Valorant

Valorant is a next-generation tactical shooter that puts even the most modest graphics hardware through a puzzling ordeal—often peaking at hundreds of frames per second. The combination of an Intel Core i5-13400F and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 sits squarely in high-performance territory, and the measured results confirm that this pairing does not just run Valorant fast; it runs it at frame rates that make the engine's tick rate look like the real. The following analysis is based exclusively on the measured FPS data set gathered for this specific CPU-GPU combination, with 12 separate resolution-preset permutations spanning 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The fundamental question for any GPU-driven game is how the frame rate responds to the number of pixels being rendered. Valorant is inherently light on pixel work, and the numbers bear that out. At 1080p with Low settings, the average FPS is 552. Jumping to 1440p Low drops that to 524, and 4K Low lands at 486. That is a reduction of 68 FPS from 1080p to 4K across nearly 2.5 times the pixels—less than a 15% loss, which is a strikingly narrow spread. For comparison, the High preset at 1080p equals 463 average, versus 439 at 1440p and 408 at 4K. The Medium preset (which also exposes minimum and maximum FPS) shows 471 at 1080p, 447 at 1440p, and 415 at 4K, while Ultra runs 456 at 1080p, 432 at 1440p, and 401 at 4K.

The key insight is that the scaling from 1080p to 4K is exceptionally small in absolute terms—around 5–10% of the total frame rate. This pattern indicates that the frame rate is not dominated by the GPU’s shader output or texture throughput, but rather by the C++ / Vulkan thread scheduling of the game engine. Valorant is a relatively low-resolution title, and even at 4K (which only adds 70 columns of pixels), the RTX 4080 still has plenty of headroom. The CPU is dropped into the loop for every frame, and with only a handful of objects most of the workload is vertex contraction and draw calls. The data strongly suggests that this CPU–GPU pair never becomes GPU bound in any tested row; the bottleneck is the render engine and the refresh of the timer. Because of this, the resolution scaling is almost flat, which is a sign that the moment the player moves from 1440p to 4K they lose a tiny portion of the surplus they had at 1080p.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 itself is a 16GB GDDR6X card with a memory clock of 22.4 Gbps effective, a 256-bit bus, and 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. In the context of a GPU, those are numbers that could easily feed a much heavier title. The base clock is 2205 MHz and the boost clock is 2505 MHz, delivering a total graphics power figure of 320 W. For this game, that is equivalent to bringing a satellite to a fishing pool. The average FPS tops out at 552 (1080p Low) and at every configuration remains above 400 FPS. Even the worst result—4K Ultra at 401—yields average frame times of 2.5 ms, which is comfortably inside the 144 Hz and 240 Hz windows that most serious players use.

The GPU’s own synthetic benchmark profile underscores the point. Its PassMark G3D score is 34,457, and it ranks in the 95th percentile (in the database of all GPUs) in benchmark marks. Its nearest neighbors according to the benchmark database are the RTX 4080 SUPER, with an average score of 54,209 and a delta of only 0.1% from the same card, the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X at 54,828 (‑1.1%), and AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12GB at 55,698 (‑2.6%). Those differences are negligible at the levels this card operates. In actual Valorant, such massive architecture is overkill, and none of the tested resolution bumps move the needle much. The data says the GPU is idle most of the time—waiting on the CPU to submit commands rather than being saturated by shaders. The real story is how far the console-level latency can be shifted into the background.

CPU Contribution

The CPU side is the real engine of this matchup. The Intel Core i5-13400F has 10 cores (6 Performance + 4 Efficient) and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost of 4.60 GHz. This is a Raptor Lake part (Intel 7 process) with a 20MB L3 cache. Its core architecture (60% single-thread) is exactly what a game like Valorant wants—the kind of high-frequency physical core that avoids SPTS (single win) dependency. Benchmarks of the CPU show a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3,191 and a multi-core score of 22,604. Passmark single thread is 3,634, and Geekbench single is 1,996. The CPU ranks at the 77th percentile among all CPUs in the database, coming close to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (average score 25,284) and the Intel Core 5 120 (25,362) with a dereliction of only 0.3%.

For Valorant, the most relevant metric is not the peak utilization of many cores but the speed of the few threads that actually process the game logic. The game’s hidden truth is that it rarely uses more than 4-6 threads at the game-play level. The high boost clock of 4.60 GHz, allowing a 10-core architecture with only a modest thermal envelope (TDP 65 W), can pump out the single-threaded physics and collision computations without any thermal throttling. In all observed resolutions, the CPU is the component that allows the FPS to stay above 400 despite the GPU casting away its power. The data suggests that the CPU is the limiting factor both at 1080p and 4K, and the smaller the resolution gap, the more it shows.

Measured FPS Breakdown

There are 12 data points, one for each combination of three resolutions and four preset qualities. The average FPS numbers, and where incomplete, the minimum and maximum (available for Medium) are listed here.

1920x1080

• Low: 552 avg
• Medium: 471 avg (min 400, max 542)
• High: 463 avg
• Ultra: 456 avg

At 1080p, the best result is the Low preset with 552. Interestingly, the difference between High and Ultra is just 7 FPS (456 vs 463). This is a clear sign that the visual improvements added by Ultra are essentially free, and the engine scaling is flat.

2560x1440

• Low: 524 avg
• Medium: 447 avg (min 380, max 514)
• High: 471 avg
• Ultra: 432 avg

When moving to 1440p, the same trend holds. Low is the fastest, but the gap to Medium shrinks. High and Ultra end within 40 FPS of each other.

3840x2160

• Low: 486 avg
• Medium: 415 avg (min 352, max 477)
• High: 408 avg
• Ultra: 401 avg

At 4K, even the most demanding preset still yields over 400 average FPS. The medium preset at 4K has a minimum of 352, which is still far above the v-sync 60 Hz barrier. The linear nature of the drops across presets shows that every visual lever adds only a few hundredths of a millisecond to the frame.

How This Combo Ranks

When measured against the entire database of millions of gaming combos, the RTX 4080 + i5-13400F combination is very high on the list. The ranking is 894th out of 3,708 distinct CPU-GPU pairings that have been tested. That places it in the upper tier (around the 75th percentile). This is impressive given that the database includes configurations with the most elite components—many with RTX 4090 and i9-14900. Despite that, the high core-count CPU and the massive GPU result in a dedicated fire-breathing performer.

The ranking is strongly influenced by single-core strength, because Valorant does not scale well to multiple cores. The 13400F’s performance in 3DMark’s 1-thread test (score?) Actually the pack provides 3dmark_single_thread: 960. The fact pack gives a full benchmark suite. This email-like rank of 894 is not a measure of raw 4K power, but of the entire suite of benchmarks the database uses, which includes a mix of workloads. Yet the practical takeaway is that this pairing performs in the top quarter of all tested builds. The relative performance delta between this and adjacent ranked combos is very tight—the most similar CPU or GPU differ by a maximum 0.4% in their average benchmark score, meaning the i5-13400F + RTX 4080 is an extremely balanced match, falling in the natural Pareto optimum.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data allows a direct, evidence-based recommendation. If we view the rows as a dataset, the best balance between picture quality and undiminished motion is the Medium preset at any resolution. Take 1440p: Medium yields 447 avg FPS (min 380), which is faster than 240 Hz displays, yet the Low preset stalls at 524 FPS (which is not a meaningful jump for most vibrate refresh panels). The High and Ultra presets drop only 5-10% from Medium, losing about 40 FPS, but they cannot be distinguished by a typical human eye at four-digit refresh rates. The scores at High (463 @1080p, 471 @1440p) and Ultra (456 and 432) are nearly identical, so choosing High rather than Ultra saves approximately 30 FPS for an almost invisible difference in the texture filtra.

Given that even the Ultra preset at 4K delivers 401 average frames, every preset above Medium is simply additional load with no practical gameplay benefit and a higher chance of microdrop (the only min FPS shown is for Medium). Since the CPU is the bottleneck, reducing the preset from High to Medium gives a 5% FPS boost while still exhibiting the shaders and effects the game can provide. Thus, for a standard 144Hz-240Hz monitor, Medium is the sweet spot—it keeps a pixel margin above the refresh rate, offers substantial headroom, and uses the RTX 4080’s performance without pushing the CPU into a corner where it may spike. For those with 480 Hz or 540 Hz screens, Low is the only choice to get above 500 FPS, but it costs a considerable push in visual quality. The analysis stands: the data shows the best experience is achieved by “Medium” for the majority of hardware, with “High” as the fallback since its gains are minimal and the cost is still small.