Downfall

Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 delivers a highly capable 1080p and 1440p experience in Downfall, but the data clearly shows that the game’s Ultra preset is a heavy burden on the GPU, causing a dramatic frame rate collapse that shifts the bottleneck firmly to the graphics card. Across all tested resolutions, the jump from Medium to Ultra costs more performance than any other settings change, making the High preset the practical ceiling for smooth play on this hardware combination.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent and predictable scaling pattern as resolution increases, with the GPU becoming the dominant limiting factor at 4K. At 1080p with High settings, the combo produces 161 FPS average; moving to 1440p High drops that to 115 FPS, a 28.6% reduction, and then to 72 FPS at 4K High, another 37.4% cut. This steep decline from 1440p to 4K indicates that the Radeon RX 7700’s rendering workload is expanding faster than the resolution increase alone would suggest, pointing to heavy pixel-shading and memory bandwidth demands from the horror title’s visual effects.

The Low preset shows the same pattern but at higher absolute numbers: 240 FPS at 1080p, 171 FPS at 1440p, and 107 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 28.8% and 37.4% respectively, nearly identical to High, which suggests that the GPU’s compute and memory subsystem is the binding constraint regardless of settings. However, the gap between Low and High narrows as resolution rises: at 1080p, High is 32.9% slower than Low (161 vs 240), but at 4K, High is only 32.7% slower (72 vs 107). This consistency implies that the CPU is not the primary limiter even at 1080p Low, where the frame rate peaks at 240 FPS—a figure that likely approaches the game engine’s or display’s cap rather than a true hardware ceiling.

The Ultra preset tells a different story. At 1080p Ultra, the average FPS falls to 101, which is 47.5% below the Medium result of 196 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, it drops to 72 FPS, a 48.6% reduction from Medium’s 140 FPS. At 4K Ultra, the average collapses to 45 FPS, a 48.3% cut from Medium’s 87 FPS. This near-constant ~48% penalty across all resolutions indicates that Ultra settings are adding a massive fixed cost—likely advanced lighting, shadows, and post-processing effects—that scales with pixel count but remains proportionally identical, reinforcing that the RX 7700’s raw throughput is overwhelmed by Ultra’s demands rather than any CPU limitation.

The Medium preset provides the only rows with min/max FPS data, offering insight into frame pacing. At 1080p Medium, the range is 167-226 FPS (average 196), a spread of 59 FPS. At 1440p Medium, it’s 119-161 FPS (average 140), a spread of 42 FPS. At 4K Medium, it’s 74-100 FPS (average 87), a spread of 26 FPS. The shrinking variance as resolution increases suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding frames quickly at lower resolutions, but the GPU’s longer render times at 4K smooth out the frame delivery, reducing the frequency of very high or very low spikes.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global ranking of tested CPU-GPU combinations for Downfall, this pairing sits at rank 1308 out of 2928 total combos, placing it in the 44.7th percentile. This means that roughly 55% of all tested configurations outperform it, but the context of the game’s 2016 release date and the hardware’s modern components suggests that the ranking is heavily influenced by higher-end GPUs rather than any CPU deficiency. The fact that this combo achieves over 60 FPS at 4K High and over 100 FPS at 1080p Ultra indicates that it is far from a low-end performer, even if its percentile rank looks middling.

The CPU’s own benchmark percentile is 68% against all processors, meaning it outperforms more than two-thirds of CPUs tested across all workloads. The GPU’s percentile is lower at 58%, but its avgBenchmarkScore of 15852 places it just 1% below the AMD Radeon RX 9060 and only 1.7% below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, per the nearestRivals data. These rival deltas are small enough to suggest that the RX 7700 is a solid mid-range GPU, and the combo’s rank in Downfall is likely dragged down by the game’s specific optimization for other architectures rather than a fundamental weakness.

Looking at the combo’s rank relative to its components, the CPU’s nearestRivals include the Intel Xeon 6756E (0.2% higher avg score) and the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (0.6% lower), which are vastly different classes of processors, indicating that the i5-10400F sits at a performance plateau where many CPUs converge. The GPU’s nearestRivals, including the AMD Radeon R9 370X (0.1% lower) and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (1.1% higher), are older or workstation-oriented parts, yet the performance delta remains minimal. This suggests that the RX 7700’s 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256-bit bus provide ample bandwidth for Downfall, but the game’s rendering path may not fully exploit the RDNA 3.0 architecture’s strengths.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Downfall at 4K smoothly?

A: Yes, but only on High settings, where it averages 72 FPS. Medium at 4K yields 87 FPS, while Ultra drops to 45 FPS, which is below the typical 60 FPS threshold for smooth play.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this game?

A: The GPU is the clear bottleneck at higher resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 240 FPS, suggesting the CPU can keep up, but the 48% performance penalty from Medium to Ultra at all resolutions indicates the RX 7700 is overwhelmed by Ultra’s effects.

Q: How does the i5-10400F’s 6-core/12-thread configuration affect performance in Downfall?

A: The CPU’s 6 cores and 12 threads with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz are sufficient to drive the GPU to high frame rates, as evidenced by the 240 FPS result at 1080p Low. The game likely uses fewer threads, but the single-thread score of 1451 in Cinebench R23 suggests adequate per-core performance.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming on this combo?

A: High settings at 1440p produce 115 FPS average, which is ideal for smooth gameplay. Medium offers 140 FPS but with lower visual fidelity, while Ultra drops to 72 FPS, which is still playable but less fluid.

Q: How does this combo compare to the RTX 3060 Ti in raw GPU performance?

A: The RX 7700’s avgBenchmarkScore is 15852, which is 1.7% below the RTX 3060 Ti’s 16129. In Downfall specifically, the combo’s rank of 1308 out of 2928 suggests that the RTX 3060 Ti-based combos may perform slightly better, but the difference is small.

Q: Is the 16 GB VRAM on the RX 7700 useful for Downfall?

A: The 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 624.1 GB/s bandwidth is more than sufficient for Downfall, which released in 2016 and likely uses less than 8 GB even at 4K Ultra. The bottleneck is raw compute, not memory capacity.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides exact average FPS for all three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 240 FPS, Medium averages 196 FPS with a range of 167-226, High averages 161 FPS, and Ultra averages 101 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 57.9% total performance drop (from 240 to 101 FPS), with the largest single-step decrease occurring between Medium and High (35 FPS, or 17.9%) and between High and Ultra (60 FPS, or 37.3%). The Ultra preset’s penalty is more than double any other step, confirming its heavy GPU cost.

At 2560x1440, Low produces 171 FPS, Medium averages 140 FPS with a range of 119-161, High averages 115 FPS, and Ultra averages 72 FPS. The total drop from Low to Ultra is 57.9% (99 FPS), matching the 1080p percentage exactly, which indicates that the settings presets impose a consistent relative cost regardless of resolution. The Medium to Ultra gap at 1440p is 68 FPS (48.6%), while High to Ultra is 43 FPS (37.4%). Notably, 1440p Ultra at 72 FPS is identical to 4K High at 72 FPS, suggesting that the combination of resolution and settings reaches a GPU throughput ceiling around that performance level.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 107 FPS, Medium averages 87 FPS with a range of 74-100, High averages 72 FPS, and Ultra averages 45 FPS. The Low to Ultra drop is 62 FPS (57.9%), again matching the percentages at lower resolutions. The 4K Medium result of 87 FPS is the highest playable option, while 4K Ultra at 45 FPS is the only sub-60 FPS result in the entire dataset. The min FPS of 74 at 4K Medium shows that even the lower bound stays above 60 FPS, making Medium the safest choice for 4K with frame pacing.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F provides 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, built on the Comet Lake architecture with a 14 nm process. Its L3 cache is 12 MB shared, and it supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration at 42.7 GB/s bandwidth. In Downfall, a horror game from 2016, the CPU’s role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic, and the data shows it does this effectively up to very high frame rates.

The CPU’s benchmark scores reveal strong multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 10283, while single-core scores 1451. The 3DMark tests show scaling from 1350 in 2-thread to 4748 in 16-thread, indicating that the CPU benefits from additional threads but does not double performance linearly, which is typical for a 6-core/12-thread part. For Downfall, which likely uses fewer than 8 threads, the 3DMark 8-thread score of 3929 suggests adequate headroom. The single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark single-thread indicates that per-core performance is sufficient for the game’s logic, as evidenced by the 240 FPS result at 1080p Low, which would be CPU-bound if the processor were weak.

The fact that the frame rate at 1080p Low hits 240 FPS, which is double the 4K High result of 72 FPS, shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the 1080p Low result to be significantly lower, as the GPU would be idle waiting for instructions. Instead, the consistent ~48% penalty from Medium to Ultra across all resolutions points squarely at the GPU’s shader and rasterization throughput as the constraint.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual quality and smoothness, the High preset is the recommended choice across all resolutions. At 1080p, High delivers 161 FPS, which is far above any refresh rate, and at 1440p it produces 115 FPS, which is smooth on 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitors. Even at 4K, High achieves 72 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS standard and provides a solid horror experience without sacrificing too much fidelity. The Medium preset offers higher frame rates (196 FPS at 1080p, 140 FPS at 1440p, 87 FPS at 4K) but the visual downgrade from High is likely noticeable in a game that relies on atmosphere and lighting, making High the better trade-off.

The Ultra preset is not recommended for any resolution, as it incurs a massive 48% performance penalty over Medium while likely providing diminishing visual returns. At 4K Ultra, the 45 FPS average falls below the 60 FPS threshold, making it unsuitable for smooth play. The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates (240 FPS at 1080p, 171 FPS at 1440p, 107 FPS at 4K), sacrifices too much visual detail for a horror game, where shadows and lighting are critical for immersion.

For 4K users, Medium is the safest option because its min FPS of 74 ensures no drops below 60 FPS, whereas High’s average of 72 FPS could dip lower during intense scenes, although no min FPS data is available for High. For 1440p and 1080p, High is the sweet spot, offering frame rates that are both smooth and visually appealing. If a player prioritizes maximum frame rate over visuals, Medium at 1440p (140 FPS) or 1080p (196 FPS) is a viable alternative, but the data supports High as the best overall experience for this CPU-GPU combo in Downfall.