Valorant

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Valorant across three resolutions reveals a pattern that is unusual for most modern games: the frame rate drops are surprisingly modest when moving from 1080p to 4K. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 567.4 at 1920x1080 to 536.6 at 2560x1440, then to 499.1 at 3840x2160. That represents a total decline of only 68.3 FPS, or roughly 12%, from the lowest to the highest resolution tested. This is a remarkably shallow scaling curve, indicating that even at 4K, the game is not placing an overwhelming burden on the GPU.

The story is similar at higher quality presets. At High settings, the average FPS moves from 473.1 at 1080p to 446.4 at 1440p, and finally to 415.9 at 4K. The delta between 1080p and 4K here is just 57.2 FPS. Medium settings show a drop from 483 to 456.2 to 423.6 across the same resolution ladder. Ultra settings begin at 462.4 at 1080p, dip to 443.2 at 1440p, and settle at 406.5 at 4K. In every case, the step from 1440p to 4K costs fewer than 40 FPS, which is a narrow margin compared to typical AAA titles.

What this tells the analyst is that the limiting component in this configuration is not the GPU, at least not in a conventional sense. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, with its 12 GB of GDDR7 memory and 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, is more than capable of handling Valorant's rendering workload. The frame rates at 4K, even at Ultra, remain well above 400 FPS. The data suggests that the game's engine is heavily CPU-bound, particularly at lower resolutions where the GPU has even less work to do. The gap between Low settings at 1080p (567.4 FPS) and Low settings at 4K (499.1 FPS) is only 68.3 FPS, which implies that the CPU is the primary throttle even when pixel count increases substantially.

The Intel Core i5-14400F, with its 10 cores and 16 threads, has a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. This single-thread performance is critical for Valorant, which is known to favor high clock speeds over raw core counts. The benchmark results for the CPU, such as a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3093 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2333, support the notion that this processor can feed frames at a very high rate. The data indicates that moving from 1080p to 4K does not proportionally stress the GPU, because the CPU is already working near its limit to produce these frame rates.

Another way to read the scaling is to examine the percentage differences between presets at each resolution. At 4K, the difference between Low (499.1 FPS) and Ultra (406.5 FPS) is 92.6 FPS, which is about 18.6% slower. At 1080p, the same preset gap is 567.4 versus 462.4, a difference of 105 FPS, or roughly 18.5%. The consistency of this gap across resolutions reinforces that the performance ceiling is set by the CPU, not by the GPU's fill rate or shading power. The RTX 5070 has a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s; these are far beyond what Valorant needs at any tested resolution.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the choice of settings should be driven by the user's display refresh rate and preference for visual fidelity versus raw frame rate. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 567.4 FPS, which is the highest number recorded in the entire dataset. This is ideal for competitive play on a high-refresh monitor, as the extra frames provide minimal input latency. However, the jump to Medium (483 FPS) costs 84.4 FPS, which is a significant drop of about 14.9%. The jump from Medium to High (473.1 FPS) is only 9.9 FPS, and the jump from High to Ultra (462.4 FPS) is another 10.7 FPS.

For most users at 1080p, the Medium preset appears to be the sweet spot. It retains the vast majority of the performance headroom while offering better visual quality than Low. The data shows that the drop from Low to Medium is steep, but the subsequent drops to High and Ultra are gradual. At 2560x1440, Low produces 536.6 FPS, Medium produces 456.2 FPS, High produces 446.4 FPS, and Ultra produces 443.2 FPS. The gap between Medium and Ultra here is only 13 FPS, which suggests that at 1440p, users can enable Ultra without a meaningful performance penalty relative to High or Medium.

At 3840x2160, the measured FPS values are 499.1 (Low), 423.6 (Medium), 415.9 (High), and 406.5 (Ultra). The difference between Low and Medium is 75.5 FPS, which is notable, but the difference between Medium and Ultra is only 17.1 FPS. Given that the absolute numbers remain above 400 FPS even at Ultra, the recommendation for 4K users is to select Ultra if their display can handle the frame rate. The performance cost of the highest preset is minimal, and the visual improvement is worth the small trade-off. The data consistently shows that the High and Ultra presets are closely matched at every resolution, with High trailing Ultra by only 7 to 10 FPS depending on the resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this configuration in Valorant?

A: The highest average FPS is 567.4, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low settings preset.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings?

A: At Ultra settings, the average FPS drops from 462.4 at 1920x1080 to 406.5 at 3840x2160, a difference of 55.9 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 5070 the limiting factor in this game?

A: No, the data indicates the CPU is the primary limit. The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is only about 12% at Low settings, suggesting the GPU is not heavily taxed.

Q: What is the difference between Medium and High settings at 2560x1440?

A: At 2560x1440, Medium produces an average of 456.2 FPS, while High produces 446.4 FPS, a gap of 9.8 FPS.

Q: Which preset offers the best balance of performance and quality at 4K?

A: The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 averages 406.5 FPS, which is only 17.1 FPS slower than Medium, making it the recommended choice for 4K.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance relate to Valorant's frame rates?

A: The Intel Core i5-14400F has a boost clock of 4.70 GHz and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3093, which correlates with the high frame rates observed, especially at lower resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides twelve distinct measurement points, covering three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset yields an average of 567.4 FPS, the Medium preset yields 483 FPS, the High preset yields 473.1 FPS, and the Ultra preset yields 462.4 FPS. The range from Low to Ultra is 105 FPS, which is the largest spread observed at any resolution.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset produces 536.6 FPS, Medium produces 456.2 FPS, High produces 446.4 FPS, and Ultra produces 443.2 FPS. The range here is 93.4 FPS. Notably, the gap between High and Ultra at 1440p is just 3.2 FPS, making the two presets nearly indistinguishable in terms of performance.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 499.1 FPS, Medium averages 423.6 FPS, High averages 415.9 FPS, and Ultra averages 406.5 FPS. The range is 92.6 FPS. The step from Medium to High at 4K is only 7.7 FPS, and the step from High to Ultra is 9.4 FPS. These small deltas indicate that the game's rendering pipeline becomes more efficient at higher resolutions, or that the CPU bottleneck smooths out the differences between presets.

Looking at resolution scaling within each preset, the Low preset drops by 30.8 FPS from 1080p to 1440p, and then by another 37.5 FPS from 1440p to 4K. The Medium preset drops by 26.8 FPS and then 32.6 FPS. The High preset drops by 26.7 FPS and then 30.5 FPS. The Ultra preset drops by 19.2 FPS and then 36.7 FPS. The consistency of these drops, all in the 20-40 FPS range, reinforces the idea that the GPU is not the sole determinant of performance; otherwise, the 4K penalty would be much larger.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process node from TSMC. It features 6,144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units. The GPU has a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz. Its memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s. The GPU's performance percentile is 83, and its average benchmark score is 41,687.

In Valorant, the RTX 5070's role is to render frames quickly enough not to become the bottleneck. The measured FPS data suggests that it succeeds. At 4K Ultra, the GPU still delivers 406.5 FPS, which is far beyond what most displays can show. The memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s is more than sufficient for the game's textures and geometry, even at 3840x2160. The GPU's pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s are also high enough to handle the load without issue.

The nearestRivals for the RTX 5070 include the AMD Radeon Pro 5300, which has an average score of 41,610 and a deltaPct of 0.2, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, which has an average score of 41,441 and a deltaPct of 0.6. These comparisons are based on aggregate benchmark scores, not in-game FPS. In Valorant, the RTX 5070's performance is so high that the differences between these GPUs would likely be imperceptible, as the CPU becomes the limiting factor well before the GPU reaches its maximum output. The GPU's FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS is another indicator of its headroom in this title.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, manufactured on a 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. 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. It supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. The CPU's performance percentile is 88, and its average benchmark score is 32,508.

The benchmark results for the i5-14400F show strong single-thread performance, which is directly relevant to Valorant. The Cinebench R23 single-core score is 3093, and the Geekbench single-core score is 2333. These numbers suggest that the CPU can process game logic and draw calls at a very high rate. The multi-threaded scores are also robust: Cinebench R23 multi-core is 21,914, and Geekbench multi-core is 11,209. However, Valorant is not a game that scales well with many cores, so the single-thread performance is more indicative of the frame rates observed.

The nearestRivals for the i5-14400F include the Intel Core i7-12800H with an average score of 32,513 and a deltaPct of 0, and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 with an average score of 32,446 and a deltaPct of 0.2. These rival comparisons are based on aggregate CPU benchmarks, not game-specific FPS. In Valorant, the i5-14400F's boost clock of 4.70 GHz is likely the key factor in achieving the high frame rates seen in the measured data. The fact that the FPS does not drop drastically when moving from 1080p to 4K is strong evidence that the CPU is the primary limiter in this configuration. At 1080p Low, the CPU produces 567.4 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it still manages 406.5 FPS; the difference is largely due to the GPU taking on more work at higher resolutions, but the CPU remains the ceiling.