Valorant

Valorant is a competitive FPS built around high frame rates, and the data for the Intel Core i5-12400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti shows a pairing that obliterates standard refresh rate targets at every resolution tested. The measured results place this combination in the 438th spot out of 1,650 tested combos, placing it in the top 27% of all configurations analyzed. This is a high-performance setup where the GPU is rarely the constraint, and the analysis of the measured FPS rows reveals a system that scales predictably with settings and resolution, though the headroom at 1080p is immense.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is modest in percentage terms, which is a strong indicator that the CPU is doing the heavy lifting in this game. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 530.9 at 1920x1080 to 468.4 at 3840x2160, a reduction of roughly 12%. Moving from 2560x1440 to 4K at Low settings shows a similar trend, dropping from 502.9 to 468.4. This relatively small penalty for a 4x increase in pixel count suggests that the game’s rendering workload at Low presets is not taxing the RTX 4070 Ti’s capabilities, leaving the Intel Core i5-12400F as the primary determinant of the final frame rate.

The scaling picture changes slightly when you push the graphics preset to Ultra. At 1920x1080, Ultra yields 439.4 FPS, while 3840x2160 Ultra drops to 382.5 FPS, a decrease of about 13%. This consistent scaling pattern across all presets indicates that Valorant is heavily CPU-bound in this configuration. The RTX 4070 Ti, with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, is not being saturated even at 4K Ultra, as the frame rate remains above 380 FPS. The limiting component here is clearly the processor’s single-thread performance, which is typical for a game like Valorant that relies on a few fast cores rather than massive parallel throughput.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a high-end Ada Lovelace part with a boost clock of 2610 MHz and a base clock of 2310 MHz. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Valorant’s modest VRAM requirements. The benchmark data shows that the GPU’s role in this pairing is to ensure that even at the highest settings, the frame rate never dips below 382.5 FPS at 4K. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 44,900 places it in the 85th percentile of all GPUs, and it performs within 1.6% of the AMD Radeon Pro 580 and 1.5% of the Intel Arc A730M in synthetic tests.

In practical gaming terms, the RTX 4070 Ti’s 40.09 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is overkill for Valorant. The measured FPS differences between Low and Ultra settings at the same resolution are relatively small, which confirms that the GPU is idling through most frames. For instance, at 1920x1080, the gap between Low (530.9 FPS) and Ultra (439.4 FPS) is only 91.5 FPS, a 17% performance hit for turning everything up. At 3840x2160, that same gap narrows to 85.9 FPS (468.4 vs. 382.5). This behavior indicates that the GPU has enough raw compute and memory bandwidth to handle the visual enhancements without becoming a bottleneck, leaving the CPU to dictate the ceiling.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread Alder Lake processor with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It features 18 MB of shared L3 cache and a 10 nm process node. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 19,221 places it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs, and it sits within 0.7% of the AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS and 0.1% of the Intel Core i7-8700K in synthetic comparisons. In Valorant, the data suggests that the CPU’s single-thread performance, evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 2,221 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 909, is the primary driver of the high frame rates.

The CPU’s boost clock of 4.40 GHz is critical for this game’s engine, which typically favors fewer, faster cores over many slower ones. The measured FPS data supports this: at 1080p Low, the system hits 530.9 FPS, which is near the practical limit for many competitive players. The delta between the 2-thread 3DMark score of 1,699 and the 16-thread score of 5,895 suggests that while the CPU can handle multi-threaded workloads, Valorant is not utilizing all 12 threads effectively. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,332 further reinforces that the i5-12400F’s single-core muscle is what keeps the frame rates pinned at these high levels, regardless of resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the configuration delivers its peak performance. Low settings produce an average of 530.9 FPS, while Medium, High, and Ultra yield 451.2, 445.9, and 439.4 FPS, respectively. The spread between Medium and Ultra is just 11.8 FPS, indicating that the CPU is hitting a performance wall that the GPU cannot overcome, even with reduced graphical demands. For players on 1080p monitors, this setup guarantees frame rates well beyond any 360 Hz or 500 Hz display’s capabilities, even at the highest preset.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain exceptionally high. Low settings average 502.9 FPS, while Medium, High, and Ultra produce 427.0, 422.0, and 411.4 FPS, respectively. The performance drop from 1080p to 1440p is more pronounced at Ultra (439.4 to 411.4, a 6.4% decrease) but still minimal, reinforcing that the GPU is not the limiting factor. At 3840x2160, the system still pushes 468.4 FPS on Low, with Medium at 396.1, High at 388.6, and Ultra at 382.5. Even at 4K Ultra, the frame rate is over 380 FPS, which is more than enough for any competitive scenario and demonstrates that this combo is not just playable at 4K—it is excessively fast.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 438 out of 1,650 tested configurations places this pairing in the 73.5th percentile of all systems tested. This is a strong result, but it is importantly the rank reflects the overall system performance across all games, not just Valorant. Given that the CPU’s percentile (77) is lower than the GPU’s percentile (85), the ranking suggests that the processor is the weaker link in this pairing. In Valorant specifically, the measured FPS data shows that the system is capable of 530.9 FPS at 1080p Low, which is a top-tier result. The delta between the CPU’s average score and its nearest rivals is minimal—0.1% ahead of the Intel Core i7-8700K and 1.3% ahead of the AMD EPYC 7773X—meaning that swapping in a slightly faster CPU would not yield a massive frame rate jump in this game.

The GPU’s ranking relative to its peers is also tight, with a 0.6% deficit to the RTX 5090 Mobile and a 1.6% advantage over the Radeon Pro 580. This indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti is well-positioned in the GPU hierarchy, but in Valorant, the CPU’s single-thread performance is what separates this combo from lower-ranked systems. The data suggests that this combination is near the sweet spot for Valorant, where further GPU upgrades would yield negligible gains, but a CPU with a higher boost clock could push the 1080p frame rates even higher.

Settings Recommendations

For players using a 1080p or 1440p monitor with a high refresh rate, the Low preset is the obvious choice if maximizing FPS is the goal, as it delivers 530.9 and 502.9 FPS, respectively. However, the data shows that the visual quality improvements from Low to Ultra cost only 91.5 FPS at 1080p and 91.5 FPS at 1440p. Given that even the Ultra preset at 1440p produces 411.4 FPS, there is no practical reason to sacrifice visual fidelity for additional frame rate. The Medium preset offers a balanced middle ground, with 451.2 FPS at 1080p and 427.0 FPS at 1440p, but the gap to Ultra is so small that most users should simply enable Ultra settings.

At 4K, the recommendation is slightly different. The Low preset yields 468.4 FPS, while Ultra drops to 382.5 FPS. While 382.5 FPS is still exceptionally high and playable on any current monitor, the 85.9 FPS penalty for Ultra settings may be noticeable to players with 360 Hz displays who want to maximize their refresh rate headroom. For 4K users, the Medium preset (396.1 FPS) provides a reasonable compromise, but the data indicates that even Ultra is viable. The optimal experience per the measured rows is to run Ultra at 1080p or 1440p, where the frame rates exceed 400 FPS, and to consider Low at 4K only if absolute maximum FPS is the priority.