I want to upgrade either my CPU or GPU for Valorant. Can you help me find out what is causing the bottleneck?

Iliad · January 27

I have an intel core i3-8100 and a GT 1030 with a 1280x720 monitor. My CPU is 100% utilized when playing valorant, but I figured that it only happens due to the game being cpu intensive.

ImWilly · January 27

It's probably hard to find new parts since it's around 5-6 years CPU, so you're gonna need to find compatible upgrade CPU on the used market

I would recommend upgrade your CPU first to i5-9500 or 9600

Depending on your budget, if you wanna upgrade GPU (not mandatory at all) you could find GTX 980 or GTX 1070/80

It probably won't affect much since you're gaming in 720p resolution, so you need to focus on CPU upgrade first

thewelshbrummie · January 28

You're barely above the recommended specs:

Memory: 4 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 or Radeon R7 240
CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 or Ryzen 3 1200
File Size: 23 GB
OS: Windows 10 64-bit

The 1030 is in theory faster than a 730 but that's such a low starting point that it's still on the weak side. And an 8100 is a 4 core 4 thread CPU vs a 2 core 4 thread CPU - neither of which are very fast for modern games.

Ideally you need to start over with a complete rebuild but so long as your power supply can provide enough power, upgrading the GPU makes the most sense here and go from there. You could upgrade the CPU but if that makes little difference then you'd need to replace CPU, motherboard and RAM for any meaningful upgrade so it's a huge gamble to upgrade your CPU as it may make little difference.