Downfall

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a remarkably consistent experience in Downfall, a horror title from 2016 that clearly favors high frame rates over extreme visual fidelity. The measured data shows that this combination ranks 305th out of 1741 tested combos, placing it in the top 17.5% of all configurations. Across all resolutions and settings, the system never drops below 64.5 frames per second, indicating that the hardware is more than capable of handling the game's demands, with the primary challenge being how to balance visual quality against the very high refresh rates the hardware can achieve.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals a clear hierarchy in performance scaling across the four available presets. At 1080p, the Ultra preset delivers 143.7 FPS, which is perfectly playable, but the jump to High at 230.4 FPS represents a 60.5% improvement in frame rate for what is likely a modest visual difference in a horror game. The Medium preset at 283.9 FPS and Low at 346.2 FPS push frame rates into territory that exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, making these settings better suited for competitive play or extreme smoothness.

At 1440p, the pattern holds with High producing 166.1 FPS, which is ideal for 144Hz displays, while Ultra drops to 102.5 FPS, still smooth but noticeably less fluid. The 4K results are decisive: High delivers 106.6 FPS, which is excellent for 4K gaming, while Ultra falls to 64.5 FPS, dipping below the 70 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for smooth motion. The data suggests that High is the optimal preset across all resolutions, as it offers the best balance between visual fidelity and performance headroom. Medium and Low are unnecessary for this hardware unless targeting refresh rates above 240Hz, and Ultra is only viable at standard refresh rates where the visual upgrade is worth the performance cost.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 60Hz 4K display?

A: The High preset at 3840x2160 yields 106.6 FPS, providing a 77.7% performance buffer over the 60 FPS target. Ultra at 4K drops to 64.5 FPS, which is still above 60 FPS but leaves virtually no headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Ultra produces 143.7 FPS while High reaches 230.4 FPS. This represents a 60.4% increase in frame rate when dropping from Ultra to High, suggesting the Ultra preset imposes a significant rendering cost.

Q: Is the system capable of driving a 240Hz monitor at 1440p?

A: No preset at 2560x1440 reaches 240 FPS. The fastest option, Low, achieves 247.4 FPS, while Medium hits 205.8 FPS and High reaches 166.1 FPS. Only the Low preset exceeds the 240 FPS threshold, and only marginally.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and High at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, Medium averages 128.5 FPS while High averages 106.6 FPS. The Medium preset provides 20.5% higher performance, which could be preferable for high-refresh 4K monitors that support 120Hz or 144Hz.

Q: Does the Ultra preset ever become the recommended choice?

A: The Ultra preset produces 143.7 FPS at 1080p, 102.5 FPS at 1440p, and 64.5 FPS at 4K. It is only recommended for 1080p and 1440p displays with 60Hz or 100Hz refresh rates, where the visual upgrade can be appreciated without noticeable stutter.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER uses the AD104 chip built on a 5 nm process, with 35,800 million transistors and a die size of 294 mm². Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory operates across a 192-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. The card's base clock is 1980 MHz with a boost clock of 2475 MHz, while the memory runs at 1313 MHz, translating to 21 Gbps effective. These specifications place the GPU in the 84th percentile of all graphics cards, and its average benchmark score of 42576 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (42653, deltaPct -0.2) and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE (42723, deltaPct -0.3).

In Downfall, the GPU's role becomes evident when examining the performance scaling across settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low (346.2 FPS) and Ultra (143.7 FPS) is 202.5 FPS, showing that the rendering load scales dramatically with visual quality. The 12 GB VRAM appears sufficient for all tested settings, as no resolution or preset combination shows signs of memory-related performance degradation. The GPU's 220 W TDP and 550 W suggested PSU rating indicate that power delivery is not a bottleneck. The card's 7168 shading units and 80 ROPs handle the game's horror visuals effectively, with the data showing that the GPU is the primary performance driver at 4K Ultra, where it drops to 64.5 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates exceptional performance across all presets. The Low setting produces 346.2 FPS, followed by Medium at 283.9 FPS, High at 230.4 FPS, and Ultra at 143.7 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a consistent performance cost, with each tier removing roughly 50-60 FPS from the average.

Moving to 2560x1440, the results show a predictable decrease. Low averages 247.4 FPS, Medium 205.8 FPS, High 166.1 FPS, and Ultra 102.5 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra widens to 63.6 FPS at this resolution, compared to 86.7 FPS at 1080p, indicating that the Ultra preset becomes relatively more expensive as pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, the performance hierarchy remains consistent but with reduced absolute values. Low achieves 154.1 FPS, Medium 128.5 FPS, High 106.6 FPS, and Ultra 64.5 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra shrinks to 42.1 FPS, while the gap between Low and Ultra expands to 89.6 FPS. Notably, the 4K Ultra result is the only measurement below 100 FPS, suggesting that this preset at this resolution is the most demanding scenario the hardware faces.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p shows a consistent performance reduction across all presets. Low drops from 346.2 to 247.4 FPS, a 28.5% decrease; Medium from 283.9 to 205.8 FPS, a 27.5% decrease; High from 230.4 to 166.1 FPS, a 27.9% decrease; and Ultra from 143.7 to 102.5 FPS, a 28.7% decrease. These nearly uniform reductions indicate that the scaling factor is primarily resolution-driven rather than settings-driven.

The move from 1440p to 4K produces a more pronounced drop. Low falls from 247.4 to 154.1 FPS, a 37.7% decrease; Medium from 205.8 to 128.5 FPS, a 37.6% decrease; High from 166.1 to 106.6 FPS, a 35.8% decrease; and Ultra from 102.5 to 64.5 FPS, a 37.1% decrease. The larger percentage drop at 4K compared to 1440p suggests that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the pixel count increases from 3.7 million to 8.3 million, a 2.25x increase in workload.

The scaling pattern indicates that the CPU maintains sufficient performance headroom across all resolutions, as the frame rates do not collapse at 1080p where CPU load would be highest. Instead, the GPU's rendering capacity becomes the bottleneck at higher resolutions, particularly at 4K Ultra where the 64.5 FPS result shows the hardware reaching its limits.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X features 12 cores and 24 threads with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. This Zen 5 architecture processor, codenamed Granite Ridge, is built on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 16,630 million transistors. Its cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 64 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports DDR5 memory across a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth and 24 PCIe Gen 5 lanes.

In the 3DMark benchmarks, the CPU shows strong scaling from 1286 in single-thread to 13929 in max-threads, with 12552 in 16-threads. Its Cinebench R23 scores of 6555 single-core and 46438 multi-core demonstrate robust performance. The processor ranks in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54450. This places it nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D (54681, deltaPct -0.4) and slightly ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700F (54097, deltaPct 0.7).

In Downfall, the CPU's role is evident from the frame rate consistency across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 346.2 FPS, which is a high enough frame rate that CPU limitations could potentially surface, yet the data shows no such bottleneck. The 24 threads provide ample parallelism for the game's horror AI and physics systems. The processor's 120 W TDP and 4 nm process allow for sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling, ensuring consistent performance throughout extended gaming sessions. The CPU's strong single-thread performance of 1286 in 3DMark single-thread and 6555 in Cinebench R23 single-core ensures that the game's main thread is not a limiting factor, even at the highest frame rates measured.