Downfall

The Intel Core i9-14900K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a high-refresh-rate experience in Downfall, but the data reveals a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and frame pacing. Across the measured settings, the most balanced experience is achieved at the High preset. At 1920x1080, High produces an average of 225.7 FPS, which is a massive jump from the 139.5 FPS seen at Ultra, while still offering a substantial upgrade over Medium’s 277.8 FPS in terms of visual quality. Moving up to 2560x1440, High maintains a robust 163.4 FPS, comfortably above the 144 Hz threshold for most displays and far more stable than the 103.2 FPS at Ultra. At 3840x2160, High is the only preset that remains playable on high-refresh panels, with 103.9 FPS, whereas Ultra drops to 63.4 FPS. The data indicates that Ultra is disproportionately punishing, likely due to a specific rendering feature that taxes the GPU heavily, making High the optimal blend of responsiveness and image quality for this combination.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo in Downfall?*

A: The highest average frame rate is 339.7 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low settings preset.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 2560x1440?

A: At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset produces an average of 103.2 FPS, which is significantly lower than the 163.4 FPS delivered by the High preset. This represents a performance drop of roughly 37% when switching from High to Ultra.

Q: Is the RTX 5070’s performance in this game limited by its 12 GB VRAM?

A: The benchmark data does not directly indicate VRAM capacity as a limiting factor. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K suggests a compute-bound scenario, where the GPU’s shading units and memory bandwidth are more relevant than the 12 GB capacity itself.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Medium settings at 3840x2160?

A: At 4K, the Low preset averages 150.3 FPS, while the Medium preset averages 121 FPS. The difference of 29.3 FPS indicates that the Medium preset introduces a manageable overhead while providing noticeably better visuals.

Q: How does this combo’s performance rank against other tested configurations?

A: In Downfall, this combination ranks 321st out of 1741 tested combos, placing it in the top 18.4% of all configurations in the database.

Q: At what resolution does the frame rate drop below 100 FPS on the High preset?

A: The High preset never drops below 100 FPS in the measured data. The lowest recorded average for High is 103.9 FPS at 3840x2160.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling across resolutions reveals a classic GPU-bound pattern, with the CPU’s headroom becoming apparent only at lower resolutions. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo produces 225.7 FPS. Stepping up to 2560x1440 reduces this to 163.4 FPS, a drop of 27.6%. Moving to 3840x2160 yields 103.9 FPS, which is another 36.4% reduction from the 1440p figure. This consistent decline with pixel count indicates that the RTX 5070’s rendering throughput is the primary constraint as resolution increases.

The scaling is more dramatic on the Ultra preset. From 1080p to 1440p, the frame rate falls from 139.5 FPS to 103.2 FPS (a 26% decrease), and then to 63.4 FPS at 4K (a 38.6% drop from 1440p). The steeper drop at 4K on Ultra suggests that the preset introduces effects that scale super-linearly with pixel count, such as volumetric lighting or high-resolution shadows. This behavior implies that while the Core i9-14900K provides ample single-thread performance—evidenced by its 709-point Cinebench R15 single-core score—it is not the bottleneck here. The 4K data points to the GPU’s 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 compute being the limiting factors, as the workload becomes purely pixel-throughput bound.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates span a wide range depending on the settings preset. The Low preset achieves an average of 339.7 FPS, making it ideal for extreme refresh rate displays or competitive play. Medium settings still deliver a very high 277.8 FPS, while High brings the experience to 225.7 FPS. The Ultra preset, by contrast, drops to 139.5 FPS, a major reduction of over 86 FPS compared to High.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds but with lower overall numbers. Low settings produce 241.1 FPS, Medium averages 196.3 FPS, and High maintains a solid 163.4 FPS. The Ultra preset falls to 103.2 FPS, which is just above the 100 FPS mark but significantly less smooth than High. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is roughly linear, with each preset losing approximately 30% of its frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the GPU’s workload becomes severe. Low settings still manage 150.3 FPS, demonstrating the raw power of the RTX 5070. Medium follows at 121 FPS, and High averages 103.9 FPS. The Ultra preset is the outlier, collapsing to 63.4 FPS. This 4K Ultra result is less than half the frame rate of the 1080p Ultra score, highlighting a non-linear performance cliff that is likely tied to specific memory-intensive effects.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 ranks 321st out of 1741 tested configurations in Downfall. This places it in the upper echelon of tested systems, outperforming roughly 81.6% of all combos in the database. The ranking reflects the strength of both components, but the data suggests that the GPU is the more impactful contributor for this specific title.

Given that the CPU ranks in the 97th percentile among all processors, its pairing with a GPU that ranks in the 83rd percentile among all graphics cards results in a combined position that is slightly lower than the CPU’s individual standing. This implies that the RTX 5070 is the limiting factor in this pairing. The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i9-14900KF (with a 0.7% higher average score) and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF (also 0.7% higher), show negligible performance differences, confirming that the CPU is not a bottleneck. The GPU’s nearest rivals, including the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (0.6% higher average score), show that the RTX 5070 is closely matched with previous-generation high-end cards, but the frame rates in Downfall indicate that this game favors the newer architecture’s features.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a 24-core, 32-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz. Its substantial core count and high boost clock provide exceptional multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 49,872 points. For Downfall, a horror game released in 2016, the workload is typically not heavily multi-threaded, but the CPU’s 36 MB of shared L3 cache and high single-core performance—evidenced by a 7040-point R23 single-core score—ensure that frame pacing remains consistent.

The data suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this pairing. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 339.7 FPS, which is likely near the game engine’s frame rate ceiling. The CPU’s 3.20 GHz base clock and 6.00 GHz boost clock provide a wide dynamic range, allowing it to effortlessly feed the GPU at lower resolutions. Even at 4K, the CPU’s role diminishes, as the frame rate is dictated by the GPU’s pixel throughput. The 32 threads are more than sufficient for any background tasks, and the processor’s 97th percentile rank among all CPUs underscores that it is a top-tier component that will not bottleneck the RTX 5070 in this title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, featuring 6,144 shading units and 48 RT cores. Its 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical resource for a game like Downfall that appears to be memory-bandwidth sensitive at high settings. The GPU’s base clock of 2325 MHz and boost clock of 2512 MHz allow it to sustain high throughput, but the data shows that the Ultra preset causes a significant performance hit.

The frame rate collapse at 4K Ultra (63.4 FPS) compared to 4K High (103.9 FPS) suggests that the Ultra preset activates effects that exceed the GPU’s memory subsystem capacity. The 192-bit bus width, while paired with fast GDDR7, may struggle with the data requirements of Ultra settings at 4K. This is further supported by the fact that the GPU’s 83rd percentile rank among all graphics cards is lower than the CPU’s rank, indicating that the GPU is the weaker link. The 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs provide solid rasterization throughput, but the 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the main driver for the frame rate scaling seen across resolutions. The data implies that for optimal performance, users should stick to High settings to avoid the VRAM bandwidth cliff observed at Ultra.