Downfall

# Downfall with AMD Ryzen 5 8400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 delivers a formidable 1080p and 1440p experience in Downfall, with the data showing this combination sits comfortably in the upper tier of tested systems. At 4K, the frame rates remain playable across most settings, though the Ultra preset pushes the hardware to its limits. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS results across three resolutions and four quality presets, examining where the GPU and CPU each become the limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of diminishing returns as resolution increases, with the GPU becoming the dominant constraint at higher pixel counts. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 400 FPS average, which drops to 285 FPS at 1440p Low (a 28.75% reduction) and further to 178 FPS at 4K Low (a 55.5% reduction from 1080p). This scaling curve indicates that at Low settings, the CPU is still providing enough headroom that the GPU workload scales nearly linearly with pixel count.

Moving to High settings, the resolution scaling becomes more pronounced. The 1080p High result of 268 FPS drops to 191 FPS at 1440p High (28.7% reduction) and then to 119 FPS at 4K High (55.6% reduction from 1080p). The percentage drops are nearly identical to the Low preset, suggesting that the GPU is consistently the limiting factor even at lower quality settings. The RTX 4080's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth provide sufficient headroom for the higher resolutions, but the raw compute demand at 4K still cuts performance roughly in half compared to 1080p.

The Medium preset shows the same trend with slightly different absolute numbers: 327 FPS at 1080p, 233 FPS at 1440p (28.7% drop), and 145 FPS at 4K (55.7% drop). The consistency of these percentage reductions across Low, Medium, and High presets strongly indicates that resolution scaling in Downfall is almost purely GPU-bound for this hardware combination. The Ultra preset tells a different story, however, with 168 FPS at 1080p dropping to 120 FPS at 1440p (28.6% drop) and then to 74 FPS at 4K (56% drop). While the percentage pattern holds, the absolute numbers at 4K Ultra fall below the 80 FPS threshold that many builders consider the minimum for smooth horror gameplay.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 with its Ada Lovelace architecture and AD103 chip provides the computational backbone for this combo. The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for Downfall's texture-heavy horror environments even at 4K resolution. The boost clock of 2505 MHz and base clock of 2205 MHz allow the card to maintain high sustained performance during extended gameplay sessions.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 86th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54247. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, scores 54209, a mere 0.1% difference that puts this card essentially at parity with its successor. The AMD Radeon Pro W5700X and Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB actually score higher in synthetic benchmarks (54828 and 55698 respectively, representing 1.1% and 2.6% deltas), but the RTX 4080's real-world gaming performance in Downfall demonstrates that synthetic scores don't always translate directly to game-specific results.

In Downfall specifically, the GPU's role becomes increasingly critical as resolution rises. At 1080p Low, the 400 FPS result suggests the game is likely CPU-limited at that point, since the RTX 4080 is capable of far higher frame rates in less demanding scenes. However, as resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU workload expands and the card's 48.74 TFLOPS FP32 compute and 761.5 GTexel/s texture rate become the determining factors. The 112 ROPs and 280.6 GPixel/s pixel rate handle the fill-rate demands of Downfall's dark, detailed environments without becoming a bottleneck in the measured scenarios.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F brings 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 4 Phoenix architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process. With a base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz, this CPU provides strong single-threaded performance that horror games like Downfall often rely on for physics, AI, and game logic. The 16 MB shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth ensure that the CPU can feed the RTX 4080 without stalling.

The CPU's benchmark results show it ranks in the 77th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 25005. Its nearest rivals are extremely close: the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F scores 24964 (0.2% delta), the Intel Core i7-11850H scores 24935 (0.3% delta), and the Intel Core i7-13620H scores 24911 (0.4% delta). This clustering indicates that the 8400F performs essentially identically to its closest competitors in general compute tasks, making the choice between these CPUs more about platform features than raw performance.

In Downfall, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p Low, where the 400 FPS average suggests the game is pushing against CPU limits. The 3dmark single-thread score of 951 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2943 indicate strong per-core performance that prevents the CPU from becoming a significant bottleneck at typical gaming frame rates. However, the data shows that even at 1080p, the combo doesn't exceed 400 FPS, which likely represents a CPU-imposed ceiling given the RTX 4080's theoretical capacity. The 12 threads handle Downfall's multi-threaded workloads effectively, as evidenced by the 3dmark max-threads score of 6165 and Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20851.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimizing the Downfall experience with this hardware combination. At 1080p, all settings presets deliver well above 144 Hz refresh rates, with High at 268 FPS, Medium at 327 FPS, and Ultra at 168 FPS. Even the most demanding 1080p preset keeps the frame rate high enough for competitive play on high-refresh monitors. The Low preset at 400 FPS serves primarily as a benchmark reference rather than a practical gaming setting, since the visual quality trade-off isn't necessary at this resolution.

At 1440p, the High preset's 191 FPS average provides an excellent balance of visual fidelity and performance, comfortably exceeding 144 Hz for smooth gameplay. The Medium preset at 233 FPS offers additional headroom for those with 240 Hz displays, while Ultra at 120 FPS still meets the 120 Hz standard. The Low preset at 285 FPS is excessive for most displays and sacrifices too much visual quality for a horror game where atmosphere matters.

The 4K resolution presents the most interesting trade-offs. The High preset at 119 FPS is nearly perfect for 120 Hz 4K displays, offering a strong balance between the game's horror aesthetics and smooth motion. The Medium preset at 145 FPS provides even more headroom, though the visual quality difference between Medium and High may be noticeable in Downfall's detailed environments. The Ultra preset at 74 FPS dips below the 80 FPS threshold that many players consider minimum for comfortable gameplay, making it the only measured setting that struggles at 4K. For the best overall experience across all resolutions, the High preset emerges as the recommended choice: it maintains at least 119 FPS at 4K, 191 FPS at 1440p, and 268 FPS at 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 ranks 230th out of 3716 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the top 6.2% of all configurations tested. This ranking reflects the strong synergy between the CPU and GPU, where the 8400F provides sufficient processing power to keep the RTX 4080 fed at lower resolutions, while the GPU takes over as the primary performance driver at higher resolutions.

The combo's rank is particularly impressive given that the CPU's general benchmark score places it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU sits in the 86th percentile. The gap between these percentile positions suggests that the system performs better in Downfall than the individual component rankings might predict, indicating good optimization for this specific game's workload. The 8400F's nearest CPU rivals, which score within 0.4% in synthetic benchmarks, would likely produce nearly identical results in this game when paired with the same GPU, making the 230th rank a function of the GPU's strong performance rather than any CPU advantage.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo in Downfall spans three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a comprehensive picture of performance scaling.

1920x1080:

• Low: 400 FPS average
• Medium: 327 FPS average, with a minimum of 278 FPS and maximum of 376 FPS
• High: 268 FPS average
• Ultra: 168 FPS average

2560x1440:

• Low: 285 FPS average
• Medium: 233 FPS average, with a minimum of 198 FPS and maximum of 268 FPS
• High: 191 FPS average
• Ultra: 120 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 178 FPS average
• Medium: 145 FPS average, with a minimum of 123 FPS and maximum of 167 FPS
• High: 119 FPS average
• Ultra: 74 FPS average

The Medium preset is the only setting that includes minimum and maximum FPS data, providing insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the 278 FPS minimum represents a 15% drop from the average, while at 1440p the 198 FPS minimum is 15% below the 233 FPS average, and at 4K the 123 FPS minimum is 15.2% below the 145 FPS average. This consistent 15% variance suggests that Downfall has occasional demanding scenes that cause frame rate dips, but the overall experience remains smooth across all resolutions.

The step-up from Low to Medium costs roughly 18% performance at each resolution, while the jump from Medium to High costs about 18-19% more, and High to Ultra costs an additional 37-38% at each resolution. This exponential scaling of performance cost with each quality tier means that Ultra preset demands significantly more from the hardware than High, making High the sweet spot for maintaining high frame rates without excessive visual compromises.