Downfall

# Downfall with AMD Ryzen 7 9700X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti produces a striking performance profile in Downfall, a 2016 horror title that clearly favors high refresh rates. Across the measured resolutions, this combo delivers everything from a silky 93 FPS at 4K High to a blistering 311 FPS at 1080p Low, suggesting that the game's engine scales well with both CPU and GPU headroom. The data reveals a system that is never truly GPU-bound at lower settings, but one where the RTX 3080 Ti's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 912.4 GB/s bandwidth become crucial at higher resolutions. The combo ranks 970th out of 3716 tested configurations, placing it in the top 26% of all pairings, which indicates a well-balanced setup for this specific title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average FPS this combo achieves in Downfall at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti deliver an average of 311 FPS. This drops to 254 FPS on Medium, 208 FPS on High, and 130 FPS on Ultra, showing a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and raw frame rate.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to 4K Low performance?

A: The gap is substantial. At 3840x2160, Low settings yield 138 FPS average, while Ultra settings drop to just 58 FPS average. That is an 80 FPS difference, or roughly a 58% reduction in frame rate, purely from increasing graphical fidelity.

Q: Is the system more CPU-limited or GPU-limited at lower resolutions?

A: The data strongly suggests CPU limitation at 1080p Low. With 311 FPS at 1080p Low versus 222 FPS at 1440p Low, the scaling is not linear with pixel count, implying the CPU's single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 1280) becomes the bottleneck before the GPU's capabilities are fully taxed.

Q: What are the minimum FPS figures for Medium settings across resolutions?

A: At 1080p Medium, the minimum FPS is 216. At 1440p Medium, it drops to 154. At 4K Medium, the minimum is 96 FPS. These min FPS values indicate frame pacing consistency, with the 4K figure still comfortably above 60 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 3080 Ti's average benchmark score compare to its nearest rival?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti has an average benchmark score of 41187. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon Pro 5300, scores 40870, which is 0.8% lower. The NVIDIA Tesla M40 24 GB scores 41707, which is 1.2% higher, showing the 3080 Ti sits in a tight competitive cluster.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among all tested configurations in Downfall?

A: This specific pairing of AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti ranks 970th out of 3716 tested combos in Downfall. This places it in the upper quartile of all configurations, indicating strong but not top-tier performance for this game.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the primary driver of Downfall's visual output, and its specifications shed light on the measured frame rates. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing 912.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This high bandwidth is critical for a horror game that likely uses large texture sets and complex lighting effects to create atmosphere. The 10,240 shading units and 112 ROPs handle pixel throughput at a rate of 186.5 GPixel/s, while the 320 TMUs deliver 532.8 GTexel/s for texture filtering.

The clock speeds of 1365 MHz base and 1665 MHz boost are modest by modern standards, but the Ampere architecture's efficiency allows the card to punch above its clock rate. The RTX 3080 Ti's 34.10 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is substantial, and this raw throughput directly influences how many draw calls and shader operations can be processed per frame. In Downfall, the transition from 1080p to 4K shows the GPU becoming more relevant: at 1080p Low, the 311 FPS ceiling is likely limited by the CPU's ability to feed the GPU, while at 4K Ultra, the 58 FPS result indicates the GPU is nearly maxed out.

The GPU's 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are present but likely underutilized in this 2016 title, which predates widespread ray tracing adoption. The card's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility ensure it can run the game's most advanced rendering paths. With a passmark G3D score of 26896 and a percentile rank of 83 against all GPUs, the RTX 3080 Ti is firmly in the upper tier, though its nearest rivals include both older Tesla workstation cards and the newer RTX 5070, illustrating how quickly GPU performance evolves.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how Downfall scales across resolutions, and the pattern is revealing about the system's bottleneck points. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 311 at 1080p to 222 at 1440p, a 28.6% decrease, then further to 138 at 4K, another 37.8% decrease. This scaling is not purely pixel-driven; the 1440p to 4K jump represents a 2.25x increase in pixel count, but the FPS drop is less severe, suggesting the GPU is still managing the load relatively efficiently.

At High settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 208 FPS at 1080p, 149 FPS at 1440p, and 93 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 28.4% and 37.6% respectively, nearly identical to Low settings, indicating that the relative performance ceiling is consistent across settings. This suggests that Downfall's rendering pipeline scales predictably with resolution, and the RTX 3080 Ti's memory bandwidth is sufficient to avoid a catastrophic cliff at 4K.

The Medium settings row provides the only min/max FPS data, showing 216-292 FPS at 1080p, 154-209 FPS at 1440p, and 96-130 FPS at 4K. The min FPS at 4K Medium (96) is higher than the average FPS at 4K Ultra (58), which indicates that the Ultra preset introduces effects that cause significant frame time spikes. The fact that 1080p Low (311 FPS) is nearly 2.3x faster than 4K Low (138 FPS) suggests that at lower resolutions, the CPU's thread scheduling and single-core performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 1280) become limiting factors, while at 4K, the GPU's shading units and ROPs take over as the primary constraint.

Settings Recommendations

For players seeking the optimal balance of visual quality and frame rate, the data points to Medium settings as the sweet spot for this combo. At 1080p Medium, the average FPS is 254 with a minimum of 216, providing a high-refresh experience with no risk of dropping below 200 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 182 FPS with a minimum of 154, which is still excellent for fast-paced horror gameplay where smooth motion is essential for immersion.

For 4K displays, Medium settings at 113 FPS average with a 96 FPS minimum is the only configuration that guarantees a stable 60+ FPS experience. The High preset at 4K produces 93 FPS average, which is playable but lacks the headroom of Medium. Ultra settings at any resolution are difficult to recommend: at 1080p Ultra, the 130 FPS average is respectable, but at 1440p Ultra (93 FPS) and 4K Ultra (58 FPS), the system begins to struggle with maintaining high refresh rates.

The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates (311 FPS at 1080p, 222 FPS at 1440p, 138 FPS at 4K), likely sacrifices too much visual detail for a horror game that depends on atmosphere. The data suggests that Medium settings offer the best compromise, providing a 254 FPS average at 1080p and 113 FPS at 4K, both with solid minimum FPS figures that prevent stuttering during intense scenes.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest frame rates. Low settings yield an average of 311 FPS, Medium delivers 254 FPS with a range of 216 to 292 FPS, High achieves 208 FPS, and Ultra drops to 130 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 58.2% reduction in average FPS, highlighting the significant cost of Ultra-preset effects at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 222 FPS on Low, 182 FPS on Medium (min 154, max 209), 149 FPS on High, and 93 FPS on Ultra. The Medium settings at 1440p maintain a minimum of 154 FPS, which is crucial for keeping frame times consistent on high-refresh monitors. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 93 FPS average, which is a 37.6% reduction from High, suggesting that Ultra enables compute-intensive effects that disproportionately impact this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are 138 FPS on Low, 113 FPS on Medium (min 96, max 130), 93 FPS on High, and 58 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low result of 138 FPS is particularly notable, as it shows the RTX 3080 Ti can still push high frame rates at 4K when the graphical load is minimized. The 4K Ultra result of 58 FPS is the only measured configuration that falls below 60 FPS average, indicating that this preset is too demanding for the GPU's 34.10 TFLOPS of compute power when paired with 4K resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X plays a critical role in enabling the high frame rates observed at lower resolutions. With 8 cores and 16 threads, the CPU provides ample parallel processing capability, but its single-thread performance is what matters most for Downfall's game logic and draw call submission. The 3dmark_single_thread score of 1280 and the 3dmark_2_threads score of 2525 indicate strong per-core performance, which is essential for maintaining high FPS when the GPU is not the bottleneck.

The CPU's boost clock of 5.50 GHz and base clock of 3.80 GHz, combined with 32 MB of shared L3 cache, allow it to feed the RTX 3080 Ti efficiently. At 1080p Low, the 311 FPS result is likely limited by the CPU's ability to process game state and issue rendering commands, rather than the GPU's capacity. The 3dmark_16_threads score of 9824 and 3dmark_max_threads score of 9771 show that the CPU scales well with multi-threaded workloads, but Downfall's engine from 2016 may not fully utilize 16 threads.

The Ryzen 7 9700X's 65W TDP is remarkably low for a desktop CPU with this performance level, and its 4 nm TSMC process node with 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die suggests high efficiency. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20485 and single-core score of 2211 place it in the 86th percentile against all CPUs, with its nearest rival being the Intel Core i9-14901E with a delta of just 0.1%. This indicates that the 9700X's performance is competitive with top-tier alternatives, which is reflected in the high FPS floors observed across all resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti ranks 970th out of 3716 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the top 26.1% of all configurations. This ranking reflects a system that delivers strong but not elite performance for this title. The CPU's 86th percentile ranking and the GPU's 83rd percentile ranking suggest that neither component is a weak link, and the overall combo rank is consistent with what one would expect from pairing two high-performing parts.

The GPU's nearest rivals provide context for its performance: the RTX 3080 Ti's average benchmark score of 41187 is only 0.8% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (40870) and 2% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (40377). This tight clustering indicates that the RTX 3080 Ti is not significantly ahead of its direct competitors in synthetic benchmarks, yet in Downfall, the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (58 FPS) shows it can handle demanding scenarios. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-14901E, has an average score of 37911 versus the 9700X's 37943, a difference of just 0.1%, meaning the two CPUs are effectively tied in overall benchmark performance.

The combination's rank of 970 suggests that while this setup is capable of high frame rates, there are hundreds of faster configurations in the database. The fact that the combo achieves 311 FPS at 1080p Low but only 58 FPS at 4K Ultra highlights that the system's performance is highly dependent on the chosen settings, and the ranking likely reflects average performance across all tested conditions. For a horror game like Downfall, where smooth frame pacing and high minimum FPS matter more than raw averages, this combo's Medium settings results (min 96 FPS at 4K, min 154 FPS at 1440p) indicate a well-optimized pairing that delivers a consistent experience.