Downfall

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Downfall with the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER reveals a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 193.2 FPS, Medium drops to 157.5 FPS, High settles at 129 FPS, and Ultra falls to 80 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is substantial—a 113.2 FPS difference—indicating that Ultra imposes a heavy rendering load that this GPU handles with difficulty at lower resolutions.

For players prioritizing smooth horror gameplay, the High preset at 1080p offers the best balance. It maintains 129 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold, while still providing the visual fidelity that the genre benefits from. The Medium preset at 157.5 FPS is also viable, but the jump from Medium to High costs only 28.5 FPS while presumably adding meaningful detail. The Ultra preset at 80 FPS remains playable but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes typical of horror titles, where sudden visual effects can cause frame drops.

At 1440p, the High preset produces 94.2 FPS, which remains smooth and is the recommended choice for this resolution. The Medium preset at 110.7 FPS is slightly faster, but the visual trade-off may not be worth the 16.5 FPS gain. The Low preset at 133.7 FPS is unnecessarily fast for a horror game, where atmosphere and detail matter more than raw frame rate. The Ultra preset at 56 FPS dips below the 60 FPS line, making it less suitable for consistent gameplay.

At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. The High preset manages 56.7 FPS, which is just under the 60 FPS target but still playable. The Medium preset at 69.3 FPS is actually the better choice here, offering both a higher frame rate and better visual quality than Low (86.4 FPS). The Ultra preset at 38 FPS is too slow for comfortable play, especially in a horror game where quick reactions are sometimes necessary. For 4K, the Medium preset is the recommended setting—it provides a smooth experience while keeping the GPU from being overwhelmed.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset to use at 1080p for the RTX 2060 SUPER with the Ryzen 5 9600X?

A: The High preset at 1080p delivers 129 FPS, which offers a strong balance between visual quality and performance. The Ultra preset drops to 80 FPS, and while still playable, the High preset provides more headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: Can this combination handle 4K gaming in Downfall?

A: Yes, but with caveats. The Medium preset at 4K produces 69.3 FPS, which is smooth, while the High preset yields 56.7 FPS. The Ultra preset at 38 FPS is not recommended for consistent play.

Q: How does the CPU's core configuration affect Downfall's performance?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X has 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. Its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 25525 and single-core score of 3603 indicate strong processing power, which helps maintain high frame rates at lower resolutions where the GPU is less stressed.

Q: Is the RTX 2060 SUPER a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher settings. At 1080p, the FPS drops from 193.2 on Low to 80 on Ultra, a 58.6% reduction, indicating that the GPU is struggling with the increased graphical load rather than the CPU being a constraint.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the FPS decreases from 129 at 1080p to 94.2 at 1440p, and further to 56.7 at 4K. This represents a 56.0% drop from 1080p to 4K, showing how resolution scaling heavily impacts the GPU.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 1212 out of 1741 tested combinations in Downfall, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the ranking. This suggests that while the hardware is capable, many other combinations deliver higher frame rates in this specific game.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER combination ranks 1212 out of 1741 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the 69.6th percentile of all tested systems. This ranking indicates that the combo performs below average when compared to the full spectrum of hardware pairings tested for this game. The CPU itself ranks in the 85th percentile against all CPUs, showing it is a strong processor, but the GPU only reaches the 63rd percentile against all GPUs, which drags down the overall combo ranking.

Looking at the nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 9600X outperforms the Intel Core i5-13490F by just 0.3% in average benchmark score, and it also leads the AMD Ryzen 5 230 by 0.3%. However, it trails the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS by 0.4% and the Intel Core i5-14500T by 0.5%. These margins are tiny, indicating that the CPU is well within the performance band of its direct competitors. The GPU side shows a similar pattern: the RTX 2060 SUPER leads the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN by 0.3%, the RTX 2070 by 0.5%, the Quadro K5200 by 0.8%, and the Tesla K40m by 1.3%. This suggests the GPU is slightly faster than these alternatives but not by a significant margin.

The combo's rank of 1212 out of 1741 means that approximately 529 other combos perform worse, while 1211 perform better. This places the system in the lower half of tested configurations, which is consistent with the GPU being an older, end-of-life product (released in 2019) paired with a newer CPU (released in 2024). The data shows a clear imbalance: the CPU is near the top of its class, while the GPU is mid-tier, and this mismatch is reflected in the overall ranking.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 193.2 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded for this combo. The Medium preset delivers 157.5 FPS, the High preset produces 129 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 80 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steady decline, with the largest single-step drop occurring between High and Ultra, a 49 FPS reduction.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates scale down predictably. The Low preset achieves 133.7 FPS, Medium reaches 110.7 FPS, High produces 94.2 FPS, and Ultra falls to 56 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra at this resolution is 77.7 FPS, which is a 58.1% reduction. The Ultra preset at 56 FPS is the only setting at 1440p that falls below the 60 FPS threshold, making it marginal for smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly under heavy load. The Low preset manages 86.4 FPS, Medium produces 69.3 FPS, High reaches 56.7 FPS, and Ultra drops to 38 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 48.4 FPS, and interestingly, the Low preset at 4K (86.4 FPS) is faster than the Ultra preset at 1440p (56 FPS), highlighting the significant cost of pushing resolution to 4K.

Comparing the same settings across resolutions reveals the resolution's impact. For High settings, the FPS drops from 129 at 1080p to 94.2 at 1440p (a 26.9% decrease) and then to 56.7 at 4K (a 39.8% decrease from 1440p). For Low settings, the drop is from 193.2 at 1080p to 133.7 at 1440p (30.8% decrease) and then to 86.4 at 4K (35.4% decrease). The consistent pattern shows that 4K imposes roughly a 55-60% penalty compared to 1080p across all settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a clear pattern of resolution scaling that identifies the GPU as the primary limiting component. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at High settings, the frame rate drops from 129 to 94.2 FPS, a 34.8 FPS reduction. Moving further to 4K, the frame rate falls to 56.7 FPS, a 37.5 FPS additional drop. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 72.3 FPS, which represents a 56.0% decrease in performance.

The scaling pattern is consistent across all settings. At Low settings, the drop from 1080p to 4K is from 193.2 to 86.4 FPS, a 55.3% reduction. At Medium settings, the drop is from 157.5 to 69.3 FPS, a 56.0% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 80 to 38 FPS, a 52.5% reduction. The similarity of these percentages—all falling in the 52-56% range—indicates that the GPU is the bottleneck, as the resolution-dependent workload scales linearly with pixel count.

The Ryzen 5 9600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads running at up to 5.40 GHz boost, provides more than enough processing power to feed the GPU at these resolutions. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 25525 and PassMark multithread score of 30027 show it is a high-end processor for gaming. The fact that the FPS drops so uniformly with resolution, regardless of settings, confirms that the RTX 2060 SUPER's rendering capabilities are the limiting factor. This is typical for a GPU with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and a 256-bit bus providing 448.0 GB/s bandwidth—the memory bandwidth and compute capacity (7.181 TFLOPS FP32) are what determine the resolution ceiling.

The data also shows that the CPU's performance headroom is not fully utilized at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the CPU can push 193.2 FPS, but the GPU is likely the constraint even there, as the CPU's single-thread performance (3603 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is far above what most games require. At 4K, the GPU is clearly overwhelmed, with even the Low preset (86.4 FPS) showing a significant drop from 1080p Low (193.2 FPS), proving that the resolution, not the CPU, is determining the frame rate.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge, manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. Its base clock of 3.90 GHz and boost clock of 5.40 GHz provide strong per-core performance, which is critical for games like Downfall that depend on single-threaded performance for game logic and physics. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps keep frequently accessed data close to the cores.

Benchmark results show the CPU excels in both single-threaded and multithreaded workloads. Its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3603 and multicore score of 25525 place it among the top processors, with a percentile rank of 85 against all CPUs. The Geekbench scores follow a similar pattern: 3363 single-core and 15182 multicore. The PassMark multithread score of 30027 and single-thread score of 4570 further confirm its strong performance. In the 3DMark tests, the CPU achieves 1253 in single-thread and 7590 in max-thread tests, showing excellent scaling with thread count.

In the context of Downfall, the CPU's role is to maintain frame rates at lower resolutions where the GPU is less stressed. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (193.2 FPS) and 1440p Low (133.7 FPS) show that the CPU can drive high frame rates when the GPU is not the bottleneck. However, the CPU's nearest rivals—the Intel Core i5-13490F and AMD Ryzen 5 230, both within 0.3% of its average benchmark score—suggest that any mid-range modern CPU would perform similarly in this game. The Ryzen 7 8845HS and Core i5-14500T are 0.4% and 0.5% faster respectively, but these differences are negligible in real-world gaming.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and support for DDR5 memory with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth ensure it does not starve the GPU of data. The launch MSRP of $279 positions it as a mid-range desktop processor, and its active production status means it will remain available. The CPU's strong single-thread performance (3603 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is particularly relevant for horror games, which often use complex scripting and AI that benefit from high per-core speed. Overall, the data shows the Ryzen 5 9600X is more than capable of supporting the RTX 2060 SUPER in Downfall, and the GPU is the component that determines the playable settings and resolutions.