Downfall

# Downfall with AMD Ryzen 7 7700X + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

This combination pairs AMD's 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor with NVIDIA's Pascal-era GTX 1070, producing a system that is firmly GPU-limited at every resolution tested in Downfall. The measured frame rates across 12 preset/resolution combinations reveal a consistent pattern: the GTX 1070, with its 8 GB GDDR5 memory and 256-bit bus, dictates performance, while the Ryzen 7 7700X's substantial compute headroom remains largely untapped. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 155.7 FPS average, but this drops by roughly 71% at 4K Ultra to 26.7 FPS, illustrating the GPU's dominance in this horror title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average frame rate this combo achieves in Downfall?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 155.7 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 107.7 at High settings and 66.6 at Ultra, showing a steep penalty for increasing quality even at 1080p.

Q: How does the GTX 1070 compare to its nearest rivals in overall GPU benchmarks?

A: The GTX 1070's average benchmark score is 12331, which is 0.7% higher than the NVIDIA Quadro K4200 (12241) and 1.4% higher than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER (12504 is actually higher, so the 1070 is 1.4% lower — specifically, the deltaPct vs GTX 1650 SUPER is -1.4%, meaning the 1070 trails it). It also sits 1.3% below the GTX 880M (12490) and 1.7% below the Tesla K20Xm (12547).

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 7700X a bottleneck at 4K Ultra settings?

A: No. At 4K Ultra, the combo averages only 26.7 FPS, which is a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU's average benchmark score of 34313 places it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, and it scores 30325 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, indicating ample headroom that the GTX 1070 cannot utilize at this resolution.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 2560x1440?

A: At 1440p, Low settings yield 111.6 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 49 FPS. This represents a 56% reduction in average frame rate when moving from the lowest to the highest quality preset at this resolution.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations in Downfall?

A: The combo ranks 1461 out of 1741 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 16% of systems. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GTX 1070's age, as the GPU's percentile versus all GPUs is 51, meaning it sits near the median of all graphics cards.

Q: Does increasing resolution from 1080p to 4K at High settings halve the frame rate?

A: Yes, nearly. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 107.7 at 1080p to 77.6 at 1440p and then to 45 at 4K. The 1080p-to-4K transition alone reduces performance by 58%, confirming that the GPU's memory bandwidth (256.3 GB/s) and pixel rate (107.7 GPixel/s) are the limiting factors.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows that the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience across all resolutions for this hardware. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 129.2 FPS, which is only 17% lower than Low settings (155.7 FPS) but delivers noticeably better visual fidelity. At 1440p Medium, the average sits at 93.8 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Even at 4K Medium, the combo manages 58.4 FPS, which is playable for a horror title where atmospheric tension matters more than competitive frame rates.

High settings are viable at 1080p (107.7 FPS) and 1440p (77.6 FPS), but at 4K High the average drops to 45 FPS, which may feel sluggish for some players. Ultra settings should be avoided entirely: it produces 66.6 FPS at 1080p, 49 FPS at 1440p, and a stutter-prone 26.7 FPS at 4K. The jump from High to Ultra at 1080p costs 41 FPS (from 107.7 to 66.6), which is a massive penalty for incremental visual gains.

For the best experience, Medium at 1080p or 1440p is the sweet spot. The data indicates that Low settings are unnecessary even on this older GPU, since Medium at 1440p still holds above 90 FPS. Players prioritizing frame rate above all else should select Low at 1440p (111.6 FPS) rather than dropping to 1080p, as the resolution reduction yields only marginal gains over Medium at the same resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a textbook GPU-bound scenario. At Low settings, average FPS declines from 155.7 at 1080p to 111.6 at 1440p (a 28% drop) and then to 66.3 at 4K (a 57% drop from 1440p). At High settings, the progression is 107.7 → 77.6 → 45, representing a 58% total reduction from 1080p to 4K. This consistent scaling pattern indicates that the GTX 1070's pixel throughput and memory bandwidth are saturated, while the Ryzen 7 7700X remains underutilized.

The scaling ratio between resolutions is roughly proportional to pixel count: 1080p to 1440p increases pixels by 78%, and the frame rate drops by 28-33% depending on preset. The 1440p to 4K transition quadruples pixel count, and the frame rate drops by 40-42%. This sub-linear scaling suggests that the GPU's fill-rate limits (107.7 GPixel/s) are being approached but not fully saturated until 4K Ultra, where the 26.7 FPS result shows the card is completely overwhelmed.

Notably, the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, Ultra is 57% slower than Low (66.6 vs 155.7). At 4K, Ultra is 60% slower (26.7 vs 66.3). This indicates that the GPU's 8 GB memory capacity and 256-bit bus are not the primary constraint at lower resolutions, but at 4K Ultra, the combination of memory pressure and compute load pushes the card to its absolute limits.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 1461 out of 1741 tested combinations in Downfall, this system sits in the 16th percentile of all tested hardware pairings. This low ranking is driven almost entirely by the GPU: the Ryzen 7 7700X is a top-tier processor (89th percentile among all CPUs), but the GTX 1070's 51st percentile standing among GPUs drags the overall combo down. In practical terms, this means the CPU is capable of far higher frame rates than the GPU can deliver in this game.

The CPU's nearest rivals illustrate its standing: the Intel Core i5-13500 scores 34175 (0.4% higher), the Intel Core i7-12800HX scores 34136 (0.5% higher), while the AMD EPYC 4244P scores 34599 (0.8% higher) and the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H scores 34584 (0.8% higher). These differences are negligible in gaming scenarios, confirming that the 7700X is not the performance limiter. The GPU's nearest rivals show a similar clustering: the Quadro K4200 is 0.7% lower, while the GTX 880M, GTX 1650 SUPER, and Tesla K20Xm are 1.3-1.7% higher. This tight grouping around the 12331 average benchmark score indicates that the GTX 1070 is firmly mid-pack among its contemporaries.

The implication for Downfall players is that upgrading the GPU would yield dramatic improvements, while CPU upgrades would produce minimal gains. The 1461st ranking reflects a system that was high-end for its era (the GTX 1070 launched at 379 USD and the 7700X at 399 USD) but is now constrained by graphics processing capabilities in this 2016-released horror title.

GPU Role

The GTX 1070's role as the performance bottleneck is clear from both the benchmark data and the measured FPS. The GPU's 8 GB GDDR5 memory operates at 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, delivering 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming but becomes strained at 4K, where the 26.7 FPS Ultra result indicates that memory capacity and bandwidth are both undersized for the workload.

The card's clock speeds — 1506 MHz base and 1683 MHz boost — are modest by modern standards, and its pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s are the physical limits that govern the resolution scaling observed in the data. The GPU's FP32 performance of 6.463 TFLOPS places it well below modern cards, yet it still manages 155.7 FPS at 1080p Low, showing that Downfall is not an exceptionally demanding title when settings are reduced.

The GTX 1070's benchmark scores reinforce its mid-range standing: it scores 13498 in Passmark G3D, 47490 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 47395 in Geekbench Vulkan. The DirectX 12 score of 48 and DirectX 11 score of 100 in Passmark indicate that the card's API support is adequate but not exceptional for this game's era. The GPU's 51st percentile ranking among all GPUs means that half of all tested graphics cards outperform it, yet the measured FPS in Downfall remains playable at Medium settings across all resolutions, confirming that this horror game is well-optimized for mid-range hardware from the Pascal generation.