Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i7-12700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achievable with this combination in Downfall?

A: The highest measured average is 201 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 144 FPS at 2560x1440 Low and 89 FPS at 3840x2160 Low, showing a clear scaling pattern tied directly to resolution.

Q: How does the RTX 5050's average benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 5050 has an average benchmark score of 21035, sitting 1.6% above the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (20713) and 0.6% below the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL (21153). It trails the RTX A4000 Mobile (21379) by 1.6% and sits 1% above the AMD Radeon HD 8970M (21237).

Q: What is the CPU's percentile ranking among all tested processors?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700K ranks in the 84th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 35287 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i5-13600T (35305, -0.1%), the Intel Core i7-12700KF (35365, -0.2%), the Intel Core i7-13700T (35403, -0.3%), and the Intel Core 5 213PE (35428, -0.4%).

Q: Does the RTX 5050 support modern graphics APIs required for current games?

A: Yes. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test yields a score of 2502, confirming functional DirectX 12 capability.

Q: What is the measured frame rate at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 37. This is the lowest measured result across all tested settings, representing a substantial drop from the 60 FPS average at 4K High and the 73 FPS at 4K Medium.

Q: How much VRAM does the GPU have and what is its memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 5050 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 320.0 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 2500 MHz, which translates to 20 Gbps effective.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data across three resolutions and four settings presets provides a clear picture of optimal configurations. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 135 FPS average, while Medium produces 165 FPS with a minimum of 140 FPS and maximum of 189 FPS. The Low preset reaches 201 FPS, but the jump from Low to Medium costs 36 FPS while the jump from Medium to High costs another 30 FPS. Ultra drops sharply to 84 FPS, making it the least efficient choice at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 118 FPS average with a floor of 100 FPS and ceiling of 135 FPS. High follows at 96 FPS, Low at 144 FPS, and Ultra at 60 FPS. The 1440p Medium configuration maintains a 100 FPS minimum, which is the key threshold for smooth gameplay. The 84 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution indicates the Ultra preset imposes severe rendering costs that outweigh its visual benefits.

At 3840x2160, Medium is the only preset with a recorded minimum FPS (62) and maximum FPS (84), averaging 73 FPS. High averages 60 FPS with no min/max data, while Low averages 89 FPS. Ultra falls to 37 FPS, which is below playable thresholds for most users. The data suggests that Medium at 4K is the most balanced choice, offering a 73 FPS average with a 62 FPS floor. High at 4K is borderline at 60 FPS average, while Ultra at 4K should be avoided entirely given the 37 FPS result.

The best experience across all resolutions is Medium settings. At 1080p, it provides 165 FPS with a 140 FPS minimum. At 1440p, it provides 118 FPS with a 100 FPS minimum. At 4K, it provides 73 FPS with a 62 FPS minimum. The Medium preset consistently maintains a minimum FPS that is at least 83% of the average, whereas Ultra presets show no min/max data but deliver average FPS that are roughly half of the Medium values at each resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a strong GPU-bound workload. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 201 at 1080p to 144 at 1440p (a 28.4% reduction) and then to 89 at 4K (a 55.7% reduction from 1080p). This translates to a 2.26x reduction in FPS when pixel count increases by 4x, indicating that the RTX 5050's rendering throughput scales sub-linearly with resolution.

At Medium settings, the scaling is similar but with a slightly different pattern. The 1080p average of 165 FPS drops to 118 at 1440p (28.5% reduction) and then to 73 at 4K (55.8% reduction from 1080p). The High preset shows 135 FPS at 1080p, 96 at 1440p (28.9% reduction), and 60 at 4K (55.6% reduction). The consistency of these percentage drops across settings — all hovering near 28% for the 1080p-to-1440p step and 55-56% for the 1080p-to-4K step — indicates that resolution scaling is uniform regardless of quality preset.

The Ultra preset deviates slightly: 84 FPS at 1080p, 60 at 1440p (28.6% reduction), and 37 at 4K (56.0% reduction from 1080p). The near-identical scaling percentages across all four settings presets strongly suggest that the limiting component at higher resolutions is the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth. The RTX 5050's 82.30 GPixel/s pixel rate and 320.0 GB/s memory bandwidth directly constrain performance as pixel count increases. The CPU's role diminishes at higher resolutions; the i7-12700K's 12 cores and 20 threads provide ample headroom that becomes less relevant as GPU load dominates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 201 FPS average. Medium delivers 165 FPS with a minimum of 140 FPS and maximum of 189 FPS. High produces 135 FPS average. Ultra drops to 84 FPS average. The gap between Low and Ultra is 117 FPS, representing a 58.2% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest to highest quality preset.

At 2560x1440, Low achieves 144 FPS average. Medium delivers 118 FPS with a minimum of 100 FPS and maximum of 135 FPS. High produces 96 FPS average. Ultra drops to 60 FPS average. The gap between Low and Ultra is 84 FPS, a 58.3% reduction. The 1440p Medium minimum of 100 FPS is exactly equal to the 1440p Ultra average, highlighting how much performance is lost at Ultra.

At 3840x2160, Low achieves 89 FPS average. Medium delivers 73 FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS and maximum of 84 FPS. High produces 60 FPS average. Ultra drops to 37 FPS average. The gap between Low and Ultra is 52 FPS, a 58.4% reduction. Notably, the 4K High average of 60 FPS is exactly equal to the 1440p Ultra average, demonstrating that resolution and settings trade-offs can yield identical performance outcomes.

The Medium preset at each resolution provides the only complete min/max data set: 140-189 FPS at 1080p, 100-135 FPS at 1440p, and 62-84 FPS at 4K. The consistency of the min-to-max spread (49 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p, 22 FPS at 4K) suggests that frame pacing becomes more consistent at lower resolutions, likely due to reduced GPU bottleneck variance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using the GB207 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 16,900 million transistors on a 149 mm² die. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2317 MHz and boosts to 2572 MHz. It features 2560 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, along with 20 RT cores and 80 tensor cores.

The memory subsystem consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, running at 2500 MHz with 20 Gbps effective speed. This yields 320.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's pixel rate is 82.30 GPixel/s and texture rate is 205.8 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 13.17 TFLOPS, with FP16 matching at 13.17 TFLOPS (1:1).

In Downfall, the GPU's role is clearly dominant. The measured FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that the RTX 5050's memory bandwidth and pixel throughput become the primary constraints at higher resolutions. The 128-bit memory bus and 320.0 GB/s bandwidth are modest by current standards, which explains why 4K Ultra results in only 37 FPS. The GPU's benchmark scores reflect its mid-range positioning: PassMark G3D score of 17326, 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2502, and Geekbench OpenCL score of 90334.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 66 places it below the 84th percentile CPU ranking of the i7-12700K. This mismatch suggests the GPU is the bottleneck in this pairing. The nearest rival data confirms the RTX 5050 sits in a competitive cluster: it is 1.6% faster than the RX 5600 XT but 1.6% slower than the RTX A4000 Mobile. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Downfall at the tested settings, as no VRAM-related performance anomalies appear in the FPS data.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process with a 215 mm² die size. It features a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB L1 per core, 1.25 MB L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The TDP is 125 W, and it supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration.

The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 19784, Geekbench multi-core scores 15790, and 3DMark max threads scores 9979. Single-thread performance is also solid, with Cinebench R23 single-core at 1850.5 and PassMark single-thread at 4013. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 9276 indicates that the CPU can handle heavily threaded workloads effectively.

In Downfall, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU at the tested resolutions. The consistent percentage-based FPS drops from 1080p to 4K (approximately 28% for the first step and 55-56% for the full range) indicate that the CPU is not introducing variable bottlenecks across resolutions. The i7-12700K's 20 threads provide ample processing capacity for game logic and physics, and its 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures strong single-thread performance where needed.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 35287 places it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rivals being the i5-13600T (35305, -0.1%), i7-12700KF (35365, -0.2%), i7-13700T (35403, -0.3%), and Core 5 213PE (35428, -0.4%). The extremely small deltaPct values (all under 0.5%) indicate that this CPU is performance-clustered with several alternatives, meaning the choice between them has minimal impact on Downfall performance.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-12700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 combination ranks 1755 out of 2928 tested combinations in Downfall, placing it in the 60th percentile of all tested systems. This ranking reflects the GPU's mid-range positioning more than the CPU's strong performance, given the 84th percentile CPU ranking versus the 66th percentile GPU ranking.

The combo's ranking relative to its component parts suggests that the RTX 5050 is the limiting factor. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking indicates it has substantial headroom, while the GPU's 66th percentile ranking pulls the overall combo down. In a GPU-bound game like Downfall, the RTX 5050's performance ceiling constrains the system regardless of the i7-12700K's capabilities.

The measured FPS data supports this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 201 FPS, which is excellent. At 4K Ultra, it drops to 37 FPS, which is poor. The CPU's 12 cores and 20 threads are more than sufficient for the game's demands, as evidenced by the consistent scaling patterns that show no CPU-related stutters or anomalies.

When compared to other tested combinations, this pairing offers a balanced experience at 1080p and 1440p, with Medium settings providing the best frame rate consistency. The 4K experience is limited to Medium settings (73 FPS average) or Low settings (89 FPS average) for acceptable performance. The combo's rank of 1755 out of 2928 places it in the upper-middle range, which aligns with the GPU's 66th percentile ranking. Users seeking higher 4K performance would need a more powerful GPU, while those satisfied with 1080p or 1440p gaming would find this combination well-suited to their needs.