Valorant

The Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination delivers exceptional frame rates in Valorant, with performance that scales predictably and remains remarkably high across all tested resolutions. The data indicates that this pairing is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at lower settings but becomes increasingly balanced as resolution and graphical fidelity increase, though the sheer speed of the hardware ensures that even the most demanding preset remains far beyond the refresh rate of typical high-end monitors.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic shift in bottleneck behavior. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 650.1 FPS, which falls to 567.6 FPS at 4K Low—a reduction of 82.5 FPS, or roughly 12.7%. This relatively modest decline suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is doing a significant portion of the work, and the GPU has enough headroom to handle the resolution increase without a catastrophic frame rate penalty.

However, the scaling pattern changes dramatically when moving to higher settings. With Ultra settings, the drop from 1080p (536.2 FPS) to 4K (469.8 FPS) is only 66.4 FPS, a 12.4% decrease. This tighter scaling at Ultra indicates that the GPU is now more fully engaged, though even at 4K Ultra, the RTX 4080 SUPER is nowhere near its computational limits. The most significant scaling gap appears between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings, where the frame rate falls from 650.1 to 611.7 FPS—a 38.4 FPS drop—whereas the 1440p to 4K transition at the same settings costs only 44.1 FPS. This nonlinearity points to a system where neither component is consistently saturated, with the CPU’s 20 cores and 28 threads providing ample parallel processing headroom for Valorant’s engine.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 SUPER’s role in this pairing is best understood through its memory and clock characteristics. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, the card offers 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is far more than Valorant requires at any resolution or setting. The benchmark results confirm this: at 4K Ultra, the combo still achieves 469.8 FPS, a figure that would be impossible if memory bandwidth were a constraint. The GPU’s boost clock of 2550 MHz, paired with its Ada Lovelace architecture and 10240 shading units, delivers a theoretical FP32 throughput of 52.22 TFLOPS. In practice, the data shows that the card is operating well below its peak capability, as even the most demanding scenario—4K Ultra—leaves the GPU with substantial untapped headroom.

The GPU’s 88th percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 53610, places it just 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M. This competitive positioning matters less in Valorant than in GPU-bound titles, because the frame rates here are so high that the CPU becomes the limiting factor at lower resolutions. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the frame rate of 650.1 FPS is likely constrained by the CPU’s single-thread performance rather than the GPU’s capabilities. When the settings are raised to Ultra at 1080p, the frame rate only drops to 536.2 FPS, indicating that the GPU can absorb the increased workload with minimal impact.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is the dominant component in this pairing, particularly at lower resolutions and settings. Its 20 cores (comprising performance and efficiency cores) and 28 threads, with a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, provide exceptional single-threaded performance—critical for Valorant’s engine, which relies heavily on a few primary threads. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5003 and multi-core score of 35443 demonstrate strong all-around capability, but it is the single-core result that most directly translates to high FPS in competitive shooters.

The CPU’s 94th percentile ranking among all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54097, places it 0.6% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 1.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D. This narrow gap in synthetic benchmarks does not manifest as a meaningful difference in Valorant, where the measured frame rates are already above 469 FPS at the most demanding settings. The CPU’s 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help maintain low latency, which is evident in the 650.1 FPS result at 1080p Low—a figure that approaches the practical limits of what most displays can show. At 4K Ultra, the CPU still keeps pace, with the frame rate dropping only to 469.8 FPS, suggesting that the processor’s headroom is sufficient to feed the GPU even at high resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a clear picture of performance across the full spectrum of settings and resolutions. At 1080p, the combo delivers 650.1 FPS on Low, 550.9 FPS on Medium, 540.1 FPS on High, and 536.2 FPS on Ultra. The transition from Low to Medium costs 99.2 FPS, but the jump from Medium to High is only 10.8 FPS, and from High to Ultra just 3.9 FPS. This pattern indicates that the Low preset is significantly lighter on the GPU, allowing the CPU to push frame rates to their maximum, while the Medium through Ultra presets represent a more GPU-intensive workload that yields diminishing frame rate differences.

At 1440p, the results are 611.7 FPS on Low, 524.8 FPS on Medium, 514.2 FPS on High, and 504.2 FPS on Ultra. The drop from 1080p Low to 1440p Low is 38.4 FPS, while the drop from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra is 32.0 FPS. At 4K, the frame rates are 567.6 FPS on Low, 484.2 FPS on Medium, 477.8 FPS on High, and 469.8 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low result is still 31.4 FPS higher than the 1080p Ultra result, highlighting how much headroom exists in this combination. Across all settings, the largest resolution penalty occurs between 1080p and 1440p at Medium settings (26.1 FPS), while the smallest penalty is between 1440p and 4K at Ultra settings (34.4 FPS), suggesting that the GPU’s workload scaling is not perfectly linear.

FAQ

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

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 650.1 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings?

A: The frame rate drops from 536.2 FPS at 1080p Ultra to 469.8 FPS at 4K Ultra, a reduction of 66.4 FPS, which represents a 12.4% decrease.

Q: Which component is more critical for high FPS at 1080p Low settings?

A: The data suggests the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p Low, as the frame rate of 650.1 FPS is far above what the GPU would typically deliver in GPU-bound scenarios, indicating the Intel Core i7-14700F’s single-thread performance is driving the result.

Q: Is the RTX 4080 SUPER’s 16 GB VRAM sufficient for Valorant?

A: Yes, the 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is far more than Valorant requires, as evidenced by the high frame rates at 4K Ultra settings, which show no signs of memory capacity or bandwidth limitations.

Q: How does this combo rank relative to other tested combinations?

A: This combo ranks 97th out of 1650 tested combinations in Valorant, placing it in the top 6% of all recorded pairings.

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

A: At 1440p, the Low preset delivers 611.7 FPS while the Ultra preset delivers 504.2 FPS, a difference of 107.5 FPS, which is the largest settings gap observed in the data at any resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For competitive play where maximum frame rate is the priority, the Low preset at 1080p provides the best measured result at 650.1 FPS. This setting minimizes GPU workload, allowing the CPU’s single-thread performance to push frame rates to their peak. However, the data shows that the difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is only 113.9 FPS, and even the Ultra preset delivers 536.2 FPS—a figure that exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all consumer monitors. For players using high-refresh-rate displays (240 Hz or 360 Hz), the Medium preset at 1080p (550.9 FPS) offers a balanced compromise between visual fidelity and frame rate, with only a 99.2 FPS penalty compared to Low.

At 1440p, the Ultra preset (504.2 FPS) is still fast enough to saturate most high-refresh-rate panels, and the 107.5 FPS gap between Low and Ultra is proportionally smaller than at 1080p. At 4K, the Ultra preset (469.8 FPS) remains playable at extreme refresh rates, but the Low preset (567.6 FPS) provides a more comfortable margin for 360 Hz displays. The optimal choice depends on the display’s refresh rate: for 240 Hz panels, the High preset at 4K (477.8 FPS) is sufficient, while for 360 Hz panels, the Low preset at 1440p (611.7 FPS) or 1080p (650.1 FPS) is recommended. Given that the frame rate differences between Medium, High, and Ultra at any resolution are small (less than 20 FPS), players should select Ultra for the best visual quality without sacrificing competitive performance.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 97th out of 1650 tested combos in Valorant, placing it in the top 5.9% of all recorded pairings. This high ranking is driven primarily by the CPU’s exceptional single-thread performance—the i7-14700F’s 5.40 GHz boost clock and 5003 Cinebench R23 single-core score are well-suited to Valorant’s CPU-bound nature at lower settings. The GPU’s contribution is less critical, as evidenced by the modest frame rate differences between settings at each resolution, but the RTX 4080 SUPER’s high memory bandwidth and shading unit count ensure that the combo never becomes GPU-limited, even at 4K Ultra.

Relative to other high-end pairings, this combo’s 97th rank indicates that a small number of combinations—likely featuring CPUs with even higher single-thread scores—can achieve slightly better results in Valorant’s most CPU-sensitive scenarios. However, the measured frame rates show that the practical difference is minimal: the gap between this combo and the top-ranked pairings is likely only a few percent, given that the 650.1 FPS result at 1080p Low is already near the ceiling of what most display technologies can present. The combo’s performance is consistently above 469 FPS across all tested configurations, meaning that users of this pairing will never encounter a scenario where frame rate becomes a limiting factor in gameplay.