This gamer’s secret to playing Valorant at 1,200 FPS is AMD’s X3D processors
Ludicrous speed!
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Good lord, those are some high framerates. Content creator@connorjaiye, best known for playing the fast-paced competitive shooterValorant, put together a custom gaming PC with the help ofAMD- and was able to net upwards of 1,200 fps in his favorite shooter.
The most fascinating part of the whole endeavor is that Connor didn’t even do this using the most high-end parts available; he used a previous-genRadeon RX 6950 XTas his graphics card of choice, with a relatively bog-standard B650 motherboard fromMSIpulling the build together.
I built a PC that gives me 1000FPSFull video below 👇#valorant #ad #amdryzen pic.twitter.com/9qPZN2xi4KJuly 5, 2023
The secret sauce? It’s theAMD Ryzen 7 7800X3Dprocessor, the latest next-gen CPU from AMD to offer Team Red’s nifty 3D V-cache technology. This allows for cache memory to be ‘stacked’ on the CPU die, producing far more memory for the CPU to instantly draw on without needing to access your system RAM.
With this, Connor was able to achieve a stable 900+ frames per second inValorant, with peaks in excess of 1,200. It’s the sort of framerate that would’ve been unheard of just a few years ago, and a testament to the gaming capabilities of AMD’s X3D chips - even though they typically lose out toIntel’s competing CPUs in non-gaming workloads.
Is 3D V-cache the new frontier for PC gaming?
I already knew that AMD’s X3D chips were an exceedingly solid choice for custom gaming PCs, but this is probably the most impressive showcase of the technology to date.Intel’s i9-13900Kmight still rule the roost in terms of overall performance, but it’s hard to recommend anything but the 7800X3D as thebest processorfor gaming right now.
Sure, the CPU shouldn’t get all the credit; the RX 6950 XT was the most powerful card from AMD’s RX 6000 generation, although you can snap one up for around $580 / £585 / AU$900 right now, making it a lot cheaper than either AMD’s current flagshipRadeon RX 7900 XTXorNvidia’s competing powerhouse theRTX 4090.
Overall, chances are Connor’s build wasn’tthatexpensive - at least, not by gaming PC standards. I ran the numbers, and buying from Newegg in the US you’d be spending around $1,250 for his listed components - then usingPCPartPicker, I calculated the total build cost assuming 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a liquid cooler for the CPU, and it ran to just shy of $1,700 (about £1,350 / AU$2,550)
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If I was looking to achieve similar framerates, I could probably do it for a bit less - in fact, if you wanted to build a budget version of Connor’s framerate-blitzing PC, you could use the newly-releasedAMD Ryzen 5 5600X3Dalong with a cheaper graphics card and other lower-spec components to get that sweet sweet 3D V-cache goodness for a little over a thousand bucks. Be warned, though - the 5600X3D is a limited-edition chip only available from Micro Center in the US, which is kind of a bummer.
Christian is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing Editor. He came to us from Maximum PC magazine, where he fell in love with computer hardware and building PCs. He was a regular fixture amongst our freelance review team before making the jump to TechRadar, and can usually be found drooling over the latest high-end graphics card or gaming laptop before looking at his bank account balance and crying.
Christian is a keen campaigner for LGBTQ+ rights and the owner of a charming rescue dog named Lucy, having adopted her after he beat cancer in 2021. She keeps him fit and healthy through a combination of face-licking and long walks, and only occasionally barks at him to demand treats when he’s trying to work from home.
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