Downfall

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 delivers an exceptionally strong showing in Downfall, a 2016 horror title that clearly responds well to modern hardware. The data shows this combination ranks 65th out of 1,741 tested combos, placing it in the top 4% of all systems measured. With frame rates ranging from a minimum of 76.5 FPS at 4K Ultra to a maximum of 423.8 FPS at 1080p Low, this pairing is overkill for most displays but offers headroom for high-refresh-rate gaming and maximum fidelity. The following analysis breaks down the measured performance across settings and resolutions, with an emphasis on where this combo excels and where it becomes limited.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the High preset is the sweet spot for this combination, particularly at higher resolutions. At 3840x2160, High delivers 124.8 FPS, which is 48.3 FPS higher than Ultra (76.5 FPS) while still looking substantially better than Medium (155.5 FPS). The gap between High and Ultra is significant — a 48.3 FPS drop — indicating that Ultra settings impose a heavy penalty that may not justify the visual gain. For 4K gaming, High is the recommended preset because it stays comfortably above 120 FPS while retaining most of the graphical fidelity.

At 2560x1440, the picture shifts slightly. High delivers 202.5 FPS, which is excellent, but Medium offers 245.7 FPS, a 43.2 FPS improvement. The difference between Medium and High at 1440p is less dramatic than the jump from High to Ultra, so users with 144Hz or 165Hz monitors should consider Medium to lock in higher frame rates. Ultra at 1440p (126.7 FPS) is still playable but sacrifices 75.8 FPS compared to High, making it a poor trade for most.

For 1920x1080, the story is about chasing refresh rates. High delivers 287 FPS, while Medium reaches 347.9 FPS and Low hits 423.8 FPS. The data shows diminishing returns beyond High at 1080p — the jump from High to Medium is 60.9 FPS, but from Medium to Low it is 75.9 FPS. For competitive play or 360Hz monitors, Low is viable, but High remains the best balance for single-player immersion. Ultra at 1080p (177.2 FPS) is unnecessary given the GPU's headroom.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured results. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is more than sufficient for Downfall at any resolution, as evidenced by the fact that even 4K Ultra (the most demanding tested setting) never dips below 76.5 FPS. The 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 84 RT cores are largely underutilized in this title, which is not ray-tracing heavy, but they contribute to the raw rasterization performance seen here.

The GPU's clock speeds — 2295 MHz base and 2617 MHz boost — are relatively high, and the data suggests that the card scales well with resolution. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, as frame rates drop by roughly 40-50% compared to 1440p across settings. However, the RTX 5080's 89th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 59,188 indicate that it is a top-tier part. The nearest rivals in the database — Intel Arc A570M, Arc Pro A60, Arc A580, and AMD Radeon Pro W5500X — are all significantly slower in synthetic tests, with deltaPct values ranging from 1.6% to 2.6%, confirming the 5080's position as a high-end solution.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K reveal where the bottleneck lies. At High settings, the progression is 287 FPS at 1080p, 202.5 FPS at 1440p, and 124.8 FPS at 4K. That is a 29.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 38.4% drop from 1440p to 4K. The percentage decline is more pronounced at higher settings: at Ultra, the drop from 1080p (177.2 FPS) to 1440p (126.7 FPS) is 28.5%, but the drop from 1440p to 4K (76.5 FPS) is 39.6%. This pattern indicates that the GPU becomes progressively more stressed as pixel count increases, which is expected.

However, the data also shows that the CPU is not entirely idle. At 1080p Low, the system hits 423.8 FPS, which is a massive number that suggests the CPU is still keeping up. The fact that 1080p High (287 FPS) is only 32.2% slower than 1080p Low (423.8 FPS) indicates that the GPU is not fully saturated at lower resolutions. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p — from 423.8 to 177.2 FPS — is a 58.2% reduction, which is larger than the resolution scaling alone, pointing to a mix of CPU and GPU limits at 1080p. At 4K, the GPU is the clear limiter, as the frame rate differences between settings (188.5 Low vs. 76.5 Ultra) are strictly tied to GPU workload.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 65 out of 1,741 tested combinations, this system sits in the top 3.7% of all configurations in the database. This ranking is driven primarily by the RTX 5080, which holds an 89th percentile position among all GPUs, and secondarily by the Core i7-14700KF, which ranks in the 96th percentile among all CPUs. The combo's average benchmark score of 70,104 for the CPU and 59,188 for the GPU are both strong, but the game-specific results show that Downfall is particularly well-suited to this hardware.

The rank suggests that this pairing outperforms the vast majority of systems, but it is not the absolute top. The data implies that a few combinations — likely those with higher-end GPUs like the RTX 5090 or RTX 4090 — would score higher in this title. However, for the price class, this combo is exceptional. The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Core i7-14700K (0% delta), AMD EPYC 9115 (0.3% delta), and Ryzen 9 9950X (-0.4% delta), all of which are within 1.3% of the 14700KF's average score. This means the CPU is not the differentiator here; the GPU is.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF provides 20 cores and 28 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. In Downfall, which is a horror title that likely benefits from high single-thread performance, the 14700KF's boost clock is crucial. The CPU's Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6,290 and multi-core score of 44,557 indicate strong performance, but the game's measured FPS at high resolutions is more dependent on the GPU.

At 1080p Low, the system reaches 423.8 FPS, which suggests the CPU is able to feed the GPU adequately. However, the fact that 1080p Ultra drops to 177.2 FPS — a 58.2% reduction — shows that the CPU's margin shrinks when the GPU is pushed harder. The CPU's 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help with game logic and asset streaming, but they are not the primary limiter in this pairing. The data indicates that the CPU is sufficient for this title at any resolution, but it does not boost the combo beyond what the GPU can deliver. The 14700KF's 96th percentile ranking confirms it is a high-end part, but its nearest rivals are all within 1.3% in synthetic scores, so swapping to a comparable CPU would not meaningfully change Downfall performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the measured average FPS values are 188.5 on Low, 155.5 on Medium, 124.8 on High, and 76.5 on Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 112 FPS, which is the largest absolute gap across all resolutions. This indicates that 4K is where the GPU's limits are most visible, with Ultra nearly halving the Low preset's frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the results are 304 FPS on Low, 245.7 on Medium, 202.5 on High, and 126.7 on Ultra. The drop from Low to Ultra is 177.3 FPS, which is a smaller percentage decline (41.7%) than at 4K (59.4%), suggesting that the CPU starts to play a larger role at 1440p. The High preset remains above 200 FPS, making it ideal for 144Hz displays.

At 1920x1080, the numbers are 423.8 FPS on Low, 347.9 on Medium, 287 on High, and 177.2 on Ultra. The Low preset's 423.8 FPS is the highest measured value in the entire dataset, and it shows that the CPU can push the GPU to extreme frame rates when the graphical load is minimal. The gap between Low and Ultra is 246.6 FPS, which is a 58.2% reduction, confirming that even at 1080p, the GPU's workload scales significantly with settings. Overall, the data shows a consistent pattern: this combo delivers playable frame rates at every setting and resolution, with the only caveat being that 4K Ultra is the only configuration that dips below 100 FPS.