Downfall

# Downfall with AMD Ryzen 5 9600X + Intel Arc B570

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a playable but settings-sensitive experience in Downfall, a 2016 horror title. The data set spans four quality presets across three resolutions, with average frame rates ranging from 30 FPS at 4K Ultra to 163 FPS at 1080p Low. The combination ranks 2343rd out of 2928 tested CPU-GPU pairings for this game, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. The Arc B570's 10 GB of VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth prove sufficient for the game's demands, while the 9600X's six-core Zen 5 architecture never appears to be the primary constraint in the measured results.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear stratification of playable presets for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, all four settings exceed 60 FPS on average, with Low hitting 163 FPS, Medium at 133 FPS, High at 109 FPS, and Ultra at 68 FPS. This makes 1080p the only resolution where every preset remains comfortably playable, including the demanding Ultra setting which still maintains a 68 FPS average.

Moving to 2560x1440, the picture changes substantially. Low and Medium remain fluid at 116 FPS and 95 FPS respectively, while High drops to 78 FPS. Ultra falls below the 60 FPS threshold at 49 FPS average, making it a marginal choice for users who demand smooth motion. The Medium preset at 1440p shows a minimum frame rate of 81 FPS, indicating consistent performance without significant dips.

At 3840x2160, only Low (72 FPS) and Medium (59 FPS) approach playable territory. High sits at 49 FPS, which may be acceptable for slower-paced horror gameplay, but Ultra drops to 30 FPS, a figure that feels sluggish even for the genre. The Medium preset at 4K shows a minimum of 50 FPS and a maximum of 68 FPS, suggesting minor frame-time variance but overall stability.

For the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 emerges as the optimal choice. It delivers 95 FPS average with a minimum of 81 FPS, keeping the experience smooth while offering noticeably better image quality than Low. At 4K, Medium at 59 FPS is the highest preset that stays near the 60 FPS target, though users prioritizing frame rate over visuals should select Low for a 72 FPS average. Ultra should be avoided at every resolution above 1080p, as the 49 FPS at 1440p and 30 FPS at 4K fail to provide a consistently fluid experience. For 1080p users, High at 109 FPS offers the best quality-to-speed ratio, with Ultra still viable at 68 FPS if visual fidelity is paramount.

FAQ

Q: Can this hardware run Downfall at 4K with acceptable frame rates?

A: Yes, but only at Low or Medium settings. The measured data shows 72 FPS average at 4K Low and 59 FPS average at 4K Medium. High drops to 49 FPS and Ultra falls to 30 FPS, making those presets less suitable for 4K play.

Q: What is the highest settings preset that maintains above 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: High settings at 2560x1440 produce a 78 FPS average, which remains above the 60 FPS threshold. Ultra falls to 49 FPS average, so High is the highest preset that stays fluid at this resolution.

Q: How much performance difference exists between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: The gap is substantial. Low averages 163 FPS while Ultra averages 68 FPS, representing a 95 FPS difference between the two extremes. Medium and High sit in between at 133 FPS and 109 FPS respectively.

Q: Is the Intel Arc B570's VRAM capacity sufficient for Downfall at maximum settings?

A: The GPU features 10 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 160-bit bus and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth. The measured results show Ultra settings are playable at 1080p (68 FPS) but drop to 49 FPS at 1440p and 30 FPS at 4K, indicating VRAM capacity is not the limiting factor—compute performance appears to constrain Ultra settings at higher resolutions.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 9600X bottleneck the Arc B570 in this game?

A: The data suggests the CPU is not the primary bottleneck. The 9600X scores 2183.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 17528.5 in multi-core, placing it in the 81st percentile among all CPUs. Frame rates scale dramatically with resolution and settings, a pattern consistent with GPU-limited performance.

Q: What frame rate can users expect with Medium settings at 1440p?

A: The measured average is 95 FPS, with a minimum of 81 FPS and a maximum of 110 FPS. This represents one of the most consistent results in the entire data set, with only a 29 FPS spread between minimum and maximum.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture with the BMG-G21 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It contains 19,600 million transistors across a 272 mm² die, with a transistor density of 72.1M per mm². The GPU runs at a fixed 2500 MHz base and boost clock, with memory operating at 2375 MHz for 19 Gbps effective speed. The 10 GB GDDR6 frame buffer connects via a 160-bit bus, yielding 380.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The compute configuration includes 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units, alongside 18 ray tracing cores. The card achieves 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 23.04 TFLOPS of FP16 performance at a 2:1 ratio. Pixel fill rate reaches 200.0 GPixel/s while texture fill rate hits 360.0 GTexel/s. The GPU's 150 W TDP requires a single 8-pin power connector and a suggested 450 W power supply.

In Downfall, the Arc B570's performance profile shows clear scaling with settings and resolution. At 1080p, the GPU delivers 163 FPS at Low, 133 FPS at Medium, 109 FPS at High, and 68 FPS at Ultra. These figures indicate headroom at lower settings, but the Ultra preset at 1080p consumes most of the available performance. At 1440p, the same pattern continues with a more compressed range: 116 FPS at Low, 95 FPS at Medium, 78 FPS at High, and 49 FPS at Ultra. The 4K results show the GPU reaching its limits, with 72 FPS at Low but only 30 FPS at Ultra.

The benchmark scores place the Arc B570 in the 65th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20556. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (0.1% faster), Intel Arc A750 (0.1% slower), NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (0.4% faster), and AMD Radeon R9 M390X (0.5% slower). The PassMark G3D score of 14195 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2649 provide additional context for the card's overall capability.

The VRAM configuration appears adequate for Downfall's requirements, as the game's release date of 2016-02-28 predates the GPU by nearly nine years. The 10 GB capacity and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth provide sufficient memory throughput even at 4K resolution, where the Low preset achieves 72 FPS. The bottleneck at higher settings emerges from compute throughput rather than memory limitations, as evidenced by the steep performance drops when transitioning from Medium to High and Ultra at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings range remains playable. Low produces the highest average at 163 FPS, followed by Medium at 133 FPS with a minimum of 113 FPS and maximum of 153 FPS. High achieves 109 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 68 FPS average. The spread between Low and Ultra spans 95 FPS, demonstrating significant performance headroom for users who prioritize frame rate.

The 2560x1440 results show a tighter distribution. Low leads at 116 FPS average, with Medium at 95 FPS (minimum 81 FPS, maximum 110 FPS). High falls to 78 FPS average, and Ultra reaches only 49 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 67 FPS, smaller than at 1080p but still substantial. The Medium preset's 29 FPS range between minimum and maximum indicates stable frame delivery.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals the hardware's limits. Low averages 72 FPS, Medium averages 59 FPS with a minimum of 50 FPS and maximum of 68 FPS. High drops to 49 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 30 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 42 FPS at this resolution, as both settings approach the GPU's maximum throughput. The Medium preset's 18 FPS range between minimum and maximum suggests the game maintains consistent frame pacing even at 4K.

Comparing the same settings across resolutions, the performance degradation follows a predictable pattern. At Low settings, 163 FPS at 1080p becomes 116 FPS at 1440p and 72 FPS at 4K. At Medium, the progression is 133 to 95 to 59 FPS. High settings produce 109, 78, and 49 FPS across the three resolutions. Ultra generates 68, 49, and 30 FPS respectively. The smallest absolute drop occurs at Ultra settings, where the difference between 1080p and 1440p is only 19 FPS, while the largest drop at Low settings shows a 47 FPS difference between 1080p and 1440p.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 1440p reveals how the hardware responds to increasing pixel counts. At Low settings, the drop from 163 to 116 FPS represents a 29% reduction. Medium falls from 133 to 95 FPS, a 29% decrease. High goes from 109 to 78 FPS, a 28% reduction. Ultra declines from 68 to 49 FPS, a 28% drop. The consistency of these percentages—all within a narrow 28-29% band—suggests the GPU scales uniformly with pixel count when transitioning from 1080p to 1440p.

The move from 1440p to 4K shows a different pattern. Low settings drop from 116 to 72 FPS, a 38% reduction. Medium falls from 95 to 59 FPS, a 38% decrease. High goes from 78 to 49 FPS, a 37% reduction. Ultra declines from 49 to 30 FPS, a 39% drop. Again, the percentages cluster tightly between 37-39%, but the steeper decline compared to the 1080p-to-1440p transition indicates the GPU approaches its memory bandwidth or compute ceiling at 4K.

The pixel count increase from 1080p to 1440p is 78% more pixels, while the frame rate drops by roughly 28-29%. Moving from 1440p to 4K adds 125% more pixels, yet frame rates fall by 37-39%. This non-linear relationship suggests the Arc B570 handles the 1440p load efficiently but begins to saturate at 4K. The 380.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 compute become increasingly strained as resolution climbs.

The scaling pattern points to the GPU as the limiting component across all resolutions. The CPU, scoring in the 81st percentile among all processors with a PassMark single-thread score of 4570 and multi-thread score of 30027, provides ample headroom. If the CPU were the bottleneck, frame rates would remain flat across resolutions, but instead they scale consistently with pixel count. At 1080p Low, the 163 FPS average likely approaches the CPU's frame delivery ceiling, but at higher resolutions and settings, the GPU's rendering workload dominates.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a six-core, twelve-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It operates at a 3.90 GHz base clock and 5.40 GHz boost clock, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth, and includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes and includes Radeon integrated graphics.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9600X demonstrates strong single-thread performance with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2183.5 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2923. Multi-threaded performance reaches 17528.5 in Cinebench R23 and 14438 in Geekbench multicore. The 3DMark results show scaling from 2456 at 2 threads to 7590 at max threads, indicating efficient thread utilization. PassMark scores include 4570 for single-thread, 30027 for multithread, and 60081 for floating-point math.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 81 places it above most processors in the database, with an average benchmark score of 29713. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE (0.2% faster), AMD Ryzen 7 7840H (0.5% slower), AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT (0.6% slower), and AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (0.8% slower). This competitive positioning suggests the 9600X provides adequate processing power for modern games.

In Downfall, the CPU's contribution to frame rates appears secondary to the GPU. The measured FPS values show clear GPU-bound scaling: at 1080p Low, the system achieves 163 FPS, but this drops to 68 FPS at 1080p Ultra—a 95 FPS difference driven entirely by GPU workload. The CPU maintains consistent frame delivery across settings, as evidenced by the Medium preset's minimum frame rates of 113 FPS at 1080p and 81 FPS at 1440p, which remain high relative to averages.

The six-core, twelve-thread configuration with 12 MB of total L2 cache and 32 MB of shared L3 provides sufficient parallelism for the game's threading model. The boost clock of 5.40 GHz ensures responsive single-threaded performance, which horror titles often rely on for gameplay logic and AI. The 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth from DDR5 support eliminates memory subsystem bottlenecks that could constrain frame rates.

The launch MSRP for the 9600X is $279. The CPU's active production status and August 2024 release date mean it represents current-generation hardware. In the context of Downfall, a 2016 title, the 9600X offers far more processing capability than the game requires, ensuring the Arc B570 remains the performance limiter across all measured configurations.