Valorant

Valorant is a competitive FPS where frame rate consistency and input responsiveness often matter more than absolute visual fidelity. The measured data for the Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 provides a clear picture of how this specific combination handles the game at various settings and resolutions. The benchmark results show a system capable of delivering very high frame rates across the board, but with distinct performance characteristics that reveal the role each component plays.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for this combo across all resolutions indicates that the "Low" preset consistently delivers the highest average frame rate. At 1920x1080, the Low setting produces an average of 369.9 FPS, which is the single highest score recorded for this system. This is notably higher than the next best preset, Medium, which averages 313.4 FPS at the same resolution. The performance hierarchy remains consistent as resolution increases: at 2560x1440, Low again leads with 350.3 FPS, and at 3840x2160, it achieves 325.1 FPS.

The data suggests that for players seeking the absolute highest frame rates, the Low preset is the optimal choice. However, the differences between presets are not enormous. At 1920x1080, the jump from Low to High is a reduction from 369.9 to 310.2 FPS, a drop of roughly 16%. The Ultra preset yields 303.9 FPS, which is only about 2% lower than High. For a game like Valorant, where visual clarity for spotting enemies can be beneficial, the High preset offers a strong balance, providing a significant visual upgrade over Low while still maintaining an average well above 300 FPS at 1080p. The Medium preset, at 313.4 FPS, sits nearly identical to High in performance, making the choice between them a matter of visual preference rather than frame rate. At higher resolutions, the pattern holds, with High and Medium delivering near-identical results, suggesting that players can opt for higher visual fidelity without a major performance penalty, provided they are comfortable with frame rates in the 280-310 range. The Ultra preset, while the most demanding, still keeps the system comfortably above 268 FPS at 4K, indicating that this combo has enough headroom to run the game at maximum settings without falling below competitive refresh rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, running on the Intel Socket 1151 platform. Its base clock is 2.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and a single-core score of 1125. Its average benchmark score across all tests is 2305, placing it in the 50th percentile of all CPUs. This places it directly between the Intel Core i3-10305, which has an average score of 2300, and the Intel Core i7-8809G, which scores 2319.

In the context of Valorant, the CPU's role is critical for maintaining high frame rates, as the game engine often relies heavily on single-thread performance. The i5-9400's boost clock of 4.10 GHz, combined with its solid single-core score, appears sufficient to feed the RTX 5090 with data. The data shows that frame rates scale significantly with resolution, which is a typical indicator of a CPU bottleneck at lower resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the system hits 369.9 FPS, but this drops to 350.3 FPS at 1440p and 325.1 FPS at 4K with the same settings. This scaling suggests that the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p, as the GPU has ample headroom to render more frames if the CPU could provide them. The fact that the frame rate drops as resolution increases, despite the GPU becoming more stressed, indicates that the CPU is not fully maxed out at higher resolutions, but it is the primary constraint at lower ones. The CPU's 6 cores and 6 threads are sufficient for Valorant, which typically does not utilize more than a few cores effectively, but the lack of hyper-threading may be a minor limitation in scenarios with heavy background load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a flagship graphics card built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture and the GB202 chip, using a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a massive 1.79 TB/s of memory bandwidth. Its core clocks are listed with a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz. The GPU has 21760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 39650 in Passmark G3D and 380114 in Geekbench OpenCL, placing it in the 94th percentile of all GPUs.

In Valorant, the GPU's role is less stressed than in many other modern titles, given the game's relatively modest graphical demands. The data shows that the RTX 5090 is powerful enough to maintain extremely high frame rates even at 4K. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the system still averages 268.3 FPS. This indicates that the GPU is not the primary bottleneck in this configuration. The difference between Low and Ultra settings at 4K is a drop from 325.1 to 268.3 FPS, a reduction of about 17.5%. This shows that while the GPU is capable of handling the increased workload of higher presets, the frame rate is still heavily influenced by the CPU's ability to process the game logic. The GPU's massive memory bandwidth and high clock speeds ensure that it can render frames as fast as the CPU can feed them, meaning that the performance ceiling in this pairing is dictated more by the i5-9400 than the RTX 5090 itself. The GPU's high pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s are far beyond what Valorant requires, even at 4K Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is ranked 1317 out of 1650 tested combos in Valorant. This ranking places it in the lower 20% of all possible pairings tested, which is somewhat surprising given the high absolute frame rates measured. This suggests that while this specific combo produces very high FPS numbers, other combinations of hardware are capable of achieving even higher frame rates in this particular game. The ranking is based on the overall average performance across all tested settings and resolutions, and the data indicates that this CPU-GPU pairing is not optimized for Valorant's specific requirements.

The low rank is likely due to the significant imbalance between the CPU and GPU. The i5-9400, while competent, is not a high-end processor and ranks in the 50th percentile of all CPUs. The RTX 5090, on the other hand, is in the 94th percentile of all GPUs. This pairing creates a scenario where the CPU is unable to fully utilize the GPU's capabilities, especially at lower resolutions where the CPU bottleneck is most apparent. Other combos that pair the RTX 5090 with a more powerful CPU would likely achieve higher frame rates and thus rank higher. The deltaPct values from the CPU's nearest rivals show that the i5-9400 is only 0.2% faster than the Intel Core i3-10305 and 0.4% faster than the Intel Xeon E-2134, but 0.6% slower than the Intel Core i7-8809G. These small differences in CPU performance can translate to measurable differences in frame rates in a CPU-bound game like Valorant, pushing this combo down the rankings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data shows a clear trend of decreasing performance as resolution increases, but the scale of the drop is more moderate than expected given the GPU's power. At High settings, the system averages 310.2 FPS at 1080p, 294.9 FPS at 1440p, and 271.1 FPS at 4K. This represents a 12.6% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 12.6% drop from 1440p to 4K, for a total drop of 12.6% from 1080p to 4K. This relatively small scaling factor indicates that the system is not heavily GPU-bound at lower resolutions. If the GPU were the primary bottleneck, we would expect to see a much more significant frame rate drop when moving to 4K, as the pixel count quadruples.

The scaling pattern is more pronounced at Low settings, where the frame rate drops from 369.9 FPS at 1080p to 350.3 FPS at 1440p and then to 325.1 FPS at 4K. This is a total drop of 12.1% from 1080p to 4K. The fact that the frame rate does not drop more sharply at 4K, even with the massive increase in pixel count, confirms that the CPU is the limiting factor. The RTX 5090 has enough headroom to render frames at 4K almost as fast as it does at 1080p, but the CPU cannot supply it with enough data to maintain the same frame rate. This is a classic sign of a CPU bottleneck, where the resolution scaling is dampened because the CPU's processing speed is the ceiling for performance. The data suggests that players with this combo should prioritize CPU performance if they wish to see significant frame rate gains, as upgrading the GPU would yield no benefit in this game.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo can achieve in Valorant?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 369.9 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: How does this combo perform at 4K resolution with Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the system produces an average of 268.3 FPS, showing that it can handle maximum settings at 4K with a frame rate well above typical high-refresh-rate monitors.

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

A: The data indicates the CPU is the primary limiting factor. This is evidenced by the relatively small frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K (e.g., from 369.9 to 325.1 FPS on Low settings), which suggests the GPU has spare capacity while the processor holds back performance.

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-9400 compare to its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-8809G?

A: The i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2305, which is 0.6% lower than the i7-8809G's score of 2319, making the i7-8809G slightly faster in synthetic tests.

Q: What is the difference in average FPS between the Low and High presets at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 350.3 FPS, while the High preset delivers 294.9 FPS, a difference of 55.4 FPS in favor of the Low preset.

Q: Where does this CPU-GPU combo rank among all tested combos in Valorant?

A: This combo is ranked 1317 out of 1650 tested combos, placing it in the lower portion of the rankings despite achieving high absolute frame rates.