Downfall

This combo pairs AMD’s Zen 5-based Ryzen 5 9600X with NVIDIA’s Pascal-era GTX 1070, a pairing that places it in the lower-mid tier of tested configurations for Downfall. The data shows the combo ranks 1469th out of 1741 tested combos, putting it in the bottom 16% of all pairings. That ranking is not a verdict on either component individually; rather, it reflects a significant imbalance where the CPU’s modern architecture is held back by a GPU that is now end-of-life. The GTX 1070’s average benchmark score of 12331 places it at the 51st percentile of all GPUs, while the Ryzen 5 9600X sits at the 85th percentile among CPUs, a gap that becomes obvious in the measured frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The 1469th position out of 1741 combos is a clear signal that this system is GPU-limited in Downfall. The ranking is driven almost entirely by the graphics card’s performance ceiling, not the processor’s capability. For context, the GTX 1070’s nearest rivals in the database are the NVIDIA Quadro K4200 (with a delta of 0.7%), the GeForce GTX 880M (-1.3%), the GTX 1650 SUPER (-1.4%), and the Tesla K20Xm (-1.7%). These deltas are tiny, meaning the GTX 1070 is clustered tightly with other mid-range GPUs of its era. The Ryzen 5 9600X, meanwhile, is within 0.3% of the Intel Core i5-13490F and AMD Ryzen 5 230, and only -0.4% and -0.5% behind the Ryzen 7 8845HS and Core i5-14500T, respectively. The CPU is punching well above the GPU’s weight class, which is the core takeaway for anyone considering this pairing.

FAQ

*Q: Is this combo capable of running Downfall at 1080p?*

A: Yes, with headroom. At 1920x1080 on Low settings, the average FPS is 157.4, and even on High it stays above 104.5. Ultra is the only setting that dips below 70 FPS, coming in at 67.3.

Q: What is the biggest bottleneck in this system?

A: The GPU. The GTX 1070 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit bus, but its raw compute of 6.463 TFLOPS is the limiting factor. The CPU’s single-thread score of 1253 in 3DMark and multi-thread score of 7590 are far ahead of what this game needs.

Q: How does the GTX 1070 compare to its closest rivals?

A: Its average benchmark score of 12331 is essentially tied with the Quadro K4200 (12241, delta 0.7%) and GTX 880M (12490, delta -1.3%). It trails the GTX 1650 SUPER (12504) by -1.4% and the Tesla K20Xm (12547) by -1.7%.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 9600X’s performance hold up in this game?

A: Yes, but it is underutilized. The CPU’s 6 cores and 12 threads with a boost clock of 5.40 GHz provide far more processing power than Downfall can leverage at most settings, given the GPU constraint.

Q: Should I play at 1440p or 1080p with this combo?

A: The data favors 1080p for smooth play. At 2560x1440 on Medium, the average FPS is 93.3, which is playable, but High drops to 72.8. At 4K, only Low (70.4 FPS) is viable; Ultra falls to 28.4.

Q: Is the GTX 1070’s VRAM sufficient for this game?

A: The 8 GB frame buffer is sufficient for Downfall’s highest settings at 1080p and 1440p, but the GPU’s compute limits prevent it from maintaining high frame rates at 4K Ultra, where the average drops to 28.4 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance cliff as resolution increases, which is typical of a GPU-bound scenario. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the average is 104.5 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 drops that to 72.8 FPS, a 30% reduction. At 3840x2160, the average falls to 45.5 FPS, another 38% drop from 1440p. This scaling pattern is almost entirely attributable to the GTX 1070’s pixel throughput and memory bandwidth. The GPU’s pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s are simply not enough to feed a 4K display with modern settings.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings grows with resolution. At 1080p, Low (157.4 FPS) is 2.3x faster than Ultra (67.3 FPS). At 4K, that gap widens to 2.5x (Low 70.4 vs Ultra 28.4). This suggests that the GPU’s shading units (1920) and ROPs (64) become the hard limit at higher resolutions, and lowering settings from Ultra to Low effectively reduces the workload enough to keep the card from being completely overwhelmed. For a builder targeting 1440p, Medium settings (93.3 FPS) offer the best balance; for 4K, only Low is playable, and even then the 70.4 FPS average is marginal for a horror title where smoothness matters.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset provides a clear picture of what to expect at each resolution and quality preset.

At 1920x1080, the GTX 1070 delivers:

• Low: 157.4 FPS
• Medium: 128.6 FPS
• High: 104.5 FPS
• Ultra: 67.3 FPS

At 2560x1440, the averages are:

• Low: 112.5 FPS
• Medium: 93.3 FPS
• High: 72.8 FPS
• Ultra: 44.9 FPS

At 3840x2160, the card struggles:

• Low: 70.4 FPS
• Medium: 57.7 FPS
• High: 45.5 FPS
• Ultra: 28.4 FPS

The 1080p data shows that this combo can handle high-refresh gaming on Low through High settings, but Ultra is the breaking point. The 1440p results are playable up to High, with Ultra dropping below 45 FPS. At 4K, the card is only viable on Low, and even then, the 70.4 FPS average is likely to dip in intense scenes given the lack of reported minimums. The step from Medium to High at 1440p costs 20.5 FPS (from 93.3 to 72.8), while the step from High to Ultra at 4K costs 17.1 FPS (from 45.5 to 28.4). This non-linear scaling indicates that the GPU’s 256.3 GB/s bandwidth is saturated at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is the clear limiting component in this pairing. Its GP104 chip, built on a 16 nm process, contains 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die. The card’s base clock of 1506 MHz boosts to 1683 MHz, and the 8 GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 2002 MHz (effectively 8 Gbps) across a 256-bit bus, yielding 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth. These specs place it at the 51st percentile of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 12331 is only slightly above the Quadro K4200.

In Downfall, the GTX 1070’s 1920 shading units and 64 ROPs are the primary drivers of the FPS results. The card’s 6.463 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is adequate for 1080p Medium and High, but the 4K Ultra result of 28.4 FPS shows that the architecture is simply outclassed at that resolution. The 150 W TDP and PCIe 3.0 x16 interface are not bottlenecks; the issue is raw compute and memory bandwidth. The card’s nearest rival, the GTX 1650 SUPER, is 1.4% faster on average, which tells you that the GTX 1070 is firmly in the mid-range tier of the database, and pairing it with a top-tier CPU does not change that.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a modern 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 9000 series, based on the Zen 5 architecture (codename Granite Ridge). It operates on the AMD Socket AM5 platform with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. The CPU’s 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s of dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth are far more than Downfall requires. Its benchmark scores are exceptional: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25525 and a single-core score of 3603, placing it at the 85th percentile of all CPUs.

In this game, however, the CPU is rarely the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work, the CPU can push 157.4 FPS, but that figure is still well below what the CPU could theoretically deliver. The Ryzen 5 9600X’s single-thread performance, measured at 1253 in 3DMark and 4570 in PassMark, ensures that frame pacing is stable, but the GPU’s 45.5 FPS at 4K High shows that the processor is idling while the graphics card works at its limit. The CPU’s nearest rivals, the Core i5-13490F and Ryzen 5 230, are within 0.3% of its average score, so the 9600X is not uniquely suited to this game; any comparable modern CPU would yield similar results. The imbalance is stark: the CPU is capable of far more, but the GTX 1070 caps the experience.