Doom

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D presents a striking case study in system bottlenecking within Doom (2016). The measured results show a combination where a contemporary flagship GPU is consistently restrained by an older, six-core processor, resulting in frame rates that, while high in absolute terms, do not fully reflect the GPU’s potential. This analysis breaks down the specific performance metrics, scaling behavior, and component roles based exclusively on the provided data.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the combo achieves an average of 196 FPS. This is notably lower than the 234 FPS seen at Low settings, indicating a significant performance cost for maximum visual fidelity.

Q: How much faster is the RTX 5090 D compared to its nearest rival in the database?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score is 77712, which is 1.1% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (score of 76904). Compared to the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT, it is 1.6% slower, as that card scores 78940.

Q: What is the best measured performance for this combo in the entire dataset?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 234, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. The minimum frame rate for this configuration was not recorded, but the average is the peak among all 12 measured rows.

Q: Does the CPU have a high benchmark standing relative to other processors?

A: The Ryzen 5 2600 sits in the 75th percentile among all CPUs tested. Its average benchmark score is 21484, placing it just 0.2% above the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V (score 21440) and 0.5% above the Intel Core i9-11900H (score 21367).

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 4K High and 4K Low settings?

A: At 3840x2160, the average frame rate drops from 165 FPS at Low settings to 125 FPS at High settings. This represents a 40 FPS reduction, or roughly a 24% performance penalty for the higher graphical preset.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations in this game?

A: The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 576th out of 2930 tested combos for Doom. This places it in the top 20% of all benchmarked pairings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the choice of settings is a direct trade-off between visual quality and frame rate, with the CPU acting as a limiting factor at lower resolutions. For players with high-refresh-rate displays seeking maximum smoothness, the Low preset at 1080p offers the highest average frame rate in the dataset at 234 FPS. However, this comes at the cost of visual fidelity.

The Medium preset provides a more balanced experience. At 1080p, it yields an average of 223 FPS with a recorded minimum of 190 FPS and a maximum of 257 FPS. This minimum frame rate is crucial, as it indicates that the system is less likely to experience noticeable stutters compared to presets where no minimum is recorded. The 11 FPS difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is a relatively small price to pay for improved graphical details, making Medium the recommended starting point for most users.

At 1440p, the Medium preset again offers a solid balance, averaging 193 FPS with a minimum of 164 FPS and a maximum of 222 FPS. The High preset at this resolution drops to 182 FPS, which is still very playable. For 4K, the data shows a more pronounced impact from settings. Ultra settings produce an average of 102 FPS, which is the lowest measured value in the entire set. High settings at 4K achieve 125 FPS, while Medium reaches 148 FPS. To maintain a high refresh rate experience at 4K, the Medium preset appears to be the optimal choice, as it delivers a substantial 46 FPS improvement over Ultra while still offering better visuals than Low. Pushing beyond Medium settings at 4K yields diminishing returns, as the frame rate begins to drop significantly.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, equipped with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a massive 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its architecture, Blackwell 2.0, features 21,760 shading units and a boost clock of 2407 MHz. In synthetic benchmarks, this GPU demonstrates immense compute capability, scoring 44065 in the Passmark G3D test and 376915 in the Geekbench Vulkan test.

Despite this raw power, the measured game performance reveals that the GPU is not the primary constraint in most scenarios. The data indicates that the GPU has more than enough headroom to render Doom at extremely high frame rates. The fact that the average FPS at 1080p Low (234) is only 29 FPS higher than at 4K Low (165) suggests that the GPU’s workload scaling with resolution is not the main factor limiting performance. In a GPU-bound scenario, we would expect a much steeper drop in frame rates as resolution increases. The GPU’s 32 GB of VRAM is far more than sufficient for this game, meaning memory capacity is not a bottleneck. The GPU is being held back by the CPU's inability to feed it data fast enough, particularly at lower resolutions where the CPU has to handle a higher rate of draw calls and game logic updates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides a clear picture of performance across all combinations of resolution and settings. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 234 at Low to 196 at Ultra. The Medium preset averages 223 FPS, with a minimum of 190 and a maximum of 257. High settings yield an average of 210 FPS. There is a clear, though non-linear, decline in performance as settings increase, with the gap between Low and Ultra being 38 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS values compress. Low settings produce 203 FPS, Medium 193 FPS (with min/max of 164/222), High 182 FPS, and Ultra 169 FPS. The performance drop from 1080p to 1440p is modest, ranging from 13 FPS at High settings to 31 FPS at Low settings. This relatively small change suggests that the CPU is still a significant limiting factor at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the impact of the GPU becomes more apparent. The average FPS at Low settings is 165, which is a substantial drop from the 203 FPS seen at 1440p. Medium settings average 148 FPS (with min/max of 126/170). High settings drop further to 125 FPS, and the Ultra preset brings the average down to 102 FPS. The spread between the lowest and highest settings at 4K is 63 FPS, indicating that the GPU is now more heavily loaded and the CPU bottleneck is less severe.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves a rank of 576 out of 2930 tested combos in Doom. This places the pairing in the 80th percentile of all configurations, a strong showing overall. However, this ranking must be interpreted in the context of the components involved. The RTX 5090 D is in the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, while the Ryzen 5 2600 is in the 75th percentile among all CPUs.

The discrepancy in these percentile rankings highlights the imbalance of the system. A more balanced pairing would typically see both components with similar percentile rankings. The fact that the CPU is ranked much lower than the GPU suggests that the combo’s overall rank is being dragged down by the processor. In a game like Doom, which is known for its high frame rates, the CPU’s single-thread performance is critical. The Ryzen 5 2600’s Passmark single-thread score is 2239, which is competent but far from the top tier. The combo’s 576th rank confirms the GPU’s ability to compensate for the CPU’s limitations, but it also indicates that this pairing is leaving significant performance on the table.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. It features 16 MB of shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 46.9 GB/s. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 1248 in Cinebench R15 multi-core and 157.3 in single-core. Its Passmark multithread score is 13160.

In the context of Doom, the CPU's role is to process game logic, physics, and issue draw calls to the GPU. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU is the primary bottleneck for this configuration. This is most evident in the resolution scaling analysis. When the resolution is increased from 1080p to 4K, the frame rate does not drop proportionally. At Low settings, the FPS only drops from 234 to 165, a 30% decrease. If the system were fully GPU-bound, we would expect a much larger drop, closer to the 4x increase in pixel count. This suggests that at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is unable to generate frames fast enough to keep the GPU fully occupied.

The CPU’s performance, while sufficient to maintain high frame rates, is the limiting factor preventing this combo from reaching the absolute maximum potential of the RTX 5090 D. The 12 threads are more than enough for Doom, but the per-core performance and the memory bandwidth available to the CPU are not sufficient to match the GPU's immense speed. The result is a system that performs very well, but not to the level its most powerful component is capable of.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K provides critical insight into which component is the limiting factor. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 234 at 1080p to 203 at 1440p, and then to 165 at 4K. This is a total reduction of 69 FPS, or roughly 30% from the 1080p baseline. In a purely GPU-bound scenario, one would expect the 4K performance to be significantly lower, often less than half of the 1080p performance, due to the four-fold increase in pixel count.

The relatively modest drop in frame rates, especially at lower settings, confirms that the CPU is the bottleneck. As the resolution increases, the GPU has to work harder to render each frame, but it still has spare capacity because the CPU is not delivering frames fast enough. The gap between the 1080p and 4K frame rates is the "headroom" that the GPU has. At higher settings like Ultra, the gap widens (196 FPS at 1080p vs. 102 FPS at 4K, a 48% drop). This is because the higher settings increase the GPU's workload, making it more of a co-bottleneck with the CPU. The data shows that the system is not purely CPU or GPU bound; it is a combination, with the CPU being the dominant constraint at 1080p and the GPU becoming more relevant as resolution and settings increase. This behavior is typical of a high-end GPU paired with a mid-range older CPU, where the system's performance is a delicate balance between the two.