Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i5-12400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti delivers exceptional frame rates in Downfall, a horror title from February 2016 that remains surprisingly demanding at maximum settings. This combination ranks 159th out of 1741 tested combos, placing it in the top 9.1% of all configurations. Across all twelve measured scenarios, average frame rates range from a low of 70.4 FPS at 4K Ultra to a high of 383.3 FPS at 1080p Low, demonstrating that this pairing offers substantial headroom for high-refresh-rate displays at most settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for maintaining 144 FPS?

A: At 1440p, the High preset delivers 181.7 FPS, and Medium reaches 221.4 FPS, both comfortably above 144 FPS. Even at 4K, the High preset averages 112.5 FPS, which is below 144 but still smooth for most displays.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Core i5-12400 has an average benchmark score of 19850, placing it 0.1% above the Intel Core i7-9700 (19831) and 0.4% above the Intel Core i5-11600K (19771). It sits 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-8700 (19894) and 0.4% behind the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19928).

Q: What is the GPU's relative standing among all tested graphics cards?

A: The RTX 5070 Ti achieves an average benchmark score of 52086, placing it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. Its closest rival is the RTX 4080 with a score of 52085, showing a delta of 0.0%.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K?

A: At High settings, the drop from 255.3 FPS (1080p) to 112.5 FPS (4K) represents a 55.9% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 160.3 FPS to 70.4 FPS, a 56.1% reduction.

Q: Which preset offers the highest raw frame rate at 1080p?

A: The Low preset at 1080p produces 383.3 FPS, the highest measured result in the entire dataset. Medium follows at 311.7 FPS, then High at 255.3 FPS, and Ultra at 160.3 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at lower resolutions?

A: The evidence suggests yes at 1080p Low: the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads with a 4.40 GHz boost clock appear to limit the GPU, as the 383.3 FPS result is far below what the GPU's compute capabilities would suggest, and the gap between settings narrows compared to higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear hierarchy across presets. At 4K, the Ultra preset produces 70.4 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a horror game where smooth motion enhances atmosphere. The High preset at 4K delivers 112.5 FPS, a 59.8% improvement over Ultra while maintaining visual quality that should still look strong. For 4K users, High is the optimal choice—it provides a substantial frame rate cushion while avoiding the heavy cost of Ultra.

At 1440p, the situation changes. Medium achieves 221.4 FPS and High reaches 181.7 FPS, both excellent for high-refresh monitors. Ultra at 114.5 FPS is still smooth but represents a 48.3% drop from High, suggesting that the Ultra preset's demands are disproportionate to its visual benefits at this resolution. The sweet spot is Medium at 1440p, offering 221.4 FPS with room to spare for demanding scenes.

At 1080p, even Ultra delivers 160.3 FPS, which exceeds most displays' refresh rates. Low produces 383.3 FPS, Medium 311.7 FPS, and High 255.3 FPS. Given the extreme frame rates available, players should choose High or Ultra at 1080p unless they have a 360Hz+ monitor that can exploit the lower presets. The data suggests that High at 1080p provides the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, with 255.3 FPS being far beyond what most users need.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process with a 65 W TDP. Its base clock of 2.50 GHz boosts to 4.40 GHz, and it carries 18 MB of shared L3 cache alongside 1.25 MB L2 per core. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 5873 in 3DMark's 16-thread test and 5890 at max threads, showing that its 12 threads provide near-linear scaling from 8 to 16 threads (4745 at 8 threads). Single-thread performance is strong at 910 in 3DMark single-thread, which helps in games that rely on one or two primary threads.

The CPU's role in Downfall becomes apparent when examining frame rate scaling across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system produces 383.3 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low yields 273.9 FPS (a 28.5% drop), and 4K Low produces 167.7 FPS (a further 38.8% drop). This scaling pattern indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is likely the limiting factor—the GPU has enough headroom that lowering resolution from 1440p to 1080p only improves frame rates by 39.9%, rather than the larger gains expected if the GPU were fully saturated. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15935 and single-core score of 2249 suggest it can sustain high frame rates, but the 383.3 FPS ceiling at 1080p Low hints that this processor's 6 physical cores may cap extremely high refresh scenarios.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 77 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19850, places it in the upper-middle tier of processors. Its nearest rivals include the Core i7-9700 (0.1% faster), Core i7-8700 (0.2% faster), and Core i5-11600K (0.4% slower), indicating this is a well-balanced mid-range part that avoids being a significant bottleneck in most gaming scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti ranks 159th out of 1741 tested configurations in Downfall, placing it in the top 9.1% of all combinations. This high ranking is notable because the CPU is not a flagship part—it sits in the 77th percentile among CPUs—yet the combo still achieves near-elite gaming performance. The ranking suggests that Downfall is heavily GPU-bound at most settings, allowing the RTX 5070 Ti's 87th-percentile standing to dominate the overall result.

The gap between the combo's rank (159th) and the CPU's percentile (77th) reveals that the GPU is the primary driver of gaming performance in this title. If the CPU were the limiting factor, one would expect the combo rank to be closer to the CPU's percentile position. Instead, the combo outperforms what the CPU alone would suggest, indicating that the RTX 5070 Ti's capabilities are being well-utilized across all tested presets. This alignment of a strong GPU with a capable mid-range CPU results in a configuration that punches above its component-level rankings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, packing 45,600 million transistors into a 378 mm² die. It features 8960 shading units, 280 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units, along with 70 ray tracing cores and 280 tensor cores. Memory consists of 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock reaches 2452 MHz, while memory operates at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective).

In Downfall, the GPU's influence is most apparent at 4K, where the gap between presets widens significantly. At 4K, Ultra produces 70.4 FPS while High produces 112.5 FPS—a 59.8% difference that reflects the GPU's struggle with the most demanding settings. The RTX 5070 Ti's 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 686.6 GTexel/s texture rate are substantial, but Downfall's Ultra preset at 4K still pushes the GPU to its limits. The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 32974 and average benchmark score of 52086 (87th percentile) confirm it as a high-end part, yet the 4K Ultra result shows that even top-tier GPUs face challenges with the most aggressive settings in this 2016 horror title.

The GPU's memory subsystem plays a critical role at high resolutions. With 16 GB of VRAM and 896.0 GB/s bandwidth, the RTX 5070 Ti has ample resources for 4K textures. The measured frame rates at 4K High (112.5 FPS) versus 4K Medium (139.8 FPS) suggest that High settings still fit within the memory bandwidth constraints, while Ultra's 70.4 FPS indicates the GPU's compute units, rather than memory, become the limiting factor at maximum quality.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5070 Ti delivers extraordinary performance across all presets. Low settings produce 383.3 FPS, Medium reaches 311.7 FPS, High achieves 255.3 FPS, and Ultra still manages 160.3 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 58.2% reduction in frame rate, demonstrating that Downfall's Ultra preset imposes a significant cost even at 1080p. The jump from High to Ultra is particularly steep—a 37.2% drop from 255.3 to 160.3 FPS—suggesting that Ultra enables effects that heavily tax the GPU.

At 2560x1440, performance remains excellent. Low delivers 273.9 FPS, Medium 221.4 FPS, High 181.7 FPS, and Ultra 114.5 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows reductions of 28.5% (Low), 29.0% (Medium), 28.8% (High), and 28.6% (Ultra), indicating a consistent resolution penalty across all presets. This uniformity suggests that both CPU and GPU scale predictably with pixel count at this resolution range.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to show its limits. Low produces 167.7 FPS, Medium 139.8 FPS, High 112.5 FPS, and Ultra drops to 70.4 FPS. The transition from 1440p to 4K causes reductions of 38.8% (Low), 36.9% (Medium), 38.1% (High), and 38.5% (Ultra). These consistent drops indicate that 4K roughly doubles the pixel count compared to 1440p, and the frame rate decreases accordingly, confirming that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how this system's bottleneck shifts across resolutions. At Low settings, 1080p produces 383.3 FPS, which drops to 273.9 FPS at 1440p (−28.5%) and 167.7 FPS at 4K (−38.8% from 1440p). The total reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low is 56.2%. At High settings, the progression is 255.3 → 181.7 (−28.8%) → 112.5 (−38.1%), totaling a 55.9% reduction. At Ultra, it's 160.3 → 114.5 (−28.6%) → 70.4 (−38.5%), a 56.1% total drop.

The near-identical percentage reductions across all presets—roughly 28-29% from 1080p to 1440p and 37-39% from 1440p to 4K—point to a consistent scaling pattern. Since 4K has 4 times the pixels of 1080p, a purely GPU-bound scenario would show a 75% reduction (to 25% of original FPS). The observed 56% reduction is shallower, indicating that the CPU contributes meaningfully to the 1080p results by limiting the GPU's potential. At 1080p Low, 383.3 FPS likely approaches the CPU's maximum frame delivery capacity, meaning the GPU is underutilized. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes progressively more saturated, and by 4K, the frame rates align more closely with what the GPU's raw compute would predict.

This scaling analysis suggests that at 1080p, users are CPU-limited in low and medium presets, while at 4K, particularly with Ultra settings, the GPU is the clear bottleneck. The 1440p results represent a balanced zone where both components contribute significantly, making it the most efficient operating point for this combination.