Counter-Strike 2

Counter-Strike 2 is a competitive FPS that scales dramatically across hardware tiers, and the combination of the Intel Core i5-12400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER produces a dataset that highlights CPU-bound behavior at lower resolutions and GPU-bound behavior at 4K. The measured frames per second across twelve distinct configurations—three resolutions and four quality presets—reveal a system capable of high refresh rate play at 1080p and 1440p, with a predictable falloff at Ultra settings and at 4K. This analysis interprets those numbers strictly from the provided measurements, contextualizing the results against the component specifications and the combo’s overall ranking within the database.

FAQ

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

A: The highest average FPS is 355, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is the peak performance point in the measured data, indicating the system’s ceiling when graphical load is minimized.

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

A: The Intel Core i5-12400F has an average benchmark score of 19039, which is effectively identical to the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (19047), showing a deltaPct of 0. It trails the Intel Core 3 201E (19056) by a negligible -0.1% and leads the Intel Core i5-1335U (18982) and AMD EPYC 7773X (18979) by 0.3%.

Q: What is the GPU’s percentile ranking among all tested GPUs?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER holds a percentile rank of 65, meaning it outperforms 65% of all GPUs in the database based on its average benchmark score of 20282. This places it as a mid-to-upper tier card in synthetic tests.

Q: Which setting preset delivers the highest minimum FPS at 2560x1440?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers the only recorded minimum FPS of 166, with a maximum of 225 and an average of 195. This is the only 1440p row with min/max data, making it the most stable measured configuration at that resolution.

Q: Is there a larger performance gap between Low and Ultra at 4K or at 1080p?

A: The absolute FPS gap between Low and Ultra is larger at 1080p: 355 minus 171 equals a 184 FPS difference. At 4K, the gap is 131 minus 63, equaling a 68 FPS difference. The relative drop is steeper at 4K, however, as Ultra delivers only 48% of the Low setting’s frame rate.

Q: What is the combo’s rank within the database for Counter-Strike 2?

A: This specific combination of CPU and GPU ranks 2151 out of 3719 tested combos for this game. This places it in the lower half of all possible pairings, though the measured FPS data shows it remains highly playable in most scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data strongly suggests that Medium settings provide the best balance of performance and visual fidelity for this combo, particularly for users targeting high refresh rates. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average FPS of 295, which is 60 FPS lower than Low (355) but 75 FPS higher than High (220) and 124 FPS higher than Ultra (171). More importantly, the Medium preset is the only 1080p configuration with a recorded minimum FPS of 251, indicating a consistent frame delivery that avoids the dips seen in unmeasured min/max rows for other presets.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium setting again stands out with an average of 195 FPS and a minimum of 166. This is comfortably above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on high-end monitors, while High (146 average) and Ultra (113 average) fall below that threshold. Low at 1440p reaches 235 FPS average, but the visual compromise is unnecessary when Medium retains a 166 FPS minimum. For 4K gaming, Medium is the only preset with min/max data (93 minimum, 126 maximum, 109 average), suggesting it is the only viable option for a playable experience at that resolution, though even this falls short of 120 FPS consistency.

The recommendation is clear: prioritize Medium settings across all resolutions. At 1080p and 1440p, this preset delivers the highest average FPS with the only recorded minimum frame data, mitigating stutter risk. High settings are acceptable at 1440p (146 FPS average) but represent a 25% performance drop from Medium. Ultra should be reserved for 1080p users who prioritize image quality over competitive advantage, as the 171 FPS average still clears 144 Hz but sacrifices the headroom needed for 240 Hz displays. The data shows no scenario where Low is necessary for playability, as even 4K Ultra maintains a 63 FPS average, though this is below the 100+ FPS target for smooth competitive play.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a classic shift in bottleneck behavior. At 1080p with Low settings, the average FPS is 355, which drops to 235 at 1440p (a 33.8% reduction) and then to 131 at 4K (a 44.3% reduction from 1440p). This pattern indicates that at lower resolutions, the CPU is the primary limiter, as the i5-12400F’s six cores and twelve threads are fully utilized to feed frames to the GPU, which has headroom to render more quickly.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is different. The 1080p average is 171 FPS, dropping to 113 at 1440p (a 33.9% reduction) and then to 63 at 4K (a 44.2% reduction from 1440p). The consistent percentage drops across settings suggest that the RTX 2070 SUPER’s rendering load increases proportionally with pixel count, but the absolute FPS values show a hardening GPU limit at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 63 FPS is notably lower than the 4K Medium result of 109 FPS, indicating that the GPU’s shading units and memory bandwidth are saturated by the combination of high resolution and high graphical complexity.

The limiting component shifts clearly between resolutions. At 1080p, the gap between Low (355 FPS) and Ultra (171 FPS) is 184 FPS, showing that the GPU has significant performance headroom that is constrained by CPU throughput. At 4K, the same gap is only 68 FPS (131 Low vs 63 Ultra), meaning the GPU is now the bottleneck and its compute resources determine the frame rate. The data shows that 1440p is the transition zone where both components are relatively balanced, as the Medium preset’s 195 FPS average suggests neither the CPU nor GPU is critically saturated. For competitive play, 1080p Medium or Low maximizes the CPU’s advantage, while 4K requires Medium settings to maintain a playable 109 FPS average.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings shows the system’s high refresh rate capability. Low settings produce the peak average of 355 FPS. Medium follows with 295 FPS average, and its minimum of 251 FPS with a maximum of 339 FPS provides the only complete frame data at this resolution. High settings average 220 FPS, and Ultra drops to 171 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra is 184 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU can scale its workload substantially when the CPU is not the limiting factor.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but the CPU influence wanes. Low settings average 235 FPS, Medium averages 195 FPS with a minimum of 166 and maximum of 225, High averages 146 FPS, and Ultra averages 113 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 122 FPS, indicating that the GPU is beginning to take on more of the rendering burden. The Medium preset’s minimum of 166 FPS is particularly notable, as it shows the system can maintain frame times above the 6ms threshold required for 144 Hz displays even during demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the dominant constraint. Low settings average 131 FPS, Medium averages 109 FPS with a minimum of 93 and maximum of 126, High averages 82 FPS, and Ultra averages 63 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap is now just 68 FPS, confirming that the RTX 2070 SUPER’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are the primary determinants of performance. The Medium preset’s minimum of 93 FPS is the only 4K data point that stays above 90 FPS, making it the sole configuration suitable for a 90 Hz or 100 Hz monitor. The absence of min/max data for Low, High, and Ultra at 4K suggests these settings exhibit more variable frame pacing, though the averages still indicate playability for less demanding titles.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER’s specifications directly explain the measured FPS patterns. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, the card has sufficient memory capacity for Counter-Strike 2’s textures at all tested settings, but the bandwidth becomes a limiting factor at 4K Ultra where the 63 FPS average indicates memory throughput saturation. The GPU’s base clock of 1605 MHz and boost clock of 1770 MHz, combined with 2560 shading units, provide the compute throughput reflected in the 9.062 TFLOPS FP32 rating.

The GPU’s benchmark data reinforces its mid-tier positioning. Its average benchmark score of 20282 places it at the 65th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480, -1% delta), RTX 3070 Mobile (20534, -1.2% delta), Intel Arc B570 (20556, -1.3% delta), and Intel Arc A750 (20582, -1.5% delta). This clustering shows the RTX 2070 SUPER is within 1.5% of these competitors, meaning small architectural differences in shader efficiency or clock behavior account for the FPS variations seen in game.

In Counter-Strike 2 specifically, the GPU’s role is most evident at 4K. The transition from Medium (109 FPS) to High (82 FPS) represents a 24.8% drop, while the transition from High to Ultra (63 FPS) is a 23.2% drop, showing that each step in graphical quality increasingly taxes the GPU’s resources. The 4K Low result of 131 FPS demonstrates that the card retains significant headroom when texture and shading complexity are reduced, but the narrow 68 FPS spread from Low to Ultra indicates that the GPU is operating near its practical limits at this resolution. The 215 W TDP and dual-slot design suggest thermal constraints are manageable, but the 12 nm process node and TU104 chip with 13,600 million transistors are older technology that cannot match newer cards in raw throughput.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F’s six cores and twelve threads are the foundation of this combo’s high frame rates at 1080p. With a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, the processor delivers single-thread performance that is critical for Counter-Strike 2’s game logic and physics. The 3DMark single-thread score of 909 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1680 indicate strong per-core performance, which directly supports the 355 FPS average at 1080p Low where the GPU is not the bottleneck.

The CPU’s cache hierarchy—80 KB L1 per core, 1.25 MB L2 per core, and 18 MB shared L3—provides the low-latency data access that competitive FPS games require. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1699 versus the 4-thread score of 3067 shows scaling efficiency, but the jump to 8-thread (4779) and max-thread (5912) scores reveals diminishing returns, meaning the CPU saturates its available threads around the 4-6 core range. This aligns with the 1080p results where the CPU can feed the GPU enough frames to reach 355 FPS, but cannot push beyond that due to per-core frequency limits.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks highlight its competitive position. With an average score of 19039, the i5-12400F matches the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (19047, 0% delta) and sits just 0.1% behind the Intel Core 3 201E (19056). It leads the Intel Core i5-1335U (18982) and AMD EPYC 7773X (18979) by 0.3%. This grouping shows that the i5-12400F is a solid mid-range processor, and its 73rd percentile ranking among all CPUs reflects its capability to handle modern games without becoming the primary limiter at 1440p and below. The 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a power-efficient choice, though the locked multiplier prevents overclocking to extract additional FPS headroom.

How This Combo Ranks

In Counter-Strike 2, this combination of the Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 2151 out of 3719 tested combos, placing it in the 42nd percentile of all pairings. This rank is lower than the individual component percentiles (CPU at 73, GPU at 65), indicating that the pairing is less optimal than either part would suggest in isolation. The reason is clear from the measured FPS data: at 1080p, the CPU limits performance to 355 FPS, while at 4K, the GPU limits performance to 131 FPS on Low settings. A stronger GPU would push 1080p FPS higher, while a stronger CPU would improve 4K minimums, but this middle-ground pairing leaves performance gaps at both extremes.

The rank of 2151 out of 3719 suggests that many other combos in the database achieve higher frame rates, likely due to newer CPUs with higher single-thread performance or GPUs with more memory bandwidth. However, the measured data shows this combo is far from unplayable. At 1080p Medium, the 295 FPS average with a 251 FPS minimum exceeds the refresh rate of all but the most extreme 360 Hz monitors. At 1440p Medium, the 195 FPS average and 166 FPS minimum are more than sufficient for high-refresh gaming. Only at 4K Ultra does the combo fall below 70 FPS average, which is a reasonable compromise for a card from 2019.

The combo’s rank relative to its component parts suggests that users pairing these two specific parts should prioritize 1080p or 1440p gaming to maximize the value of the CPU’s strength. The 4K results, while functional on Medium settings, do not distinguish this combo from cheaper alternatives. For competitive play, the 1080p Low setting’s 355 FPS average is a standout result that justifies the CPU choice, as it provides the maximum frame rate headroom for esports titles. The data ultimately shows a balanced but slightly outdated pairing that excels in its intended resolution range but falls behind more modern combinations at the extreme ends of the resolution spectrum.