Valorant

Valorant is a competitive FPS that leans heavily on CPU throughput, and this pairing of an Intel Core i5-12400 with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 produces a dataset that is far more instructive about processor limits than about graphics card headroom. The measured frames per second across all four settings presets and three resolutions stay remarkably high, with the lowest average being 384.1 FPS at 4K Ultra and the highest reaching 529.1 FPS at 1080p Low. What matters here is not whether the game is playable — it is — but how the frame rate scales when resolution drops and settings change, which reveals where the bottleneck sits.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate deltas between 1080p and 4K are modest in absolute terms but tell a clear story about component balance. At High settings, the average FPS moves from 440.9 at 1920x1080 to 420.7 at 2560x1440, then down to 389 at 3840x2160. That is a drop of roughly 20 FPS from 1080p to 1440p, and another 31.7 FPS from 1440p to 4K, for a total loss of 51.9 FPS across the full resolution sweep. The Low preset shows a similar pattern: 529.1 at 1080p, 498.7 at 1440p, and 462.4 at 4K, a 66.7 FPS total decline. Medium and Ultra presets follow the same trajectory, with Medium going from 448.1 to 424.8 to 392.3, and Ultra from 435.4 to 410.8 to 384.1.

These numbers indicate that even at 4K, the RTX 4090 is not being pushed anywhere near its limits. The difference between 1080p and 4K at the same preset is under 70 FPS in every case, which is a relatively narrow band given that the pixel count increases by a factor of four. In a GPU-bound scenario, the 4K result would typically fall far below the 1080p result — often by more than half. Here, the 4K High score of 389 is still 88.3% of the 1080p High score of 440.9. This suggests that the CPU is the primary limiter even at the highest resolution tested, because the graphics card has enough raw throughput to handle the added pixel load without causing a proportional frame rate collapse.

The scaling pattern across presets reinforces this interpretation. At any given resolution, the difference between Low and Ultra is smaller than the difference between resolutions. For example, at 1920x1080, Low produces 529.1 FPS while Ultra produces 435.4 FPS, a gap of 93.7 FPS. But at 4K, Low gives 462.4 and Ultra gives 384.1, a gap of 78.3 FPS. The fact that Low settings only yield about 20% more FPS than Ultra at the same resolution — rather than the 2-3x improvement seen in GPU-limited titles — points directly to a CPU ceiling. The i5-12400, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, is doing the heavy lifting for frame generation in a game like Valorant, and the RTX 4090 is effectively idle-waiting for the next draw call.

Settings Recommendations

Given that the i5-12400 is the limiting factor, the choice of in-game preset has a smaller impact on performance than one might expect from a flagship GPU. The measured rows show that Low settings provide the highest average FPS at every resolution: 529.1 at 1080p, 498.7 at 1440p, and 462.4 at 4K. Medium is the next best, with 448.1 at 1080p, 424.8 at 1440p, and 392.3 at 4K. High comes in slightly behind Medium, at 440.9, 420.7, and 389 respectively. Ultra trails all others, hitting 435.4 at 1080p, 410.8 at 1440p, and 384.1 at 4K.

The spread between Low and Ultra is consistent — roughly 90 FPS at 1080p, 88 FPS at 1440p, and 78 FPS at 4K. This means that for a player prioritizing maximum frame rate, Low is the clear winner. However, the data also shows that Ultra is only about 18% slower than Low at 1080p, which is a relatively small penalty for a significant visual upgrade. Since the absolute numbers are so high — even Ultra at 4K stays above 384 FPS — the best experience depends on the refresh rate of the display. For a 360 Hz monitor, Low at 1080p or 1440p is the only way to get close to the panel’s maximum, with 529.1 and 498.7 respectively. For a 240 Hz display, Medium or High at 1440p (424.8 and 420.7) would suffice, and even Ultra at 1080p (435.4) clears that bar. For 4K gaming, all presets exceed 384 FPS, so the choice comes down to visual fidelity — Ultra at 384.1 is perfectly playable and the most visually rich option.

The key takeaway is that the preset choice does not change the fundamental bottleneck. The CPU limits frame generation, so dropping from Ultra to Low yields a measurable but not transformative FPS boost. Players who want the smoothest possible experience for competitive play should select Low, while those who prefer better image quality can run Ultra without sacrificing playability.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 brings an enormous amount of graphics horsepower to this pairing, but the benchmark results show that its role in Valorant is largely secondary. The GPU has 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, with a memory bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s, and its boost clock is rated at 2520 MHz. These specifications are more than sufficient for a game like Valorant, which does not demand heavy VRAM usage or extreme texture throughput. The measured FPS figures do not show any sign of GPU limitation — even the lowest average, 384.1 at 4K Ultra, is far above what any display refresh rate would require.

The RTX 4090’s average benchmark score of 66473 places it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (with a delta of -0.4%), the NVIDIA Tesla P40 (+0.5%), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (-0.9%). These comparisons are based on synthetic benchmarks, not game performance, but they underscore that the GPU is operating at the very top of the hardware hierarchy. In Valorant, however, that raw compute power translates into headroom rather than necessity. The game’s engine is not designed to stress a card of this caliber, so the RTX 4090 is effectively coasting.

The memory configuration — 24 GB at 21 Gbps effective — is overkill for Valorant, which would run comfortably on a fraction of that capacity. The GPU’s pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are similarly far beyond what this title needs. The data suggests that the RTX 4090 is not the component determining frame rates here; it is simply providing a floor of performance that is so high that the CPU becomes the sole constraint. If a different, less powerful GPU had been used, the FPS might have dropped in GPU-bound scenarios, but in this dataset the RTX 4090 is never the limiting factor.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this pairing of the i5-12400 and RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 473 out of 1650 total combos. That places it in the top 28.7% of all tested systems, which is a strong showing but not a top-tier result. The rank reflects the fact that while the GPU is exceptional, the CPU is a mid-range part, and Valorant’s frame rates are constrained by the processor. A combo with a higher-end CPU would likely rank much higher, even if it paired with a weaker GPU, because this game rewards single-thread and multi-thread CPU performance more than raw graphics power.

The i5-12400’s own benchmark profile helps explain this ranking. Its average benchmark score is 19850, which puts it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-9700 (avg score 19831, delta 0.1%), the Intel Core i7-8700 (19894, delta -0.2%), and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19928, delta -0.4%). The i5-12400 essentially sits in the same performance class as these older i7 parts, which is respectable for a 6-core processor but not exceptional. The combo rank of 473 out of 1650 suggests that while this system is faster than most, it is not in the elite tier of Valorant-specific configurations.

The discrepancy between the GPU’s high percentile (91st) and the combo’s lower rank highlights the mismatch in this pairing. The RTX 4090 is overkill for Valorant, and the i5-12400 is the weaker link. If the goal were to maximize Valorant FPS, a less expensive GPU paired with a faster CPU would likely yield a better combo rank. But as measured, this combo delivers excellent absolute performance — the lowest FPS recorded is still above 384 — even if the rank does not reflect the GPU’s full potential.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is the true driver of frame rates in this Valorant dataset. With 6 cores and 12 threads, a base clock of 2.50 GHz, and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, it provides the single-thread performance that Valorant’s engine relies on. The CPU’s cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3, which helps keep frequently accessed game data close to the cores. Its 3DMark single-thread score of 910 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2249 indicate strong per-core capability, which is exactly what a competitive FPS needs.

The benchmark results show that the i5-12400 is the bottleneck at all resolutions and settings. The fact that FPS does not scale dramatically with resolution — a 66.7 FPS drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low — confirms that the CPU is generating frames as fast as it can, and the GPU is simply keeping up. The CPU’s multi-threaded performance, as measured by Cinebench R23 multicore at 15935 and Passmark multithread at 18747, is adequate for Valorant’s modest thread usage, but it is not sufficient to push frame rates into the 600+ range that a more powerful processor might achieve.

The i5-12400’s nearest rival comparisons show it is within 0.4% of the Intel Core i7-9700, i7-8700, and AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX in average benchmark score. This means that in general compute tasks, the i5-12400 is competitive with older i7 parts, but it does not have the top-tier single-core clock speeds of newer flagship CPUs. In Valorant, where frame generation is heavily dependent on the CPU’s ability to process game logic and issue draw calls, this limits the maximum achievable FPS. The measured 529.1 FPS at 1080p Low is impressive, but it is far from the theoretical ceiling that a higher-clocked processor could reach.

The data implies that upgrading the CPU would yield a more significant FPS improvement than any GPU change. The RTX 4090 is already providing more than enough graphics throughput, so the limiting factor is the i5-12400’s processing speed. For players using high-refresh-rate monitors, this CPU might hold back the system from reaching its full potential, but for the vast majority of displays, the frame rates are already more than sufficient. The i5-12400’s 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a practical, efficient choice for a Valorant-focused build, even if it does not unlock every last frame the RTX 4090 could deliver.