Valorant

Valorant remains one of the most accessible competitive shooters on PC, and the pairing of the Intel Core i5-11400F with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT produces a combination that is decisively aimed at high-refresh-rate dominance. The benchmark data places this specific setup at rank 874 out of 1650 tested combos, a position that reflects an upper-mid tier placement within the database. This ranking is notable because it suggests that while the hardware is exceptionally strong for this specific title, there are 775 other configurations that achieve higher average frame rates, likely due to CPUs with superior single-thread performance. The data indicates that this combo is not at the very top of the leaderboard, but it sits comfortably ahead of the majority of systems, making it a highly capable platform for competitive play.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 874 out of 1650 places it in the 53rd percentile of all tested pairings for Valorant, meaning it outperforms slightly more than half of the configurations in the database. This position is interesting because the individual components are high performers in their own right; the CPU holds a 75th percentile ranking against all processors, and the GPU sits in the 82nd percentile against all graphics cards. The discrepancy between the component-level percentiles and the combo-level rank highlights that Valorant is heavily dependent on CPU performance, and the Core i5-11400F, while solid, is not the absolute top-tier option for this specific workload. When examining the CPU’s nearest rivals, the data shows the i5-11400F is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U, with a delta percentage of 0, and is only 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-1260P and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U. This indicates that the processor is performing exactly as expected for its class, and the combo’s ranking is a direct result of that performance ceiling rather than any bottleneck from the graphics card.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how the game scales with different visual presets. For players prioritizing maximum frame rates for competitive advantage, the Low preset is the definitive choice. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 453.3 FPS, which is a substantial lead over the next best preset at that resolution. The High and Medium presets are nearly identical in performance, with averages of 380.2 and 383.7 FPS respectively, while the Ultra preset trails at 370.8 FPS. The data strongly suggests that the visual fidelity gains from High or Ultra are not worth the significant frame rate drop when compared to Low. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 82.5 FPS, a margin that can be the difference between a smooth experience on a 360Hz monitor and one that is slightly less consistent. For most players, the Low preset is the optimal choice for competitive integrity, as the game’s art style is not heavily dependent on graphical effects to convey information.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals that this combination remains GPU-bound at all tested resolutions, but the CPU still plays a significant role in capping performance. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the average FPS is 380.2. Moving to 2560x1440, the average drops to 359.9, a decrease of 20.3 FPS. At 3840x2160, the average falls to 336.7, representing a total drop of 43.5 FPS from 1080p to 4K. This scaling pattern indicates that the RX 7900 XT has enough headroom to push high frame rates even at 4K, but the performance delta between resolutions is relatively small. The data points to the CPU as the primary limiter, as the frame rates at 1080p are not dramatically higher than at 4K, suggesting that the i5-11400F is nearing its maximum output for this game. The difference between 1080p Low (453.3 FPS) and 4K Low (401.7 FPS) is 51.6 FPS, which shows that even at the lowest settings, the resolution scaling is not linear, further confirming that the processor is the limiting factor in this pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full spectrum of settings shows a clear hierarchy. The Low preset leads with an average of 453.3 FPS, followed by Medium at 383.7 FPS, High at 380.2 FPS, and Ultra at 370.8 FPS. The performance gap between Medium and High is negligible at just 3.5 FPS, making them effectively interchangeable in terms of output. The Ultra preset is 12.5 FPS behind High, which is a more noticeable difference. Moving to 2560x1440, the same pattern holds. Low leads at 429.5 FPS, with Medium at 368 FPS, High at 359.9 FPS, and Ultra at 354.1 FPS. The difference between Low and the next preset is substantial at 61.5 FPS, reinforcing that Low is the performance-oriented choice. At 3840x2160, the spread tightens. Low averages 401.7 FPS, Medium 339.8 FPS, High 336.7 FPS, and Ultra 330.2 FPS. The gap between Medium and High shrinks to just 3.1 FPS, and the difference between High and Ultra is only 6.5 FPS. This data suggests that at 4K, the game is becoming more GPU-dependent, but the CPU still prevents the frame rates from scaling as high as they would with a more powerful processor.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT plays a crucial, yet secondary, role in this configuration for Valorant. The GPU features 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 800.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is far beyond what Valorant requires, and the data confirms that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor at any resolution or setting. The GPU’s boost clock is rated at 2394 MHz, with a game clock of 2025 MHz, and these clocks are sufficient to deliver the high frame rates observed. The benchmark results show that the GPU is performing at a level that is on par with its nearest rivals; the data indicates a delta percentage of 0.0 compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile, and it is only 0.3% ahead of the NVIDIA CMP 70HX. This suggests that the RX 7900 XT is delivering expected performance for its class. However, the measured FPS in Valorant is not exceptionally high relative to what the GPU is capable of, as the CPU’s 6-core, 12-thread design with a boost clock of 4.40 GHz is the ceiling. The GPU is never the bottleneck in this pairing; it is consistently waiting on the processor to feed it frames, which is why the frame rates do not scale as aggressively with resolution as they would in a more GPU-intensive title.