Counter-Strike 2

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Counter-Strike 2 with the Intel Core i7-13700K and Intel Arc B580 reveal a pronounced scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the combo produces 149.5 FPS average. Moving to 2560x1440 on the same preset drops the average to 100.5 FPS, a reduction of approximately one-third. Pushing further to 3840x2160 at Ultra yields 56.2 FPS, which is less than half the 1440p result and barely above a 4K60 threshold. This trajectory indicates that the graphics card becomes the primary constraint at higher resolutions, particularly on the most demanding preset.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 306.8 FPS average, a figure that suggests the CPU is doing most of the heavy lifting at this setting. Scaling to 1440p Low reduces the average to 207.1 FPS, while 4K Low still manages 112.3 FPS. The gap between 1080p and 1440p Low is about 100 FPS, whereas the gap between 1440p and 4K Low is roughly 95 FPS. This relatively consistent drop across resolutions indicates that at Low settings, the workload remains balanced enough that neither component is completely saturated until 4K.

The Medium preset occupies a middle ground. At 1080p Medium, the average is 255.8 FPS, falling to 170.5 FPS at 1440p and 92.4 FPS at 4K. The percentage losses from 1080p to 1440p and from 1440p to 4K are similar, around 33% and 46% respectively. High settings show 192.4 FPS at 1080p, 127.6 FPS at 1440p, and 71.5 FPS at 4K. Across all four presets, the 4K results are consistently the weakest relative to their 1080p counterparts, which strongly suggests that the Arc B580's memory bandwidth and pixel throughput become limiting factors at 3840x2160.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture with 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units. Its boost clock is fixed at 2670 MHz, identical to the base clock, which means the card runs at a constant frequency without dynamic boosting. The memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, delivering 456.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This configuration places the card in the 66th percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 23021.

In Counter-Strike 2, the GPU's role is most evident in the Ultra preset results. The 4K Ultra average of 56.2 FPS is the lowest measured figure in the entire dataset, and the 1440p Ultra result of 100.5 FPS is similarly the weakest at that resolution. The card's 13.67 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 213.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are clearly insufficient for the game's highest visual settings at high resolutions. However, at 1080p Low, the 306.8 FPS average demonstrates that the B580 has ample headroom when the workload is lighter.

The nearest rivals for the Arc B580 include the AMD Radeon 760M with a deltaPct of 0.1, the NVIDIA P106-100 at 0.3, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 at -0.7, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile at 1.3. These deltas are small, indicating that the B580 performs within a tight band around these comparable products in synthetic benchmarks. The RTX 4060 is the only desktop discrete GPU in this group, and its score is just 0.7% higher than the B580's average. This proximity suggests that in less demanding scenarios, such as Counter-Strike 2 at Low or Medium settings, the B580 should track closely to the RTX 4060, though the measured data here only covers the B580 itself.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers 255.8 FPS average, which is the second-highest 1080p result behind Low. The difference between Medium and Low at 1080p is 51 FPS, while the difference between Medium and High is 63.4 FPS. This places Medium as the point of diminishing returns: it offers a substantial frame rate advantage over High while remaining visually superior to Low. At 1440p, Medium produces 170.5 FPS, which comfortably exceeds the 144 Hz refresh rate common on many monitors. Even at 4K, Medium manages 92.4 FPS, which is playable for competitive titles.

The High preset at 1440p achieves 127.6 FPS, which is still above 120 FPS but below the 144 FPS mark. At 4K High, the 71.5 FPS average is functional but not ideal for fast-paced competitive play. The Ultra preset is the least recommended option across all resolutions. At 1080p Ultra, the 149.5 FPS average is the lowest among the four 1080p presets, and at 4K Ultra the 56.2 FPS result risks dropping below the refresh rate of many displays during intense firefights.

For players prioritizing frame rate over visual fidelity, Low at 1440p provides 207.1 FPS, which is a strong competitive option. However, the data suggests that Medium at 1080p or 1440p offers the best balance between image quality and performance. The 4K Medium result of 92.4 FPS is the most viable 4K option, as it is over 36 FPS higher than 4K High and over 36 FPS higher than 4K Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the four presets produce a clear hierarchy. Low leads with 306.8 FPS average, followed by Medium at 255.8 FPS, High at 192.4 FPS, and Ultra at 149.5 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 157.3 FPS, meaning the Ultra preset costs roughly half the frame rate of Low. This is a significant penalty for the visual enhancements that Ultra provides.

At 2560x1440, Low achieves 207.1 FPS, Medium reaches 170.5 FPS, High drops to 127.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 100.5 FPS. The spread here is 106.6 FPS, slightly narrower than at 1080p. The Medium result is notably close to the 1440p High result at 1080p, which suggests that resolution scaling and settings scaling have comparable impacts on performance.

At 3840x2160, Low produces 112.3 FPS, Medium drops to 92.4 FPS, High falls to 71.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 56.2 FPS. The 4K Low result is actually higher than the 1080p Ultra result, which underscores how much the Ultra preset taxes the GPU. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a consistent decline, with each step costing roughly 20 to 25 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-13700K and Intel Arc B580 ranks 1259 out of 1632 tested combos in Counter-Strike 2. This places it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which is somewhat surprising given the strong CPU and the B580's reasonable synthetic scores. The rank suggests that the GPU holds back the overall combo performance in this specific game, especially when compared to other pairings that may include higher-tier graphics cards.

The CPU alone sits in the 93rd percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 47282. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-13700KF at a deltaPct of -0.1, the AMD EPYC 4364P at 0.3, the Intel Core i9-12900F at 0.4, and the AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 5945 at -0.5. These deltas are all within half a percent, indicating that the 13700K is essentially tied with several high-end processors in general compute performance. The GPU, by contrast, sits in the 66th percentile, and its rival deltas are similarly small, ranging from -0.7 to 1.3 percent.

The disparity between the CPU's 93rd percentile and the GPU's 66th percentile explains the combo's rank. In Counter-Strike 2, a game that is traditionally CPU-bound at lower resolutions, the 13700K should theoretically push frame rates very high. The measured data confirms this at 1080p Low with 306.8 FPS. However, the combo rank of 1259 out of 1632 indicates that most other tested combinations outperform this pair, likely due to the GPU becoming a bottleneck at higher settings and resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K features 16 cores and 24 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. It is built on Intel's 10 nm Raptor Lake architecture and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. The L3 cache is 30 MB shared, and the processor includes UHD Graphics 770 as integrated graphics. Its synthetic benchmarks are strong: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 39000, single-core scores 5505, and Geekbench multicore reaches 17731.

In Counter-Strike 2, the CPU's influence is most apparent at 1080p Low, where the 306.8 FPS average far exceeds anything the GPU could produce on its own at higher settings. The 3dmark single-thread score of 1136 and the passmark single-thread score of 4333 both indicate strong per-core performance, which is critical for a game like Counter-Strike 2 that often relies on a few heavily loaded threads. The 16-core configuration also ensures that background tasks and game logic do not starve the main threads.

The CPU's nearest rivals all have average benchmark scores within 0.5% of the 13700K. The i7-13700KF is essentially identical with a deltaPct of -0.1, while the AMD EPYC 4364P and Intel Core i9-12900F are within 0.3 and 0.4 percent respectively. The AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 5945 is 0.5 percent lower. This tight clustering means that swapping to any of these CPUs would produce nearly identical results in Counter-Strike 2, assuming the GPU remains the same.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's role diminishes as the GPU becomes more heavily loaded. The 4K Low result of 112.3 FPS is still high enough to suggest that the CPU is not a limiting factor even at this resolution, but the 4K Ultra result of 56.2 FPS is clearly GPU-bound. The data indicates that the 13700K provides more than enough processing power for this game, and the overall combo performance is constrained almost entirely by the Arc B580's capabilities.