Downfall

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers exceptional performance in Downfall, a title that clearly favors high-end hardware. The benchmark results reveal a system capable of pushing even the most demanding settings at 4K, while offering staggering frame rates at lower resolutions. The data indicates that the optimal experience depends heavily on the user's display resolution and refresh rate, but the Ultra preset at 4K remains the definitive target for visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a clear hierarchy across all resolutions, with the Ultra preset providing the most demanding workload. At 3840x2160, Ultra yields an average of 82.8 FPS, which is fully playable but represents a significant drop from the High preset's 132.4 FPS. The data suggests that for a balanced 4K experience, High settings are the sweet spot, delivering a 59.9% improvement over Ultra while still maintaining high visual quality. High at 4K maintains an average well above the 60 FPS threshold, ensuring smooth gameplay in this horror title where responsiveness matters.

For users with 1440p displays, the High preset again proves optimal, hitting 211 FPS average. This is substantially higher than the 135.8 FPS achieved at Ultra, offering a 55.4% performance uplift. The Medium preset at 1440p also performs admirably at 258.7 FPS, but the visual fidelity loss may not justify the additional 22.6% frame rate increase over High. At 1080p, the story shifts: even the Ultra preset achieves 186.8 FPS, making it a viable choice for high-refresh-rate monitors. However, the High preset's 300.1 FPS average suggests that for competitive or fast-paced play, dropping from Ultra to High provides a 60.7% frame rate boost with minimal visual compromise on most displays.

The best experience per the measured rows is therefore the High preset at 1440p, which balances the 211 FPS average with the resolution's inherent clarity. For 4K users, High is the recommendation, as it preserves the resolution's advantage while staying well clear of the 82.8 FPS floor seen at Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination ranks 45th out of 1741 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the top 2.6% of all configurations. This rank reflects the hardware's pedigree: the CPU sits in the 90th percentile among all processors, while the GPU ranks in the 91st percentile among all graphics cards. The combination of a top-tier CPU and GPU yields a system that outperforms the vast majority of tested configurations in this specific title.

The CPU's nearest rivals show a tightly clustered group, with the AMD EPYC 4245P trailing by just 0.2% in average benchmark score, while the Intel Core i7-13700F sits 0.9% behind. The Intel Core i7-13700 is 1% ahead, and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS leads by 0.7%. These negligible deltas indicate that the 5900X's 12 cores and 24 threads provide competitive processing power, though the game's performance is likely more dependent on the GPU's capabilities.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4090's nearest rivals are a mix of workstation and datacenter cards. The NVIDIA Tesla T4 is 0.4% ahead, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 leads by 0.9%. The NVIDIA Quadro P6000 trails by 1.3%, and the Tesla P40 is 0.5% behind. These small percentage differences suggest that the RTX 4090's raw performance is well-matched against these specialized cards, but its consumer-focused feature set and driver optimization for gaming titles like Downfall likely contribute to its strong in-game ranking.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090's role in this configuration is defined by its massive memory subsystem and high clock speeds. The GPU features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. This memory capacity is more than sufficient for Downfall's horror environments, which often feature detailed textures and complex lighting effects. The 5 nm AD102 chip, with 76,300 million transistors, operates at a base clock of 2235 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective).

The GPU's 16,384 shading units and 512 texture mapping units deliver a pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s. These specifications translate into the measured frame rates, particularly at 4K where the GPU's fill rate becomes critical. The 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores also contribute to the game's visual effects, though Downfall's 2016 release date predates widespread ray tracing adoption, so these units may not be fully utilized. The FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS provides ample compute headroom for the game's physics and AI calculations.

The GPU's 450 W TDP and 1x 16-pin power connector indicate a power-hungry component, but the benchmark results show it handles the workload without throttling, as evidenced by the consistent FPS averages across settings. The 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms that this is a top-tier part, and the measured FPS data shows it is not a bottleneck at any tested resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4090 produces extraordinary frame rates across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 386 FPS, which drops to 359.8 FPS at Medium, 300.1 FPS at High, and 186.8 FPS at Ultra. The delta between Low and Ultra is 199.2 FPS, or a 51.6% reduction, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional visual effects have a substantial cost. The 1080p results suggest the CPU becomes a limiting factor at this resolution, as the GPU is capable of far higher output than the game engine can process.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show more differentiation. Low settings yield 316.8 FPS, Medium 258.7 FPS, High 211 FPS, and Ultra 135.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 181 FPS, a 57.1% reduction. The 1440p results show a more linear scaling pattern compared to 1080p, with each settings tier representing a roughly 20% reduction in frame rate. This suggests the GPU is becoming more relevant at this resolution, though the CPU still provides ample headroom.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop significantly, reflecting the increased pixel count. Low settings produce 196.9 FPS, Medium 160.4 FPS, High 132.4 FPS, and Ultra 82.8 FPS. The reduction from Low to Ultra is 114.1 FPS, a 57.9% decrease. Notably, the 4K Ultra result is the only measured average below 100 FPS, indicating that the game's most demanding configuration stresses even this flagship GPU. The 4K results show that the GPU is now the primary bottleneck, as the CPU's performance headroom is less relevant at this resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is most pronounced at the High settings tier. At 1080p High, the system achieves 300.1 FPS, which drops to 211 FPS at 1440p (a 29.7% reduction) and further to 132.4 FPS at 4K (a 55.9% reduction from 1080p). This scaling pattern indicates a transition from CPU-bound behavior at 1080p to GPU-bound behavior at 4K. At 1080p, the Ryzen 9 5900X's 12 cores provide sufficient processing power to feed the RTX 4090, but the frame rates are likely capped by the game engine's single-threaded performance.

The Low settings tier shows a similar trend: 386 FPS at 1080p drops to 316.8 FPS at 1440p (a 17.9% reduction) and 196.9 FPS at 4K (a 49% reduction from 1080p). The Medium tier follows the same pattern, with 359.8 FPS at 1080p, 258.7 FPS at 1440p (a 28.1% reduction), and 160.4 FPS at 4K (a 55.4% reduction from 1080p). The Ultra tier exhibits the most consistent scaling: 186.8 FPS at 1080p, 135.8 FPS at 1440p (a 27.3% reduction), and 82.8 FPS at 4K (a 55.7% reduction from 1080p).

The average reduction from 1080p to 4K across all settings is approximately 55%, which aligns with the pixel count increase of 4.5x. This suggests that the RTX 4090's scaling efficiency is strong, but the limiting component shifts from the CPU at 1080p to the GPU at 4K. At 1080p, the CPU's 24 threads are not fully utilized by Downfall, given its 2016 release date, resulting in a CPU bottleneck. At 4K, the GPU's 24 GB of VRAM and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are taxed to their limits, particularly at Ultra settings. The data indicates that for 1080p users, the RTX 4090 is overkill, but for 4K users, it provides the only viable path to high refresh rates at High settings.