Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 produces a formidable Downfall experience, with measured frame rates ranging from 74 FPS at 4K Ultra to 400 FPS at 1080p Low. This data-driven analysis breaks down how the pairing behaves across resolutions and settings, what the numbers reveal about the limiting component, and where this combo stands among the 3,716 tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for this combo shows a clear and consistent pattern: as resolution increases, frame rates drop proportionally, but the magnitude of that drop depends heavily on the settings preset. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 sees average FPS fall from 268 to 191, a reduction of 77 FPS or roughly 29%. Moving from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 at High settings brings the average down further to 119 FPS, another 72 FPS drop. Across the full 1080p-to-4K span at High settings, the average FPS declines from 268 to 119, a total reduction of 149 FPS.

The Low preset exhibits even steeper absolute drops. At 1920x1080 Low, the combo delivers 400 FPS average. At 2560x1440 Low, that falls to 285 FPS, and at 3840x2160 Low, it reaches 178 FPS. The 222 FPS difference between 1080p Low and 4K Low is the largest absolute scaling gap across all presets, indicating that at Low settings the GPU has ample headroom and the rendering workload scales almost linearly with pixel count.

Ultra settings show the smallest absolute drop but the largest relative drop. From 168 FPS at 1080p Ultra to 120 FPS at 1440p Ultra, the reduction is 48 FPS. Moving to 4K Ultra yields 74 FPS, another 46 FPS decline. The 94 FPS total drop from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra represents a 56% reduction. Medium settings sit in between, with 327 FPS at 1080p, 233 FPS at 1440p, and 145 FPS at 4K.

The scaling pattern suggests that at 1080p, particularly on Low and Medium presets, the CPU begins to assert itself as a limiting factor. The 400 FPS ceiling at 1080p Low, combined with the i7-12700KF's 12 cores and 20 threads, indicates that the processor's single-thread performance is sufficient to push extremely high frame rates, but the GPU is not fully saturated at lower resolutions. As resolution climbs to 4K, the RTX 4080's workload becomes the dominant constraint, and the frame rate drops reflect the GPU's raw rendering throughput rather than any CPU bottleneck.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Downfall?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 400, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the peak of the 12 recorded data points.

Q: Does the combo maintain playable frame rates at 4K Ultra?

A: Yes, but barely above the 60 FPS threshold. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 74, which is playable but leaves limited headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from High to Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High settings average 191 FPS while Ultra settings average 120 FPS. The difference is 71 FPS, meaning Ultra costs roughly 37% of the High preset's frame rate.

Q: Is there a large gap between Low and Medium settings at 4K?

A: Yes. At 3840x2160, Low averages 178 FPS while Medium averages 145 FPS. The 33 FPS gap is significant, but both presets deliver well above 120 FPS average.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The lowest min FPS in the dataset is 123 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. The max FPS at that same setting is 167 FPS.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 230 out of 3,716 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the top 6.2% of all configurations.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the primary driver of Downfall's rendering performance, and its specifications explain much of the measured behavior. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is more than sufficient for Downfall at any of the tested resolutions, as the game's release date of 2016-02-28 predates the GPU's 2022-09-19 release by several years and does not appear to demand excessive VRAM capacity.

The RTX 4080's clock speeds — a base of 2205 MHz and boost of 2505 MHz — are relatively high for a modern GPU, and the Ada Lovelace architecture's 5 nm process node from TSMC helps maintain efficiency under load. The GPU's 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 performance provides substantial compute throughput, which is reflected in the high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p. The pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 761.5 GTexel/s indicate that the GPU can handle high-resolution rasterization without becoming texture-bound in this title.

The RTX 4080's 9728 shading units and 112 ROPS contribute to the observed scaling behavior. At 4K Ultra, the GPU's fill rate and shader throughput become the limiting factors, resulting in 74 FPS average. The fact that 4K Low achieves 178 FPS — more than double the Ultra number — demonstrates that the GPU is fully utilized at 4K and that settings changes have a profound impact on its workload. The GPU's percentile ranking of 86 versus all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 54247 place it in the upper tier of graphics hardware, consistent with the measured Downfall performance.

The memory clock of 1400 MHz (22.4 Gbps effective) and 16 GB capacity ensure that neither bandwidth nor capacity becomes a bottleneck in Downfall, even at 4K with the Medium preset's min FPS of 123. The GPU's transistor count of 45,900 million on a 379 mm² die gives it substantial compute resources, and the 304 TMUs help maintain texture filtering performance across all settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results across all four presets. Low settings average 400 FPS, Medium averages 327 FPS with a min of 278 and max of 376, High averages 268 FPS, and Ultra averages 168 FPS. The 232 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p is the largest of any resolution, reflecting the CPU's ability to feed the GPU at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the primary constraint.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages shift downward across the board. Low settings produce 285 FPS, Medium averages 233 FPS with a min of 198 and max of 268, High averages 191 FPS, and Ultra averages 120 FPS. The 165 FPS spread between Low and Ultra is narrower than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is beginning to take on a greater share of the workload as pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, the 4K results show the most compression between presets. Low settings average 178 FPS, Medium averages 145 FPS with a min of 123 and max of 167, High averages 119 FPS, and Ultra averages 74 FPS. The 104 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is the smallest of the three resolutions, confirming that the GPU becomes the dominant bottleneck at this resolution. The Medium preset at 4K is the only configuration in the dataset with complete min/max data, showing a 44 FPS range between its 123 FPS minimum and 167 FPS maximum.

The data shows a consistent relationship between resolutions: 1440p averages are approximately 70-72% of 1080p averages across all presets, while 4K averages are approximately 62-63% of 1440p averages. This geometric scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound title at higher resolutions, though the 1080p Low result of 400 FPS suggests some CPU limitation at the extreme low end.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 230 out of 3,716 tested combinations in Downfall, placing it in the top 6.2% of all configurations. This rank reflects the strength of both components: the RTX 4080's percentile of 86 versus all GPUs and the i7-12700KF's percentile of 85 versus all CPUs both sit comfortably in the upper quartile of their respective categories.

The GPU's nearest rivals provide context for its standalone performance. The RTX 4080's average benchmark score of 54247 is essentially tied with the RTX 4080 SUPER at 54209, a delta of 0.1%. The AMD Radeon Pro W5700X scores 54828, putting it 1.1% ahead, while the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB scores 55698, 2.6% ahead, and the AMD Radeon 8060S scores 55757, 2.7% ahead. These close margins indicate that the RTX 4080 sits in a tightly contested performance band, yet in Downfall specifically, the combo still achieves a top-230 placement.

The CPU's nearest rivals show a similar pattern. The i7-12700KF's average benchmark score of 35365 is within 0.2% of the Intel Core i5-13600T at 35305 and the Intel Core i7-12700K at 35287. The Intel Core i7-13700T scores 35403, 0.1% higher, and the Intel Core 5 213PE scores 35428, 0.2% higher. These deltas are negligible, suggesting that the CPU's performance class is well-established and that the i7-12700KF is not leaving meaningful performance on the table in this pairing.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 1080p, the data suggests that High settings at 268 FPS average provide an excellent balance of visual quality and performance. The jump to Ultra costs 100 FPS (from 268 to 168), which is a substantial reduction for what is likely a modest visual improvement in a 2016 horror title. Low settings at 400 FPS are excessive for most displays, and Medium at 327 FPS offers diminishing returns over High.

At 1440p, High settings at 191 FPS average is the recommended preset. The step down to Medium at 233 FPS provides additional headroom but sacrifices visual fidelity, while Ultra at 120 FPS average drops below the 144 FPS threshold that many high-refresh monitors target. The 71 FPS gap between High and Ultra at this resolution makes Ultra a poor trade-off unless visual fidelity is the absolute priority.

For 4K, the recommendation is Medium settings at 145 FPS average. This preset maintains a comfortable margin above 120 FPS, with a min of 123 FPS that ensures consistent smoothness. High settings at 119 FPS average dip below 120 FPS, and Ultra at 74 FPS average, while playable, does not take full advantage of high-refresh displays. Low settings at 178 FPS are viable but sacrifice too much visual quality for the modest 33 FPS gain over Medium.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience, with average FPS of 327 at 1080p, 233 at 1440p, and 145 at 4K. For users with 144 Hz displays, Medium or High at 1440p and Medium at 4K are the only presets that consistently stay above 144 FPS in the measured data.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF brings 12 cores and 20 threads to this pairing, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. This Alder Lake-S architecture processor, built on Intel's 10 nm process node, provides strong single-threaded performance as evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 1043 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4071. The 25 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core help maintain low-latency access to game data.

In Downfall, the CPU's role becomes increasingly important at lower resolutions. The 400 FPS result at 1080p Low demonstrates that the i7-12700KF can feed the RTX 4080 with enough draw calls and physics updates to sustain extremely high frame rates. The processor's 3DMark 16-thread score of 9282 and max-thread score of 9983 indicate strong multi-threaded capability, which is relevant for a horror game that may spawn multiple background processes.

The CPU's percentile of 85 versus all CPUs, combined with its average benchmark score of 35365, places it in the same performance tier as its nearest rivals — the i7-13700T at 35403, the Core 5 213PE at 35428, the i5-13600T at 35305, and the i7-12700K at 35287. All of these processors fall within a 0.2% delta of each other, meaning the i7-12700KF is not a weak link in this system.

At 4K, however, the CPU's influence wanes. The 74 FPS average at 4K Ultra is more than 5x below the 400 FPS at 1080p Low, and the scaling pattern across resolutions strongly suggests the GPU is the limiting component at higher pixel counts. The CPU's boost clock of 5.00 GHz provides the single-thread headroom needed for the game's engine logic, while the 20 threads ensure that any background tasks do not interfere with frame pacing. The 125 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a straightforward pairing for a high-end gaming system, though those details are secondary to the measured performance data.