Downfall

# How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X paired with the Intel Arc B390 sits at rank 2589 out of 2928 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the bottom 12% of all configurations. This is a profoundly lopsided pairing: the CPU ranks in the 85th percentile among all processors, while the GPU sits at just the 9th percentile among all graphics cards. The combo's poor standing is almost entirely attributable to the graphics side, as the Arc B390's 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482 places it within 1.3% of the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX and within 2.7% of the GT 710 — both entry-level parts from a decade ago.

The measured frame rates confirm this ranking. Across all resolutions and settings, the best average FPS recorded is 106 at 1080p Low, which drops to 44 at 1080p Ultra. At 4K Ultra, the combo manages only 20 FPS. These numbers place the configuration firmly in "playable only at reduced settings" territory for a horror game that benefits from smooth motion and atmospheric tension.

What makes this rank particularly telling is the delta between the CPU and GPU performance classes. The Ryzen 7 7700X's average benchmark score of 35909 is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845, which scores 35802 (a 0.3% delta). Meanwhile, the Arc B390's nearest rival, the GT 520MX, scores 1463 — a 1.3% delta. The GPU is bottlenecking the system so severely that the CPU's capability is essentially irrelevant to the final ranking.

FAQ

Q: Is this combo better suited for 1080p or 4K gaming in Downfall?

A: The data shows a steep performance cliff as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 106 FPS, but at 4K Low it drops to 47 FPS — a 55.7% reduction. At Ultra settings, 1080p yields 44 FPS, while 4K yields just 20 FPS. The playable range is clearly at 1080p, with 1440p being marginal and 4K being unsuitable for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the Arc B390 compare to its closest GPU rivals in this game?

A: The Arc B390's 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1482 puts it 1.3% ahead of the GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% ahead of the GeForce 800M (1460), and 2.5% ahead of the GT 625 OEM (1446). These are extremely tight margins, indicating the B390 performs at the level of legacy entry-level GPUs rather than modern gaming hardware.

Q: What is the best FPS this combo can achieve in Downfall?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 106, recorded at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next best is 87 FPS at 1080p Medium, followed by 76 FPS at 1440p Low. No configuration exceeds 106 FPS in the measured data.

Q: Does the Ryzen 7 7700X compensate for the weak GPU in this game?

A: Benchmark results indicate the CPU's strength — with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 19088 and a Passmark multithread score of 35686 — does not translate into higher frame rates. The GPU's 9th percentile ranking (versus the CPU's 85th percentile) means the Arc B390 becomes the limiting factor at every resolution and setting tested.

Q: What settings should be avoided for acceptable performance?

A: At 4K, High settings produce 32 FPS and Ultra produces 20 FPS — both below the 30 FPS threshold many consider minimally playable. At 1440p, Ultra drops to 32 FPS. At 1080p, Ultra yields 44 FPS, which is playable but not smooth. High settings at 4K and Ultra at any resolution above 1080p should be avoided based on the measured data.

Q: Is the Arc B390's performance consistent across the settings ladder?

A: No. The scaling is non-linear. At 1080p, moving from Low (106 FPS) to Medium (87 FPS) is a 17.9% drop, but moving from Medium to High (71 FPS) is an 18.4% drop, and High to Ultra (44 FPS) is a 38.0% drop. The Ultra setting imposes a disproportionate penalty, suggesting it enables effects that heavily tax the GPU's limited resources.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data reveals a GPU that is severely bandwidth- and compute-limited. From 1080p to 1440p at Low settings, the average FPS drops from 106 to 76 — a 28.3% reduction. From 1440p to 4K at Low, it drops from 76 to 47 — a 38.2% reduction. The scaling is steeper at higher resolutions, which is characteristic of a GPU whose pixel throughput (60.00 GPixel/s) and texture rate (120.0 GTexel/s) are simply too low for 4K workloads.

At Medium settings, the trend continues: 1080p delivers 87 FPS, 1440p delivers 62 FPS (a 28.7% drop), and 4K delivers 39 FPS (a 37.1% drop from 1440p). The 4K Medium result includes a minimum FPS of 33 and a maximum of 44, showing significant frame pacing variance even within the average.

At High settings, 1080p produces 71 FPS, 1440p produces 51 FPS (a 28.2% drop), and 4K produces 32 FPS (a 37.3% drop). The consistency of these percentage drops across settings suggests the bottleneck is resolution-driven pixel fill rather than specific game effects.

The Ultra settings tell a more dramatic story: 1080p at 44 FPS drops to 32 FPS at 1440p (a 27.3% reduction) and further to 20 FPS at 4K (a 37.5% reduction from 1440p). The 4K Ultra result of 20 FPS is below the standard 24 FPS film rate and far below what horror game players would find acceptable for maintaining tension and responsiveness.

The limiting component is unequivocally the GPU. The Ryzen 7 7700X, with its 8 cores and 16 threads boosting to 5.40 GHz, would have no trouble feeding frames at these rates. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s on dual-channel DDR5 far exceeds what the Arc B390 can consume via its System Shared memory interface, which is dependent on the system's RAM configuration.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best results across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 106 FPS, the only triple-digit score in the entire dataset. Medium settings achieve 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 and maximum of 100, showing a 26 FPS spread that suggests some scene-dependent variability. High settings drop to 71 FPS, and Ultra falls to 44 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 62 FPS — a 58.5% reduction.

At 2560x1440, the performance ceiling lowers considerably. Low settings produce 76 FPS, which remains playable for most users. Medium settings yield 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 and maximum of 71, a tighter 18 FPS range than at 1080p Medium. High settings drop to 51 FPS, and Ultra falls to 32 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap at 1440p is 44 FPS — a 57.9% reduction.

At 3840x2160, the results are marginal at best. Low settings produce 47 FPS, which is playable but not smooth. Medium settings yield 39 FPS with a minimum of 33 and maximum of 44, indicating that even the average hides occasional drops below 35 FPS. High settings produce 32 FPS, right at the edge of playability. Ultra settings produce 20 FPS, which is effectively a slideshow for a horror game requiring quick reactions. The Low-to-Ultra gap at 4K is 27 FPS — a 57.4% reduction, consistent with the other resolutions.

The Medium settings rows across all three resolutions include min/max data, allowing for frame time analysis. At 1080p Medium, the 74-100 FPS range means the average of 87 sits closer to the minimum, suggesting longer hitches. At 1440p Medium, the 53-71 FPS range has its average of 62 nearly centered, indicating more consistent frame pacing. At 4K Medium, the 33-44 FPS range has its average of 39 slightly closer to the minimum, again suggesting occasional stutter.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is built on Intel's 3 nm process with the Xe3-LPG architecture, part of the Panther Lake generation. It operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz, a wide dynamic range that allows it to idle efficiently but limits sustained high-frequency performance. The GPU's 1536 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 24 ROPs produce a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s, with FP32 compute of 7.680 TFLOPS.

The memory configuration is System Shared, meaning the GPU uses the host system's DDR5 RAM rather than dedicated VRAM. The bus width is also System Shared, and bandwidth is System Dependent. This architecture means the Arc B390's performance is partly contingent on the Ryzen 7 7700X's dual-channel memory controller and the installed DDR5 kit's speed — factors that are not isolated in the measured FPS data.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1482 places it at the 9th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are all legacy NVIDIA parts: the GT 520MX (1463, 1.3% slower), the GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% slower), the GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% slower), and the GT 710 (1443, 2.7% slower). This clustering indicates the B390 delivers performance equivalent to entry-level GPUs from roughly a decade ago, which aligns with the measured Downfall frame rates.

In Downfall specifically, the GPU's 12 ray tracing cores and DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) are largely irrelevant because the measured settings likely do not enable RT effects that would tax these units. Instead, the bottleneck is raw rasterization throughput and memory bandwidth. The 47 FPS at 4K Low versus 106 FPS at 1080p Low demonstrates that the GPU's fill rate is the primary constraint, not its shader complexity.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is a Zen 4 part on the Raphael codename, built on TSMC's 5 nm process. It packs 8 cores and 16 threads in a 71 mm² die with 6,570 million transistors, running at a base clock of 4.50 GHz and boosting to 5.40 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3. Its 105 W TDP is modest for the performance class.

The CPU's benchmark scores are stellar. Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 19088, single-core 1987. Geekbench multicore is 12451, single-core 2289. Passmark multithread scores 35686, single-thread 4190. The 3DMark multi-threaded tests show near-linear scaling from 2 threads (2112) to 8 threads (7057) to max threads (8852), indicating strong thread scaling that a game like Downfall — a 2016 horror title — is unlikely to fully utilize.

The CPU's percentile rank of 85 versus the GPU's 9th percentile creates a massive imbalance. In Downfall, the CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (35802, 0.3% delta), Intel Core 7 250H (35728, 0.5% delta), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 (35719, 0.5% delta), and Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (35670, 0.7% delta). All of these CPUs would perform nearly identically in this game when paired with the Arc B390, since the GPU saturates well below any CPU's frame generation capability.

The practical implication is that the Ryzen 7 7700X is vastly overqualified for this pairing in Downfall. Its 16 threads and 5.40 GHz boost are wasted when the GPU delivers 106 FPS at best. For a game from 2016, the CPU's single-thread performance (1987 in Cinebench R23 single-core, 1090 in 3DMark single-thread) would handle physics and AI computations without strain, but the measured FPS shows no scenario where the CPU becomes a limiting factor.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal experience balances smoothness with visual fidelity. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 106 FPS, which is ideal for high-refresh-rate displays but sacrifices the atmospheric lighting and shadow effects that horror games rely on. Medium settings at 1080p deliver 87 FPS, a 17.9% reduction from Low but with a minimum of 74 FPS that keeps frame pacing above stutter territory. This is the recommended configuration for most users.

At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 76 FPS, which remains smooth, while Medium produces 62 FPS with a minimum of 53. The 1440p Medium configuration is the best balance for higher-resolution displays, as it maintains playable frame rates while benefiting from the resolution increase. High settings at 1440p (51 FPS) are borderline, and Ultra (32 FPS) should be avoided.

At 3840x2160, no setting is ideal. Low produces 47 FPS, which is playable but not smooth. Medium produces 39 FPS with dips to 33, which will be noticeable in a horror game where sudden frame drops break immersion. High (32 FPS) and Ultra (20 FPS) are not recommended for any scenario.

The data suggests the "best experience" is 1080p Medium, offering 87 FPS average with a 74-100 FPS range that supports VRR displays well. Users with 1440p monitors should choose 1440p Low (76 FPS) over 1080p High (71 FPS) if resolution matters more than settings. For 4K users, the only viable option is Low settings at 47 FPS, and even that may feel choppy during intense scenes.

The Ultra preset shows a disproportionate FPS cost across all resolutions — 44 FPS at 1080p versus 87 FPS at Medium — suggesting it enables effects that the Arc B390 cannot handle efficiently. The 38% drop from High to Ultra at 1080p indicates a settings tier that should be avoided entirely with this GPU.