Valorant

# Valorant with Intel Core i5-13400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

This combo places 361st out of 1,650 tested configurations in Valorant, putting it in the top 22% of all combinations tracked. The pairing of a 13th-generation Intel processor with a current-generation NVIDIA GPU produces frame rates that are exceptionally high across all tested settings, though the rank indicates that several other combinations deliver even higher averages in this specific title. The data suggests this is a well-balanced pairing for competitive play, with the measured results showing that both components contribute meaningfully to the final output.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 361 out of 1,650 tested combinations reflects a system that sits comfortably in the upper quartile of Valorant performance. This is a strong showing, but not an elite one; the gap between this configuration and the top-ranked combos is primarily attributable to CPU performance characteristics in a game that heavily favors high single-thread throughput. The Intel Core i5-13400F holds a percentile ranking of 82 against all CPUs, meaning it outperforms the vast majority of processors in general benchmark workloads. Its average benchmark score of 25,236 places it nearly level with the Intel Core i7-13620H, which scores 25,201 (a 0.1% difference), and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D, which scores 25,365 (a -0.5% difference). This tight clustering indicates that the CPU is not a distinguishing factor at the very top of the ranking table. The GPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080, holds a percentile ranking of 89 against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59,188. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Arc A570M at 58,239 (1.6% lower), the Intel Arc Pro A60 at 60,326 (1.9% higher), and the Intel Arc A580 at 57,756 (2.5% lower). The relatively small deltas between these scores suggest that the RTX 5080's raw compute performance is competitive but not dominant in synthetic tests, yet in Valorant's specific workload, the measured FPS indicates that the GPU is rarely the limiting factor at lower resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. Its base clock is 2.50 GHz, and it boosts to 4.60 GHz, which is a modest boost ceiling compared to some higher-end parts, but sufficient for Valorant's engine. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, the processor scores 7,314 in 3DMark 16-thread, 1,880 in 2-thread, and 960 in single-thread tests. The single-thread score is particularly relevant for Valorant, as the game's engine relies heavily on one or two primary threads for game logic and rendering command submission. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21,279 and single-core score of 3,004 further illustrate this CPU's balanced profile; it has enough multi-threaded headroom for background tasks but its single-thread performance is what drives high FPS in competitive shooters. The PassMark single-thread score of 3,634 is solid, and the data compression score of 311,364 shows strong integer performance. In Valorant, the measured FPS at 1080p Low is 555.3, which is the highest average across all settings and resolutions in the data. This indicates that even at the lowest settings, the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough frames to exceed 500 FPS, and the frame rate drops only slightly as settings increase, suggesting that the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p. The CPU's 65 W TDP and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory make it a flexible choice, though the memory bandwidth is not explicitly measured in the data.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, with 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. It features 10,752 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output pipelines, along with 84 ray tracing cores and 336 tensor cores. The GPU's base clock is 2,295 MHz, with a boost clock of 2,617 MHz, and memory runs at 1,875 MHz (30 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, yielding 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth from 16 GB of GDDR7 memory. In synthetic tests, the GPU scores 8,637 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 264,461 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 257,942 in Geekbench Vulkan. The PassMark G3D score of 36,565 and GPU compute score of 21,789 indicate strong raw performance. In Valorant, the GPU's role becomes more apparent at higher resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the measured average FPS is 401.1, which is only 72% of the 1080p Low score, showing that the GPU is being exercised more heavily at 4K. However, the frame rates are still far above the refresh rates of most monitors, meaning the GPU is never a bottleneck in a practical sense. The RTX 5080's pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s are more than adequate for Valorant's relatively simple visual scenes, and the 16 GB VRAM is far more than the game requires, so memory capacity is a non-issue. The GPU's 360 W TDP and 750 W suggested PSU are notable for system planning, but the performance data shows that in this game, the GPU's headroom is substantial.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 457.1 at Ultra settings to 555.3 at Low settings. High settings yield 466.2, and Medium yields 471.2. The spread between Low and Ultra is 98.2 FPS, which is a 21.5% reduction from Low to Ultra. This pattern indicates that the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p, as the GPU can render frames faster than the CPU can submit them, and higher settings only marginally increase GPU load. At 2560x1440, the averages are 430.7 (Ultra), 441.8 (High), 447.8 (Medium), and 526.8 (Low). The Low setting at 1440p is 555.3 FPS at 1080p, showing a 5.4% decrease from 1080p to 1440p at Low, which is a modest drop. At Ultra, the 1440p score is 430.7, which is 5.8% lower than the 1080p Ultra score of 457.1. At 3840x2160, the averages are 401.1 (Ultra), 409 (High), 413.1 (Medium), and 486.5 (Low). The 4K Low score of 486.5 is 12.4% lower than the 1080p Low score, and the 4K Ultra score of 401.1 is 12.3% lower than 1080p Ultra. These percentage drops are consistent across settings, suggesting that resolution scaling is uniform and that the GPU is beginning to become a more significant factor at 4K, but the CPU still plays a substantial role.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows that from 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drop at Low settings is from 555.3 to 526.8, a decrease of 28.5 FPS or 5.1%. At High settings, the drop is from 466.2 to 441.8, a decrease of 24.4 FPS or 5.2%. At Medium, the drop is from 471.2 to 447.8, a decrease of 23.4 FPS or 5.0%, and at Ultra, the drop is from 457.1 to 430.7, a decrease of 26.4 FPS or 5.8%. These consistent percentage drops indicate that the limiting component remains the CPU even as resolution increases to 1440p, because the GPU has enough headroom to handle the additional pixel load without significant performance degradation. Moving from 1440p to 4K, the Low setting drops from 526.8 to 486.5, a decrease of 40.3 FPS or 7.7%. At High settings, the drop is from 441.8 to 409, a decrease of 32.8 FPS or 7.4%. At Medium, the drop is from 447.8 to 413.1, a decrease of 34.7 FPS or 7.7%, and at Ultra, the drop is from 430.7 to 401.1, a decrease of 29.6 FPS or 6.9%. The slightly larger percentage drops at 4K compared to 1440p suggest that the GPU is beginning to take on a more significant role, but the absolute frame rates are still so high that neither component is a practical bottleneck. The pattern across all resolutions shows that the CPU is the dominant limiter up to 1440p, and even at 4K, the GPU is not fully saturated, as evidenced by the fact that the 4K Ultra score of 401.1 is still more than 70% of the 1080p Low score. This indicates that for Valorant, this combo provides essentially unbounded performance, with the CPU setting the ceiling for frame rates at lower resolutions and the GPU only marginally influencing results at 4K.