Valorant

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 paired with Intel Core i5-10400F is a high-refresh-rate machine for Valorant, but the data shows it is not GPU-bound at any resolution. The measured FPS range from 283.8 at 4K High to 389.7 at 1080p Low, which means this combo is consistently delivering frame rates far above what even the fastest competitive monitors can display. The limiting factor here is not the graphics card, but the CPU, which is the older of the two components and holds back the GPU's full potential. This analysis breaks down the measured results to show exactly where the bottleneck lies and what settings give the best experience.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is surprisingly small, which tells a clear story about where the performance ceiling sits. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 389.7 at 1080p to 340 at 4K, a reduction of roughly 12.7%. At High settings, the drop is from 325.4 at 1080p to 283.8 at 4K, about 12.8%. This is a very shallow scaling curve. For comparison, a GPU-bound scenario would typically show a much steeper decline when pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K. The fact that the RTX 4070 loses only about 50 FPS going from 1080p to 4K indicates that the CPU is the primary constraint.

The pattern holds across all settings presets. At Medium, the average goes from 327 at 1080p to 288.6 at 4K. At Ultra, it goes from 320.8 at 1080p to 283.2 at 4K. In every case, the 4K result is within 13% of the 1080p result. This is the signature of a CPU-limited configuration. The RTX 4070 has massive headroom in this game; it is waiting on the Intel Core i5-10400F to feed it frames. If the GPU were the limiting factor, the resolution scaling would be much more aggressive, with 4K performance often dropping to half or less of 1080p performance. Here, the data shows a smooth, gradual decline that points directly at the processor.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070's specifications suggest it should be overkill for Valorant, and the benchmark results confirm this. It has 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory operates at 1313 MHz, which yields 21 Gbps effective. The GPU also has a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, with 5888 shading units. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3854 and a Passmark G3D score of 26927 place it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the database include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, which is 0.6% behind, and the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A, which is 1.9% behind.

Despite this raw power, the GPU is not the star of the show in this pairing. The measured FPS at any resolution and settings preset never drops below 283.2, which is 4K Ultra. This means the RTX 4070 is never working hard. The VRAM capacity is far beyond what Valorant requires, and the memory bandwidth is entirely sufficient. The data suggests that even at 4K Ultra, the GPU is likely idling, waiting for the CPU to send draw calls. The GPU's role here is to provide a rock-solid frame pacing at high refresh rates, but it is not being utilized to its full extent. The Passmark GPU Compute score of 14720 further demonstrates that the card's compute power is not the limiting factor in this game.

CPU Role

This is where the bottleneck sits. The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 10th Gen Comet Lake processor with 6 cores and 12 threads. Its base clock is 2.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. It has a 12 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. In Cinebench R23, it scores 10297 in multi-core and 1453 in single-core. The Passmark single-thread score is 2541. These are solid numbers for a mid-range CPU, and it sits in the 73rd percentile of all CPUs.

However, Valorant is a game that heavily depends on single-thread performance, and the i5-10400F's single-core scores are its weak point. The 3DMark single-thread score is only 688, and the Cinebench R23 single-core score is 1453. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz is decent, but it is the architecture that limits performance. When comparing to rivals, the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C is 0.8% ahead in average benchmark score, and the Intel Core i5-8500 is 1.1% ahead. This places the 10400F in the middle of the pack among similar processors. The fact that FPS does not scale much with resolution is direct evidence that the CPU is the limiting component. The GPU can render frames faster than the CPU can calculate game logic and issue draw calls. To get higher FPS, the user would need a processor with stronger single-core performance. The 12 threads and 6 cores are sufficient for Valorant, but the per-core speed is holding the RTX 4070 back.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the choice of settings preset has very little impact on the overall experience, because the CPU is the bottleneck. However, there are subtle differences that point to a clear recommendation. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers the highest average FPS at 389.7. The Medium preset gives 327, High gives 325.4, and Ultra gives 320.8. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is only 68.9 FPS, or about 17.7%. This is a small gap for a significant visual quality change.

At 4K, the pattern is similar. Low gives 340 FPS, Medium gives 288.6, High gives 283.8, and Ultra gives 283.2. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 56.8 FPS, or about 16.7%. The data shows that the Low preset is consistently the fastest, but the margins are modest. For a competitive FPS like Valorant, the best experience per the measured rows is the High preset at any resolution. The reason is that High delivers nearly the same FPS as Ultra, but with a slightly better frame rate. At 1080p High, the average is 325.4 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any high-refresh monitor. At 4K High, it is 283.8 FPS, which is still far beyond the 240 Hz refresh rate of most competitive monitors. The Low preset offers a small FPS advantage, but the visual fidelity loss is not worth the marginal gain when the frame rate is already so high. The Ultra preset offers no benefit, as its FPS is the lowest of all presets at each resolution, making it the least efficient choice.

How This Combo Ranks

In the grand scheme of tested hardware, this combination ranks at 1285 out of 1650 combos for Valorant. This is a low ranking, which seems counterintuitive given the high FPS numbers. The reason is that the comboRankInGame field compares this specific pairing against all other CPU-GPU combos in the database. The rank of 1285 out of 1650 means that a large majority of other tested combos achieve higher FPS in Valorant. This is likely because the i5-10400F is a mid-range processor that is often paired with lower-end GPUs, but when paired with a high-end GPU like the RTX 4070, the CPU becomes a severe bottleneck.

The ranking reflects the overall potential of the combo, not the absolute FPS. Since Valorant is CPU-bound, any combo with a faster single-core CPU would likely rank higher, even if it had a weaker GPU. The RTX 4070 is wasted in this configuration from a pure FPS perspective, as the CPU is the limiting factor. This does not mean the combo is bad; it means that the pairing is unbalanced for this specific game. The data shows that the GPU is capable of much more, but the CPU cannot keep up. For users with this combo, the ranking indicates that an upgrade to a newer, faster CPU would yield a significant boost in Valorant performance, while keeping the same GPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides exact average FPS for all combinations of four resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the average FPS is 389.7 for Low, 327 for Medium, 325.4 for High, and 320.8 for Ultra. At 2560x1440, the average FPS is 364.9 for Low, 312 for Medium, 307.2 for High, and 299.6 for Ultra. At 3840x2160, the average FPS is 340 for Low, 288.6 for Medium, 283.8 for High, and 283.2 for Ultra. There are no minimum or maximum FPS values recorded in the data, only averages. The highest measured FPS is 389.7 at 1080p Low, and the lowest is 283.2 at 4K Ultra.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: the Low preset always yields the highest FPS, followed by Medium, then High, and then Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra is minimal, often less than 5 FPS. At 4K, High and Ultra are virtually identical, with only 0.6 FPS separating them. This suggests that Ultra settings do not add any meaningful performance cost over High for this game, but they also do not provide any benefit. The spread between the best and worst cases is 106.5 FPS (from 389.7 to 283.2), which is significant in absolute terms but small in percentage terms when considering the resolution change. The data confirms that the combo is capable of producing playable frame rates at all settings and resolutions, with the lowest result still being far above the threshold for competitive play.