Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

# Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — Intel Core i9-14900K + Intel Arc B570

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive remains one of the most demanding esports titles for high-refresh-rate displays, and the Intel Core i9-14900K paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a compelling dataset across three resolutions and four quality presets. The measured FPS figures range from a minimum average of 119 frames per second at 4K Ultra to a maximum of 465 FPS at 1080p Low, placing this combo in the 79.7th percentile of all tested configurations (rank 2271 out of 2848 combos). This analysis breaks down how the CPU and GPU each influence performance across the tested spectrum.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound progression. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 343 FPS at 1920x1080 to 236 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 139 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 31% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 41% drop moving to 4K. The scaling pattern is consistent: each resolution step costs roughly a third of the remaining headroom, which is typical for a title where pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint at higher resolutions.

Low settings tell a similar but steeper story. The 1080p Low result of 465 FPS drops to 320 FPS at 1440p (a 31% decrease) and then to 189 FPS at 4K (a 41% drop from 1440p). The percentage losses are nearly identical to High settings, suggesting the Arc B570's rendering pipeline scales predictably with pixel count regardless of the quality preset. This is notable because CS:GO's Low preset reduces shadow and texture work substantially, yet the resolution scaling curve remains unchanged — indicating that fill-rate and memory bandwidth, not shader complexity, are the primary limiters at higher resolutions.

The Medium preset provides the only complete min/max FPS data in the dataset. At 4K Medium, the average is 161 FPS with a minimum of 137 and maximum of 185. At 1440p Medium, the average rises to 273 FPS with a minimum of 232 and maximum of 314. At 1080p Medium, the average reaches 396 FPS with a minimum of 337 and maximum of 456. The spread between minimum and maximum grows from 48 FPS at 4K to 82 FPS at 1440p and 119 FPS at 1080p — a sign that at lower resolutions, CPU-driven frame time variance becomes more pronounced, while at 4K the GPU smooths out the frame pacing by being the consistent bottleneck.

Ultra settings compress the resolution scaling further. The 4K Ultra average of 119 FPS is only 41% of the 1080p Ultra figure of 293 FPS. This is the largest relative drop across any preset-to-resolution combination in the dataset. The gap between High and Ultra at 4K is just 20 FPS (139 vs 119), while at 1080p the gap is 50 FPS (343 vs 293). That narrowing at 4K suggests the GPU is nearing its architectural limits — the additional shader work from Ultra settings cannot be fully hidden when the pixel fill rate is already saturated.

What this scaling data says about the limiting component: at 1080p, the i9-14900K's 24 cores and 32 threads are clearly feeding the Arc B570 fast enough to exceed 450 FPS on Low settings, but the GPU becomes the ceiling at 4K where even the fastest presets struggle to maintain 190 FPS. The crossover point appears to be around 1440p, where the combo still delivers 201–320 FPS depending on settings — a range that keeps high-refresh 1440p monitors saturated.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture (Battlemage generation) using TSMC's 5 nm process. The chip packs 19,600 million transistors into a 272 mm² die, with a transistor density of 72.1M per mm². The GPU runs at a fixed 2500 MHz for both base and boost clocks, which is unusual — there is no dynamic clock range to exploit thermal or power headroom. The memory subsystem consists of 10 GB of GDDR6 on a 160-bit bus, delivering 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That bandwidth figure is critical for CS:GO at high resolutions, as the 4K data shows the GPU becoming the limiting factor even at Medium settings.

The B570's compute resources include 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines. The pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s directly impact how quickly the GPU can fill the 8.3 million pixels of a 4K frame. The FP32 throughput of 11.52 TFLOPS is modest by modern standards, but CS:GO is not a compute-heavy title — it relies more on rasterization efficiency and draw-call processing. The 18 ray tracing cores are present but largely irrelevant for this game, which does not use ray-traced effects in any preset.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 65th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20556. Its nearest rivals by that metric are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (0.1% ahead), the Intel Arc A750 (0.1% behind), the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (0.4% ahead), and the AMD Radeon R9 M390X (0.5% behind). The Arc A750 comparison is particularly telling — the predecessor-generation Intel GPU scores nearly identically in synthetic benchmarks, yet the B570's newer architecture delivers the measured FPS figures here. The GPU's DirectX 12 benchmark score of 72 out of a possible 118 in the Passmark DirectX 12 test suggests the driver stack is still maturing, as CS:GO runs on DirectX 9/11 paths in most configurations.

The measured FPS results show the B570 handling 1080p Low at 465 FPS, which is far beyond the 240 Hz refresh rate of most competitive monitors. At 4K Ultra, the 119 FPS average is still playable for casual users but falls short of the 144 Hz target that competitive players prefer. The 10 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for CS:GO — even at 4K Ultra, the game's texture budget is well under 10 GB — so the memory size is not a limiting factor in any tested configuration. The 160-bit bus width, however, does constrain memory bandwidth, which likely contributes to the steep scaling drop between 1440p and 4K.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in CS:GO?

A: The highest measured average is 465 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next highest is 396 FPS at 1080p Medium, followed by 343 FPS at 1080p High.

Q: Can this combo maintain 144 FPS at 4K?

A: Yes, at Medium settings the 4K average is 161 FPS with a minimum of 137 FPS. At High settings the average drops to 139 FPS, which is below the 144 FPS threshold. Ultra settings yield 119 FPS average.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570 compare to its closest rival GPU?

A: The B570's average benchmark score is 20556, which is 0.1% behind the Intel Arc A750 (20582) and 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534). The AMD Radeon R9 M390X scores 20662, 0.5% higher.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested CPU-GPU combinations?

A: This combo ranks 2271 out of 2848 tested combinations, placing it in the 79.7th percentile — meaning it outperforms roughly 80% of all tested combos in CS:GO.

Q: Does the i9-14900K bottleneck the Arc B570 at any resolution?

A: The data suggests no CPU bottleneck is evident. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 465 FPS, which is well above what most displays can show. The consistent resolution scaling pattern indicates the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K, not the CPU.

Q: How much FPS is lost between Medium and Ultra at the same resolution?

A: At 1080p, Medium averages 396 FPS while Ultra averages 293 FPS — a loss of 103 FPS. At 1440p, the gap is 72 FPS (273 vs 201). At 4K, the gap narrows to 42 FPS (161 vs 119).

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Intel Core i9-14900K and Intel Arc B570 combination delivers its strongest results. Low settings produce an average of 465 FPS — the highest figure in the entire dataset. Medium settings average 396 FPS with a minimum of 337 and maximum of 456, providing a tight frame-time distribution that would satisfy even the most demanding esports players. High settings reduce the average to 343 FPS, while Ultra drops to 293 FPS. The 1080p results show that the GPU is never the bottleneck at this resolution; even the most demanding preset stays well above the 240 Hz refresh rate that competitive CS:GO players typically target.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages remain high but begin to show GPU influence. Low settings average 320 FPS, Medium averages 273 FPS with a minimum of 232 and maximum of 314, High averages 236 FPS, and Ultra averages 201 FPS. The 1440p Medium minimum of 232 FPS is still comfortably above the 144 Hz standard, and even the Ultra preset's 201 FPS average leaves room for high-refresh monitors. This resolution presents the best balance for competitive play with this hardware — every preset clears the 200 FPS mark.

At 3840x2160, the Arc B570's limits become apparent. Low settings average 189 FPS, which is the only 4K preset to break the 180 FPS barrier. Medium averages 161 FPS with a minimum of 137 and maximum of 185 — the minimum dips below the 144 Hz threshold, indicating occasional frame drops during intense scenes. High settings average 139 FPS, and Ultra averages 119 FPS. The 4K results show a clear GPU-bound scenario: the pixel throughput required to render 8.3 million pixels per frame outstrips what the B570's 200.0 GPixel/s pixel rate can sustain at higher quality settings.

The complete dataset includes only one min/max FPS set per resolution — the Medium preset. At all three resolutions, the minimum FPS is roughly 85% of the average (137/161 at 4K, 232/273 at 1440p, 337/396 at 1080p). This consistency suggests stable frame pacing across resolutions, with the GPU maintaining a predictable performance envelope regardless of pixel count.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 2271 out of 2848 tested CPU-GPU pairs in CS:GO, placing it in the 79.7th percentile of all configurations. This means the i9-14900K + Arc B570 outperforms roughly four out of every five tested combos in this specific game. Given that CS:GO is heavily CPU-bound at lower resolutions, the i9-14900K's strong single-thread performance is a major contributor to this ranking.

The CPU's own benchmark scores reinforce its role. The Intel Core i9-14900K achieves a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2262.5 and a multi-core score of 39399.5, with a Geekbench single-core score of 2655 and multi-core of 21697. Its average benchmark score is 79097, placing it in the 95th percentile of all CPUs. The nearest rivals are separated by less than 2%: the Core i9-14900KF scores 79371 (-0.3%), the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus scores 79574 (-0.6%), the AMD EPYC 7413 scores 80041 (-1.2%), and the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 scores 77740 (+1.7%).

The GPU's ranking is lower — the Arc B570 sits in the 65th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 20556. The combination of a top-5th-percentile CPU with a mid-range GPU creates an interesting dynamic: in CS:GO, where the engine's draw-call throughput is heavily CPU-dependent, the i9-14900K boosts the combo's performance well beyond what the GPU's percentile would suggest. The 2271st rank out of 2848 combos reflects this synergy — the CPU carries the combo in low-resolution scenarios, while the GPU holds it back at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a 24-core, 32-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture (Raptor Lake-R refresh). It has a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 cache. This large L3 cache is particularly beneficial for CS:GO, which has a small working set that fits comfortably within the 36 MB — reducing memory latency and improving frame consistency.

The CPU's 24 cores are split between performance and efficiency cores (the FACT PACK does not specify the exact P-core/E-core ratio, but the 24-core/32-thread configuration is consistent with the 8 P-core + 16 E-core design typical of this generation). For CS:GO, which primarily uses 2-4 threads for its main simulation and rendering threads, the single-core performance matters more than the multi-core throughput. The Cinebench R15 single-core score of 324.5 and R20 single-core score of 2935 indicate excellent per-thread performance, which directly translates to higher FPS in CPU-bound scenarios like 1080p Low.

The processor's boost clock of 6.00 GHz is the highest in the dataset and helps explain the 465 FPS result at 1080p Low. The i9-14900K's nearest rival in CPU benchmarks, the Core i9-14900KF, scores nearly identically (-0.3% average benchmark score), confirming that the integrated graphics (UHD Graphics 770) have no meaningful impact on CS:GO performance — the discrete Arc B570 handles all rendering.

The CPU's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5, along with dual-channel architecture, gives system builders flexibility, though the FACT PACK does not specify which memory type was used in these measurements. The PCIe Gen 5 interface with 16 lanes provides ample bandwidth for the Arc B570, which runs on a PCIe 4.0 x8 bus — the CPU's Gen 5 lanes are backward-compatible and do not bottleneck the GPU's x8 connection.

At 4K resolutions, the CPU's role diminishes as the GPU becomes the limiting factor. The 119 FPS Ultra average at 4K is less than a third of the 1080p Low figure, and the 24-core processor is clearly not the constraint — the Arc B570's 80 ROPs and 380.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are. The data shows that the i9-14900K provides enough headroom to push the Arc B570 to its absolute limits at every resolution and preset combination tested, making the GPU the sole bottleneck in all 4K scenarios and most 1440p scenarios.