Valorant

Valorant is a competitive FPS where frame rate consistency and high averages directly translate to smoother aiming and reduced input latency. The measured data for the Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 shows exceptional performance, with average frame rates never dropping below 493 FPS across all tested configurations. This places the combination in the 45th position out of 1650 tested combos, putting it in the top percentile for this title.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals a clear hierarchy across the four settings presets tested: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 681 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded in the entire dataset. The Medium preset follows at 577.2 FPS, High at 569 FPS, and Ultra at 560.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 120.9 FPS, which is substantial but not game-breaking given the absolute numbers involved.

The data suggests that Low settings provide the best competitive experience, as the 681 FPS average at 1080p gives the maximum headroom above high-refresh-rate monitors. However, the differences become less pronounced at higher resolutions. At 2560x1440, Low yields 648 FPS, while Ultra still delivers 529.9 FPS. At 3840x2160, Low produces 597.3 FPS and Ultra produces 493.7 FPS.

For players prioritizing visual clarity without sacrificing competitive viability, Medium settings present a balanced option. The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 577.2 FPS, which is only 15.2% lower than Low, while providing improved visual fidelity. The data indicates that Medium is the optimal compromise, as the performance penalty versus Low is modest, but the gap between Medium and High is even smaller, suggesting diminishing returns on visual quality at higher presets.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average is 681 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to Low at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, Ultra delivers 493.7 FPS average, while Low delivers 597.3 FPS. This represents a 103.6 FPS difference, or approximately 17.3% lower performance on Ultra.

Q: Is this combination better than the Intel Core i7-14700K with the same GPU?

A: The data shows the i7-14700KF has an average benchmark score of 70104, while the i7-14700K scores 70074. This gives the KF variant a negligible 0% deltaPct advantage, meaning they perform essentially identically.

Q: What is the combo's ranking among all tested configurations in Valorant?

A: The combo ranks 45th out of 1650 tested combinations, placing it in the top 2.7% of all systems tested for this game.

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

A: The drop is from 681 FPS at 1080p Low to 493.7 FPS at 4K Ultra, representing a total reduction of 187.3 FPS or approximately 27.5% lower performance.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's performance relative to its rivals affect Valorant frame rates?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score of 84306 is 0.1% higher than the RTX 5090 D (84241) and 0.2% higher than the RTX 5050 Mobile (84171), but these differences are within noise and do not translate to meaningful FPS changes in Valorant.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling across resolutions reveals important characteristics about this system's performance in Valorant. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Low settings reduces the average from 681 FPS to 648 FPS, a drop of 33 FPS or 4.8%. Continuing to 3840x2160 at Low settings brings the average down to 597.3 FPS, representing a further 50.7 FPS reduction from 1440p.

At High settings, the scaling is more pronounced. The transition from 1080p (569 FPS) to 1440p (540.1 FPS) costs 28.9 FPS, and the jump to 4K (497.6 FPS) costs another 42.5 FPS. The total scaling loss from 1080p High to 4K High is 71.4 FPS, or 12.5%. This relatively small percentage loss indicates that the system is not heavily GPU-limited at lower resolutions.

The pattern across all presets shows that the RTX 5090 is more than capable of handling the graphical load in Valorant, even at 4K. The frame rate deltas between resolutions are proportionally small, suggesting that the CPU, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, becomes a more significant factor at higher frame rates. The 4K Ultra result of 493.7 FPS demonstrates that even the most demanding settings leave substantial performance headroom, with the limiting factor shifting toward the CPU's ability to feed the GPU with draw calls at extreme frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a rank of 45 out of 1650 tested combos in Valorant. This places the system in the 97.3rd percentile of all configurations tested, meaning only 44 other combinations produced higher average frame rates. Given that Valorant is designed to run on modest hardware, this ranking is particularly impressive because it shows the system is extracting near-maximum performance from the game engine.

The ranking data becomes more meaningful when considering the CPU's position in its own benchmark hierarchy. The i7-14700KF sits at the 96th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70104. Its nearest rivals include the i7-14700K (70074, 0% delta), AMD EPYC 9115 (69887, 0.3% delta), and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70420, -0.4% delta). The GPU similarly ranks at the 94th percentile among all GPUs with an average score of 84306.

The combination's rank of 45 suggests that the pairing is well-balanced for Valorant, with neither component bottlenecking the other significantly. The fact that the combo outperforms 97% of tested systems while the individual components rank in the 94-96th percentiles indicates that this particular pairing synergizes well with the game's engine, likely due to the CPU's strong single-thread performance and the GPU's massive rendering headroom.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF brings substantial processing capability to this Valorant configuration. With 20 cores and 28 threads, the processor offers a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. The Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, provides a large 33 MB shared L3 cache, which is beneficial for keeping frequently accessed game data close to the cores.

In Valorant specifically, the CPU's role is critical because the game engine's draw call submission and physics calculations are largely single-threaded. The i7-14700KF's single-core performance is strong, evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6290 and Geekbench single-core score of 2972. These scores indicate excellent per-thread performance, which directly translates to higher frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios like Valorant's low-settings configurations.

The multi-threaded capabilities are equally impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44557 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 19287. While Valorant may not fully utilize all 20 cores, the high core count ensures that background tasks and game threads never contend for resources. The PassMark multithread score of 52425 and single-thread score of 4480 further confirm that this CPU is well-suited for high-FPS gaming workloads where the CPU must keep pace with a very fast GPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all presets. The Low preset achieves 681 FPS average, which is the peak performance in the entire dataset. Medium produces 577.2 FPS, High produces 569 FPS, and Ultra produces 560.1 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 120.9 FPS, showing that settings choices have a meaningful impact even at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain exceptionally high. Low settings yield 648 FPS average, representing only a 4.8% drop from the 1080p result. Medium delivers 547.4 FPS, High delivers 540.1 FPS, and Ultra delivers 529.9 FPS. The difference between Medium and Ultra at 1440p is just 17.5 FPS, indicating that the GPU handles increased visual complexity with minimal penalty.

At 3840x2160, the system still maintains triple-digit frame rates well above competitive thresholds. Low settings produce 597.3 FPS, Medium produces 509.6 FPS, High produces 497.6 FPS, and Ultra produces 493.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 103.6 FPS, which is proportionally larger than at lower resolutions, suggesting the GPU becomes more of a factor at this high pixel count. However, even the lowest 4K result of 493.7 FPS exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all gaming monitors, making this combination capable of maxing out any display available for Valorant.