Valorant

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER delivers exceptional frame rates in Valorant, a competitive FPS that scales heavily with CPU performance. Across the measured resolutions, this combination never drops below 238.8 FPS at any setting, indicating a system built to far exceed the requirements of high-refresh-rate monitors. The data shows a strong, consistent performance profile, though the scaling patterns between 1080p and 4K reveal clear insights into which component is doing the heavy lifting.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is moderate, but the pattern is highly dependent on the graphics settings preset. At Low settings, the average frame rate decreases from 596.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 506.6 FPS at 2560x1440, and finally to 405.2 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 32.1% reduction in performance from 1080p to 4K, which is a relatively small penalty for a 4x increase in pixel count. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is still a significant bottleneck, as the GPU has plenty of headroom to render frames quickly.

The scaling becomes more pronounced at higher quality presets. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 371.1 FPS at 1080p to 318.8 FPS at 1440p, and then to 255.6 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 4K here is 31.1%, nearly identical to the Low preset percentage-wise, but the absolute numbers are much lower. However, the most telling data point is the difference between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution. At 1080p, the gap between Low (596.8 FPS) and Ultra (352.5 FPS) is 244.3 FPS, a 40.9% reduction. At 4K, this gap narrows slightly: Low (405.2 FPS) versus Ultra (238.8 FPS) is a 41.1% reduction.

The fact that the percentage drop from Low to Ultra is so consistent across resolutions indicates that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as settings increase, but the CPU remains the dominant constraint even at 4K. A GPU-bound scenario would typically show a much larger percentage drop when moving from 1080p to 4K, especially at higher settings. Since the RTX 2060 SUPER maintains over 400 FPS at 4K Low and over 238 FPS at 4K Ultra, the render pipeline is clearly not being saturated. The benchmark results indicate that this game is heavily optimized for high frame rates, and the i7-12700K's strong single-thread performance is what keeps the minimums so high.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, built on the Turing architecture with a 12 nm process, provides a solid foundation for Valorant's graphics workload. Its memory configuration includes 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1470 MHz with a boost clock of 1650 MHz, and its memory runs at an effective speed of 14 Gbps. With 2176 shading units and 64 ROPs, the card is well-suited for the relatively simple geometric and texture workloads present in a competitive tactical shooter.

In this game, the GPU's role is secondary to the CPU, but its performance is still critical for maintaining high frames at higher settings. The data shows that moving from Low to Ultra at 4K reduces frame rates from 405.2 FPS to 238.8 FPS, a drop of 166.4 FPS. This indicates that the increased rendering load at Ultra settings does impact the GPU, but the absolute performance remains extremely high. The RTX 2060 SUPER's percentile ranking against all GPUs is 63, placing it in the upper-midrange tier of graphics cards, yet it still manages to push over 350 FPS at 1080p Ultra.

The card's nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (with a deltaPct of 0.5) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (0.3), show that the 2060 SUPER is almost on par with the RTX 2070 in terms of average benchmark scores. However, in Valorant, the difference between these cards is likely negligible due to the CPU bottleneck. The 12 nm process node and 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die suggest a power-hungry but capable design, though the actual TDP of 175 W is not directly relevant to the frame rate data. The GPU's compute capabilities, such as its 7.181 TFLOPS FP32 performance, are more than adequate for this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo?

A: The highest recorded average frame rate is 596.8 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo achieves an average frame rate of 238.8 FPS, which is still well above the refresh rate of most high-end monitors.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data indicates the CPU is the primary limiting factor, as the frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is relatively small (e.g., from 596.8 FPS to 405.2 FPS at Low settings), suggesting the GPU has ample headroom.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the average frame rate drops from 506.6 FPS at Low settings to 302.4 FPS at Ultra settings, a reduction of 204.2 FPS.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 992nd out of 1650 tested combinations in Valorant, placing it in the upper 40th percentile of all tested systems.

Q: Does the RTX 2060 SUPER's performance align with its benchmark scores in this game?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 19774, and its percentile rank is 63, which is consistent with its strong but not top-tier performance in Valorant, where it still exceeds 350 FPS at 1080p Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 992nd out of 1650 tested combinations in Valorant, placing it in the 60th percentile of all systems tested. Given the high frame rates achieved, this ranking might seem low, but it reflects the fact that many other combinations, likely with newer or more powerful CPUs, can achieve even higher scores in this CPU-bound title. The i7-12700K is a strong performer, with an average benchmark score of 35684 and a percentile ranking of 89 against all CPUs. Its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (deltaPct of -0.3) and the Intel Core i7-13700T (deltaPct of 0.6), are extremely close in average score, indicating that the 12700K is right at the edge of the top tier of processors.

In the context of Valorant, the ranking is less about raw GPU power and more about how well the CPU can feed frames to the GPU. The RTX 2060 SUPER, with an average benchmark score of 19774 and a percentile of 63, is not the fastest GPU available, but it is sufficient. The 992nd ranking suggests that while this combo is excellent, there are 991 other configurations that produce even higher average frame rates, likely due to newer CPUs with higher single-thread performance or more powerful GPUs that can reduce the CPU bottleneck further. However, the absolute performance is so high that the ranking may be more of a formality; the system is clearly capable of driving any competitive monitor to its limits.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is the star of the show in Valorant, a game that is notoriously sensitive to single-thread performance. This processor features 12 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Its architecture, Alder Lake, uses a hybrid design that combines performance and efficiency cores, though the benchmark data does not differentiate between them. The CPU has 25 MB of shared L3 cache, which is crucial for game data retrieval, and it supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, though the specific memory configuration used in the test is not specified.

The CPU's benchmark scores highlight its strength: a single-thread score of 1043 in 3DMark, a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4128, and a Geekbench single-core score of 2561. These numbers place it in the top tier of processors for gaming workloads. The multi-threaded scores are also impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 29241 and a Passmark multithread score of 34404, but these are less relevant for Valorant, which primarily uses a few threads. The CPU's percentile ranking of 89 against all CPUs confirms its high-end status, and its average benchmark score of 35684 is within 0.7% of its nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i5-14500HX (deltaPct of -0.7) and the Intel Core i7-13800H (deltaPct of 0.8).

In Valorant, the CPU's role is to process game logic, physics, and draw calls, and the i7-12700K excels at this. The data shows that at Low settings, the frame rates are incredibly high (596.8 FPS at 1080p), which is a direct result of the CPU's fast single-thread performance. Even at 4K Ultra, the frame rate of 238.8 FPS is more than sufficient, and the fact that the drop from 1080p Low to 4K Ultra is only 60% (from 596.8 to 238.8 FPS) suggests that the CPU is still keeping up with the GPU's demands. The 5.00 GHz boost clock is particularly beneficial, as Valorant's engine tends to favor higher clock speeds over core counts. Overall, the i7-12700K provides the necessary compute headroom to ensure that the RTX 2060 SUPER is never idle, making this combo a highly capable choice for competitive play.