Downfall

# Downfall with AMD Ryzen 7 5800X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

The pairing of AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X with NVIDIA's RTX 4090 in Downfall produces a performance curve that clearly illustrates where this 2016 horror title's bottlenecks lie. Across all tested resolutions and settings, the combo delivers playable frame rates, but the scaling pattern reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher fidelity presets while becoming increasingly CPU-limited at lower settings and lower resolutions. The measured data shows a spread from 82.6 FPS at 4K Ultra to 385 FPS at 1080p Low, a range that spans nearly fivefold and tells a distinct story about component utilization.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steepest at the Ultra preset, where average FPS falls from 183.9 at 1920x1080 to 82.6 at 3840x2160 — a reduction of over 55%. This severe scaling indicates that at Ultra settings, the RTX 4090's rendering workload dominates, with the GPU's compute capabilities becoming the primary constraint. The 4K Ultra result of 82.6 FPS, while still smooth, represents the only sub-100 FPS point in the entire dataset, suggesting that this preset pushes the GPU to its limits even with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput available.

At Medium settings, the resolution scaling is similarly pronounced but slightly less dramatic. The 1080p Medium result of 361.2 FPS drops to 159.3 FPS at 4K, a 56% decline. This near-identical percentage drop to the Ultra preset suggests that the GPU remains the limiting factor across these two quality levels. However, the Low preset tells a different story: 385 FPS at 1080p scales to 199.6 FPS at 4K, a 48% reduction. The smaller relative drop at Low settings indicates that the CPU begins to assert more influence at 1080p, where the Ryzen 7 5800X's 8 cores and 16 threads must work harder to feed frames to the GPU.

High settings show the most interesting scaling behavior. The 295 FPS at 1080p drops to 210.1 at 1440p and then to 133.4 at 4K. The incremental drops of 29% and 37% respectively suggest a more balanced workload distribution. The 1440p High result of 210.1 FPS is particularly notable because it exceeds the 4K Medium result of 159.3 FPS, indicating that resolution has a more significant impact on performance than quality preset adjustments at these higher fidelity levels.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090's specifications directly explain several observed performance characteristics. With a 24 GB GDDR6X memory pool on a 384-bit bus delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample headroom for Downfall's texture-heavy horror environments at any resolution. The memory clock of 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) combined with the 1.01 TB/s bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and memory bandwidth are unlikely bottlenecks, even at 4K Ultra where the 82.6 FPS result still allows for substantial scene complexity.

The GPU's clock behavior — a base of 2235 MHz and boost of 2520 MHz — contributes to the strong scaling observed at lower resolutions. The 16384 shading units and 512 TMUs provide massive geometry and texture processing throughput, which explains why the 1080p Low result reaches 385 FPS. However, the benchmark data indicates that the RTX 4090's raw compute power, rated at 82.58 TFLOPS FP32, is only fully utilized at the most demanding presets. The 4K Ultra result of 82.6 FPS, while the lowest in the dataset, still represents a frame rate that many competing GPUs could not achieve at this resolution in more modern titles.

The GPU's 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores, while not explicitly benchmarked in Downfall's measured FPS data, are part of the Ada Lovelace architecture that enables the card's overall performance envelope. The 176 ROPs and 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate are directly relevant to the 4K results, where pixel fill requirements are highest. The fact that 4K Ultra achieves 82.6 FPS with this pixel throughput suggests the game's rendering pipeline is well-optimized for modern GPU architectures.

FAQ

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 5800X a bottleneck for the RTX 4090 in Downfall?

A: At 1080p Low, the 385 FPS result suggests some CPU limitation, as the Ryzen 7 5800X's 8 cores and 16 threads with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz must generate frames faster than the GPU can process at lower settings. However, at 4K Ultra, the 82.6 FPS result indicates the GPU is the clear limiting factor, so the bottleneck shifts based on resolution and preset.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 4K gameplay?

A: The data shows 4K High delivers 133.4 FPS, while 4K Medium achieves 159.3 FPS and 4K Ultra drops to 82.6 FPS. For smooth 4K play, High or Medium offers a substantial margin over the 60 FPS threshold, whereas Ultra still clears it but with less headroom.

Q: How much performance is lost moving from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At High settings, the drop is from 295 FPS at 1080p to 210.1 FPS at 1440p, a 29% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 183.9 FPS to 131.1 FPS, a 29% reduction as well. The consistent percentage suggests resolution scaling is predictable across quality presets.

Q: Does the RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM matter for this game?

A: Downfall is a 2016 title, and the 24 GB GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is far beyond what this game requires. The high memory capacity has no negative impact on the measured results, and the bandwidth likely contributes to consistent frame times across all tested settings.

Q: Why does 1080p Low produce 385 FPS while 1080p Ultra produces only 183.9 FPS?

A: The difference of over 200 FPS is attributed to the increased GPU workload at Ultra settings, which activates more of the RTX 4090's 16384 shading units and 512 TMUs. At Low settings, the CPU becomes more involved, and the Ryzen 7 5800X's single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 943) helps push frames faster.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: This pairing ranks 48th out of 1,741 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the top 2.8% of all configurations. The rank reflects the strong synergy between the Ryzen 7 5800X and RTX 4090, despite the CPU's 84th percentile ranking among all CPUs and the GPU's 91st percentile among all GPUs.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results show a clear hierarchy: Low produces 385 FPS, Medium achieves 361.2 FPS, High delivers 295 FPS, and Ultra drops to 183.9 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is relatively small at 23.8 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns at the lower end of the quality spectrum. The jump from Medium to High costs 66.2 FPS, while the jump from High to Ultra costs 111.1 FPS — the largest single-preset penalty in the dataset. This pattern indicates that Ultra settings introduce rendering features that disproportionately impact the GPU.

Moving to 2560x1440, the same ordering persists with Low at 314.7 FPS, Medium at 261 FPS, High at 210.1 FPS, and Ultra at 131.1 FPS. The percentage gaps between presets narrow slightly compared to 1080p: Low to Medium is a 17% drop, Medium to High is a 19.5% drop, and High to Ultra is a 37.6% drop. The 1440p Ultra result of 131.1 FPS is still well above 60 FPS, demonstrating the combo's capability at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results compress further: Low delivers 199.6 FPS, Medium achieves 159.3 FPS, High reaches 133.4 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 82.6 FPS. The 4K Low result is actually higher than the 1080p Ultra result, highlighting how resolution affects performance more than preset quality at these extremes. The 4K Ultra figure of 82.6 FPS is the only sub-100 FPS measurement, but it remains fully playable and indicates that even the most demanding configuration in this test maintains a smooth experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's 48th place ranking out of 1,741 tested configurations places it in the 97.2nd percentile of all Downfall combos. This top-tier position is notable given that the individual components have different percentile standings: the Ryzen 7 5800X sits at 84th percentile among all CPUs, while the RTX 4090 achieves 91st percentile among all GPUs. The combined result outperforms what either component's individual ranking might suggest, indicating strong pairing efficiency.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for the processor's contribution. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800 has an average score of 27,535, just 0.3% lower than the 5800X's 27,606, making them nearly identical in general compute performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE and Intel Core i7-13700H both score within 0.4% of the 5800X, while the Intel Core i5-12600KF trails by 0.8%. These tight margins suggest that the 5800X's 8-core, 16-thread configuration with 32 MB of L3 cache is well-matched to the demands of Downfall's engine.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4090's average benchmark score of 66,473 places it slightly below the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66,733, -0.4%) and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (67,097, -0.9%), while exceeding the NVIDIA Tesla P40 (66,127, +0.5%) and NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (67,320, -1.3%). These are all professional or workstation-class cards, yet the 4090's gaming-oriented architecture clearly excels in Downfall's real-time rendering, as evidenced by the measured FPS results. The combination of a top-50 overall rank with consistent performance across all settings positions this pairing as one of the most capable configurations for this horror title.