Doom

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT delivers a formidable Doom experience, with the data showing this combination ranks 611th out of 1681 tested combos. The measured frames per second across all resolutions and settings indicate a system that is consistently capable of high refresh rate gameplay, though the relationship between settings and performance reveals where the bottlenecks lie.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data shows that the Ultra preset provides the most demanding workload, yielding 62.6 FPS at 3840x2160, 113.1 FPS at 2560x1440, and 175.3 FPS at 1920x1080. These figures are respectable, but the drop from High to Ultra at 4K is substantial—from 78 FPS down to 62.6 FPS—which suggests the Ultra preset introduces a significant rendering cost. The High preset, by contrast, delivers 78 FPS at 4K, 136.6 FPS at 1440p, and 216.5 FPS at 1080p, making it the most balanced option for maintaining high frame rates across all resolutions.

The Low preset offers the highest raw performance, with 99.9 FPS at 4K, 188.9 FPS at 1440p, and 265.7 FPS at 1080p. However, the difference between Low and High at 1440p is 52.3 FPS, while the difference between High and Ultra is only 23.5 FPS. This indicates that the High preset captures most of the performance headroom while providing better visual quality, as the data shows the GPU is not fully saturated at lower settings. For users prioritizing competitive frame rates, Medium at 1440p yields 163.1 FPS, which is only 25.8 FPS below Low, but the jump to High adds 26.5 FPS over Medium, making High the best compromise for the majority of players seeking both smoothness and fidelity.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 3600 and RX 6800 XT achieves a rank of 611 out of 1681 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the upper third of all configurations. This rank reflects the strong synergy between the CPU and GPU, as the 6-core, 12-thread processor provides enough throughput to feed the graphics card’s capabilities. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 18129 places it near the Intel Core i5-11400, which scores 18150 with a deltaPct of -0.1, indicating near-identical performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS scores 18101 with a deltaPct of 0.2, showing the 3600 is essentially on par with these rivals.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 49982 puts it close to the Intel Arc A550M, which scores 49737 with a deltaPct of 0.5, and the NVIDIA RTX A1000, which scores 50826 with a deltaPct of -1.7. This positioning suggests the RX 6800 XT is a high-tier performer, and in Doom, the combo’s rank reflects that the GPU is the dominant factor in achieving high FPS. The data shows that this pairing is well-matched for the game, as the CPU does not appear to be a limiting factor at most settings, given the high FPS figures observed.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a Navi 21 chip, featuring 4608 shading units, 288 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for Doom’s textures at high resolutions. The GPU’s base clock is 1825 MHz, with a game clock of 2015 MHz and a boost clock of 2250 MHz, and the memory operates at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective speed. These clocks contribute to a pixel rate of 288.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 648.0 GTexel/s, enabling the card to handle the game’s fast-paced rendering demands.

In Doom, the GPU’s role is evident in the scaling of FPS with settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 90.4 FPS, while at 4K, the difference is 37.3 FPS. This pattern indicates that at lower resolutions, the GPU has headroom to render more frames, while at 4K, the rendering load increases, reducing the impact of settings changes. The GPU’s percentile rank of 87 among all GPUs, and its proximity to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in average score (48704 with a deltaPct of 2.6), confirms it is a high-performance part that excels in this title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 265.7 on Low to 175.3 on Ultra. The Medium preset achieves 252.4 FPS, while High delivers 216.5 FPS. These numbers show that even at the most demanding settings, the combo maintains well over 170 FPS, comfortably exceeding standard 144 Hz display refresh rates. The 1080p results are characterized by minimal CPU involvement, as the high FPS figures suggest the GPU is the primary driver.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS drops to 188.9 on Low, 163.1 on Medium, 136.6 on High, and 113.1 on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a consistent decline, with the largest single-step drop occurring between Medium and High at 26.5 FPS. At this resolution, the system still provides excellent performance, with the Ultra preset remaining above the 100 FPS threshold, making 1440p a viable option for high-refresh-rate gaming.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS falls to 99.9 on Low, 88.8 on Medium, 78 on High, and 62.6 on Ultra. The 4K results demonstrate the GPU’s limits, as even the Low preset does not reach triple-digit FPS, and Ultra dips below 65 FPS. The data shows that for 4K gaming, the High preset is the most sensible choice, as it offers 78 FPS, which is 15.4 FPS higher than Ultra while providing better visual quality than Medium’s 88.8 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU’s dominance in this setup. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 216.5 at 1080p to 136.6 at 1440p, a reduction of 79.9 FPS, and further down to 78 at 4K, a reduction of 58.6 FPS from 1440p. This translates to a 36.9% decrease from 1080p to 1440p, and a 42.9% decrease from 1440p to 4K, indicating that the rendering resolution has a significant impact on performance.

The Low settings show a similar pattern, with FPS declining from 265.7 at 1080p to 188.9 at 1440p, and then to 99.9 at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 28.9%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 47.1%. This steeper decline at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU is becoming more saturated as the pixel count increases, and the CPU is not the limiting factor. The data implies that at 1080p, the system is likely CPU-bound, as the FPS figures are exceptionally high and the GPU has ample headroom, but as resolution increases, the GPU’s workload grows, and the FPS becomes more dependent on the graphics card’s capabilities.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 features 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. Its Zen 2 architecture, built on a 7 nm process, includes 32 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps reduce memory latency in gaming workloads. The CPU’s single-thread performance, as measured by the 3dmark single-thread score of 696, is adequate for Doom’s engine, which relies heavily on single-core performance for game logic and physics.

The CPU’s multi-threaded capabilities, indicated by a 3dmark max-threads score of 4603 and a cinebench r23 multicore score of 15045, ensure that background tasks do not interfere with gameplay. In Doom, the CPU’s role is most apparent at 1080p, where the FPS figures are high enough to suggest that the processor is keeping up with the GPU’s output. The fact that the FPS scales significantly with settings at 1080p—from 265.7 on Low to 175.3 on Ultra—indicates that the CPU can handle the frame rates, but the GPU’s workload changes with the preset.

At 4K, the CPU’s influence diminishes, as the FPS is primarily determined by the GPU’s rendering capabilities. The CPU’s percentile rank of 76 among all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 18129, show that it is a mid-to-high-tier processor that pairs well with the RX 6800 XT. The data confirms that the Ryzen 5 3600 does not bottleneck the GPU in Doom, as the performance scales as expected with resolution and settings, and the combo’s rank of 611 out of 1681 reflects a balanced pairing.