Valorant

Valorant is a competitive FPS where frame rates far above display refresh rates are the norm, and this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-14400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers exactly that in spades. The data shows a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at every setting, yet still produces such high numbers that the CPU's role becomes a question of raw ceiling rather than a bottleneck. This analysis breaks down the measured performance across resolutions and presets, explaining what the scores mean for a builder looking to maximize competitive advantage.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic pattern that becomes more pronounced as settings increase. At 1080p with Low settings, the system produces 563 FPS average. Moving to 1440p drops that to 534 FPS, a reduction of about 5.1%, and then to 4K it falls to 496 FPS, another 7.1% drop from 1440p. This relatively shallow decline indicates that at Low settings, the GPU has so much headroom that even a significant pixel count increase only moderately impacts the output. The performance is still massively above any display's capability, but the trend is clear.

The scaling becomes steeper when the preset is raised to Medium. At 1080p Medium, the average is 480 FPS. At 1440p, it drops to 456 FPS, a 5% decrease. At 4K, it falls to 423 FPS, which is a 7.2% reduction from 1440p. The pattern is consistent, but the absolute numbers are lower. This suggests that the added shader and lighting work at Medium settings begins to engage the GPU more, making the pixel-count increase more costly.

High settings show a similar curve. The 1080p High average is 473 FPS, dropping to 448 FPS at 1440p (a 5.3% decrease), and then to 416 FPS at 4K (a 7.1% decrease from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low, Medium, and High is remarkable. It shows that the RTX 4070 SUPER is scaling almost linearly with resolution in Valorant, and the game is not hitting any memory bandwidth or cache wall at these settings.

Ultra settings exhibit the largest relative drop, though still modest. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 465 FPS. At 1440p, it is 441 FPS, a 5.2% decrease. At 4K, it falls to 409 FPS, an 8.2% decrease from 1440p. This steeper decline at 4K Ultra indicates that the GPU is finally starting to feel the pressure of the combination of high resolution and maximum graphical features. The difference between the 1080p to 1440p drop and the 1440p to 4K drop widens slightly at Ultra, showing the rendering load is compounding.

The key takeaway from the scaling data is that the limiting component is the GPU, but only just. In all cases, the delta between 1080p and 4K is less than 20% of the total frame count. For a game like Valorant, where competitive play often prioritizes lowering settings to increase FPS, the data shows that even at 4K Ultra, the system is producing over 400 FPS. The CPU is not the bottleneck at any resolution, as the FPS does not plateau or become erratic; it scales smoothly with the GPU load. This means a user with a 360Hz monitor can run 4K High and still saturate it, while a 500Hz esports display would necessitate Low settings at 1080p to get close to its maximum refresh rate.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake Refresh architecture. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 3,055 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 21,645 in multi-core, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. For Valorant, a game that is notoriously sensitive to single-thread performance for the game logic and rendering draw calls, the 4.70 GHz boost clock is the critical spec. The benchmark results confirm that the CPU has sufficient single-core prowess to feed the GPU.

The data suggests the CPU is never the primary limiter in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the system pushes 563 FPS. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see the FPS plateau regardless of resolution or settings. Instead, we see a steady decline as the GPU load increases, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU's headroom is evident in the fact that the difference between 1080p Low and 1080p Ultra is only 98 FPS (563 vs 465). If the CPU were struggling, that gap would be much smaller or non-existent, as the GPU would be waiting on the processor.

The i5-14400F's multi-core score of 21,645 in Cinebench R23 and its PassMark multithread score of 25,470 ensure that background tasks and streaming overhead won't interfere with frame pacing. The 20 MB of shared L3 cache is also beneficial for keeping game assets close at hand. Compared to its nearest rivals, the data shows it is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840U (0.1% higher score) and the Intel Core i9-11900 (0.2% higher), while being 0.2% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS and 0.5% ahead of the Intel Core i7-12800H. These are negligible differences in synthetic tests, and in a game like Valorant, they would not translate into a meaningful FPS difference.

The 65W TDP of the i5-14400F is worth noting for a builder, but the benchmark data shows its performance is consistent. The fact that the FPS scales so predictably with resolution indicates that the CPU's clock speeds are stable and not thermally throttling under the gaming load. For Valorant specifically, the CPU role is to maintain a high enough frame floor to allow the GPU to stretch its legs. With this chip, the floor is above 400 FPS even at 4K Ultra, which confirms its architecture. The 10 cores and 16 threads are more than sufficient for the game's engine, and the high boost clock ensures that the single-threaded rendering pipeline is never starved.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS achievable with this combo?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 563 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This represents the absolute ceiling for this pairing in the data, where the GPU load is at its minimum.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this system for Valorant?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the primary limiting factor. As resolution increases from 1080p to 4K, the average FPS consistently decreases across all settings, which is the expected behavior for a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU's high single-core performance provides enough headroom to avoid becoming the bottleneck.

Q: How does the i5-14400F compare to the Ryzen 7 6800HS in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 6800HS has an average benchmark score that is 0.2% higher than the i5-14400F. This is a negligible difference, and in real-world gaming, the performance would be virtually identical, with the i5-14400F's higher boost clock potentially giving it an edge in single-threaded tasks.

Q: Can this system maintain high FPS at 4K resolution?

A: Yes. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the system still produces an average of 409 FPS. Even at the highest preset and resolution, the frame rate is far above what any current monitor can display, making 4K gaming not just playable but excessively smooth.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings yield 534 FPS, while Ultra settings yield 441 FPS. This is a difference of 93 FPS, or roughly a 17.4% reduction in performance for the maximum visual quality preset. The trade-off is purely visual, as both are well above competitive thresholds.

Q: What is the average FPS delta between the i5-14400F and its closest rival?

A: The Intel Core i5-14400F has an average benchmark score that is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840U and 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i9-11900. This indicates that all three processors are statistically tied in overall performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a complete matrix of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets.

At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the system is at its fastest. Low settings produce an average of 563 FPS. Medium settings reduce this to 480 FPS, with a minimum of 408 FPS and a maximum of 552 FPS. High settings yield 473 FPS average. Ultra settings bring the average down to 465 FPS. The range between Low and Ultra is 98 FPS, showing that even at 1080p, the settings choice has a measurable impact on raw frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains exceptionally high. Low settings average 534 FPS. Medium settings average 456 FPS, with a minimum of 387 FPS and a maximum of 524 FPS. High settings average 448 FPS. Ultra settings average 441 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 93 FPS, a similar delta to 1080p, indicating the GPU is handling the extra pixels without disproportionately taxing the system.

At 3840x2160, the highest resolution, the system still delivers outstanding performance. Low settings average 496 FPS. Medium settings average 423 FPS, with a minimum of 359 FPS and a maximum of 486 FPS. High settings average 416 FPS. Ultra settings average 409 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 87 FPS. The minimum FPS recorded anywhere in the data is 359 FPS at 4K Medium, which is still significantly higher than the refresh rate of any mainstream monitor.

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, providing insight into frame pacing. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 408 FPS and the maximum is 552 FPS, a spread of 144 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the min is 387 FPS and max is 524 FPS. At 4K Medium, the min is 359 FPS and max is 486 FPS. The spread remains consistent, suggesting that the frame time variance is stable and not causing hitches. The minimums are all within 9% of the average, indicating a smooth experience without sudden drops.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with 7,168 shading units. It has a boost clock of 2475 MHz and is equipped with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 29,995 in PassMark G3D and 4627 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs. For Valorant, this is an extraordinary amount of power, far exceeding what the game requires.

The GPU's role in this pairing is to provide the frame rate ceiling. The data shows that the RTX 4070 SUPER is the component that dictates the final FPS number, as evidenced by the resolution scaling. The 12 GB VRAM is more than ample for Valorant, which is not a VRAM-intensive title, so the 504.2 GB/s bandwidth and the core clock speed are the primary drivers of performance. The 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power ensures that even at 4K Ultra, the pixel and texture processing rates are not overwhelmed.

The benchmark data shows the GPU is not the bottleneck in a negative sense; it is simply the component that is working the hardest. The fact that the FPS drops from 563 at 1080p Low to 409 at 4K Ultra confirms that the GPU is scaling its workload with the resolution and settings. The GPU's performance percentile of 83 places it in the top tier of available hardware, and its nearest rivals in the data are all other high-end cards, with the RTX 4090 Mobile being 1% faster in the average benchmark score, and the Quadro M6000 24 GB being 0.1% slower. This level of performance means that for Valorant, the RTX 4070 SUPER is effectively overkill, providing so much headroom that the user could enable maximum settings at any resolution without concern.

The GPU's memory clock of 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) and 192-bit bus width work together to deliver that high bandwidth. In a game like Valorant, which has relatively simple textures, this bandwidth is not a limiting factor. The GPU's ability to maintain high frame rates at 4K Ultra, where it produces 409 FPS, shows that its memory subsystem is not a bottleneck. This is a case where the GPU is so strong that the game's engine is the only thing preventing even higher numbers.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how to configure the system for different priorities. For a competitive player using a 360Hz monitor, the goal is to maximize frame rate to stay above the refresh rate at all times. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system produces 563 FPS, which is the only preset that gets close to saturating a 500Hz display. For a 360Hz panel, 1080p Medium (480 FPS) or even 1080p High (473 FPS) would be sufficient, offering a slight visual upgrade without dropping below the refresh rate threshold.

For users with a 1440p 240Hz monitor, the choice is more flexible. The data shows that 1440p Low (534 FPS) and 1440p Medium (456 FPS) both provide frame rates well above 240Hz. Even 1440p Ultra (441 FPS) maintains a comfortable margin. The recommendation here is to use Medium settings as a baseline, as it provides a balance of visual clarity and performance headroom. The minimum FPS of 387 at 1440p Medium ensures that even in the most demanding scenes, the frame rate will not dip below the monitor's refresh rate.

For 4K users, the story is similar but with a lower ceiling. A 4K 144Hz monitor is easily driven by this system. At 4K High (416 FPS) and 4K Ultra (409 FPS), the frame rates are nearly triple the refresh rate. Even at 4K Medium (423 FPS), the system is massively overqualified. The data suggests that for 4K, users should simply enable Ultra settings, as the 7 FPS difference between Medium and Ultra (423 vs 409) is negligible, and the visual fidelity gain is substantial. The minimum FPS of 359 at 4K Medium is still far above any 4K display's capability.

The best experience per the measured rows depends on the display. For maximum competitive advantage with a high-refresh monitor, 1080p Low provides the absolute highest FPS, but the visual downgrade is significant. The data shows that the jump from Low to Medium costs about 15% of the frame rate at 1080p (563 to 480), but the visual improvement in shadow quality and texture filtering is often worth it for spotting enemies. The sweet spot for most users is High settings, which offers a robust visual package with only a 16% reduction in FPS compared to Low at 1080p (473 vs 563). Ultimately, the RTX 4070 SUPER is so powerful that the recommendation is to prioritize refresh rate and use High settings at 1080p or 1440p, as the frame rates are still astronomically high.