Valorant

The Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti combination delivers exceptionally high average frame rates in Valorant across every resolution and preset measured. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system averages 368 FPS; at 3840x2160 Ultra, the average is still 267 FPS. These frame times, coupled with the combo's low ranking among all tested CPU/GPU pairs (2939 out of 3708), indicate that the CPU is the primary bottleneck in this dual-core title, even though the GPU holds a high percentile standing among all graphics cards.

GPU Role

The RTX 5070 Ti is designed for high-resolution and high-throughput workloads, but Valorant’s rendering demands can be fully managed by the GPU’s resources without perceivable starup. The card’s 16 GB of GDDR7 memory with a 375 mm² die and 45,600 million transistors gives it a pipeline capable of very high fill rates. Its memory runs at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective), delivering a bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s—far beyond the 1920x1080 frame buffering typical of a competitive title. The 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 280 TMUs and 96 ROPs allow the render to proceed essentially without latency. The GPU’s percentileVsAllGpus is 86, and its avgBenchmarkScore is 49957, placing it just 0.1% ahead of the nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, which scores 50001. Even against the stronger RX 6900 XT (score 50959), the RTX 5070 Ti is only 2% behind. Despite this raw GPU power, the measured FPS does not rise quickly with resolution—differences in frame rates between 1080p and 4K are only about 12% at most. For a typical title, an FPS drop of nine to 25% usually implies a GPU bottleneck; the small drop here suggests the frame rate is often clamped by the CPU rather than the memory bandwidth or shader count.

The GPU’s performance in PassMark’s DirectX tests is also revealing: it scores 351 in DX9, 300 in DX11, and 127 in DX12. These lower DX12 scores indicate that the benchmark may not fully stress the GPU complex, but the game itself is light, which allows even a modest GPU to touch very high rates. The RTX 5070 Ti’s boost clock of 2452 MHz and 896.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are more than enough to push over 360 FPS in the Lo profile at 1440p, but because Valorant’s visual load is limited, both metrics fail to dictate the outcome at 4K Ultra.

Settings Recommendations

According to the measured rows, each of the four presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) yields average frame rates that exceed most high-refresh-rate displays. At 1920x1080, the Low preset is the fastest at 368, followed by Medium at 314, High at 309, and Ultra at 320. Indoors the 4K: Low gives 324, Medium 279, High 272, and Ultra 271. The consistent gap between presets is small—about 10 to 10 FPS between the lowest and the highest at any resolution.

For a competitive player who wants the absolute highest response times, the Low preset is the logical choice, as it yields the maximum measured average at each resolution (368, 398, and 324 on 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, respectively). For players who value visual fidelity and are still able to run a high-refresh monitor, the Medium preset offers a balanced state. Notably, only the Medium configuration has m7–max FPS data in the pack: at 1080p, the 1% low is 267 and the max reaches 361; at 1440p the range is 253–338; at 4K it is 235–312. These numbers show that Medium maintains a solid minimum frame (~235 FPS) even at 4K, ensuring smooth play. The High and Ultra presets are slightly slower by 20–30 FPS depending on the resolution, but they stay above 295 at worst (4K Ultra). Given that the RTX 5070 Ti provides ample headband, there is no disadvantage in using the Medium preset as the default twenty-four, unless the player prioritizes the absolute peak rate of the Low setting.

How This Combo Ranks

According to the comboRankInGame, the CPU+GPU pairing ranks 2939 out of 3708 tested configurations for Valorant. That places this system in the 80th percentile from the worst—meaning about 79% of tested combinations performed better in this specific title benchmark. This is surprising given that the GPU is high‑tier (percentile 86), but the CPU is a mid-range part (percentile 47). The rate is not a reflection of absolute underwhelming performance—the FPS numbers are above 264 everywhere—but rather an indicator that more CPU‑focused pairings (e.g., an 8‑core 9000‑series CPU) extract higher frame rate caps. The i5‑9400’s average benchmark score of 2247 is only 0.3% behind the Intel Core i7‑10710U, and the GPU is only 3.1% ahead of the RX 6800 XT, but in Valorant’s bursty frames, the CPU single‑core performance has a disproportionate influence. The rank informs readers that the hardware pair is not optimal for Valorant esports, even if the absolute output is high.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6‑core, 6‑thread Coffee Lake Refresh part with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. Its 9 MB shared L3 cache and 64 KB L1 per core allow fast access to the game’s code and assets. The processor’s benchmarks illustrate its place: it scores 668 in Cinebench R15 multi‑core and 94 in single‑core, while Cinebench R23 reports 6629 multi‑core and 935 single‑core. This places the CPU’s average benchmark score at 2254, with a percentile versus all CPUs of 47 (the 50th percentile would be the median). In Valorant, which is renowned for its reliance on a single high‑frequency thread, the boost clock of 4.10 GHz is the most relevant number. The CPU is not the newest but maintains a within‑0.4% of its nearest rival, the Intel Core i3-10305 (score 2264), and performs slightly better than the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (score 2246) by 0.4%.

Benchmark results also include a Geekbench single‑core of 1389 and multi‑core of 5141, which are all mid‑pack. In game terms, the measured FPS (e.g., 324 at 4K Low) is astoundingly high, but the resolution drop scenarios indicate that the game lies your bounded by the CPU’s single‑core. The FPS improves by only 5% when moving from Ultra to Low at 1080p—something typical of a CPU post‑by‑game engine. The fact that the average FPS dwells in the 260–370 range regardless of graphics preset also supports the interpretation that the GPU is rarely being forced to full utilization, leaving the i5-9400 to drive the frame generation.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160:

• Low: avg average 324 FPS
• Medium: avg 276 FPS, with a recorded min of 235 and max of 318
• High: avg 272 FPS
• Ultra: avg 267 FPS

At 2560x1440:

• Low: avg 349 FPS
• Medium: avg 298 FPS, min 253 max 342
• High: avg 293 FPS
• Ultra: avg 288 FPS

At 1920x1080:

• Low: avg 368 FPS
• Medium: avg 314 FPS, min 267 max 361
• High: avg 309 FPS
• Ultra: avg 304 FPS

These numbers are all above the 200 FPS marker, meaning any modern 144 or 240 Hz display will be saturated by at least the Ultra settings at 1080p. The difference between presets at a given resolution is small (around 8–20 FPS) but the drop across resolution is bigger. For example, from 1080 Low (368) to 1440p Low (349) is a 5% drop; from 1440 Low to 4K Low (324) drops 9%, and from 1080 Low to 4K Low drops 11.9% overall. This percentage is surprisingly uniform across settings: Low drops from 368 to 324 (12% down), High from 309 to 272 (12.6% down), Ultra from 304 to 267 (12.2% down). The fact that the scaling is nearly identical for each preset becomes a decisive piece of evidence—in a GPU‑limited scenario, lower presets usually see a much smaller relative drop because the pixel volume becomes the bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

As resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 to 3840x2160, the average FPS for this pair falls slowly. The absolute reductions are only about 13% from 1080p to 4K. For example, the High preset moves 309 → 293 → 272, a total drop of 37 FPS. This is a minor percentage because the RTX 5070 Ti’s parallel performance can handle the four‑times massive pixel count without being overwhelmed. The GPU is so proficient that the 360‑degree resolutions are barely more taxing; the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K is only 36 to 40 FPS depending on the preset, which is roughly the size of the CPU’s own performance fence.

The flatness of these numbers indicates that Valorant’s render core does not require the GPU’s full 896 GB/s bandwidth or 16 GB memory capacity at 1080p. At 4K High the average of 272 easily exceeds a 240 Hz monitor, which means the limiting factor is the CPU’s frequency and IPC, not the pixel shading. If the GPU were the bottleneck, we would expect a strict 1/4th pixel workload ratio to cause a ~75% frame drop when crossing from 1080p to 4K, but the observed drop is only 12%. Therefore, on the basis of the recorded FPS, the system behaves as CPU‑limited to the point where the RTX 5070 Ti sits idle most of each frame. The only reliable way to the user to increase frame rate would be to upgrade the processor to one with substantially higher single‑threaded speed, such as a mid‑cache/high‑boost 6‑core or 8‑core chip (not listed) from the dataset—those would also change the combo ranking accordingly.

Ultimately, the i5-9400 + RTX 5070 Ti offers exceedingly playable experience in Valorant, but the pairing’s low placement in ranking underscores the need for a stronger CPU to fully unlock the GPU’s potential in this particular esports low‑load scenario.