Valorant

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT delivers exceptional frame rates in Valorant, a game designed for high-refresh-rate competitive play. The measured data shows a system that remains fluid across all tested resolutions, yet the scaling patterns reveal a clear shift in system bottleneck as pixel count increases. At 1920x1080, the average frame rate ranges from 306.8 FPS on Ultra settings to 371.9 FPS on Low settings, demonstrating that the CPU is the primary limiting factor at this resolution. Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates compress slightly, with the Low preset producing 350.2 FPS and the Ultra preset yielding 288.2 FPS, indicating the GPU begins to assert more influence. At 3840x2160, the scaling flattens further: the Low preset still manages 323.9 FPS, but the Ultra preset drops to 269.1 FPS, showing that the graphics card is now the dominant constraint. The delta between the highest and lowest average FPS narrows from 65.1 FPS at 1080p to 54.8 FPS at 4K, a pattern consistent with a CPU-bound scenario at lower resolutions transitioning into a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is modest, which is unusual for most titles but expected for a competitive shooter like Valorant where the engine is optimized for high frame throughput. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 371.9 FPS at 1920x1080 to 350.2 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 21.7 FPS, and then to 323.9 FPS at 3840x2160, another 26.3 FPS drop. This translates to a total reduction of 48 FPS, or roughly 12.9% of the 1080p figure. For the High preset, the decline is steeper in percentage terms: 308.3 FPS at 1080p drops to 293.7 FPS at 1440p (a 14.6 FPS loss) and then to 270.9 FPS at 4K (a 22.8 FPS loss), totaling a 37.4 FPS reduction. The Ultra preset follows a similar trajectory, moving from 306.8 FPS at 1080p to 288.2 FPS at 1440p and finally 269.1 FPS at 4K. The data suggests that the CPU, with its six cores and six threads running at a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, is fully capable of feeding the GPU at 1080p, but the GPU’s rendering load at 4K begins to limit overall throughput.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combos for Valorant, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT ranks 1320 out of 1650 combinations. This percentile placement, roughly in the bottom 20% of all tested systems, is surprising given the high absolute frame rates measured. The explanation lies in the nature of the benchmark: Valorant is a lightweight title, and many combos with newer, higher-clock CPUs or more powerful GPUs achieve even higher frame rates, pushing this combo down the relative rankings. However, the absolute scores are strong; the combo sits above the median CPU percentile (50th percentile for the i5-9400) and well above the GPU median (73rd percentile for the RX 7700 XT). The rank reflects the competitive field rather than any deficiency in the measured performance, as the average FPS never falls below 269.1 FPS even at 4K Ultra, which is far beyond the refresh rate of most monitors.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 brings six physical cores and six threads, a configuration from the Coffee Lake architecture built on a 14 nm process. Its base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost clock of 4.10 GHz are modest by modern standards, but Valorant’s engine is not heavily multithreaded, favoring raw single-core performance. The processor’s Cinebench R23 scores of 1125 for single-core and 7969 for multi-core place it in the 50th percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is an average performer in synthetic workloads. In this game, the CPU’s role is evident in the 1080p results: the gap between Low and Ultra settings at 1920x1080 is only 65.1 FPS (371.9 FPS vs 306.8 FPS), suggesting that the CPU is maxing out its single-thread throughput regardless of the graphical load. The L3 cache of 9 MB shared, along with 256 KB L2 per core, provides adequate data for the game’s relatively simple scenes. The measured frame rates at 4K, where the GPU should be the bottleneck, still show a CPU influence—the Low preset at 3840x2160 achieves 323.9 FPS, which is only 48 FPS lower than at 1080p, confirming that the processor can maintain high instruction throughput even when the GPU is stressed.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the lowest measured average is 306.8 FPS on Ultra settings, while the highest is 371.9 FPS on Low settings. The Medium preset yields 311.7 FPS, and High produces 308.3 FPS, showing that the jump from Low to Medium costs 60.2 FPS, but the jump from Medium to High only costs 3.4 FPS, and High to Ultra costs another 1.5 FPS. This suggests that the CPU is the limiting factor, as graphical quality increases have minimal impact on frame rate. Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 350.2 FPS, Medium 295.7 FPS, High 293.7 FPS, and Ultra 288.2 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium expands to 54.5 FPS, indicating the GPU is beginning to handle more of the load. At 3840x2160, the numbers compress: Low hits 323.9 FPS, Medium 278.6 FPS, High 270.9 FPS, and Ultra 269.1 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is a mere 1.8 FPS, and the total spread from Low to Ultra is 54.8 FPS, confirming that the GPU’s rasterization and pixel processing are now the primary constraint, as the RX 7700 XT’s 96 ROPs and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory are taxed more heavily.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT is a substantial graphics card built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a 5 nm process. Its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus delivers 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth, and the chip’s 3456 shading units operate at a boost clock of 2544 MHz. These specifications translate to a 73rd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30097, placing it just 0.2% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 in the nearest rivals list. In Valorant, the GPU’s role becomes apparent only at higher resolutions and settings. At 1080p, the frame rates are nearly identical across presets, showing that the GPU has ample headroom. At 4K, the GPU’s 244.2 GPixel/s pixel rate and 549.5 GTexel/s texture rate are pushed harder, and the measured FPS drops accordingly. The FP32 compute of 35.17 TFLOPS is more than sufficient for this title, but the data shows that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and pixel throughput are the final arbiters of performance at 3840x2160, where the Ultra preset yields 269.1 FPS, a 27.7% reduction from the 1080p Ultra score.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal experience depends on the display’s refresh rate. For a 144 Hz monitor at 1920x1080, the Low preset is unnecessary; even Ultra settings produce 306.8 FPS, which is over double the refresh rate. The data indicates that Medium settings at 1080p, yielding 311.7 FPS, offer a balanced trade-off, as the jump from Low to Medium costs 60.2 FPS but likely improves visual clarity. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset (295.7 FPS) is the sensible choice for 240 Hz displays, as it stays above 294 FPS while High (293.7 FPS) and Ultra (288.2 FPS) begin to approach the threshold. For 4K gaming, the Low preset (323.9 FPS) is the only option that exceeds 300 FPS, but the Medium preset (278.6 FPS) still sustains high refresh rates on most monitors. The Ultra preset at any resolution provides no meaningful benefit over High—the difference at 1440p is 5.5 FPS and at 4K is 1.8 FPS—so High settings are recommended for those seeking maximum visual fidelity without sacrificing measurable frame rate. The data strongly suggests that this combo is overkill for 1080p competitive play, where the CPU limits performance, and that users should prioritize higher resolutions or refresh rates to leverage the GPU’s capabilities.