Downfall

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT delivers a broad performance envelope in Downfall, a 2016 horror title. The measured data reveals a configuration that scales predictably across resolutions and settings, with the GPU acting as the primary bottleneck at higher fidelity presets while the CPU demonstrates ample headroom at lower resolutions. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS results, contextualizes the combo’s standing among 1,741 tested configurations, and examines the specific roles of the processor and graphics card in shaping the final frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, indicating a shift in the limiting component as pixel count rises. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 291.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 128.8 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of 163.0 FPS (55.9%). The Medium preset shows a similar trajectory: 236.5 FPS at 1080p drops to 108.1 FPS at 4K. High settings scale from 194.1 FPS down to 83.4 FPS, while the Ultra preset sees the most dramatic decline, from 119.5 FPS at 1080p to 53.6 FPS at 4K, a 65.4 FPS reduction.

This pattern suggests that at 1080p, the frame rate is heavily influenced by the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU, as the RX 6800 XT is capable of producing far more frames than the processor can keep up with at Low and Medium settings. The fact that 1080p Low yields 291.8 FPS while 1080p Ultra drops to 119.5 FPS shows the GPU’s workload increasing with settings, but the CPU still has significant headroom. At 4K, however, the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor, as the pixel throughput demands overwhelm the Radeon’s capabilities, evidenced by the 4K Ultra result of 53.6 FPS, which is less than half the 1080p Ultra score.

The scaling between 1440p and 4K is particularly telling. At High settings, 2560x1440 produces 141.6 FPS, but 4K High drops to 83.4 FPS, a 41.1% decrease. Similarly, Medium at 1440p yields 169.7 FPS versus 108.1 FPS at 4K. This indicates that the RX 6800 XT’s 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for 1440p, but the 4K resolution imposes a substantial fill-rate penalty that the GPU cannot overcome, even with the Core i7-12700K’s strong single-thread performance.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-12700K and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT combination ranks 588th out of 1,741 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the 66.2nd percentile of all configurations. This ranking reflects a capable but not elite pairing, as the data shows it outperforms roughly two-thirds of tested setups while trailing the top third. The GPU’s individual percentile of 87 (vs. all GPUs) is higher than the combo’s overall percentile, suggesting that the CPU is the weaker link in this pairing for this specific title.

The CPU’s percentile vs. all CPUs is 89, which is close to the GPU’s 87, but the combo rank at 588/1741 indicates that neither component is top-tier in absolute terms. The nearest rivals for the CPU include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (avgScore 35802, deltaPct -0.3) and Intel Core i7-13700T (avgScore 35468, deltaPct 0.6), showing the i7-12700K is performance-adjacent to these processors. For the GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER (avgScore 48704, deltaPct 2.6) and Intel Arc A550M (avgScore 49737, deltaPct 0.5) are close competitors, but the Radeon’s 49982 avgBenchmarkScore edges them out.

The combo’s ranking suggests that for Downfall, the pair is well-balanced but not exceptional. The 1080p Ultra result of 119.5 FPS is strong for a horror title, but the 4K Ultra score of 53.6 FPS indicates that this combo is better suited to 1440p or lower for maximum fidelity. The rank of 588 out of 1741 places it in the upper-middle tier, far from the top configurations that likely feature newer CPUs and GPUs with higher raw throughput.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a Navi 21 chip, featuring 4608 shading units, 288 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. Its boost clock of 2250 MHz and game clock of 2015 MHz drive a pixel rate of 288.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 648.0 GTexel/s. The 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial for a 2016 game. These specifications explain the GPU’s behavior in Downfall: at 1080p and 1440p, the card has enough raw compute to produce high frame rates, but at 4K, the fill-rate demands of the horror title’s environments exceed its capabilities.

The GPU’s avgBenchmarkScore is 49982, with a percentile of 87 vs. all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A1000, scores 50826 (deltaPct -1.7), meaning the RX 6800 XT is 1.7% behind that card. The Intel Arc A550M is 0.5% ahead, while the NVIDIA CMP 50HX is 1.9% ahead. This places the Radeon in a tight competitive band. In Downfall, the GPU’s influence is most pronounced at 4K Ultra, where the 53.6 FPS average suggests the card is fully saturated. The 4K Low result of 128.8 FPS shows that even at minimal settings, the pixel count limits the GPU, as the CPU is not the bottleneck at that resolution.

The GPU’s memory capacity of 16 GB is unlikely to be a limiting factor in this 2016 title, as even 4K Ultra textures would not exceed this allocation. The card’s memory bandwidth of 512.0 GB/s is more relevant, as the drop from 1440p High (141.6 FPS) to 4K High (83.4 FPS) reflects the increased memory traffic at higher resolutions. The RX 6800 XT’s FP32 performance of 20.74 TFLOPS is more than adequate for Downfall’s DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) API, but the game’s age means the GPU is not fully utilized at lower resolutions, where the CPU takes over as the limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest frame rates. Low settings yield an average of 291.8 FPS, Medium drops to 236.5 FPS, High to 194.1 FPS, and Ultra to 119.5 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra is 172.3 FPS, showing a significant impact from settings at this resolution. The 1080p Low result of 291.8 FPS indicates the CPU is the primary limiter, as the GPU is capable of far more, but the game’s engine or the processor’s single-thread performance caps the output.

At 2560x1440, the scores are 208.1 FPS (Low), 169.7 FPS (Medium), 141.6 FPS (High), and 88.2 FPS (Ultra). The 1440p Ultra result of 88.2 FPS is 26.2% lower than 1080p Ultra, reflecting the increased pixel load. The Low preset at 1440p still exceeds 200 FPS, suggesting that the CPU remains relevant here, but the GPU is starting to take on more work. The delta between Medium and High at 1440p is 28.1 FPS, while at 1080p it is 42.4 FPS, indicating the GPU’s workload is compressing the settings-based differences.

At 3840x2160, the results are 128.8 FPS (Low), 108.1 FPS (Medium), 83.4 FPS (High), and 53.6 FPS (Ultra). The 4K Ultra score is the lowest in the dataset, and it falls below the 60 FPS threshold, which is notable for a game that is not graphically demanding by modern standards. The 4K Low result of 128.8 FPS is still playable, but the gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 75.2 FPS, showing that the GPU is the dominant constraint at this resolution. The data shows a clear pattern: the CPU limits at 1080p, the balance shifts at 1440p, and the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Its 25 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support (DDR4 and DDR5) provide solid performance for gaming. The CPU’s benchmarks show strong multi-threaded capabilities, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29241 and a Geekbench multicore score of 13892. Single-thread performance is also robust, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4128 and a Passmark single-thread score of 4013.

In Downfall, the CPU’s role is most evident at 1080p, where the 291.8 FPS Low result indicates the processor is the limiting factor. The i7-12700K’s boost clock of 5.00 GHz and single-thread performance allow it to push high frame rates, but the game’s engine appears to cap at around 292 FPS regardless of GPU capability. The 1080p Medium (236.5 FPS) and High (194.1 FPS) scores show that as GPU load increases, the CPU’s influence diminishes, but it still contributes to the overall frame rate.

The CPU’s percentile of 89 vs. all CPUs, with an avgBenchmarkScore of 35684, places it slightly above the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (35802, deltaPct -0.3) and Intel Core i5-14500HX (35940, deltaPct -0.7). In Downfall, the i7-12700K’s 20 threads are more than sufficient for a 2016 horror title, which likely uses fewer than 8 threads. The 3dmark 8-thread score of 7202 and 16-thread score of 9276 show that the CPU scales well, but the game does not appear to leverage this fully, as the 1080p frame rates do not improve proportionally with core count. The CPU’s 125 W TDP and 10 nm process node are adequate for sustained gaming loads, and the data confirms that the i7-12700K is not a bottleneck at 1440p or 4K, where the GPU takes over entirely.