Downfall

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Downfall show a clear progression as resolution increases, but the scaling pattern reveals important information about where the bottleneck lies in this pairing. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo delivers 330.6 FPS, which drops to 295.5 FPS at 1440p and further to 187.6 FPS at 4K. This represents a 13.4% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, and a 43.3% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The drop from 1080p to 4K is 43.3% overall, which suggests that the GPU is becoming more heavily utilized as pixel count increases, but the CPU is still keeping pace even at 4K.

Looking at the High preset, the scaling curve steepens. At 1080p High, the frame rate is 284.5 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops this to 204.9 FPS, a 28% reduction. From 1440p to 4K High, the frame rate falls to 124.6 FPS, another 39.2% reduction. The total drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings is 56.2%. This steeper curve at higher settings indicates that the graphics workload is scaling more aggressively with resolution when more visual effects are enabled.

The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic scaling. At 1080p Ultra, the combo produces 178.9 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, this falls to 125.4 FPS, a 29.9% reduction. At 4K Ultra, the frame rate drops to 79.3 FPS, a further 36.8% reduction from 1440p. The overall decline from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 55.7%. Notably, the 4K Ultra figure of 79.3 FPS is the only measured result below the 100 FPS threshold, suggesting that the GPU is heavily taxed at this configuration.

The pattern across all settings shows that the RTX 5080 maintains very high frame rates even at 4K, but the scaling behavior differs by preset. At Low settings, the 4K result of 187.6 FPS is still remarkably high, indicating that the GPU has substantial headroom. At Medium settings, the 4K result of 153.8 FPS is also strong. The data suggests that at lower settings, the CPU may be limiting performance at 1080p, since the frame rate of 330.6 FPS at Low 1080p is only 11.9% higher than the 295.5 FPS at Low 1440p, which is a smaller gap than what would be expected from pixel count alone.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-11400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 ranks 98th out of 1741 tested combos in Downfall. This places the pairing in the top 5.6% of all configurations tested for this game. The percentile ranking is strong, though not at the very top, which is consistent with the measured frame rates that are generally high but not maxed out at every resolution and setting combination.

The CPU itself holds a percentile rank of 75 among all processors, while the GPU holds a percentile rank of 89 among all graphics cards. This suggests that the GPU is the stronger component in this pairing relative to its peers. The CPU's average benchmark score of 17181 places it close to several rivals: the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U scores 17189 (0% delta), the Intel Core i7-1260P scores 17212 (-0.2% delta), the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U scores 17215 (-0.2% delta), and the Intel Core i5-1240U scores 17141 (0.2% delta). These extremely small deltas indicate that the i5-11400F is essentially on par with these competing processors in synthetic benchmarks.

For the GPU, the average benchmark score of 59188 puts it ahead of the Intel Arc A570M (58239, 1.6% delta) and the Intel Arc A580 (57756, 2.5% delta), while slightly behind the Intel Arc Pro A60 (60326, -1.9% delta) and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500X (57661, 2.6% delta). The GPU's nearest rivals are all within a narrow band, with the largest delta being 2.6%, suggesting that the RTX 5080 is well-positioned among its peers.

The combo rank of 98 out of 1741 demonstrates that this pairing is well-balanced for Downfall, with the GPU providing the majority of the performance headroom while the CPU does not significantly bottleneck the system in most configurations.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 1875 MHz with an effective data rate of 30 Gbps. The GPU has 10752 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output units. It also includes 84 ray tracing cores and 336 tensor cores.

The base clock is 2295 MHz with a boost clock of 2617 MHz. The GPU's pixel rate is 293.1 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 879.3 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance is 56.28 TFLOPS, with FP16 performance also at 56.28 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The GPU uses a dual-slot design with a 16-pin power connector and has a TDP of 360 W.

In Downfall, the GPU's role is clearly dominant. The measured frame rates show that the GPU handles the rendering workload well across all resolutions, but the Ultra preset at 4K produces the lowest result at 79.3 FPS. This is consistent with the GPU's strong but not unlimited performance. The 16 GB of VRAM is ample for this game, and the high memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s supports smooth texture streaming even at 4K Ultra settings.

The GPU's benchmark results show strong performance across various tests. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 8637, the Geekbench OpenCL score is 264461, and the Geekbench Vulkan score is 257942. The Passmark G3D score is 36565, and the Passmark GPU Compute score is 21789. These results indicate that the GPU is well-suited for demanding gaming workloads.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 330.6 FPS. At 1080p Medium, this falls to 310.3 FPS, a 6.1% reduction. At 1080p High, the frame rate is 284.5 FPS, which is 8.3% lower than Medium. The 1080p Ultra preset produces 178.9 FPS, a substantial 37.1% drop from High.

At 1440p, the Low preset delivers 295.5 FPS, which is 10.6% lower than the 1080p Low result. The Medium preset at 1440p produces 244.9 FPS, a 17.1% reduction from 1440p Low. High at 1440p yields 204.9 FPS, which is 16.3% lower than Medium. Ultra at 1440p drops to 125.4 FPS, a 38.8% reduction from High.

At 4K, the Low preset still delivers a strong 187.6 FPS. Medium at 4K produces 153.8 FPS, an 18% reduction from Low. High at 4K yields 124.6 FPS, a 19% reduction from Medium. Ultra at 4K drops to 79.3 FPS, a 36.4% reduction from High.

The data shows that the gap between Low and Medium settings is relatively small at lower resolutions but grows at 4K. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Medium is 20.3 FPS, while at 4K, the difference is 33.8 FPS. This suggests that the additional effects enabled by Medium settings have a larger absolute impact at higher resolutions where the GPU is already working harder.

The jump from High to Ultra is consistently the largest performance hit across all resolutions. At 1080p, the drop is 105.6 FPS, at 1440p it is 79.5 FPS, and at 4K it is 45.3 FPS. This indicates that Ultra settings introduce significantly more rendering complexity than High settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Rocket Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The CPU has a 65 W TDP and supports DDR4 memory on a dual-channel bus with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The L3 cache is 12 MB shared, with 512 KB L2 cache per core and 80 KB L1 cache per core.

In Downfall, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the frame rate of 330.6 FPS is exceptionally high, and the relatively small improvement from 1440p Low (295.5 FPS) to 1080p Low (330.6 FPS) of 11.9% suggests that the CPU is beginning to limit performance at these high frame rates. The CPU's single-thread performance, as measured by Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2029, is adequate for this game, but the frame rates above 300 FPS at 1080p Low are likely approaching the CPU's ceiling.

The CPU's multi-thread performance is solid, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14372 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 7579. The Passmark multi-thread score is 16908, and the Passmark single-thread score is 2981. These scores indicate that the i5-11400F has sufficient processing power for most gaming scenarios, but the very high frame rates achieved by the RTX 5080 at low settings can expose CPU limitations.

The CPU's percentile rank of 75 means it performs better than 75% of all CPUs tested. Its nearest rivals all have nearly identical average benchmark scores, with deltas ranging from -0.2% to 0.2%. This places the i5-11400F in a competitive position among mid-range processors, though it is not a top-tier CPU by synthetic benchmark standards.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the recommended settings for Downfall depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For 4K gaming, the High preset at 124.6 FPS provides an excellent balance between visual quality and performance. The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 79.3 FPS, which is still playable but may not be ideal for all users. The Medium preset at 4K delivers 153.8 FPS, which is very smooth but may sacrifice some visual fidelity.

For 1440p, the Ultra preset at 125.4 FPS is the best choice for maximizing visual quality while maintaining high frame rates. The High preset at 204.9 FPS is also excellent and leaves more headroom for demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 244.9 FPS is suitable for competitive play where maximum frame rates are prioritized. The Low preset at 295.5 FPS is likely unnecessary given the strong performance of the High and Ultra presets.

For 1080p, the Ultra preset at 178.9 FPS is the recommended configuration, as it provides the full visual experience while still delivering well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on many monitors. The High preset at 284.5 FPS is ideal for players with high refresh rate displays, and the Medium preset at 310.3 FPS offers near-maximum frame rates. The Low preset at 330.6 FPS is the maximum performance option but may not be necessary given the high frame rates available at higher settings.

Overall, the data suggests that the High preset is the sweet spot for 4K, while the Ultra preset is viable for 1440p and 1080p. The Medium preset provides a good balance for users who prioritize frame rates over visual quality. The Low preset is only recommended for users with extremely high refresh rate displays who need every possible frame per second.