Downfall

The pairing of an Intel Core i5-11400F with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is an unusual one: a mid-tier six-core CPU from the Rocket Lake generation feeding one of the most powerful Ada Lovelace GPUs ever shipped. The recorded data for Downfall, a 2016 horror title, suggests the imbalance barely matters here, because the game simply does not demand much from either component. Every resolution and every preset in the database clears the 60 FPS playable threshold, often by a factor of two or three.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measurements cover three resolutions and four presets, and the average frame rates are recorded as follows.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 332.8 FPS, Medium averages 313.1 FPS, High averages 290.6 FPS, and Ultra averages 187.8 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra is only 145 FPS wide, which is remarkably flat for a modern GPU like the RTX 4090, with its 24 GB of GDDR6X and 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 297.4 FPS, Medium 259.5 FPS, High 210.7 FPS, and Ultra 136.1 FPS. Even at this resolution, the Ultra result sits well above double the playable threshold.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 198 FPS, Medium 159.3 FPS, High 135 FPS, and Ultra 82.6 FPS. The Ultra figure is the closest any configuration comes to the threshold, and it still clears it with more than 20 FPS to spare.

Minimum and maximum frame rates were not captured for these runs, so the analysis rests on averages. That is a limitation worth noting for a horror game, where sudden scene transitions and physics events can produce dips that averages conceal. Still, with the lowest average at 82.6 FPS, the margin is large enough that brief dips below 60 FPS at 4K Ultra seem unlikely to define the experience.

FAQ

Q: Can the i5-11400F + RTX 4090 run Downfall at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: Yes. The recorded average at 3840x2160 Ultra is 82.6 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS playable threshold. All four presets at 4K are playable.

Q: What is the highest frame rate recorded for this game?

A: 332.8 FPS, at 1920x1080 on the Low preset. That figure strongly suggests the run was nearing a CPU or engine limit rather than a GPU one.

Q: How much performance is lost going from Low to Ultra at 1080p?

A: Frame rates drop from 332.8 FPS to 187.8 FPS. In relative terms, Ultra still delivers well over half of the Low-preset figure, which indicates the game's visual upgrades are not especially expensive for this hardware.

Q: Does the aging Core i5-11400F hold this combo back?

A: At 1080p, possibly. The shrinking gap between Low and Medium at 1920x1080 (332.8 versus 313.1 FPS) is consistent with a processor or engine ceiling rather than GPU saturation. At 1440p and 4K, the GPU does the limiting.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested configurations for Downfall?

A: It ranks 199 out of 3716 tested combinations, placing it roughly in the top five percent of results recorded for this game.

Q: Was this data measured or estimated?

A: It was measured. The database flags these frame rates as recorded measurements rather than projected figures.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling pattern across resolutions tells a clear story about which component is in charge.

From 1080p to 1440p at Ultra, the average falls from 187.8 FPS to 136.1 FPS. From 1440p to 4K, it falls further to 82.6 FPS. Those are substantial, proportional drops, and they indicate that at High and Ultra presets the RTX 4090 is the primary determinant of frame rate at every resolution above 1080p. The more pixels the GPU must push, the slower the run.

At 1080p, the picture inverts. Low and Medium are nearly indistinguishable (332.8 versus 313.1 FPS), and even High is within about 13 percent of Low. When reducing visual quality no longer buys meaningful frame rate, the bottleneck has moved to something other than the GPU: either the game engine itself or the Core i5-11400F. This is where a six-core, twelve-thread CPU with a 4.40 GHz boost clock and a single-thread Cinebench R23 score of 2024 plausibly sets the ceiling.

Is that ceiling a problem? For Downfall, no. The engine ceiling at 1080p is above 300 FPS, far beyond any refresh rate a player would use. The more interesting question is whether the 4090 is wasted here, and at 4K Ultra it certainly is not: 82.6 FPS at that preset is the kind of result that justifies the card. At 1080p, the data implies most of the GPU's capacity sits idle.

How This Combo Ranks

Against the full field of hardware combinations tested for Downfall, this pairing ranks 199 out of 3716. That placement is strong in absolute terms, yet it also raises a question: with one of the highest-percentile GPUs in the database (88th percentile versus all GPUs) paired with a CPU sitting at the 71st percentile, why is the rank not higher?

The answer likely lies in the CPU. The RTX 4090's average benchmark score of 60347 is elite hardware, but the i5-11400F's average score of 17177 is merely good. In a game where other tested combinations presumably pair comparable GPUs with stronger processors, the 11400F gives ground. Its own nearest rivals illustrate the neighborhood it occupies: the AMD EPYC 7H12 (average score 17120, within 0.3 percent), the Intel Core i5-12450H (17239, 0.4 percent ahead), the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (17278, 0.6 percent ahead), and the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (17074, 0.6 percent behind). These are capable but unremarkable processors, and that is the tier the 11400F belongs to.

For this particular game, the ranking shortfall costs nothing, since every preset is playable. But the rank hints that in more demanding titles the CPU would be the component holding the pairing back.

Similar Performance Alternatives

Looking at hardware that would behave similarly starts with the GPU's nearest rivals: the Intel Arc Pro A60 (average score 60326, exactly 0 percent delta), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (60140, 0.3 percent behind), the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (61896, 2.5 percent ahead), and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 (58657, 2.9 percent behind). Judged purely on aggregate benchmark scores, these cards cluster tightly around the 4090's recorded average, which is a curious result given the 4090's flagship positioning. It suggests the database's composite metric does not always track gaming-specific throughput, so treat these as score neighbors rather than guaranteed gameplay equivalents.

On the CPU side, the alternatives are more straightforward. The AMD EPYC 7H12, Core i5-12450H, Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G, and Core Ultra 7 164U all sit within one percent of the i5-11400F's composite average. A build using any of these processors with the RTX 4090 should produce broadly comparable results in Downfall, since the game appears to tolerate mid-tier CPUs without complaint. Conversely, a player wanting to lift the 1080p ceiling would need to look beyond this CPU tier entirely, because swapping within this cluster would change little.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC runs Downfall, and it does so with room to spare. The verdict data is unambiguous: at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160, all four presets (Low, Medium, High, and Ultra) are playable, exceeding the 60 FPS threshold in every single case.

The tightest result is 4K Ultra at 82.6 FPS average, still a healthy margin. The most comfortable is 1080p Low at 332.8 FPS. A player using this hardware can simply max out the game at any resolution and expect smooth play. The one caveat is the absence of minimum frame rate data, so the 4K Ultra figure should be read as an average with typical variance around it rather than a guaranteed floor.

Best Settings per Resolution

Because every preset is playable at every resolution, the best setting is simply the most demanding one available at each resolution.

• 1920x1080: Ultra, averaging 187.8 FPS. There is no reason to drop below Ultra here; even the most demanding preset nearly triples the playable threshold.
• 2560x1440: Ultra, averaging 136.1 FPS. More than double the threshold, and High (210.7 FPS) is available for players chasing higher refresh rates.
• 3840x2160: Ultra, averaging 82.6 FPS. The most demanding preset remains above 60 FPS, so maximum visual quality is on the table at 4K. Players wanting extra headroom can step down to High at 135 FPS or Medium at 159.3 FPS.

In short, Ultra is the answer at every resolution for this pairing. The only real decision a player faces is whether to trade visual fidelity for very high frame rates at the lower resolutions, where even Low cannot exceed roughly 333 FPS due to limits elsewhere in the system.