Downfall

This combo, pairing the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, delivers the highest measured performance in Downfall among all 2,928 tested combinations. The data shows a system that is not merely playable but overwhelmingly dominant, with frame rates that suggest the horror title’s engine is being pushed to its absolute limits at every setting and resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark database places this configuration at rank 1 out of 2,928 combos for Downfall. This is the top spot, meaning no other tested CPU-GPU pairing in the database produces higher average frame rates in this game. The ranking is definitive: this is the fastest combination on record for this title.

To contextualize this rank, the individual components are also near the top of their respective charts. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 holds the 93rd percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 64,640. Its nearest rivals in the synthetic suite are the AMD EPYC 4464P (score 64,823, deltaPct -0.3), the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F (score 64,438, deltaPct 0.3), the AMD EPYC 7343 (score 64,202, deltaPct 0.7), and the AMD EPYC 9124 (score 65,104, deltaPct -0.7). These deltas are tiny, all within one percent, indicating the Ultra 7 265 sits in a tightly contested performance band for general compute.

On the graphics side, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77,712. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (score 76,904, deltaPct 1.1), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (score 78,940, deltaPct -1.6), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (score 79,396, deltaPct -2.1), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (score 79,605, deltaPct -2.4). The sub-2.5% differences here again show the RTX 5090 D performing in a high-tier bracket, though the game-specific result proves its real-world dominance is more pronounced than the synthetic averages suggest.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Downfall provides a clear picture of how each quality preset scales on this hardware. The key decision for a user is balancing visual fidelity against the already exceptionally high frame rates. At 4K, the High preset yields 144 FPS average, while the Ultra preset drops to 90 FPS. The step from High to Ultra costs 54 FPS, which is a 37.5% reduction in performance for the highest quality settings.

Given the horror genre's reliance on smooth motion and atmospheric effects, the data supports choosing the High preset as the optimal balance. At 4K, High delivers 144 FPS, which is well above the refresh rate of most high-end displays. The Medium preset, with an average of 175 FPS, is also viable, but it comes with a 31 FPS advantage over High while sacrificing visual quality. The Ultra preset, while producing 90 FPS, is still playable but represents a significant performance hit for marginal visual gains. The measured minimum FPS for Medium at 4K is 149, while High has no recorded minimum, suggesting Medium has more stable frame pacing in the data provided.

For those with 1440p or 1080p displays, the recommendation shifts. At 2560x1440, the High preset averages 231 FPS, and at 1920x1080, it reaches 324 FPS. These numbers are so high that the limiting factor becomes the display's refresh rate rather than the hardware. The Ultra preset at 1440p still produces 144 FPS, making it a reasonable choice for users with 144Hz monitors who want maximum quality. At 1080p, Ultra averages 202 FPS, leaving ample headroom. The data indicates that High is the best all-around choice for this combo, but Ultra is viable at lower resolutions without dropping below the 144 FPS threshold.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck lies in this system. At the High preset, the average frame rate drops from 324 FPS at 1920x1080 to 231 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 144 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 55.6% reduction from 1080p to 4K. The progression is nearly linear in terms of pixel count: 1080p has 2.07 million pixels, 1440p has 3.69 million (1.78x more), and 4K has 8.29 million (4x more than 1080p). The FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p is 28.7%, and from 1440p to 4K is 37.7%, which tracks closely with the increased pixel load.

This scaling pattern indicates a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. The RTX 5090 D, with its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, has ample resources to handle the data throughput required by 4K textures and effects. The CPU, Intel Core Ultra 7 265, is clearly not the limiting factor here. At 1080p, where the CPU has more influence on frame rates, the system achieves 482 FPS on Low settings, a number that far exceeds any display's refresh rate. The fact that FPS scales down proportionally with pixel count as resolution increases is a classic sign that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting, while the CPU has sufficient headroom to feed it at all settings.

The data shows a slight anomaly at 4K with the Low preset: 214 FPS average, which is lower than the 175 FPS at Medium. This is counterintuitive, as lower settings should yield higher FPS. However, this likely indicates a CPU limitation at very high frame rates with low graphical load, where the processor's ability to issue draw calls becomes the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the system hits 482 FPS, and at 1440p Low, it reaches 345 FPS, showing the CPU can sustain these extreme frame rates but begins to cap out around the 200 FPS mark at 4K Low.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo in Downfall is as follows:

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 214 FPS average
• Medium: 175 FPS average (minimum 149, maximum 202)
• High: 144 FPS average
• Ultra: 90 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 345 FPS average
• Medium: 282 FPS average (minimum 240, maximum 324)
• High: 231 FPS average
• Ultra: 144 FPS average

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 482 FPS average
• Medium: 395 FPS average (minimum 335, maximum 454)
• High: 324 FPS average
• Ultra: 202 FPS average

The Medium settings at each resolution include both minimum and maximum FPS values, providing insight into frame time consistency. At 4K Medium, the range from 149 to 202 FPS shows a 26% variance, which is acceptable but not perfectly smooth. At 1440p Medium, the range is 240 to 324 FPS, a 26% variance as well. At 1080p Medium, the range is 335 to 454 FPS, a 26% variance. This consistency across resolutions suggests the game's frame pacing is stable, with the variance primarily driven by scene complexity rather than hardware limitations.

The Ultra preset at 4K produces 90 FPS, which is the only sub-100 FPS result in the entire dataset. This is still playable for a horror game, but it represents a significant drop from the 144 FPS at High. The data shows that Ultra is the only setting where this combo fails to maintain a 144 FPS average at 4K, making High the recommended ceiling for 4K gaming.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing. Its specifications are immense: 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The card's base clock is 2017 MHz with a boost of 2407 MHz, and it features 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs. The raw compute capacity is 104.8 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, with 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores on board.

In Downfall, the GPU's role is primarily to render the horror game's environments and effects. The 32 GB VRAM is far more than any current game requires, meaning texture streaming and memory allocation are never a bottleneck. The 1.79 TB/s bandwidth ensures that even at 4K with high-resolution textures, the card can feed data to the processing units without stalling. The measured FPS at 4K High (144 FPS) and 4K Ultra (90 FPS) demonstrates that the GPU has headroom to spare, with the Ultra preset's demands being the only thing that brings frame rates down to a more typical high-end level.

The RTX 5090 D's benchmark scores reinforce its top-tier status. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 14,326, and its Geekbench OpenCL score is 310,674. The Passmark G3D score of 44,065 places it in the 92nd percentile. Despite its nearest rivals in synthetic tests being mobile and data center parts with deltas of around 2%, the game-specific data shows this GPU pulling far ahead in Downfall's specific rendering workload. The card's 5 nm process node and 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die represent Blackwell 2.0 architecture at its largest, and this translates directly into the frame rates seen in the measured results.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 serves as the supporting component in this combo, but its role is not insignificant. With 20 cores and 20 threads, it has no hyper-threading, which is a notable design choice. The base clock is 2.40 GHz, boosting up to 5.30 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache. This processor is built on TSMC's 3 nm process with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die, which is Arrow Lake architecture.

In Downfall, the CPU's impact is most visible at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU is not fully saturated. The 1080p Low result of 482 FPS shows the CPU's ability to process game logic and issue draw calls at an extremely high rate. The 4K Low result of 214 FPS, which is lower than 4K Medium's 175 FPS, suggests a CPU bottleneck at very high frame rates with minimal GPU load. This is a classic sign that the processor, while capable of sustaining 482 FPS at 1080p, begins to hit its limits around 200 FPS when the GPU is underutilized.

The CPU's synthetic benchmarks show it performing at the 93rd percentile, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42,216 and a single-core score of 5,960. Its Passmark multithread score is 49,682, and its single-thread score is 4,689. These numbers indicate a strong processor, but one that is not the star of this show. In Downfall, the CPU's role is to keep up with the RTX 5090 D, and the data confirms it does so effectively. The only scenario where the CPU appears to limit performance is at 4K with Low settings, where the frame rate caps at 214 FPS. This is an extreme edge case that most users will never encounter in normal gameplay, as the Medium and High presets produce higher frame rates by shifting more work to the GPU.