Doom

The Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 delivers a decisive verdict for Doom: this combination is overkill for 1080p and 1440p, and remains comfortably playable even at 4K. Benchmark data confirms that every resolution tested clears the 60 FPS playable threshold at multiple settings, with the system showing particular strength in high-refresh-rate scenarios. The pairing ranks in the 55.8th percentile of all tested combos for this title, indicating solid mid-pack performance that prioritizes consistency over raw dominance. Below, the data is broken down by resolution, settings, and component roles.

FAQ

*Q: Can this PC run Doom at 4K with playable frame rates?*

A: Yes. At 3840x2160, the combo achieves 63 FPS on High settings, 74 FPS on Medium, and 85 FPS on Low. Only the Ultra preset dips below the 60 FPS threshold, landing at 51 FPS.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming?

A: At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset delivers 95 FPS average, making it the optimal choice since it is both the highest quality and maintains a substantial margin above the 60 FPS playable threshold. High settings run at 116 FPS, Medium at 137 FPS, and Low at 157 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5060 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in this game?

A: The RTX 5060’s average benchmark score sits 1.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, while the AMD Radeon 860M and NVIDIA GeForce MX550 are both 0.3% behind. The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary trails by 0.8%.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p?

A: The GPU is the primary constraint at 1920x1080. The scaling from Low (243 FPS) to Ultra (146 FPS) shows a 97 FPS drop, a 39.9% reduction, which is characteristic of GPU-bound rendering at lower resolutions where the Core i7-14700K has ample headroom.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the measured FPS ranges are tight. At 1080p, the range is 180 to 243 FPS (avg 211), at 1440p it is 116 to 157 FPS (avg 137), and at 4K it is 63 to 85 FPS (avg 74). These narrow bands indicate stable frame pacing.

Q: How does the Core i7-14700K rank against sibling CPUs?

A: The i7-14700K’s average benchmark score is 0.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 9115 and 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. It trails the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX by 0.7% and the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F by 0.9%.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data reveals a clear division of labor between the Intel Core i7-14700K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 across the three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the system is overwhelmingly GPU-bound. The frame rate progression from Low (243 FPS) to Medium (211 FPS) to High (179 FPS) to Ultra (146 FPS) demonstrates that the RTX 5060’s rendering workload scales directly with visual complexity. The 97 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is the largest of any resolution, which is expected since the CPU can feed the GPU far faster than it can rasterize at lower pixel counts.

Moving to 2560x1440, the balance shifts slightly but the GPU still dominates. The average FPS drops by 86 FPS across the preset range (157 to 95 FPS), which is a 39.5% reduction from Low to Ultra. This indicates that the increased pixel count begins to tax the RTX 5060 more heavily, but the i7-14700K’s 20 cores and 28 threads are not yet a bottleneck. The CPU’s high single-thread performance, evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2160, ensures that the game’s logic and draw call processing keep pace with the GPU’s output.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the definitive limiting factor. The Ultra preset collapses to 51 FPS, below the 60 FPS playable threshold, while High settings still manage 63 FPS. The scaling from Low (85 FPS) to Ultra (51 FPS) represents a 40% performance drop, similar to the percentage decline at 1440p, but the absolute frame rates are much lower. This pattern confirms that the RTX 5060’s 8 GB of GDDR7 memory and 128-bit bus are sufficient for the game’s textures at 4K, but the sheer pixel throughput required at 3840x2160 exceeds the GPU’s capability for Ultra settings. The CPU’s role at 4K is minimized; its PassMark multi-thread score of 52392 and Geekbench multi-core score of 20767 provide more than enough computational headroom, meaning users should look to GPU settings rather than CPU upgrades for 4K improvements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for Doom shows a consistent hierarchy across all resolutions, with Low settings yielding the highest frame rates and Ultra the lowest. At 1920x1080, the system produces 243 FPS on Low, 211 FPS on Medium, 179 FPS on High, and 146 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset records a minimum of 180 FPS and a maximum of 243 FPS, demonstrating that the average of 211 FPS is backed by solid consistency. The spread between presets is notable: Low to Medium is a 32 FPS drop, Medium to High is another 32 FPS, and High to Ultra is 33 FPS, showing a linear degradation as settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but scale down proportionally. Low settings produce 157 FPS, Medium delivers 137 FPS (with a range of 116 to 157 FPS), High achieves 116 FPS, and Ultra settles at 95 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 62 FPS, which is a 39.5% reduction. The Medium preset’s minimum of 116 FPS exactly matches the High preset’s average, indicating that the difference between these settings is less pronounced at this resolution than at 1080p.

The 3840x2160 results show the system’s limits. Low settings run at 85 FPS, Medium at 74 FPS (with a range of 63 to 85 FPS), High at 63 FPS, and Ultra at 51 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 63 FPS is exactly the same as the High preset’s average, which suggests that Medium is the safer choice for maintaining frame rates above 60 FPS during intense scenes. The Ultra preset’s 51 FPS average is the only data point that falls below the playable threshold, and its lack of min/max values in the measured data means it likely exhibits more variance than the other presets. Across all resolutions, the pattern is that the RTX 5060 offers roughly 2.5x to 3x higher frame rates at 1080p compared to 4K for the same settings, with the exact ratios being 2.86x for Low (243 vs 85), 2.85x for Medium (211 vs 74), 2.84x for High (179 vs 63), and 2.86x for Ultra (146 vs 51).

The Verdict

The Core i7-14700K and RTX 5060 unequivocally run Doom with playable performance. At 1920x1080, all four presets—Low, Medium, High, and Ultra—are playable, with the Ultra preset delivering 146 FPS average, which is 143% above the 60 FPS threshold. The best settings at this resolution are Ultra, as the system has enormous headroom for future GPU load. At 2560x1440, the verdict is equally positive: all presets clear 60 FPS, with Ultra providing 95 FPS average. The best settings at 1440p are also Ultra, since the 95 FPS result is well above playable and leaves room for demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the situation is more nuanced but still favorable. The High preset is the best playable option, achieving 63 FPS average, which clears the 60 FPS threshold by a slim margin. Low (85 FPS) and Medium (74 FPS) are also playable, but Ultra is not, falling to 51 FPS. The verdict by resolution indicates that High is the recommended setting for 4K, as it balances visual fidelity with a playable frame rate. For users with high-refresh-rate 1080p or 1440p monitors, the system is fully capable of exceeding 144 FPS on Medium settings at 1440p (137 FPS) and approaching 240 FPS on Low at 1080p (243 FPS). This is a system that does not require settings compromises at mainstream resolutions and only requires a modest step down from Ultra at 4K.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU, the nearest performance equivalents to the Intel Core i7-14700K are a cluster of AMD processors with virtually identical average benchmark scores. The AMD EPYC 9115 scores 69288, which is 0.1% below the i7-14700K’s 69355 average. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is 0.2% behind at 69515, while the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX and AMD Ryzen 7 9700F are 0.7% and 0.9% ahead, respectively. In practical terms for Doom, these differences are negligible, meaning users with any of these CPUs would experience nearly identical frame rates. The i7-14700K’s 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 5.60 GHz boost clock provide strong single-thread performance that aligns with the game’s needs, but the rival chips are statistically indistinguishable in this workload.

On the GPU side, the RTX 5060’s nearest rivals present a mixed bag. The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT is 1.2% slower, making it the closest competitor in terms of raw score. The AMD Radeon 860M and NVIDIA GeForce MX550 are both 0.3% slower, while the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary is 0.8% slower. None of these GPUs are meaningfully different in benchmark terms, so in Doom, they would deliver frame rates within a few percent of the RTX 5060. However, the RTX 5060’s 8 GB GDDR7 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are specific to its architecture, and the game’s performance is likely more sensitive to these factors than the aggregate benchmark scores suggest. Users considering alternatives should expect the RX 6750 XT to be the closest match, while the MX550’s lower power target might affect sustained performance in longer sessions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 ranks 1640 out of 3712 tested combos for Doom, placing it in the 55.8th percentile of all configurations. This rank indicates a solid, above-median performer that is neither at the bleeding edge nor struggling to keep up. The rank is more heavily influenced by the GPU than the CPU, given the game’s graphics-bound nature; the RTX 5060’s 72nd percentile ranking among all GPUs pulls the combo down from what the CPU alone would achieve. The i7-14700K’s 94th percentile among all CPUs shows that the processor is far more capable than the GPU, meaning the combo’s overall position is constrained by graphics performance.

This ranking suggests that while the system is thoroughly playable, it does not compete with top-tier combos that might pair the same CPU with a higher-end GPU. The 1640th position places it in the upper-middle range, where it outperforms roughly 55% of all tested systems. For Doom, this is more than sufficient, as the game’s optimization allows even mid-pack hardware to hit high frame rates. The combo’s strength is its balance: the CPU never bottlenecks, and the GPU provides enough power for high settings at 1440p and medium-to-high at 4K. Users moving from a lower-ranked combo will see substantial gains, while those comparing against top-100 systems will notice the GPU as the primary differentiator. The data confirms that this is a future-proof CPU pairing with a current-gen GPU that handles Doom admirably at all practical resolutions.