Valorant

The tested configuration pairs the Intel Core i5-9400 with an AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT for the FPS shooter Valorant. The benchmark data comprises 12 measured FPS rows spanning three resolutions (1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160) and four presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). Across all rows, the combination ranks 2,939 out of a total 3,708 tested combos in this game. This article breaks down the resolution scaling, the combo's standing relative to other hardware pairs, and then isolates the CPU and GPU contributions using the available scores and thermal design data.

Resolution Scaling

Resolution scaling reveals a pattern that is unusual for a high‑refresh‑rate title. Moving from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 does not halve frame rates; instead, the drop is modest in every preset. On the “Low” setting, average FPS go from 368 at 1080p down to 349 at 1440p and further to 324 at 4K — a total reduction of 44 FPS, or roughly 12% of the 1080p figure. The “Medium” preset falls from 314 at 1080p to 304 at 1440p and then 276 at 4K, a 38 FPS drop (12.1%). “High” yields 309 at 1080p, 293 at 1440p, and 272 at 4K (a 37 FPS curl, 12.0%). The “Ultra” setting gives 304 at 1080p, 288 at 1440p, and 267 at 4K (a 37 FPS loss). Across all settings, the 1080p→1440p step costs roughly 10–15 FPS, while the 1440p→4K step costs another 20–30 FPS.

The consistency of the drop across all presets suggests that the limiting component is not the GPU. If the RX 6750 XT were the dominant factor, raising resolution would cause a steeper decline because pixel load scales quadratically. However, here the absolute reduction is small, and even at 4K High the system still averages 272 FPS. The typical outcome of a CPU-bound situation is that FPS stays high but does not increase with resolution. The data supports this: the gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 64 FPS (368 – 304), and at 4K that gap shrinks to 57 FPS (324 – 267). When the GPU is not stressed by lower resolutions, the CPU saturates earlier; the performance wins with more GPU-heavy work because the CPU is still able to generate that many frames.

Thus, the limiting component in this combination is almost certainly the processor. The i5-9400 has 6 cores and 6 threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost of 4.10 GHz. While it is capable of driving high frame rates, it does not scale beyond a certain speed, and the parallel workloads that do not use many threads are limited. The RX 6750 XT, with a large VRAM buffer, is left underutilized until the resolution pushes the GPU enough to act as a limiter. In practice, the combo produces playable frame rates even at 4K, but the shape of the curve shows the CPU’s performance ceiling is acting first.

How This Combo Ranks

The overall combo rank in Valorant is 2,939 out of 3,708 tested configurations. This places the combination in the lower segment of the sample: it sits better than only 769 other combos (3,708 – 2,939) and trails behind the remaining approximately 79.5% of those tested. Such a low rank is counterintuitive given the high absolute FPS, but it reflects that many other combinations achieve even higher scores. Valorant is a relatively light esports title, and many processors far exceed the i5-9400’s performance, allowing more headroom in the frame generation. The RX 6750 XT is a strong GPU, but its performance percentile (71) does not carry the combo; the CPU percentile of the i5-9400 is 47, meaning it outperforms just 47% of all CPUs.

Looking at the nearest rivals for the CPU, the i5-9400 has an average synthetic score of 2,254, which is nearly identical to the i7-1068NG7 (2,259, –0.2% delta), i7-10710U (2,248, +0.3%), Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2,246, +0.4%), and i3-10305 (2,264, –0.4%). All these chips are within 0.5% of each other. This tight grouping means the CPU’s raw computational throughput is essentially equivalent to four other mid-range processors. However, many other combos in the database pair similar CPUs with weaker GPUs that still hit higher FPS in Valorant, because the game responds more to the CPU’s single‑core speed. The i5-9400’s Cinebench R23 multi‑core score is 6,629, while its single‑core is 935 – the latter is what usually matters for game engine logic. Yet this is still not enough to lift the combo’s rank out of the lower 30–40% percentile. The RX 6750 XT is never the bottleneck at 1080p; it can allocate up to 12 GB of VRAM for textures, but Valorant does not require anywhere near that capacity. The GPU, therefore, does not help the combo’s rank; the bottleneck is the CPU’s sustained single‑thread performance.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS the combo achieves, and at which settings/resolution?

A: The best measured FPS is 368, reached at 1920x1080 with “Low” settings. The next best is 349 at 2560x1440 Low and then 324 at 3840x2160 Low.

Q: How much FPS is lost when switching from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 at “High” settings?

A: At High, the average goes from 309 (1920x1080) to 293 (2560x1440) and then 272 (3840x2160), meaning a 37 FPS reduction between 1080p and 4K.

Q: Which preset has a listed minimum FPS at 1920x1080?

A: Only the “Medium” preset at 1920x1080 provides a minimum FPS figure of 267, along with a maximum of 361. For Low, High, and Ultra, no minima are reported.

Q: How does the combo’s rank in Valorant compare to the GPU’s overall percentile?

A: The GPU sits in the 71st percentile for all GPUs (its average benchmark score is 26,011). However, the combo in this game is ranked 2,939 of 3,727 tested combinations, far below the GPU’s standing, reinforcing that the CPU is the yardstick that defines the frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table lists every measured center, with min/max given only when available.

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Minimum FPS | Maximum FPS |

|------------|----------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

| 3840x2160 | High | 272 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 324 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 276 | 235 | 318 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 267 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | High | 293 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 349 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 298 | 253 | 342 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 288 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | High | 309 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 368 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 314 | 267 | 361 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 304 | — | — |

All FPS figures are from the measured package; the absence of minima on most rows indicates the measurement was not collected for those particular runs.

Settings Recommendations

If the goal is the absolute maximum frame rate, then “Low” at 1920x1080 is the best, with an average of 368 FPS. This provides the biggest margin over any other preset at that resolution and a 49 FPS lead over the next tier (Medium at 314). However, for many players competitive integrity does not require Extreme FPS numbers; the “Medium” preset at 1920x1080 reports 314 FPS with a minimum of 267, which gives a floor above common 240 Hz displays. The “Medium” preset is the only one that includes minimum and maximum values, so a user wanting to avoid dips will find its 267 minimum acceptable for most scenarios.

Moving to 1440p, “Low” yields 349 FPS, but the average is only 16% lower than that of 1080p Low. The resolution jump adds visual clarity while retaining a very high average. At 4K, the situation is different: even the fastest preset (“Low”) still delivers 324 FPS, and “High” averages 337, but the VRAM footprint is irrelevant in this game. In practice, none of these settings results in the CPU being starved of frames. The selection should be guided by the desired visual quality, because the goes.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor based on Coffee Lake, built on Intel’s 14 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a maximum turbo frequency of 4.10 GHz, and a shared 9 MB last-level cache. Its TDP is 65 W, and it supports DDR4 dual‑channel memory with a theoretical bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. These attributes place it as a mid‑range desktop chip from the late 2018 generation.

Synthetic scores place the i5-9400 at the 47th percentile of all CPUs. In Cinebench R23 it reaches 6,629 points in multi‑core and 935 in single‑core. Its Geekbench single‑core is 1,389, multi‑core 5,141. These numbers put it in a cluster with the i7-1068NG7 (avg score 2,259, delta +0.2% relative), i7-10710U (2,248, +0.3%), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2,246, +0.4%), and i3-10305 (2,264, –0.4%). In fact, within a narrow band of 0.5% all five CPUs perform essentially the same in their aggregated average. For Valorant, the game is heavily single‑thread performance oriented. The i5-9900’s single‑core performance is above the basic minimum, but it lacks hyper-threading and the highest clock speeds of newer parts. The 6‑core/6‑thread design is enough to handle the game engine, but not enough to push the combo into a higher rank. The observed FPS pattern supports a CPU‑bound state: raising resolution changes FPS minimally, but lowering graphics settings raises FPS by a moderate degree, indicating that the CPU cannot scale to generate more than about 370 frames per second in this configuration.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 X8 belongs to the Radeon RX 6000 series, built on the Navi 22 chip using a 7 nm process from TSMC. It houses 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192‑bit bus, giving 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth, and has a base clock of 2150 MHz, boost of 2600 MHz, and a game clock of 2495 MHz. Its shading unit count is 2,560, with 160 texture units and 64 ROPs. The GPU includes 40 ray‑tracing cores. The peak pixel rate is 166.4 GPixel/s, texture rate 416.0 GTexel/s, and FP32 performance is 13.31 TFLOPS. It uses a 250 W TDP and is a dual‑slot card. This is the higher end of the RX 6000 series, and its overall GPU percentile is 71 (placed above most GPUs). Its average benchmark score is 26,011, with nearest rivals being the Radeon R9 M395X (25,891, delta 0.5%), FirePro W7100 (25,856, +0.6%), FirePro D700 (25,842, +0.7%), and the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile (25,740, +4.1%). These deltas of less than a single percent put the 6750 XT in a performance class with those cards.

In Valorant, the GPU does not limit the system. The lowest average FPS captured is 267 at 4K Ultra, which is still thousands of frames beyond typical monitor refresh rates. The memory bandwidth of 382.4 GB/s is far above what the game demands, and the 12 GB VRAM is never filled. The tested combo shows that even with a weak CPU, the GPU can supply well over 240 FPS at 1080p in all presets. The role of the GPU here is to maintain a steady, visually rich image without feeding a bottleneck; the measured frame rates are high and the min‑only moderate variation suggests that the GPU is never the culprit.

Given this, any user seeking higher rank among tested combos would need to replace the CPU. The RX 6750 XT’s launch MSRP was 549 USD, but the rated combination’s rank is primarily constrained by the i5‑9400’s six threads.