Valorant

Valorant, as a competitive FPS, is far more demanding on the CPU than the GPU, and the benchmark data for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 reflects this. The results show a system capable of generating incredibly high frame rates at every resolution, but the distribution of those frames reveals that the CPU is doing the heavy lifting. The GPU's role becomes more apparent only as resolution increases. This analysis details the measured performance, offering recommendations on settings and breaking down the results by resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for Valorant with the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 shows a clear hierarchy in performance across the four tested presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. The key insight is that the differences in average frame rate between the presets are smaller than the gap between resolutions, suggesting that the game is not heavily GPU-bound at lower resolutions. The data indicates that the Medium preset offers the most strategic balance for players, providing a significant upgrade in visual fidelity over Low while maintaining frame rates that are only slightly below the Low preset’s results.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 711 FPS, which is the highest result of any tested configuration. The Medium preset is the next fastest at 527 FPS, which is a 184 FPS difference, or roughly 26% lower than Low. While this is the largest single drop between settings at any resolution, the absolute frame rate remains extremely high. The High preset delivers a 502 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 478 FPS. The Medium preset's average of 527 FPS is only 25 FPS lower than the High preset, but it is a substantial 184 FPS above the Low preset. For a competitive FPS, the extra frames from Low are 3; but the visual fidelity of Medium is a significant step up. The data suggests that the Medium preset is the best experience for 1080p, as it sits at a high enough average to be indistinguishable in fluidity from the Low preset for most users while offering better image quality. The Ultra preset's 478 FPS average is still massively high, but the Medium preset provides a better balance.

The trend is identical at 2560x1440 and 3840x2160. At 1440p, the Low preset averages 674 FPS, with Medium at 450 FPS, High at 428 FPS, and Ultra at 408 FPS. At 4K, the Low preset averages 546 FPS, Medium at 360 FPS, High at 342 FPS, and Ultra at 326 FPS. The Medium preset consistently delivers roughly 30-40% higher frame rates than the High and Ultra presets. The data shows that the High and Ultra presets are very close in performance, with Ultra being just 2-4% slower than High across all resolutions. This indicates that the most demanding settings that differentiate High from Ultra have a minimal impact on performance. The Medium preset's higher frame rates and the negligible gap between High and Ultra suggest that Medium is the sweet spot for this combination, as it avoids the heavy visual settings that cause the frame rate to drop from the High to Ultra tier, while keeping the frame rate high enough to ensure a fluid competitive experience.

FAQ

Q: What is the performance difference between the Medium and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers an average of 527 FPS, while the Ultra preset delivers 478 FPS. This represents a 49 FPS difference, or the Medium preset is about 10% faster than Ultra.

Q: How much performance does the Low preset gain over the High preset at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160 resolution, the Low preset achieves an average frame rate of 546 FPS. The High preset delivers 342 FPS. The Low preset is 204 FPS faster, which is approximately 60% higher than the High preset's average.

Q: Does the RTX 3070 bottleneck the Ryzen 9 9900X in Valorant?

A: The data suggests not. At 1080p, the GPU is so underutilized that the CPU is the limiting factor, with the average FPS reaching 711 FPS on Low settings. The GPU only becomes a more significant factor at 4K, where the Ultra preset still manages an average of 326 FPS, indicating that the RTX 3070 is still not the primary constraint in this game.

Q: What is the minimum FPS measured in this benchmark?

A: The minimum FPS recorded was 306 FPS, occurring at 3840x2160 resolution with the Medium preset. The next highest minimum was 382 FPS at 1440p on Medium, and 448 FPS at 1080p on Medium, showing that the minimum frame rates are well above 300 FPS in all recorded cases.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 9900X's single-thread performance relate to Valorant's performance?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X scores 4672 in the PassMark single-thread benchmark and 353 in the Cinebench R15 single-core test. The high frame rates in Valorant, which is a game that is particularly sensitive to single-core performance, are a direct product of this strong single-core capability.

Q: At 4K, what is the frame rate difference between the High and Low settings?

A: At 4K, the High preset averages 342 FPS and the Low preset averages 546 FPS. The Low preset is 204 FPS higher than the High preset, showcasing the performance headroom a lower preset provides.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, built on the Ampere architecture, is the GPU in this test. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth. In Valorant, this bandwidth is not a limiting factor at the settings tested; the game is visually simple and the 8 GB capacity is sufficient even at the highest resolution of 3840x2160. The benchmark data shows that the GPU is not the primary bottleneck at any of the tested settings, with the frame rate being more heavily influenced by the CPU at lower resolutions.

The RTX 3070's clock speeds are a base of 1500 MHz and a boost of 1725 MHz. The data shows that as resolution increases, the GPU's workload increases, but the RTX 3070 remains more than capable. At 1080p with Medium settings, the average FPS is 527, while at 4K Medium, it is 360 FPS. The performance drop is 167 FPS from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings, which is a moderate decline compared to more GPU-demanding titles. The fact that the GPU can handle 4K at an average of 342 FPS on High settings, and 326 FPS on Ultra, shows that even at the highest load, the RTX 3070 is not the primary limiting factor in this game.

The GPU's 5888 shading units contribute to a 20.31 TFLOPS FP32 performance, which is more than enough for Valorant's rendering.

The GPU's PassMark G3D score is 22214, with a percentile of 61 vs. all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT with a score of 17083 (0.7% lower) and the NVIDIA Tesla K40c with a score of 17468 (1.5% higher). These rival scores are so close that the RTX 3070 sits in a competitive performance bracket. However, in Valorant, the impact of this GPU's raw power is lessened by the fact that the game is not graphically demanding. The RTX 3070's role is to ensure that the frame rate is not limited by the GPU, and the data shows it does so, allowing the CPU to be the primary driver of performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the frame rates are extremely high. The Low preset yields an average of 711 FPS, the highest result in the entire benchmark. The Medium preset follows with 527 FPS, the High preset 502 FPS, and the Ultra preset 478 FPS. The minimum frame rates recorded at 1080p were 448 FPS for the Medium preset, with no minimum recorded for Low, High, or Ultra. The maximum FPS for Medium was 606.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high. The Low preset is the top performer with 674 FPS. The Medium preset delivers 450 FPS, the High preset 428 FPS, and the Ultra preset 408 FPS. The minimum FPS readout for the Medium preset is 382 FPS, and the maximum is 517 FPS. The FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p is a 37 FPS decrease for the Medium preset, while the High and Ultra presets decrease by 74 FPS and 70 FPS, respectively. The Low preset loses 37 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the highest resolution, the frame rates are still above 300 FPS. The Low preset averages 546 FPS, Medium 360 FPS, High 342 FPS, and Ultra 326 FPS. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 306 FPS and a maximum of 413 FPS. This is the only resolution where the minimum FPS drops below the 400 FPS mark. The data shows that the performance scale is consistent: Low > Medium > High > Ultra, with the gap between High and Ultra being smaller than the gap between Medium and High.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the CPU-bound nature of this game. The average frame rate for the Medium preset drops from 527 FPS at 1080p to 450 FPS at 1440p, a decline of 77 FPS (about 14.6%). Moving from 1440p to 4K, the drop is 360 FPS, which is a further 90 FPS (20%) decrease. The total drop from 1080p to 4K for the Medium preset is 167 FPS, meaning the 4K average is about 31.8% lower than the 1080p average.

The High and Ultra presets follow a similar pattern. At High, the average FPS is 502 at 1080p, 428 at 1440p, and 342 at 4K. This is a steady decline of 74 FPS (14.7%) from 1080p to 1440p, and 86 FPS (20.1%) from 1440p to 4K. The overall drop from 1080p to 4K is 169 FPS (33.7%). For the Low preset, the average FPS is 711 at 1080p, 674 at 1440p, and 546 at 4K, showing a more modest decline of 37 FPS from 1080p to 1440p, and a 128 FPS drop from 1440p to 4K.

The fact that the FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is not more drastic, especially for the Low preset (33% drop), indicates that the GPU is not being saturated. If the GPU were the limiting factor, the drop between resolutions would be more severe, as the pixel count increase from 1080p to 4K is over fourfold. The RTX 3070 is not the bottleneck, and the CPU's single-thread performance determines the 4K result as well. The 4K results at Medium (360 FPS) and High (342 FPS) are still extremely high, further confirming that the resolution is not the limiting factor.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X with 12 cores and 24 threads is the processor in this setup. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. The benchmark results show that Valorant is highly sensitive to single-thread performance, and the Ryzen 9 9900X's PassMark single-thread score of 4672, and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2253, are key to the high frame rates. The game's engine is efficient at distributing work across multiple threads, but the core count of 12 is more than sufficient for this task, with the 3DMark 16-thread score of 12552 and the PassMark multithread score of 54643 indicating strong multi-threaded capabilities.

The CPU's role is best shown by the fact that the frame rate does not drop dramatically as the resolution increases. At 1080p, the average FPS for Medium is 527; at 4K, it is 360. This 31.8% drop is modest compared to what would be expected if the GPU were the bottleneck. The CPU's high IPC and clock speed ensure that it can feed the GPU with enough data at all resolutions, making the GPU the weaker link only at higher resolutions, and even then, not by a significant margin.

The Ryzen 9 9900X's average benchmark score is 57498, with a percentile rank of 92 vs. all CPUs. Its nearest rivals are the AMD EPYC 9015 with an average score of 57555 (a -0.1% delta), the Intel Core i9-14900 with 58115 (a -1.1% delta), and the AMD EPYC 7313 with 57399 (a 0.2% delta). This places the Ryzen 9 9900X in the top 8% of all CPUs, and its performance in Valorant is a direct result of this high overall capability, particularly the single-core performance. The CPU's 4nm process and Zen 5 architecture contribute to its high frequency and efficiency, which translate to the high frame rates observed in the benchmark.

The CPU's 64 MB of L3 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache per core provide the necessary fast data access for the game engine. The benchmark results show that Valorant is a game that can capitalize on the Ryzen 9 9900X's strengths, with the frame rates being consistently high across all settings and resolutions, affirming that the CPU is the primary driver of performance in this title.