Downfall

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Downfall across the three tested resolutions reveal a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling at higher settings, with CPU limitations surfacing primarily at the lowest settings. At 1080p Low, the combo delivers 337.7 FPS, but this drops to 243 FPS at 1440p Low and further to 150.7 FPS at 4K Low. That represents a 55.4% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which indicates that even at the lowest graphical load, the scaling is substantial enough to suggest the GPU is still doing meaningful work. However, the more telling observation comes from the High and Ultra presets, where the frame rate deltas between resolutions are comparatively tighter in absolute terms.

At High settings, the transition from 1080p (228.9 FPS) to 1440p (163.8 FPS) yields a 28.4% drop, while moving to 4K (99 FPS) produces a further 39.6% reduction from 1440p. This steepening curve at 4K is the signature of a GPU that is being pushed toward its limits, especially given that the RX 7900 XT's memory bandwidth of 800.0 GB/s and 20 GB of GDDR6 are being taxed by the higher pixel counts. The Ultra preset tells a similar story: 143.9 FPS at 1080p, 101.5 FPS at 1440p, and 62.3 FPS at 4K, with the 4K figure representing a 56.7% drop from 1080p. This is a near-identical percentage drop to what we see at Low settings, which is a curious finding.

The fact that the percentage loss from 1080p to 4K is roughly consistent across Low (55.4%) and Ultra (56.7%) suggests that the bottleneck shifts predictably with resolution, but the absolute FPS values at 4K Ultra (62.3) versus 4K Low (150.7) highlight how much headroom the settings themselves consume. The scaling data points to a system where the CPU is not the primary constraint at 4K, but at 1080p Low, the 337.7 FPS figure approaches what a six-core Alder Lake processor can sustain in this title. This is not a game that scales linearly with resolution; the horror genre often relies on volumetric effects and shadow complexity, which the data suggests are heavily taxing the GPU at Ultra settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F brings six cores and twelve threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, provides a solid foundation for a game like Downfall, which appears to be moderately threaded based on the benchmark results. The CPU's 3DMark scores show a single-thread result of 909, a 4-thread score of 3067, and a max-thread score of 5912, indicating that the processor scales reasonably well up to its full thread count. The Cinebench R23 numbers—2332 single-core and 16518 multi-core—reinforce that this is a capable mid-range processor, but not one that will dominate in heavily CPU-bound scenarios.

In the context of Downfall, the CPU's role becomes most apparent at 1080p Low, where the 337.7 FPS result suggests the processor is still able to feed the GPU without becoming a hard ceiling. Had the CPU been the limiting factor, we would expect to see a plateau in FPS across the lower resolutions, but the data shows consistent gains when moving from 1440p to 1080p at every settings tier. The 1080p Low result is 39% higher than the 1440p Low result, which implies the GPU is still the primary driver of performance even at the lowest settings. This is a positive indicator for the i5-12400F, as it indicates the processor has enough headroom to avoid constraining the RX 7900 XT in this title.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 77 against all processors places it in a solid mid-to-upper tier, with an average benchmark score of 19221. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-8700K with a delta of 0.1% and the AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS at -0.7%, which means the i5-12400F is essentially performance-equivalent to several other mainstream options. In a game like Downfall, where the GPU is clearly the dominant factor in most scenarios, the CPU's 12 threads provide enough parallel work capacity to keep frame pacing stable, even if the horror genre's occasional scripted events might spike CPU demand. The 18 MB of shared L3 cache also helps with data locality, though the game's actual cache sensitivity is not directly measurable from the FPS data alone.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT achieves a rank of 331 out of 1741 tested combos in Downfall. This places the pairing in the top 19% of all tested configurations, which is a strong showing given that the CPU is a mid-range part paired with a high-end GPU. The rank reflects the fact that the RX 7900 XT's raw compute power—51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 5376 shading units—is able to express itself fully in this title, while the i5-12400F avoids becoming a significant drag on the overall result.

The GPU itself holds a percentile ranking of 82 against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 38358. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile at a 0% delta and the NVIDIA CMP 70HX at 0.3%, which suggests that the RX 7900 XT is performing at a level consistent with some high-end mobile and specialized parts. The combo rank of 331 indicates that many other CPU-GPU pairings outperform this one, but given the CPU's relatively modest position (77th percentile), the fact that this combo still lands in the top fifth of all configurations speaks to the GPU's dominance in Downfall's workload.

What is notable is that the CPU's percentile (77) is lower than the GPU's percentile (82), which means the combo's overall rank is likely being held back slightly by the processor. If the same GPU were paired with a stronger CPU, the frame rates would likely be higher in the CPU-bound scenarios, particularly at 1080p Low where the 337.7 FPS figure might not yet represent the absolute ceiling of the RX 7900 XT. However, the data does not show a catastrophic bottleneck; the combo rank of 331 out of 1741 is respectable and indicates a balanced-enough pairing for this specific game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values span a wide range depending on settings. Low settings produce 337.7 FPS, Medium drops to 273.1 FPS, High settles at 228.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 143.9 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is substantial, representing a 57.4% reduction in performance when enabling the highest quality presets. This suggests that the Ultra preset includes effects that are particularly demanding on the GPU, likely involving higher-resolution shadows, ambient occlusion, or post-processing filters common in horror titles.

Moving to 2560x1440, the same settings tiers yield 243 FPS at Low, 196.4 FPS at Medium, 163.8 FPS at High, and 101.5 FPS at Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at each settings level is consistent, ranging from 28.0% at Low to 29.4% at Ultra. This uniformity indicates that the GPU's fill rate and shading capacity are being scaled proportionally with pixel count, which is expected for a rasterization-heavy workload. The 1440p Ultra result of 101.5 FPS is still well above the 60 FPS threshold, making this resolution and settings combination a viable target for high-refresh-rate displays.

At 3840x2160, the results are 150.7 FPS at Low, 121 FPS at Medium, 99 FPS at High, and 62.3 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Ultra figure is the only measured result below 60 FPS, and it barely clears that bar at 62.3 FPS. This suggests that 4K Ultra is playable but not ideal for competitive or high-refresh-rate scenarios. The transition from 1440p to 4K at Ultra settings represents a 38.6% drop in FPS, which is steeper than the 28.0% drop seen when moving from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings. This nonlinear scaling at Ultra settings points to memory bandwidth or ROP throughput becoming a constraint at the highest pixel counts.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain much of the measured performance. The GPU is built on the Navi 31 chip using RDNA 3.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process with 57,700 million transistors. Its boost clock of 2394 MHz and game clock of 2025 MHz, combined with a base clock of 1387 MHz, provide a wide dynamic range that allows the GPU to ramp up under load. The 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus delivers 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for a horror game that likely streams high-resolution textures and complex geometry.

The GPU's compute resources include 5376 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, and 192 ROPs, which together produce a pixel rate of 459.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 804.4 GTexel/s. These figures explain why the GPU can maintain triple-digit frame rates at 1440p High (163.8 FPS) while still delivering nearly 100 FPS at 4K High. The 84 ray tracing cores are present but are not a factor in this test, as the measured FPS data does not indicate ray tracing being enabled. The GPU's 82nd percentile ranking against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 38358, places it in the upper echelon of available graphics cards.

The RX 7900 XT's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile at a 0% delta, which is notable because that is a mobile part with a different thermal envelope. The GPU's performance in Downfall is consistent with its overall benchmark profile, and the 4K Ultra result of 62.3 FPS is a reasonable outcome for a game that appears to stress the GPU heavily at maximum settings. The 300 W TDP and dual-slot cooler suggest this is a power-hungry part, but the measured FPS values indicate that the power is being translated into actual frame rate gains. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 51.48 TFLOPS is the key spec that enables the high fill rates observed across all resolutions, and it is the primary reason this combo achieves a rank of 331 out of 1741 despite the CPU's more modest specifications.