Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i5-13400F + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

The pairing of Intel's Core i5-13400F with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 produces a striking split in Downfall's performance profile: at 1080p the combo delivers smooth triple-digit frame rates on most presets, but at 4K Ultra it collapses to nearly unplayable territory. The measured data reveals a system that is clearly balanced for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with the GTX 1070 acting as the primary constraint once resolution climbs. This analysis examines how the two components interact across all measured resolutions and settings, what the FPS deltas imply about bottleneck behavior, and where this combination ultimately ranks among 3,716 tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is severe and consistent across all settings, pointing to the GPU as the limiting factor. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 157 FPS at 1920x1080 to 112 FPS at 2560x1440 — a 28.7% reduction — and then to 70 FPS at 3840x2160, which is another 37.5% drop from the 1440p figure. The scaling is not linear; the jump from 1440p to 4K costs more performance proportionally than the jump from 1080p to 1440p, indicating that the GTX 1070's pixel throughput is being saturated as resolution increases.

At High settings, the pattern repeats: 105 FPS at 1080p, 75 FPS at 1440p (a 28.6% drop), and 47 FPS at 4K (a 37.3% drop from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and High presets suggests that the resolution scaling behavior is largely independent of the graphics settings — the GPU is the bottleneck in both cases, and adding more pixels costs roughly the same relative amount of performance regardless of how much shading work is being done per pixel.

Medium settings show the same trend with slightly different magnitudes: 128 FPS at 1080p, 92 FPS at 1440p, and 57 FPS at 4K. The min FPS values at Medium also reveal the strain: at 4K Medium, the minimum frame rate is 48 FPS, which means the average of 57 FPS includes some dips that could cause noticeable stutter in a horror game where smooth motion matters for atmosphere. At 1440p Medium, the min is 78 FPS against an average of 92, and at 1080p Medium the min is 109 FPS against an average of 128 — the gap between min and average widens as resolution increases, suggesting the GPU is struggling to maintain consistent frame pacing at higher pixel counts.

Ultra settings are where the scaling becomes brutal. At 1080p Ultra, the combo manages 66 FPS, which is playable. At 1440p Ultra, that drops to 47 FPS — a 28.8% reduction — and at 4K Ultra, it plummets to 29 FPS, which is a 38.3% drop from 1440p. The 4K Ultra result is below the threshold for smooth gameplay in a horror title, and the data shows that this resolution/preset combination should be avoided entirely.

The CPU's role in this scaling is minimal, as evidenced by the fact that the i5-13400F's benchmark scores are far above what Downfall would need. The processor's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22,604 and single-core score of 3,191 indicate substantial headroom. Even at 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work to do per frame, the combo still reaches 157 FPS — if the CPU were a limiting factor at lower resolutions, we would expect to see a plateau where FPS stops increasing as settings drop, but no such plateau appears in the data.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Downfall at 4K with playable frame rates?

A: At 4K Medium, the average FPS is 57 with a minimum of 48 FPS, which is borderline playable. At 4K High, the average drops to 47 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it falls to 29 FPS. For a horror game where smooth motion is critical, only the Medium preset at 4K comes close to acceptable performance, and even that has notable dips.

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

A: The data shows 1440p as the sweet spot. At 1440p High, the average FPS is 75, and at 1440p Medium it is 92 FPS with a minimum of 78 FPS. The 1080p results are higher — 105 FPS at High and 128 FPS at Medium — but the 1440p numbers remain comfortably playable while offering more detail.

Q: How does the GTX 1070's VRAM affect performance in this game?

A: The GTX 1070 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus and 256.3 GB/s bandwidth. Downfall's measured results show consistent frame rates across settings, and the memory capacity does not appear to cause a hard ceiling at any resolution tested, as the FPS scaling follows a smooth pattern rather than exhibiting sudden collapses that would indicate VRAM exhaustion.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-13400F holding back the GTX 1070 in this game?

A: No. The i5-13400F's benchmark scores — including a Geekbench single-core score of 1,996 and a Passmark single-thread score of 3,634 — are far stronger than what a game like Downfall requires. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is consistent with GPU-bound behavior, meaning the processor is not the limiting component.

Q: What settings preset provides the best balance of visual quality and performance?

A: At 1080p, High settings at 105 FPS offer a strong experience. At 1440p, Medium settings at 92 FPS (with a minimum of 78 FPS) provide a better balance than High at 75 FPS. At 4K, only Low settings at 70 FPS are consistently smooth, but Medium at 57 FPS is borderline acceptable.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 3,074 out of 3,716 tested combinations, placing it in the lower portion of the database. This is consistent with the GTX 1070's overall percentile rank of 47 among all GPUs, indicating that the graphics card is the primary factor limiting this system's position.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to a clear hierarchy of playable presets. At 1920x1080, High settings deliver 105 FPS on average, which is smooth and visually detailed; Medium at 128 FPS is even faster but the visual trade-off may not be worth it when High already clears 100 FPS comfortably. Ultra at 1080p drops to 66 FPS, which is playable but represents a significant cost for the extra visual features — the 39 FPS gap between High and Ultra is substantial. Low at 157 FPS is only useful for competitive play or if the user prioritizes maximum frame rate above all else.

At 2560x1440, Medium settings at 92 FPS with a minimum of 78 FPS offer the best experience per the measured rows. High at 75 FPS is still smooth, but the drop from 92 to 75 FPS is noticeable, and the minimum FPS data for High is not provided, leaving uncertainty about frame pacing. Low at 112 FPS is available for those who want higher refresh rates, and Ultra at 47 FPS should be avoided — it is below the 60 FPS threshold that most players consider acceptable.

At 3840x2160, the options are limited. Low settings at 70 FPS is the only preset that provides consistently smooth gameplay, while Medium at 57 FPS (with a minimum of 48 FPS) is playable but risky for a horror game where frame dips can break immersion. High at 47 FPS and Ultra at 29 FPS are not recommended. The data suggests that 4K is only viable for this combo if the user is willing to sacrifice visual quality — Low at 4K will look significantly worse than High at 1080p or 1440p Medium.

The overall recommendation across all resolutions is to use High at 1080p for the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, or Medium at 1440p if the display supports that resolution. For 4K, Low is the only safe choice, and users should consider whether the resolution increase justifies the substantial quality reduction.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 157 FPS on Low, 128 FPS on Medium (minimum 109, maximum 147), 105 FPS on High, and 66 FPS on Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra is 91 FPS, which is the largest range among all resolutions tested. The Medium preset provides the only min/max data at this resolution, showing a 38 FPS range between the minimum and maximum frame rates.

At 2560x1440, the results are 112 FPS on Low, 92 FPS on Medium (minimum 78, maximum 105), 75 FPS on High, and 47 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 65 FPS, and the Medium preset shows a 27 FPS range between minimum and maximum — tighter than at 1080p, indicating more consistent frame delivery at the higher resolution. The High preset at 75 FPS is exactly 30 FPS below the Low preset's 112 FPS, and the Ultra preset at 47 FPS is exactly 28 FPS below High.

At 3840x2160, the results are 70 FPS on Low, 57 FPS on Medium (minimum 48, maximum 66), 47 FPS on High, and 29 FPS on Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra is 41 FPS, the narrowest of all resolutions, reflecting the GPU's diminishing ability to differentiate between settings as pixel count rises. The Medium preset's min/max range is 18 FPS, which is the tightest band measured in the entire dataset, suggesting that at 4K the GPU is working at its limit and frame times are more consistent because the bottleneck is fully saturated.

The progression across settings at each resolution follows a consistent pattern: Low to Medium costs roughly 18-20% of performance, Medium to High costs another 18-20%, and High to Ultra costs the most, around 37-40%. This suggests that the Ultra preset includes a disproportionately expensive set of features relative to the visual improvement it provides, at least on this hardware.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is the dominant partner in this combo for Downfall. Its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth, and its 1,920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs define its raw throughput capabilities. The GPU's boost clock of 1683 MHz and base clock of 1506 MHz are the clocks that determine how quickly those units can process frames.

The GTX 1070's benchmark results contextualize its in-game performance. Its Passmark G3D score of 13,498 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,082 place it in the 47th percentile among all GPUs, meaning it sits just below the median of the database. Its nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro W5000 (average score 9,803, delta -0.2%), NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (9,832, -0.5%), NVIDIA Tesla M10 (9,724, +0.6%), and NVIDIA Tesla C2070 (9,716, +0.7%) — all of which are workstation or professional cards that would not be expected to excel in gaming workloads.

The VRAM situation is worth examining. With 8 GB of GDDR5, the GTX 1070 has sufficient memory for Downfall at all tested settings and resolutions, as evidenced by the absence of catastrophic frame rate drops that would indicate memory swapping. The smooth FPS scaling from Low to Ultra at each resolution suggests that memory capacity is not a limiting factor — if it were, we would expect to see a cliff edge where enabling a higher preset causes a disproportionate performance collapse.

The GPU's 6.463 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 202.0 GTexel/s texture rate are the specifications that govern how quickly it can process the visual effects in Downfall. The measured FPS data shows that at 4K, even Low settings only reach 70 FPS, which indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput is the binding constraint at that resolution. The 107.7 GPixel/s pixel rate directly limits how many pixels can be rendered per second, and 4K requires 8.3 million pixels per frame — the arithmetic explains why the 4K results cap out where they do.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F provides overwhelming compute headroom for Downfall. With 10 cores and 16 threads across its Raptor Lake architecture, running at a base clock of 2.50 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz, this processor is far more powerful than a 2016 horror game would require. Its benchmark scores confirm this: Cinebench R23 multi-core of 22,604 and single-core of 3,191, Geekbench multi-core of 11,068 and single-core of 1,996, and a Passmark multi-thread score of 25,032.

The processor's nearest rivals in the database are all within a rounding error of its average benchmark score of 25,292. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS scores 25,284 (delta 0%), the Intel Core 5 120 scores 25,362 (delta -0.3%), the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D scores 25,365 (delta -0.3%), and the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H scores 25,201 (delta +0.4%). This cluster of scores within 0.7% of each other indicates that the i5-13400F sits in a crowded performance tier where no single processor has a meaningful advantage over its peers.

The 65 W TDP and 20 MB of shared L3 cache are the key architectural features that affect gaming performance. The cache size helps with data locality, and the 10-core/16-thread configuration ensures that even if Downfall were heavily multithreaded — which it likely is not, given its age — the CPU would not be strained. The Passmark physics score of 1,437 and data compression score of 311,364 further indicate that the CPU excels at the kinds of background tasks that might run alongside the game.

Since the measured FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows no sign of CPU bottlenecking, the data implies that the i5-13400F is effectively idle in Downfall. The 157 FPS at 1080p Low is likely near the upper limit of what the GTX 1070 can produce, and the CPU could presumably drive much higher frame rates if paired with a faster GPU. This is a case where the processor's 77th percentile rank among all CPUs is wasted on a game that cannot utilize it fully.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 ranks 3,074 out of 3,716 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the bottom 17% of the database. This ranking is driven almost entirely by the GPU, which sits in the 47th percentile among all GPUs — the CPU's 77th percentile rank is far higher but does little to lift the combo's position because the game is not CPU-limited.

The 642 combos that rank below this pairing likely include systems with even older or weaker GPUs, or configurations where both components are less capable. The 3,073 combos ranked above it include those with more modern graphics cards, higher-tier GPUs, or more balanced pairings. The combo's position is consistent with the GTX 1070's status as an end-of-life product that was released in 2016 and has been succeeded by two full generations of NVIDIA GPUs.

The data implies that upgrading this system would require replacing the GPU first. The CPU has substantial headroom — its benchmark scores are nearly identical to much newer processors, and its 10-core/16-thread configuration will remain relevant for years. A GPU upgrade would immediately move this combo up the rankings, as the CPU is not the constraint. The measured results in Downfall show that even at 1080p Ultra, where the GPU is most stressed relative to the CPU, the frame rate of 66 FPS is far below what the i5-13400F could support with a faster graphics card.