Valorant

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers an exceptionally strong performance profile in Valorant, placing the combination in the top half of all tested configurations. The measured frame rates are consistently high enough to saturate even the most demanding high-refresh-rate monitors, though the data reveals a clear hierarchy in settings and resolution scaling that is crucial for optimizing the experience.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for this combination shows that the choice between Low, Medium, High, and Ultra presets has a significant impact on average frame rates, but the differences are not uniform across resolutions. At 1080p, the spread from the fastest to slowest preset is substantial, with Low achieving 645.8 FPS, Medium at 433.7 FPS, High at 411.2 FPS, and Ultra at 392.3 FPS. This indicates that the CPU, not the GPU, is the primary driver at this resolution, as the frame rate scales dramatically when graphical load is reduced.

For competitive play where frame rate is paramount, the Low preset at 1080p is the clear choice, offering a massive 64% average FPS advantage over the High preset. However, the data suggests that the Medium preset provides a more balanced experience, as it only drops 33% below Low while delivering superior visual quality. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields 392.3 FPS, which is still exceptionally high, but it offers no practical benefit over High for most users given the marginal 5% difference between them.

At 1440p, the pattern shifts slightly. Low again leads with 559.9 FPS, followed by Medium at 365.8 FPS, High at 348.5 FPS, and Ultra at 334.6 FPS. The relative penalty for higher settings is more pronounced here, with Ultra being 40% slower than Low. At 4K, the GPU begins to assert its influence, as the gap between Low (450.4 FPS) and Medium (295.6 FPS) narrows to 34%, while High (280.5 FPS) and Ultra (264.1 FPS) are within 6% of each other. The optimal preset for this combo is Medium at 1440p, which provides a 366 FPS average while maintaining a substantial visual upgrade over Low, and it keeps the frame rate well above the 240Hz threshold that many competitive displays support.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, based on the Turing architecture, features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its core clocks are rated at 1605 MHz base and 1770 MHz boost, with 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs. In Valorant, a game that is notoriously CPU-bound, the GPU’s role is secondary but not negligible. The data shows that the GPU becomes a limiting factor only at 4K resolution, where the difference between Low and Ultra settings is a notable 186 FPS, indicating that the rasterization load is finally taxing the 9.062 TFLOPS FP32 compute capacity.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is more than adequate for Valorant, a game with modest texture requirements, and the memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s ensures that even at 4K Ultra settings, the frame buffer is not a bottleneck. The GPU’s percentile rank of 65 against all GPUs places it in the upper-midrange tier, and its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A400, is only 0.5% behind in average score, while the GeForce GTX TITAN Z is 0.9% ahead. This indicates that the RTX 2070 SUPER is a capable performer for its class, but its age is showing in the 4K Ultra results where the frame rate drops to 264.1 FPS, the lowest measured value in the entire dataset.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic CPU-bound profile that transitions into a GPU-bound profile at higher resolutions. At the Low preset, the average FPS drops from 645.8 at 1080p to 559.9 at 1440p, a 13% reduction, and then to 450.4 at 4K, a further 20% decline. This relatively shallow curve suggests that the Intel Core i7-14700F, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is keeping the pipeline fed even at lower resolutions, and the GPU is doing the heavy lifting as pixel count increases.

For the High preset, the scaling is steeper: 411.2 FPS at 1080p, 348.5 FPS at 1440p (a 15% drop), and 280.5 FPS at 4K (a 20% drop from 1440p). The Ultra preset shows a similar pattern, with 392.3 FPS at 1080p, 334.6 FPS at 1440p, and 264.1 FPS at 4K. The data indicates that the limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU at 4K, as the absolute FPS gap between Low and Ultra narrows from 253 FPS at 1080p to 186 FPS at 4K. This is expected behavior for a competitive FPS title, where the CPU’s single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 5003 Cinebench R23 single-core score, is crucial at lower resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides a comprehensive view of the combo’s performance. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 645.8 FPS, which is the highest score recorded for this configuration. Medium achieves 433.7 FPS, High hits 411.2 FPS, and Ultra trails at 392.3 FPS. The difference between Medium and High is only 5%, while the jump from Low to Medium is a substantial 33% reduction, indicating that the Low preset leaves significant performance headroom on the table.

At 2560x1440, the results are 559.9 FPS for Low, 365.8 FPS for Medium, 348.5 FPS for High, and 334.6 FPS for Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is more pronounced at the higher presets, with Ultra losing 15% of its frame rate compared to the 13% loss for Low. This suggests that the GPU is starting to become more involved, though the CPU still dominates.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop to 450.4 FPS for Low, 295.6 FPS for Medium, 280.5 FPS for High, and 264.1 FPS for Ultra. The gap between Low and Medium here is 34%, which is the largest relative drop across all resolutions for this settings pair, confirming that the GPU is the bottleneck at 4K. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that falls below the 300 FPS mark, and it is still far above the 144Hz refresh rate that most monitors offer.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER combination ranks 775 out of 1650 tested combos in Valorant, placing it in the 53rd percentile of all configurations. This is a solid mid-pack ranking, but it is somewhat surprising given the high absolute frame rates measured. The explanation lies in the nature of the game: Valorant is designed to run at very high frame rates on a wide range of hardware, so the competition at the top is fierce. Many combinations, particularly those with newer GPUs and higher-end CPUs, will achieve similar or higher scores, pushing the relative rank down despite the excellent absolute performance.

The CPU’s percentile rank of 94 against all CPUs is far more impressive, indicating that the Core i7-14700F is a top-tier processor. Its nearest rivals, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9900X3D, are only 0.6% and 1.1% ahead in average benchmark score, respectively, while the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 is 1.2% behind. This places the i7-14700F in elite company. The GPU, with a percentile rank of 65, is more modest, and its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A400, is 0.5% behind, while the GeForce GTX TITAN Z is 0.9% ahead. The combination of a top-6% CPU with a mid-60s GPU means that the overall ranking is constrained by the graphics card, which is the expected bottleneck for this pairing in a CPU-light game like Valorant.

The rank of 775 out of 1650 suggests that while this combo is not at the very top of the leaderboard, it sits comfortably in the upper half, and its performance is more than sufficient for any competitive scenario. The data confirms that the weak link is the GPU, and any upgrade path would focus on that component to push the combo into the top quartile.