Valorant

# Valorant with AMD Ryzen 5 2600 + Intel Arc B390

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 paired with the Intel Arc B390 delivers a playable Valorant experience, with the data showing a clear pattern: the combination is consistently capable of high frame rates across all tested resolutions, but the scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals where the system's limits lie. With an average FPS ranging from 135 at 4K Ultra to 331 at 1080p Low, this combo sits in the 2534th position out of 2883 tested combinations, indicating that while it handles the game, it does not rank among the top-tier setups. The Intel Arc B390, with its system-shared memory and a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482, places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, while the Ryzen 5 2600, with a PassMark multithread score of 13160, sits in the 75th percentile of all CPUs, suggesting a CPU-heavy configuration that still manages respectable output in this esports title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable decline as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, but the magnitude of that drop varies significantly depending on the quality preset. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 331 FPS at 1080p to 282 FPS at 1440p, then to 225 FPS at 4K — a total reduction of 32% from 1080p to 4K. This relatively modest drop indicates that at Low settings, the system is not heavily bottlenecked by the GPU, as the Intel Arc B390's shared-memory architecture still has enough headroom to push pixels at higher resolutions. The 1080p to 1440p step costs 49 FPS, while the 1440p to 4K step costs another 57 FPS, showing a slight acceleration in performance loss at higher resolution.

At Medium settings, the pattern becomes more pronounced. The average FPS drops from 218 at 1080p to 186 at 1440p, then to 149 at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p reduction is 32 FPS (about 15%), while the 1440p-to-4K reduction is 37 FPS (about 20%). This steeper decline at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU begins to play a more limiting role as resolution increases, even with only a moderate quality preset. The minimum FPS at Medium settings also drops from 185 at 1080p to 158 at 1440p, and further to 126 at 4K, indicating that frame pacing becomes less consistent as the resolution climbs.

High settings show a similar trend: 207 FPS at 1080p, 177 FPS at 1440p, and 141 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K is 32%, nearly identical to Low settings, but the absolute frame rates are lower across the board. Ultra settings, the most demanding preset tested, yield 198 FPS at 1080p, 169 FPS at 1440p, and 135 FPS at 4K — a 32% reduction from the lowest to highest resolution as well. The consistency of this 32% drop across all presets is notable; it indicates that the resolution scaling is primarily driven by the GPU's pixel throughput, and the Intel Arc B390's 60.00 GPixel/s pixel rate and 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 performance are the key constraints at higher resolutions. The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU still has influence, but by 4K, the GPU is the dominant limiting component, as the frame rates compress to a narrow band between 135 and 225 FPS depending on settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 2000 series, built on the Zen architecture using a 12 nm process node at GlobalFoundries. It operates with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The processor has 16 MB of shared L3 cache and 512 KB of L2 cache per core, along with 96 KB of L1 cache per core. Its memory bandwidth is rated at 46.9 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR4 interface, and it connects via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a PassMark multithread score of 13160 and a single-thread score of 2239, with a Geekbench multicore score of 5648 and single-core score of 1154. Its Cinebench R15 scores are 1248 for multi-core and 157.3 for single-core, placing it in the 75th percentile of all CPUs.

In Valorant, the CPU's role is evident from the frame rate behavior at 1080p, where the GPU is less stressed. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 331 FPS, which is the highest average across all tested configurations. This high frame rate suggests that the Ryzen 5 2600's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the single-thread performance — a PassMark single-thread score of 2239 and Geekbench single-core of 1154 — is modest by modern standards. The CPU's boost clock of 3.90 GHz is not particularly high, and its single-core Cinebench score of 157.3 indicates that it may struggle to maintain maximum frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios. The data shows that at 1080p High, the average FPS drops to 207, and at Ultra it is 198, which is only 6% lower than High — a small difference that suggests the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at these settings.

The CPU's percentile rank of 75 versus the GPU's rank of 9 creates an interesting dynamic. The processor is significantly stronger relative to the overall CPU pool than the GPU is relative to its pool, which means that in a game like Valorant — which is known for being CPU-intensive in competitive play — the Ryzen 5 2600 is likely providing adequate instruction throughput, but the Intel Arc B390's limited pixel processing capability caps the system's ceiling. The PassMark data compression score of 187062 and extended instructions score of 7168 show that the CPU handles general computational tasks well, but the frame rate data suggests that the CPU's single-thread limits become apparent at 1080p Low, where the 331 FPS result is still far below what high-end CPUs could achieve in the same configuration. Overall, the CPU is not the primary limiter at 4K, but at 1080p, its 3.90 GHz boost clock and 16 MB L3 cache are likely contributors to the frame rate ceiling observed across all settings.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics processor based on the Xe3-LPG architecture, built on a 3 nm process at Intel. It has 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster operation units, along with 12 ray tracing cores. Its base clock is 300 MHz with a boost clock of 2500 MHz, and it uses system-shared memory, meaning the VRAM size, type, and bus width are all "System Shared" and bandwidth is "System Dependent." The GPU's theoretical performance includes a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s, a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s, and 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 performance. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, and has a TDP of 80 W with no power connectors required. Its only benchmark score is a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 1482, which places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs.

The GPU's role in Valorant becomes clearer when examining the frame rate differences between quality presets at a fixed resolution. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 331 at Low to 198 at Ultra — a 40% reduction from the lowest to highest quality setting. At 1440p, the range is 282 at Low to 169 at Ultra, a 40% reduction as well. At 4K, the range is 225 at Low to 135 at Ultra, a 40% reduction. This consistent 40% drop across all resolutions indicates that the GPU's shading and texture processing capabilities are the primary factor driving the performance difference between presets. The Intel Arc B390's 48 TMUs and 24 ROPs are modest numbers, and its 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is low compared to discrete GPUs, which explains the relatively narrow frame rate band across settings.

The system-shared memory configuration is a critical detail. Since the GPU draws from the same DDR4 memory pool as the CPU, the 46.9 GB/s memory bandwidth of the Ryzen 5 2600's dual-channel setup is shared between processing and graphics tasks. This shared bandwidth constraint likely contributes to the frame rate drops at higher resolutions, where the GPU needs to access more texture data. The 4K High result of 141 FPS and 4K Ultra result of 135 FPS are notably close, differing by only 4%, which suggests that at 4K, the GPU is approaching its memory bandwidth limit, and additional quality settings have diminishing returns. The GPU's percentile rank of 9 places it far below the CPU's rank of 75, confirming that this system is GPU-limited in most scenarios, especially at higher resolutions and quality settings. The 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482 aligns with the GPU's nearest rivals — NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX at 1463 (1.3% delta), GeForce 800M at 1460 (1.5% delta), GT 625 OEM at 1446 (2.5% delta), and GT 710 at 1443 (2.7% delta) — indicating that the Arc B390 is positioned at the very low end of GPU performance, yet it still manages to deliver over 135 FPS at 4K Ultra in Valorant, which speaks to the game's optimization for lower-end hardware.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 + Intel Arc B390 combination ranks 2534 out of 2883 tested combos in Valorant, placing it in the bottom 12% of all configurations. This low ranking is primarily driven by the GPU's 9th percentile performance, as the CPU's 75th percentile ranking would typically support a higher overall position. The combo's rank suggests that while it can run Valorant at playable frame rates, it is far from competitive with top-tier setups, and users seeking high refresh rate gaming at 1080p would likely need a stronger GPU to unlock the CPU's full potential.

The nearest rivals for the CPU are the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V (avg score 21440, 0.2% delta), Intel Core i9-11900H (21367, 0.5% delta), Intel Xeon D-1746TER (21635, -0.7% delta), and AMD EPYC 9454 (21223, 1.2% delta), all of which have similar average benchmark scores to the Ryzen 5 2600's 21484. This indicates that the CPU is competitive with a range of modern and older processors, but the GPU's nearest rivals — the GT 520MX (1463, 1.3% delta), GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% delta), GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% delta), and GT 710 (1443, 2.7% delta) — are all ancient, low-end parts that would not be considered viable for modern gaming. The combination of a mid-range CPU from 2018 with a GPU that performs at the level of decade-old integrated graphics creates an unbalanced system. In Valorant, this imbalance manifests as frame rates that are playable but far from the 300+ FPS that competitive players often target, except at 1080p Low where the combo hits 331 FPS.

The combo rank of 2534 out of 2883 puts it in the 87.9th percentile from the bottom, meaning only about 349 tested combos perform worse. This is a poor showing, but the measured FPS data shows that the system is still capable of exceeding 135 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is above the 144 Hz refresh rate threshold for many monitors. The data suggests that this combo is best suited for 1080p gaming, where it can deliver between 198 and 331 FPS depending on settings, making it viable for competitive play at lower quality presets.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest performance. Low settings produce an average of 331 FPS, which is the highest result across all configurations. Medium settings yield 218 FPS with a minimum of 185 and maximum of 250 FPS, providing a smooth experience with some headroom for frame drops. High settings average 207 FPS, while Ultra settings average 198 FPS. The difference between Medium and High is 11 FPS (5%), and between High and Ultra is 9 FPS (4%), showing that quality scaling at 1080p is gradual and does not incur steep penalties.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates drop noticeably. Low settings average 282 FPS, still a strong result for 1440p gaming. Medium settings average 186 FPS with a minimum of 158 and maximum of 214 FPS, which is a 32 FPS drop from 1080p Medium. High settings average 177 FPS, and Ultra settings average 169 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at each preset is roughly 15-20%, which is consistent with the GPU's limited pixel throughput. The minimum FPS at 1440p Medium of 158 is still above 144 FPS, indicating that the system can maintain high refresh rates at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the system's limits become apparent. Low settings average 225 FPS, which is still respectable for 4K. Medium settings average 149 FPS with a minimum of 126 and maximum of 171 FPS, and this is the only configuration where the minimum FPS drops below 144. High settings average 141 FPS, and Ultra settings average 135 FPS. The 4K results show a compression of frame rates across settings, with only a 90 FPS difference between Low and Ultra, compared to 133 FPS at 1080p. This compression indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, and the system cannot fully utilize the CPU's capabilities at this resolution.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal setting for this combo depends on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 1920x1080, Low settings deliver 331 FPS, which is ideal for high refresh rate monitors (240 Hz or higher), while Medium settings at 218 FPS still support 200+ Hz displays with better visual quality. High and Ultra settings at 207 and 198 FPS respectively are also viable for 144 Hz monitors, offering improved visuals without sacrificing smoothness. For 1080p gaming, Medium settings provide the best balance of frame rate (218 FPS) and visual fidelity, with a minimum FPS of 185 that ensures consistent performance.

At 2560x1440, Low settings at 282 FPS are the best choice for competitive play, as they maintain well above 240 FPS. Medium settings at 186 FPS with a minimum of 158 FPS are suitable for 144 Hz monitors, offering a 32 FPS improvement over High settings (177 FPS) and a 17 FPS improvement over Ultra (169 FPS). Given the small difference between Medium, High, and Ultra at 1440p (ranging from 169 to 186 FPS), Medium is the recommended preset for most users, as it provides the highest average FPS among the quality presets while still looking better than Low.

At 3840x2160, Low settings at 225 FPS are the only preset that comfortably exceeds 144 Hz. Medium settings at 149 FPS with a minimum of 126 FPS are borderline for 144 Hz, but the minimum FPS drop below the refresh rate could cause perceptible stutters. High settings at 141 FPS and Ultra at 135 FPS are best suited for 60 Hz or 120 Hz displays. For 4K gaming, Low settings are recommended to maintain high frame rates, while Medium is acceptable if the monitor is capped at 120 Hz or lower. The data clearly shows that this combo is best used at 1080p with Medium settings, where it delivers 218 FPS average and 185 FPS minimum, providing a smooth and visually pleasing experience.

FAQ

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

A: The highest average FPS is 331, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

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

A: Yes, but only at Low settings (225 FPS average). At Medium settings, the average is 149 FPS, but the minimum FPS drops to 126, which could cause occasional dips below 144 FPS.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B390 has a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482, which is 1.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% higher than the GeForce 800M (1460), 2.5% higher than the GT 625 OEM (1446), and 2.7% higher than the GT 710 (1443).

Q: What is the CPU's percentile ranking among all processors?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 ranks in the 75th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 21484.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the minimum FPS fall below 144?

A: The minimum FPS falls below 144 only at 3840x2160 with Medium settings, where the minimum is 126 FPS. All other tested configurations have minimum FPS values above 144 (where minimum FPS data is available).

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested combinations in Valorant?

A: This combo ranks 2534 out of 2883 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 12% of all configurations tested.