Downfall

# Downfall with Intel Core i7-14700KF + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti produces a benchmark profile that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound in Downfall, with the processor's substantial headroom never becoming a limiting factor across any tested resolution or quality preset. The measured data shows a combination that ranks in the 14th percentile of tested combos for this title, placing it at position 3202 out of 3716 total configurations. The GTX 1660 Ti, with its 6 GB GDDR6 memory and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth, consistently defines the performance ceiling, while the 20-core, 28-thread i7-14700KF operates well within its capabilities throughout the entire test matrix.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent, confirming that the GTX 1660 Ti is the performance bottleneck at every settings level. At Low settings, average frame rates fall from 147 FPS at 1920x1080 to 105 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 65 FPS at 3840x2160 — a total reduction of 55.8% from 1080p to 4K. The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 120 FPS at 1080p, 86 FPS at 1440p, and 53 FPS at 4K, representing a 55.8% decline as well. High settings start at 99 FPS at 1080p, drop to 70 FPS at 1440p, and reach 44 FPS at 4K, a 55.6% reduction. Ultra settings exhibit the most dramatic scaling, falling from 62 FPS at 1080p to 44 FPS at 1440p and finally 27 FPS at 4K — a 56.5% decrease overall.

The consistency of these percentage drops across all four quality presets is telling. A CPU-limited scenario would show diminishing FPS losses as resolution increases, since the processor's workload remains constant while pixel throughput grows. Instead, the nearly identical 55-56% reductions across Low through Ultra indicate that the GPU's fill rate and shading capacity are being saturated at every quality level. The 4K Ultra result of 27 FPS is particularly revealing — the GTX 1660 Ti's 84.96 GPixel/s pixel rate and 169.9 GTexel/s texture rate are simply overwhelmed by the combination of high resolution and maximum quality settings.

The scaling behavior also highlights the GPU's memory subsystem constraints. With 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus delivering 288.0 GB/s, the card must manage texture streaming and framebuffer operations at 4K with limited headroom. The gap between Low (65 FPS) and High (44 FPS) at 4K — a 32.3% penalty — is smaller than the gap at 1080p, where Low runs at 147 FPS and High at 99 FPS, a 32.7% difference. This near-constant proportional penalty reinforces that the GPU's compute and memory resources, not the CPU or system memory bandwidth, determine the outcome at every resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame places this configuration at 3202 out of 3716 tested combinations, which places it in the lower 13.8% of all tested pairings for Downfall. This rank reflects the GTX 1660 Ti's performance tier more than the i7-14700KF's capabilities. The GPU sits at the 41st percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 7723. Its nearest rivals in the GPU rankings include the AMD Radeon 540 (avg score 7673, deltaPct 0.7), the AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (avg score 7580, deltaPct 1.9), and the AMD Radeon R7 250 (avg score 7557, deltaPct 2.2). The GTX 1660 Ti leads these competitors by margins ranging from 0.7% to 2.3%, indicating it sits at the upper edge of its immediate performance cluster.

The Intel Core i7-14700KF, by contrast, ranks at the 94th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70163. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (avg score 69996, deltaPct 0.2), the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (avg score 69875, deltaPct 0.4), the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (avg score 69515, deltaPct 0.9), and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (avg score 70879, deltaPct -1). The i7-14700KF essentially trades blows with these processors, staying within 1% of each — proof of its balanced multi-core and single-core performance. In Downfall specifically, however, this CPU horsepower goes largely unused, as the GPU becomes the limiting factor at all tested settings.

The disparity between the CPU's 94th percentile ranking and the combo's 13.8th percentile game rank tells the full story. This is a pairing where the processor is overqualified for the workload, and the measured FPS figures reflect the GPU's ceiling rather than any system-level balance consideration. Buyers seeking higher frame rates in Downfall would need to prioritize GPU upgrades, as the i7-14700KF provides ample headroom for significantly faster graphics cards.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to Medium settings at 1920x1080 as the optimal experience for this combination in Downfall. At this configuration, the average frame rate is 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS. The minimum FPS staying above 100 ensures smooth gameplay even during demanding scenes, while the 120 FPS average provides headroom above standard 60 Hz displays. This represents a 21.2% improvement over High settings at the same resolution, which averages 99 FPS.

For users targeting 2560x1440, Medium settings again emerge as the sweet spot. The average of 86 FPS with a minimum of 73 FPS and maximum of 99 FPS keeps the experience above the 60 FPS threshold in nearly all scenarios. High settings at 1440p produce 70 FPS average, which is playable but leaves less margin for frame-time spikes. Low settings at 1440p reach 105 FPS, but the visual quality trade-off may not justify the 22.1% gain over Medium.

At 3840x2160, the data shows that even Low settings (65 FPS average) cannot maintain a locked 60 FPS experience, and Medium drops to 53 FPS with a minimum of 45 FPS. The 4K Ultra setting at 27 FPS is effectively unplayable, and High at 44 FPS also falls below acceptable smoothness thresholds. Users with 4K displays should consider this combination unsuitable for Downfall at any quality level, or alternatively reduce the render resolution to 1440p and rely on display scaling.

The pattern across resolutions is clear: Medium settings provide the best balance between visual fidelity and frame rate stability. The minimum FPS data is only available for Medium presets, which allows for precise assessment — the 102 FPS minimum at 1080p and 73 FPS minimum at 1440p both indicate that the combination can maintain consistent performance without severe drops. Low settings offer higher averages but sacrifice visual quality, while High and Ultra settings increasingly tax the GPU without proportional visual returns in this horror title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU-GPU combination in Downfall?

A: The data shows 1920x1080 as the only resolution where all settings presets remain playable, with averages ranging from 62 FPS at Ultra to 147 FPS at Low. At 2560x1440, Medium produces 86 FPS average, but Ultra drops to 44 FPS. At 3840x2160, even Low settings only reach 65 FPS average.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 Ti compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The GTX 1660 Ti has an average benchmark score of 7723, which is 0.7% higher than the AMD Radeon 540 (7673), 1.9% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (7580), and 2.2% higher than the AMD Radeon R7 250 (7557). It sits at the 41st percentile among all GPUs.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-14700KF holding back the GTX 1660 Ti in this game?

A: No. The CPU ranks at the 94th percentile overall with an average benchmark score of 70163, and its nearest rivals are within 1% of its performance. The measured FPS scaling across resolutions shows the GPU as the consistent bottleneck, meaning the i7-14700KF has substantial unused headroom.

Q: What frame rates can be expected at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: The measured data shows an average of 120 FPS, with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS. This is the only preset at 1080p with complete min/max data available, confirming stable performance.

Q: Can this combination handle 4K gaming in Downfall?

A: The data indicates limited viability. Low settings average 65 FPS, Medium averages 53 FPS with a minimum of 45 FPS, High averages 44 FPS, and Ultra averages 27 FPS. Only Low settings approach a smooth 60 FPS experience, and even that is marginal.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations in Downfall?

A: The combination ranks 3202 out of 3716 total tested combos, placing it in the lower 13.8% of all configurations. This rank is primarily driven by the GPU's 41st percentile standing rather than the CPU's 94th percentile performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is the definitive performance limiter in this configuration for Downfall. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves insufficient for maintaining high frame rates at 4K resolutions. The memory operates at 1500 MHz with 12 Gbps effective speed, and the GPU's 1536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs deliver a measured 5.437 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, 169.9 GTexel/s texture rate, and 84.96 GPixel/s pixel rate.

The benchmark data shows the GPU's 41st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 7723. Its nearest rivals — the AMD Radeon 540, Radeon Pro WX 3100, Radeon R7 250, and Intel Arc A310 — all score within 2.3% of the GTX 1660 Ti, placing this card at the top of a tightly clustered low-to-midrange performance tier. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1061 and Passmark G3D score of 12871 further characterize its capabilities, while the Geekbench OpenCL score of 51029 indicates compute headroom that goes unused in a rasterization-focused title like Downfall.

The GPU's 120 W TDP and dual-slot design with a single 8-pin power connector suggest it is positioned for mainstream systems, and its 229 mm length and 35 mm width make it compatible with most cases. The card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, covering all modern rendering APIs. However, the absence of RT cores and tensor cores means ray tracing and DLSS features are unavailable, which is not a factor for this title but limits future-proofing.

At 4K Ultra settings, the GPU's 27 FPS average indicates complete saturation of its shading and memory resources. The fact that 4K Low (65 FPS) is more than double 4K Ultra (27 FPS) demonstrates how severely quality settings impact the GPU's workload. The 6 GB VRAM capacity likely contributes to performance degradation at 4K, where texture sets and framebuffer requirements can exceed the available memory, forcing the card to rely on slower PCIe transfers across its Gen 3 x16 interface.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF provides far more processing capability than Downfall requires, making it a non-factor in the measured frame rates. This 20-core, 28-thread processor operates at a 3.40 GHz base clock and boosts to 5.60 GHz, built on Intel's 10 nm process with a 257 mm² die size. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB L1 per core, 2 MB L2 per core, and 33 MB shared L3, supporting DDR4 and DDR5 memory across a dual-channel bus.

The CPU's benchmark results place it at the 94th percentile among all processors, with an average score of 70163. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44167 and single-core score of 6235 demonstrate exceptional throughput, while Geekbench scores of 21462 multi-core and 2578 single-core reinforce this standing. The Passmark multithread score of 52425 and single-thread score of 4480 further confirm balanced performance across both heavily threaded and lightly threaded workloads.

The nearest CPU rivals — AMD Ryzen 7 9700F, Ryzen 9 7940HX, Ryzen 9 7950X, and Intel Core Ultra 7 265K — all score within 1% of the i7-14700KF, indicating a highly competitive top-tier CPU market segment. With a 125 W TDP, 94th percentile ranking, and the 10 nm Raptor Lake architecture, this processor is clearly designed for high-end gaming and productivity workloads far more demanding than Downfall's engine.

In the context of this game, the CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads are largely idle, as the GTX 1660 Ti becomes the bottleneck at every resolution and settings combination. The consistent 55-56% FPS drop from 1080p to 4K across all presets confirms that no CPU-side limitation is affecting performance. The i7-14700KF's role here is to ensure the GPU receives data without stalling, a task it accomplishes with substantial margin, as evidenced by the 147 FPS result at 1080p Low — a frame rate that would challenge many mid-range CPUs but leaves this processor with significant headroom.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for Downfall with the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is as follows:

At 1920x1080, Low settings produce an average of 147 FPS. Medium settings average 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and maximum of 138 FPS. High settings average 99 FPS. Ultra settings average 62 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 57.8% reduction in average FPS, from 147 down to 62.

At 2560x1440, Low settings average 105 FPS. Medium settings average 86 FPS with a minimum of 73 FPS and maximum of 99 FPS. High settings average 70 FPS. Ultra settings average 44 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra represents a 58.1% reduction, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling.

At 3840x2160, Low settings average 65 FPS. Medium settings average 53 FPS with a minimum of 45 FPS and maximum of 61 FPS. High settings average 44 FPS. Ultra settings average 27 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra reduction is 58.5%, continuing the consistent trend across all resolutions.

Resolution scaling from 1080p to 4K yields these patterns: Low settings fall from 147 to 105 to 65 FPS; Medium from 120 to 86 to 53 FPS; High from 99 to 70 to 44 FPS; Ultra from 62 to 44 to 27 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max data at all three resolutions, showing minimums of 102, 73, and 45 FPS respectively. These minimums stay within 15% of the averages, indicating generally stable frame pacing rather than sporadic spikes. The 4K Medium minimum of 45 FPS is the lowest recorded value in the entire dataset, confirming that 4K gaming pushes this GPU to its limits even at moderate quality settings.