Counter-Strike 2

Counter-Strike 2 is notoriously CPU-bound at lower resolutions, and this combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 reveals exactly how that bottleneck shifts as resolution increases. At 1080p, the frame rates are astronomical, but the scaling pattern between settings shows a clear progression. Moving from High to Low at 1920x1080 yields a jump from 478 FPS to 775 FPS, a massive 297 FPS increase, while the step from Medium to High is a smaller 161 FPS gap. This indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is doing most of the heavy lifting, and the GPU is barely breaking a sweat. When resolution scales to 2560x1440, the same settings show 317.2 FPS on High, 426.2 FPS on Medium, and 511.3 FPS on Low, demonstrating a proportionate drop of roughly 34% from the 1080p numbers. At 4K (3840x2160), the picture changes dramatically: High drops to 180.3 FPS, Medium to 238.1 FPS, and Low to 288.1 FPS. The 4K High result is less than half of the 1080p High result, which strongly suggests the GPU is now the limiting factor. The delta between Low and High at 4K is 107.8 FPS, a narrower spread than the 297 FPS gap at 1080p, confirming that the RTX 5090's workload is becoming the primary constraint as pixel count rises.

Settings Recommendations

For competitive play, the data clearly favors Low settings, but the choice depends entirely on your refresh rate and resolution targets. At 1920x1080, Low produces 775 FPS, which is excessive for virtually any display on the market, while Medium at 639.1 FPS and High at 478 FPS are still far beyond what even the fastest 500Hz monitors can display. Ultra at 1080p yields 373.7 FPS, which remains highly playable and offers better visual fidelity without any practical downside for most players. At 2560x1440, Low hits 511.3 FPS, Medium reaches 426.2 FPS, and High sits at 317.2 FPS — all still excellent for high-refresh panels. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 245.5 FPS, which is still smooth but begins to show the GPU's influence. At 3840x2160, the picture changes: Low provides 288.1 FPS, Medium 238.1 FPS, High 180.3 FPS, and Ultra falls to 140.2 FPS. For 4K gaming, High is the sweet spot for visual quality if you have a 144Hz or 165Hz display, as the 180.3 FPS average stays comfortably above those thresholds. Ultra at 4K is the only configuration that risks dropping below 144Hz in demanding scenes, making it unsuitable for serious competitive play. The benchmark results indicate that Medium at 4K offers the best balance for players who want both smoothness and improved visuals, delivering 238.1 FPS which clears all common high-refresh targets.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 2 out of 1,632 tested combinations in Counter-Strike 2. That places this build in the top 0.12% of all systems tested, which is an exceptional result and confirms that this is one of the fastest configurations possible for this title. The only combo ranked above it would need to outperform these already extraordinary frame rates, which is a tall order given that the RTX 5090 sits at the 94th percentile among all GPUs and the i7-14700K sits at the 96th percentile among all CPUs. The 1080p Low result of 775 FPS and the 1440p Low result of 511.3 FPS are both indicative of a system that is rarely constrained by hardware limitations. The fact that this combination ranks second out of 1,632 systems means that the overwhelming majority of builds will deliver significantly lower performance, and even the most demanding 4K Ultra settings at 140.2 FPS outperform what most systems can achieve at 1080p. This ranking underscores that the i7-14700K and RTX 5090 are both top-tier components that complement each other well, with no obvious bottleneck in either direction for this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rate data provides a complete picture of performance across all twelve tested configurations. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 775 FPS, Medium 639.1 FPS, High 478 FPS, and Ultra 373.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 135.9 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 161.1 FPS, and the gap between High and Ultra is 104.3 FPS. This pattern suggests that each settings tier has a somewhat similar cost, but the CPU's single-thread performance becomes more important as settings drop. Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers are: Low 511.3 FPS, Medium 426.2 FPS, High 317.2 FPS, and Ultra 245.5 FPS. The relative drops from 1080p are 34% for Low, 33.3% for Medium, 33.6% for High, and 34.3% for Ultra, showing a remarkably consistent scaling pattern across all settings at this resolution. At 3840x2160, the results are: Low 288.1 FPS, Medium 238.1 FPS, High 180.3 FPS, and Ultra 140.2 FPS. The 4K numbers represent a 62.8% drop from 1080p for Low, a 62.7% drop for Medium, a 62.3% drop for High, and a 62.5% drop for Ultra. This consistent ~62% reduction across all settings at 4K indicates that the GPU workload scales linearly with pixel count, and the CPU is no longer the primary constraint at this resolution. The minimum frame rates are not provided in the data, but the average FPS figures are consistently high enough to suggest stable performance across all tested scenarios.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 plays a pivotal role in this combination, particularly at higher resolutions where its massive memory bandwidth and compute capabilities come into play. The GPU features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Counter-Strike 2's modest VRAM requirements. The GPU's 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs are responsible for the pixel throughput that drives the 4K results, and the benchmark data shows that the RTX 5090 is never the bottleneck at 1080p or 1440p, where the CPU dominates. The GPU's boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz are both high, but the real differentiator is the raw compute power: 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. This allows the RTX 5090 to handle even the most demanding settings without breaking a sweat, as evidenced by the 4K Ultra result of 140.2 FPS, which still exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors. The GPU's 94th percentile ranking among all graphics cards is reflected in the fact that it only becomes the limiting factor at 4K, and even then, the frame rates remain highly playable. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14,411 and the Passmark G3D score of 39,650 both place this GPU in the upper echelon of performance, and the benchmark results in Counter-Strike 2 confirm that the RTX 5090 provides ample headroom for future titles as well.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is the primary driver of performance in Counter-Strike 2 at 1080p and 1440p, and its specifications explain why. With 20 cores and 28 threads, this processor has an unusual configuration that combines 8 performance cores with 12 efficiency cores, allowing it to excel in both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads. The base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz are critical for Counter-Strike 2, which relies heavily on single-core performance for its game logic and physics calculations. The CPU's 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which is essential for maintaining high frame rates in fast-paced esports titles. The benchmark data shows that the CPU is the clear bottleneck at 1080p, where the 775 FPS Low result is only slightly below the theoretical maximum that the processor can deliver. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44,534 and single-core score of 6,287 both place this CPU in the top tier, and the 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms its status as a high-end part. The CPU's 125W TDP and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory provide flexibility for builders, and the 10nm process node from Intel ensures efficient operation even under sustained loads. The nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700KF, scores within 0% of the i7-14700K, confirming that the integrated graphics are the only meaningful difference between the two. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X trails by 0.5%, while the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 leads by 1.4%, but these margin of differences are negligible in real-world gaming scenarios. The CPU's ability to maintain frame rates above 500 FPS at 1440p Low and above 300 FPS at 1440p High demonstrates that it is more than capable of feeding the RTX 5090 with enough data to avoid any GPU idle time.