Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i5-10400F + Intel Arc B580

The Intel Core i5-10400F and Intel Arc B580 pairing delivers a compelling 1080p and 1440p experience in Downfall, a 2016 horror title. Benchmark data shows this combo ranks 1361st out of 1741 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all systems. The Arc B580's 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and 456.0 GB/s bandwidth prove sufficient for this game's demands, while the six-core Comet Lake processor with a 4.30 GHz boost clock keeps frame pacing consistent across most settings. The measured results reveal a system that excels at High settings in 1080p and 1440p but struggles to maintain playable rates at 4K Ultra, where the average drops to 33 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Downfall?

A: The data shows 1920x1080 delivers the highest frame rates across all settings, with Low reaching 182.7 FPS, Medium at 148.8 FPS, High at 124.3 FPS, and Ultra at 76.1 FPS. At 2560x1440, High remains smooth at 87.8 FPS, making 1440p a viable option for quality-focused play.

Q: How does the Arc B580 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B580's average benchmark score of 23021 sits within 0.7% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (23181) and 0.1% of the AMD Radeon 760M (22999). It also outperforms the NVIDIA P106-100 by 0.3% and the RTX 4060 Mobile by 1.3%.

Q: Does the i5-10400F bottleneck the Arc B580 in this game?

A: Based on the FPS scaling from 1080p to 1440p, the CPU keeps pace adequately. At 1080p High, the combo produces 124.3 FPS, while 1440p High yields 87.8 FPS, a 29.4% drop that suggests the GPU becomes more limiting at higher resolutions rather than the CPU holding back performance.

Q: What is the CPU's multithreaded performance relative to its rivals?

A: The i5-10400F's average benchmark score of 14168 is 0.4% higher than the AMD EPYC 7552 (14115) and 0.8% lower than the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14277). It trails the Intel Core i5-8500 by 1.1% and the AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 by 1.2%.

Q: Which settings preset provides the smoothest 4K experience?

A: At 3840x2160, Low settings achieve 79.3 FPS, Medium reaches 69.2 FPS, and High drops to 54.1 FPS. Only Ultra falls below playable thresholds at 33 FPS, so Low or Medium are the only 4K options that maintain comfortable frame rates.

Q: How does the GPU's memory configuration influence Downfall performance?

A: The Arc B580's 12 GB GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 456.0 GB/s bandwidth. Given that 4K High still holds 54.1 FPS, the memory subsystem appears adequate for this horror title's texture requirements, with no evidence of capacity-related stutters in the measured averages.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580, built on the Xe2-HPG architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, brings 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs to Downfall. Its base and boost clocks both run at 2670 MHz, while memory operates at 2375 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 213.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 427.2 GTexel/s, which directly influence how quickly the GPU can fill frames in this dark, atmospheric horror game.

The GPU's FP32 throughput of 13.67 TFLOPS and FP16 of 27.34 TFLOPS (2:1) provide ample compute headroom for the DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) API path. Benchmark results show the Arc B580 scoring 3068 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 15748 in Passmark G3D, and 7729 in Passmark GPU Compute. These scores place the GPU in the 66th percentile of all GPUs, indicating it sits above the median but below top-tier cards.

In Downfall specifically, the GPU's role becomes evident in the scaling pattern. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 182.7 FPS, suggesting the GPU has significant headroom. However, when moving to 4K Ultra, the average collapses to 33 FPS, a 81.9% reduction from 1080p Low. This dramatic drop indicates the GPU's raw rasterization power—rather than memory bandwidth—becomes the limiting factor at extreme resolutions and settings, as the 12 GB frame buffer is unlikely to be exhausted by a 2016 title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear inverse relationship between resolution and performance. At 1920x1080 High, the system delivers 124.3 FPS, which drops to 87.8 FPS at 2560x1440 High—a 29.4% decrease. Continuing to 3840x2160 High yields 54.1 FPS, another 38.4% reduction from 1440p. This pattern suggests the Arc B580's fill rate and shading capacity are progressively saturated as pixel count increases, with the GPU being the dominant bottleneck at higher resolutions.

Low settings show a similar trend: 182.7 FPS at 1080p, 129 FPS at 1440p (29.4% drop), and 79.3 FPS at 4K (38.5% drop from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across settings indicates that resolution scaling affects all quality presets uniformly, pointing to a pixel-throughput limitation rather than a settings-specific constraint.

Ultra settings exhibit the steepest decline. From 76.1 FPS at 1080p, the frame rate falls to 57.9 FPS at 1440p (23.9% drop) and then 33 FPS at 4K (43.0% drop). The accelerating degradation at 4K Ultra suggests that the combination of high pixel count and intensive shading effects overwhelms the GPU's 80 ROPs and 13.67 TFLOPS compute capacity, making this preset impractical at the highest resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For 1080p displays, the data supports High as the optimal balance. At 124.3 FPS, High delivers smooth gameplay with substantial visual improvements over Medium's 148.8 FPS and Low's 182.7 FPS—the latter two offer diminishing returns for a horror game where atmosphere matters more than raw speed. Ultra at 76.1 FPS remains playable but sacrifices 38.7% of High's frame rate for marginal visual gains.

At 2560x1440, High again emerges as the recommended preset. The 87.8 FPS average comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS threshold for fluid motion, while Medium's 108 FPS and Low's 129 FPS provide little benefit given the already-smooth High experience. Ultra's 57.9 FPS dips below ideal responsiveness, making it a poor choice for a genre that benefits from consistent frame pacing.

For 4K, the options narrow considerably. Low at 79.3 FPS and Medium at 69.2 FPS both maintain playable rates, but High's 54.1 FPS sits in a marginal zone. Given that Ultra falls to 33 FPS—a level that undermines the horror experience—players should prioritize Low or Medium at 4K, accepting reduced fidelity for stable performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings range is playable: Low averages 182.7 FPS, Medium 148.8 FPS, High 124.3 FPS, and Ultra 76.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 106.6 FPS, demonstrating the GPU's wide performance envelope at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, frame rates remain robust: Low achieves 129 FPS, Medium 108 FPS, High 87.8 FPS, and Ultra 57.9 FPS. The spread narrows to 71.1 FPS between extremes, indicating that resolution pressure begins to compress the performance range.

At 3840x2160, the hierarchy persists but with compressed absolute values: Low reaches 79.3 FPS, Medium 69.2 FPS, High 54.1 FPS, and Ultra drops to 33 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra shrinks to 46.3 FPS, confirming that 4K stresses the GPU regardless of settings, yet the relative ordering remains consistent across all three resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F provides six physical cores and 12 threads via Hyper-Threading, running at a 2.90 GHz base clock and boosting to 4.30 GHz. This Comet Lake processor, built on Intel's 14 nm process, includes 64 KB L1 and 256 KB L2 cache per core, plus a shared 12 MB L3 cache. Its dual-channel DDR4 memory support delivers 42.7 GB/s bandwidth, and the CPU connects via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes.

Benchmark scores indicate the CPU's capability: Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 10297, while single-core hits 1453. Geekbench shows 5783 multicore and 1454 single-core scores. The Passmark multithread score of 12115 and single-thread of 2541 place this CPU in the 73rd percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 14168. This places it within 1.2% of rivals like the Intel Core i5-8500 (14332) and 0.8% of the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14277).

In Downfall, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU. The 3DMark scores—4748 for 16 threads, 4735 for max threads, and 688 for single-thread—suggest adequate multithreading for a 2016 horror title. The game's measured FPS at 1080p Low (182.7 FPS) indicates the CPU can feed the GPU efficiently at high frame rates, though the 4K Ultra result of 33 FPS implies the GPU, not the CPU, caps performance at that extreme.

How This Combo Ranks

This configuration ranks 1361st out of 1741 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the 78.2nd percentile of all systems (meaning 78.2% of tested combos rank higher). This positioning reflects a mid-to-lower-tier pairing where the GPU's 66th percentile standing and CPU's 73rd percentile combine to produce average results relative to the full benchmark database.

The ranking suggests that while this combo handles 1080p and 1440p admirably, it falls behind higher-end pairings at 4K. The data indicates that the Arc B580's performance—sitting within 0.7% of the RTX 4060 and 1.3% above the RTX 4060 Mobile in average GPU benchmarks—positions this system as a capable 1080p/1440p machine rather than a 4K powerhouse. The i5-10400F's placement among rivals like the EPYC 7552 and i5-8500 reinforces that this CPU delivers mainstream-level performance that doesn't bottleneck the GPU in this title, but also doesn't boost the combo beyond its mid-range classification.