440p and 29 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 29 FPS is particularly telling—it represents a 63% reduction from the 1080p Ultra score, which is a more substantial drop than the 58% reduction seen when comparing 1080p to 4K on Low settings. This nonlinear scaling implies that the GPU's memory bandwidth or fill rate becomes increasingly inadequate as both resolution and settings complexity increase simultaneously.

The Medium preset provides the only complete dataset with min and max FPS values, offering insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the average is 134 FPS with a range of 114 to 154 FPS, while at 1440p Medium the average drops to 89 FPS with a range of 76 to 102 FPS, and at 4K Medium the average falls to 50 FPS with a range of 42 to 57 FPS. The proportional narrowing of the FPS range at higher resolutions—from a 40 FPS spread at 1080p to a 15 FPS spread at 4K—suggests that the system is becoming more consistently GPU-bound rather than experiencing intermittent CPU or memory hiccups.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable with this CPU-GPU combo in Counter-Strike 2?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 162, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This drops to 107 FPS at 2560x1440 and 60 FPS at 3840x2160 under the same Low preset.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to Low at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 78 FPS average, which is 84 FPS lower than the Low preset's 162 FPS. This represents a 52% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest to the highest quality settings.

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K resolution?

A: Only with the Low settings preset, which achieves exactly 60 FPS average at 3840x2160. The Medium preset falls short at 50 FPS, while High and Ultra produce 37 FPS and 29 FPS respectively.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like across different settings?

A: The Medium preset provides the only complete min/max data. At 1080p, frames range from 114 to 154 FPS (40 FPS spread), at 1440p from 76 to 102 FPS (26 FPS spread), and at 4K from 42 to 57 FPS (15 FPS spread), indicating tighter frame pacing at higher resolutions.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The Intel Core i5-10400F and Intel Arc B370 combination ranks 2642nd out of 2870 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 8% of all configurations tested for Counter-Strike 2.

Q: Does the performance difference between 1080p and 1440p suggest a GPU or CPU limitation?

A: The 34% FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p at both Low and High settings indicates a GPU limitation, as the CPU's workload doesn't scale significantly with resolution while the GPU's pixel processing load increases substantially.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Low settings preset at 1920x1080 provides the most playable experience for competitive Counter-Strike 2, delivering 162 FPS average which is suitable for high refresh rate monitors. The Medium preset at 1080p still offers a respectable 134 FPS average, but the 28 FPS difference between Low and Medium may be noticeable in fast-paced scenarios where frame rate consistency is critical. The data shows that the Ultra preset at any resolution fails to reach 100 FPS, making it unsuitable for serious competitive play.

For users prioritizing visual quality over maximum frame rate, the High preset at 1080p achieves 100 FPS, which remains playable but represents a 38% reduction from the Low preset's performance. At 1440p, the Low settings preset drops to 107 FPS, which is still above 100 FPS but represents a significant compromise in resolution. The 4K Low result of 60 FPS is the only 4K configuration that hits the 60 FPS threshold, though this requires sacrificing all graphical enhancements.

The benchmark data suggests that this system is best utilized at 1080p with Low or Medium settings, where it can maintain frame rates above 130 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p offers a balanced compromise with 134 FPS average and frame times ranging from 114 to 154 FPS, providing smoother performance than the High preset's 100 FPS average. Users with 1440p monitors should stick to Low settings to stay above 100 FPS, while 4K gaming is only viable with the lowest quality settings at exactly 60 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system produces its strongest results across all settings. The Low preset leads with 162 FPS average, followed by Medium at 134 FPS, High at 100 FPS, and Ultra at 78 FPS. The Medium preset's complete data shows a minimum of 114 FPS and maximum of 154 FPS, indicating a 40 FPS variance that could be perceptible in gameplay. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a consistent degradation: 162 to 134 (17% drop), 134 to 100 (25% drop), and 100 to 78 (22% drop), suggesting each settings tier imposes a similar relative cost.

At 2560x1440, performance diminishes noticeably across all presets. Low settings still manage 107 FPS, while Medium drops to 89 FPS, High to 66 FPS, and Ultra to 52 FPS. The Medium preset at this resolution shows a range of 76 to 102 FPS, with the 26 FPS spread indicating more consistent frame delivery than at 1080p. The percentage drops from 1080p to 1440p are remarkably uniform: Low drops 34%, Medium drops 34%, High drops 34%, and Ultra drops 33%, reinforcing that resolution scaling is the dominant factor rather than settings complexity.

At 3840x2160, the system's limitations become stark. Low settings produce exactly 60 FPS, Medium drops to 50 FPS, High to 37 FPS, and Ultra to 29 FPS. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 42 FPS and maximum of 57 FPS, meaning even the best-case frame time at 4K Medium falls below the 60 FPS target. The drop from 1440p to 4K is more severe than the 1080p to 1440p transition: Low falls 44%, Medium falls 44%, High falls 44%, and Ultra falls 44%, showing that the GPU's pixel processing capability is being taxed at a consistent rate regardless of settings.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370's specifications reveal why it struggles at higher resolutions in Counter-Strike 2. With a base clock of 300 MHz and boost clock of 2400 MHz, the GPU's 1280 shading units and 40 texture mapping units produce a pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance of 6.144 TFLOPS places this GPU in a modest performance tier, which aligns with its 5th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its benchmark score of 1184 in 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12.

The GPU's memory configuration is particularly relevant to the resolution scaling observed. With system shared memory, the bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent," which means the GPU relies on the CPU's dual-channel DDR4 memory running at 42.7 GB/s. This shared memory architecture likely contributes to the steep performance drops at 4K, where the increased pixel data demands more memory bandwidth than the system can provide. The 3 nm process node and Xe3-LPG architecture with Panther Lake chip suggest modern design, but the 25 W TDP indicates a power-constrained part that cannot sustain high clock speeds under load.

The GPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores—the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570, ATI Radeon HD 5770, AMD Radeon HD 7650M, and AMD FirePro M2000—are all older, lower-performance parts, with delta percentages ranging from -0.7% to 1.4%. This clustering suggests that the Arc B370 sits in a performance tier that is fundamentally unsuited for high-resolution gaming in modern titles like Counter-Strike 2. The GPU's 10 ray tracing cores provide minimal benefit for this game, as Counter-Strike 2's rendering workload is primarily rasterization-based.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F brings 6 cores and 12 threads to this configuration, with base and boost clocks of 2.90 GHz and 4.30 GHz respectively. The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance for its class, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10283 and a Passmark multithread score of 12115. The 3dmark 16-thread score of 4748 and max-thread score of 4735 indicate that the CPU's performance scales well with thread count, suggesting it can handle the game's background tasks without becoming a bottleneck.

However, the CPU's single-thread performance, which is critical for Counter-Strike 2's main game logic, shows more modest results. The 3dmark single-thread score of 688 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1451 place the i5-10400F in a mid-range position among its rivals. The nearest CPU rivals—Intel Xeon 6756E, Intel Core 7 160UL, AMD EPYC 7552, and AMD Ryzen 3 7320C—show delta percentages of 0.2%, -0.3%, 0.5%, and -0.6% respectively, indicating that the i5-10400F's overall benchmark average of 14185 is tightly clustered with these very different processors.

The CPU's 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth provide adequate support for the game's data requirements, but the DDR4 memory support and PCIe Gen 3 interface may limit the GPU's ability to access system memory efficiently for the shared memory architecture. The 65 W TDP and 14 nm process node suggest a power-efficient but not performance-leading design, which is reflected in the CPU's 68th percentile ranking among all CPUs. This percentile ranking is significantly higher than the GPU's 5th percentile, confirming that the CPU is not the primary constraint in this system.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-10400F and Intel Arc B370 combination ranks 2642nd out of 2870 tested combos for Counter-Strike 2, placing it in the bottom 8% of all configurations. This ranking is primarily driven by the GPU's severe performance limitations, as the CPU's 68th percentile ranking among all CPUs is far more respectable than the GPU's 5th percentile ranking. The measured FPS data supports this analysis—even at 1080p Low, the system achieves only 162 FPS, which is below what many competitive players would consider optimal for a game like Counter-Strike 2.

The combo's ranking relative to its component parts reveals a significant imbalance. The CPU's average benchmark score of 14185 places it 0.2% above the Intel Xeon 6756E and 0.5% above the AMD EPYC 7552, showing that the processor is competitive with much more expensive server-class parts. However, the GPU's average benchmark score of 1184 is 0.2% below the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 and 0.5% below the ATI Radeon HD 5770, demonstrating that the graphics card is performing at a level comparable to hardware from over a decade ago.

This disparity between CPU and GPU performance creates a system where the graphics card is the definitive bottleneck, as evidenced by the consistent 34% performance drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings. The 4K results, where even Low settings only achieve exactly 60 FPS, further emphasize that the GPU cannot handle the pixel throughput required at higher resolutions. For users considering this combination for Counter-Strike 2, the data suggests that the system is only viable at 1080p with Low or Medium settings, and that any upgrade path should focus on replacing the GPU rather than the CPU.