Downfall

# Downfall — Intel Core Ultra 5 225 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070

This benchmark analysis examines a horror-title pairing that delivers surprisingly strong frame rates across most settings, with the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (10 cores, 10 threads, boosting to 4.90 GHz) driving an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8 GB GDDR6, 448.0 GB/s bandwidth) through four quality presets at three resolutions. The data reveals a combo that excels at 1080p and 1440p, but hits a clear wall at 4K Ultra, where average FPS drops to 48 — exactly half of the 1080p High result. With a combo rank of 1592 out of 3716 tested configurations (57th percentile), this pairing sits comfortably in the upper-middle tier for this game, offering headroom for high-refresh monitors at lower resolutions while struggling to maintain smooth 4K gameplay at maximum settings.

FAQ

Q: What average FPS does this combo achieve at 1080p with Low settings?

A: The measured average is 257 FPS, which is the highest result across all tested settings and resolutions in this dataset. This suggests the CPU and GPU combination has substantial headroom at this resolution, with the frame rate likely limited by game engine physics or draw-call overhead rather than raw hardware capability.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra preset compare to the 1080p Low result?

A: The 4K Ultra average of 48 FPS is roughly 19% of the 1080p Low average of 257 FPS. This dramatic scaling drop — over five times fewer frames — indicates that the RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM and 256-bit memory bus become the primary constraint at 4K Ultra, rather than the CPU.

Q: What is the difference in average FPS between Medium and High settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Medium produces 150 FPS average (with a minimum of 127 and maximum of 172), while High produces 123 FPS average. That is a 27 FPS gap (18% reduction), showing that the High preset imposes noticeably heavier rendering demands than Medium at this resolution.

Q: Does the CPU percentile ranking suggest it is a bottleneck for this game?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 sits at the 85th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36938. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F, scores 36945 (0% delta), indicating parity. This high percentile suggests the CPU is unlikely to be the limiting factor in most scenarios tested here.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among tested configurations?

A: The combination ranks 1592 out of 3716 tested combos, placing it in the 57th percentile of all pairings tested in Downfall. This is a solid mid-to-upper tier position, though not exceptional, reflecting the RTX 3070's 61st percentile standing among all GPUs.

Q: Which preset at 4K comes closest to matching 1440p High performance?

A: At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 114 FPS, while 1440p High averages 123 FPS. The 9 FPS difference (7.3%) shows that dropping to Low at 4K nearly compensates for the resolution increase, whereas 4K Medium (93 FPS) and 4K High (77 FPS) fall progressively further behind.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 brings 10 cores and 10 threads to this horror title, with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. This Arrow Lake-S architecture chip, built on TSMC's 3 nm process with 17,800 million transistors in a 243 mm² die, delivers a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25891 and a single-core score of 3655. For a game like Downfall, which relies heavily on single-threaded draw call processing and physics calculations common in horror titles, the strong single-core performance is particularly relevant — the PassMark single-thread score of 4412 places this CPU in the 85th percentile overall.

The data suggests the CPU is rarely the bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the average FPS reaches 257, which is high enough that any further gains would require both stronger single-thread performance and likely a higher boost clock. The 4.90 GHz boost clock provides ample frequency headroom, and the 20 MB shared L3 cache helps maintain consistent frame pacing in scenes with many simultaneous entities — a common trait in horror games that spawn multiple enemies or scripted events. The 65 W TDP indicates efficient power draw, allowing sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling during extended gameplay sessions.

However, the lack of hyper-threading (10 threads for 10 cores) means the CPU cannot leverage extra threads for background tasks while gaming. In Downfall, where the frame rate at 1080p Low is 257 FPS, the CPU's thread management becomes important; the PassMark multi-thread score of 30459 suggests solid parallel performance, but the 1:1 core-to-thread ratio means the operating system must schedule game threads carefully. The data shows that at 1440p High, the average FPS drops to 123 — a 54% reduction from 1080p Low — but this is more attributable to GPU load than CPU limitations, as the CPU scores remain constant regardless of resolution.

Comparing to nearest rivals, the Core Ultra 5 225's average benchmark score of 36938 is essentially identical to the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (36945, 0% delta) and slightly ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (37018, -0.2%). This parity suggests that swapping to a rival CPU would not meaningfully change Downfall's performance with this RTX 3070, reinforcing that the GPU is the primary scaling factor in this combo.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, built on the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip at Samsung's 8 nm process, provides 5888 shading units, 184 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, with a boost clock of 1725 MHz and base clock of 1500 MHz. The GPU's FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS and pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s are substantial for its class, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity becomes a critical factor at higher resolutions and settings.

The benchmark data clearly shows the GPU's influence on frame rates. At 1080p, the RTX 3070 delivers 257 FPS on Low, 210 FPS on Medium, 172 FPS on High, and 108 FPS on Ultra. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 58% performance drop, which is consistent with increasing pixel shading and texture fetch demands. At 1440p, the same preset progression yields 183, 150, 123, and 77 FPS respectively — a 58% drop from Low to Ultra that mirrors the 1080p pattern, though the absolute values are lower by approximately 29-30% across presets.

The 4K results reveal the GPU's limitations more starkly: Low produces 114 FPS, Medium 93 FPS, High 77 FPS, and Ultra only 48 FPS. The jump from 1440p Ultra (77 FPS) to 4K Ultra (48 FPS) is a 38% reduction, which is close to the pixel count increase of 2.25x but less than linear, suggesting that the GPU is hitting memory bandwidth limits rather than pure compute limits. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, while generous for 1080p and 1440p, appears insufficient for 4K Ultra's texture and shadow data demands in this horror title.

The RTX 3070's percentile rank of 61 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17208, places it near the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17083, 0.7% delta) and ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17037, 1% delta). This positioning explains why the combo performs well at lower resolutions but struggles at 4K Ultra — the GPU's relative strength is in high-frequency rendering at moderate resolutions, not extreme pixel throughput.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results across all presets. Low settings produce an average of 257 FPS, which is exceptionally high for a horror game and suggests the title is not particularly demanding at this resolution. Medium averages 210 FPS with a minimum of 179 and maximum of 242, showing consistent frame delivery with only a 31 FPS spread between min and max. High averages 172 FPS — a 38 FPS drop from Medium — while Ultra averages 108 FPS, which is a 64 FPS drop from High. The progression from Low to Ultra (257 to 108 FPS) represents a 149 FPS total reduction, with each preset step costing roughly 50 FPS on average.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern holds but with reduced absolute values. Low averages 183 FPS, Medium 150 FPS (with a min of 127 and max of 172), High 123 FPS, and Ultra 77 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 106 FPS, which is less than the 149 FPS gap at 1080p, indicating that the GPU's pixel throughput becomes a larger factor at this resolution. The Medium preset's min-max range of 45 FPS (127 to 172) shows slightly more variance than at 1080p, likely due to more variable GPU load from scene complexity.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve flattens considerably. Low averages 114 FPS, Medium 93 FPS (min 79, max 107), High 77 FPS, and Ultra 48 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap is now only 66 FPS, and the Ultra result of 48 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold commonly considered smooth for action games. The Medium preset's min of 79 FPS and max of 107 FPS show a 28 FPS spread, which is tighter than at lower resolutions, suggesting that at 4K, the GPU is consistently saturated rather than experiencing intermittent spikes.

The data reveals that the Medium preset at each resolution provides the most balanced frame delivery, with min-max spreads of 63 FPS at 1080p, 45 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 4K. This consistency makes Medium the most predictable preset for maintaining smooth gameplay, while Ultra at 4K (48 FPS average) risks dipping below playable thresholds in demanding scenes.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals distinct patterns depending on the preset. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 257 at 1080p to 183 at 1440p (a 29% reduction) and then to 114 at 4K (a 38% reduction from 1440p). The total scaling from 1080p to 4K at Low is a 56% performance loss, which is less than the pixel count increase of 4x, indicating that at Low settings, the GPU is not fully pixel-bound — likely due to reduced texture sampling and shadow computation demands.

At Medium settings, the scaling is similar: 210 FPS at 1080p, 150 FPS at 1440p (29% drop), and 93 FPS at 4K (38% drop from 1440p). The total 1080p-to-4K loss is 56%, matching Low. However, at High settings, the pattern shifts: 172 FPS at 1080p, 123 FPS at 1440p (28% drop), and 77 FPS at 4K (37% drop from 1440p). The total loss is 55%, nearly identical to Low and Medium. This consistency across presets suggests that the resolution scaling is primarily a function of pixel count and memory bandwidth, not preset-specific effects.

Ultra settings break this pattern. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 31% (108 to 77 FPS), and from 1440p to 4K is 38% (77 to 48 FPS), resulting in a total 56% loss. While the percentage losses are similar to other presets, the absolute 4K Ultra result of 48 FPS is uniquely problematic. The min FPS data for Ultra is not provided, but the 48 FPS average leaves little margin for drops in demanding scenes, making this preset at 4K effectively unplayable for smooth gameplay.

The scaling behavior indicates that the limiting component shifts with resolution. At 1080p, the high FPS figures (257 at Low) suggest the CPU or game engine caps performance before the GPU reaches full utilization. At 1440p, the GPU becomes more engaged, with FPS dropping proportionally to pixel count. At 4K, the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth become the binding constraint, as the 4x pixel increase from 1080p would theoretically require 4x the memory throughput, but the FPS only drops by roughly half.

Settings Recommendations

For players prioritizing high refresh rates, the 1080p Low preset delivers 257 FPS average, which is far beyond any monitor's refresh rate capabilities and suggests this combo has significant headroom for competitive play or maximum smoothness. However, the Medium preset at 1080p (210 FPS average) offers a better balance between visual quality and performance, with a min of 179 FPS ensuring no drops below 144 Hz refresh rates.

At 1440p, the Medium preset (150 FPS average, 127 min) is the recommended choice for high-refresh 144 Hz monitors, as it maintains a comfortable margin above the 144 FPS threshold. The High preset (123 FPS average) is suitable for 120 Hz displays, while Ultra (77 FPS average) is playable on 60 Hz monitors but leaves little headroom for scene complexity spikes. The Low preset at 1440p (183 FPS average) is excessive for most displays but could benefit players with 240 Hz panels.

For 4K gaming, the data suggests that Low settings (114 FPS average) provide the only smooth experience, while Medium (93 FPS) and High (77 FPS) are playable on 60 Hz displays but may exhibit stuttering in demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 4K (48 FPS average) is not recommended, as the average falls below 60 FPS, and the lack of min FPS data suggests potential for sub-40 FPS drops in intense sequences.

The best experience per the measured rows is the 1440p Medium preset, which combines a 150 FPS average with a 127 FPS minimum — ensuring that even the slowest frames remain above 120 Hz refresh rates. This preset also benefits from the RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM being sufficient at this resolution, as the 4K results (particularly Ultra at 48 FPS) indicate VRAM or bandwidth constraints that do not manifest at 1440p.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ranks 1592 out of 3716 tested combos in Downfall, placing it in the 57th percentile of all configurations tested. This ranking reflects the GPU's 61st percentile standing among all GPUs and the CPU's 85th percentile among all CPUs, suggesting that the combo's overall position is dragged down by the GPU being the weaker component relative to its peers.

The CPU's strong performance (85th percentile) means that pairing it with a higher-tier GPU could potentially yield significantly better frame rates at 4K Ultra, where the current GPU clearly bottlenecks. The RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 17208 is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17083, 0.7% faster) and slightly behind the NVIDIA Tesla K40c (17468, -1.5%), indicating that this GPU is mid-pack in the current hardware landscape.

Within the context of Downfall specifically, the combo's 57th percentile rank suggests that 43% of tested configurations perform better, likely those with more powerful GPUs such as RTX 3080 or higher tier cards. However, the rank also implies that this combo outperforms 43% of all tested pairings, which includes many older or lower-end configurations. The data shows that the combo is well-suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where its frame rates are competitive, but falls short at 4K Ultra, where the 48 FPS average places it in the lower quartile of high-resolution performers.

The gap between the CPU's high percentile (85) and GPU's lower percentile (61) indicates an imbalance in this pairing — the Core Ultra 5 225 has headroom to drive a more powerful GPU, while the RTX 3070 is the limiting factor in achieving higher frame rates, particularly at 4K. This suggests that for players targeting 4K Ultra in Downfall, a GPU upgrade would yield more significant gains than a CPU upgrade, whereas for 1080p competitive play, the current combo is more than sufficient.