Doom

FAQ

Q: How does this CPU+GPU combo rank in Doom compared to all other tested combinations?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 284th out of 2,930 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the top tenth of all configurations. This is a strong result, though not elite-tier, given that the CPU sits at the 71st percentile among all processors while the GPU is at the 92nd percentile among all graphics cards.

Q: What is the single best measured performance result for this combo?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 268 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next best is 255 FPS at 1080p Medium, followed by 241 FPS at 1080p High and 232 FPS at 1440p Low. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 44 FPS, which shows the settings range has a meaningful impact even at lower resolutions.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 3600 compare to its nearest rivals in overall CPU benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 5 3600 has an average benchmark score of 17,035, which is essentially identical to the Intel Core i7-1260P (17,007, only 0.2% slower) and the AMD EPYC 7742 (16,998, 0.2% slower). It is also within 0.2% of the Intel Core i5-11400 (17,067) and the AMD EPYC 7573X (17,070), meaning all five chips perform within a hair of each other in aggregate.

Q: Is the RTX 5090 D significantly faster than its closest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 5090 D's average benchmark score is 77,712, which is only 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (76,904) and 1.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940). It trails the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB by 2.1% and the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB by 2.4%. These are narrow margins, suggesting the 5090 D is competitive but not dominant against these particular rivals in synthetic tests.

Q: What frame rate can users expect at 4K with this hardware in Doom?

A: At 3840x2160, the measured average FPS ranges from 102 FPS on Ultra to 170 FPS on Low. Medium delivers 148 FPS with a minimum of 126 FPS and a maximum of 170 FPS, while High sits at 125 FPS. All 4K results exceed 100 FPS, which is comfortable for high-refresh 4K displays.

Q: Does the CPU hold back the GPU at lower resolutions?

A: The data suggests some CPU limitation at 1080p, since the difference between Low (268 FPS) and High (241 FPS) is only 27 FPS, whereas at 4K the same settings gap produces a 45 FPS difference (170 vs 125). The Ryzen 5 3600's single-thread score of 696 in 3DMark and 2,124 in Cinebench R23 indicates it can push high frame rates, but the scaling pattern implies the CPU becomes more of a factor as resolution drops.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB202 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It carries 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, giving it a transistor density of 122.9 million per square millimeter. The GPU has 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output pipelines, along with 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores. This hardware configuration produces a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s, with FP32 compute rated at 104.8 TFLOPS.

Memory is a major asset for this card. It comes with 32 GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock is 1,750 MHz with 28 Gbps effective transfer. In Doom, a 2016 title, 32 GB of VRAM is far beyond what the game requires, even at 4K Ultra. The base clock is 2,017 MHz with a boost clock of 2,407 MHz, which are the figures that determine actual rendering throughput. The GPU's passmark G3D score of 44,065 and its 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs confirm it is a high-end part, even if its nearest rivals in synthetic tests are within a couple of percentage points.

The RTX 5090 D's role in Doom is clear from the measured FPS data. At 4K Ultra, it holds 102 FPS average, which is impressive for a game that pushes heavy effects at that resolution. The card also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, all of which are relevant to how Doom can be run. The GPU's 176 ROPs and 680 TMUs ensure that fill-rate-intensive scenes do not become bottlenecks, and the 1.79 TB/s bandwidth prevents memory throughput from limiting performance at high resolutions. In practical terms, the RTX 5090 D is never the constraint in this combo; even at 4K Ultra, it delivers over 100 FPS, which is a strong result for a card in the 92nd percentile.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows how performance scales across resolutions. At 1920x1080, the average FPS across all settings ranges from 224 to 268. Moving to 2560x1440, the range drops to 189 to 232. At 3840x2160, it falls further to 102 to 170. The percentage drops vary by settings, but the overall pattern is clear: higher resolutions reduce frame rates, and the reduction is more pronounced at the higher settings.

For Low settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 36 FPS (268 to 232, a 13.4% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 62 FPS (232 to 170, a 26.7% reduction). For High settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 33 FPS (241 to 208, a 13.7% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 83 FPS (208 to 125, a 39.9% reduction). For Medium, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 34 FPS (255 to 221, a 13.3% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 73 FPS (221 to 148, a 33.0% reduction). For Ultra, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 35 FPS (224 to 189, a 15.6% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 87 FPS (189 to 102, a 46.0% reduction).

These numbers indicate that the GPU is the primary limiter at 4K, especially on Ultra where the frame rate nearly halves from 1440p. At 1080p, the frame rates are high enough that the CPU starts to matter more. The Ryzen 5 3600 has a boost clock of 4.20 GHz and a base clock of 3.60 GHz, with 6 cores and 12 threads. Its single-thread performance in Cinebench R23 is 2,124, which is decent but not top-tier. The fact that 1080p Low only hits 268 FPS, while 1440p Low hits 232 FPS, suggests the CPU is capping performance at lower resolutions. If the GPU were the only constraint, the 1080p numbers would scale more proportionally with the resolution difference. The data shows that at 4K, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, while at 1080p, the CPU is increasingly relevant.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the best settings depend on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 4K, Medium settings deliver 148 FPS average with a minimum of 126 FPS and a maximum of 170 FPS. This is the sweet spot for 4K, as it maintains a high frame rate while offering better visual quality than Low (170 FPS) or High (125 FPS). Ultra drops to 102 FPS, which is still playable but sacrifices smoothness for marginal visual gains in a game from 2016.

At 1440p, High settings provide 208 FPS average, which is excellent for high-refresh monitors. Medium hits 221 FPS with a minimum of 188 FPS and a maximum of 254 FPS, while Ultra stays at 189 FPS. The differences between settings are smaller at 1440p than at 4K, so users with 144 Hz or 165 Hz displays can comfortably run High or even Ultra. Low at 232 FPS is only 24 FPS faster than High, so the visual trade-off is not worth it unless chasing maximum FPS.

At 1080p, all settings exceed 224 FPS, which is beyond the refresh rate of most monitors. Medium delivers 255 FPS with a minimum of 217 FPS and a maximum of 294 FPS, making it the best choice for competitive play. Ultra at 224 FPS is still very high, and the 31 FPS gap between Medium and Ultra is noticeable but not critical. For most users, Medium at 1080p offers the best balance, as it provides a high minimum frame rate and minimal visual compromise. The measured data suggests that Medium is the optimal preset across all resolutions, as it consistently delivers high averages and solid minimums without the performance hit of Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS is 268 on Low, 255 on Medium, 241 on High, and 224 on Ultra. The Medium preset records a minimum of 217 FPS and a maximum of 294 FPS, which is the only settings level with full min/max data at this resolution. The spread from Low to Ultra is 44 FPS, representing a 16.4% reduction in average frame rate when moving from the lowest to the highest settings.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS is 232 on Low, 221 on Medium, 208 on High, and 189 on Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 188 FPS and a maximum of 254 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 43 FPS, a similar absolute drop to 1080p but a slightly larger percentage reduction at 18.5%. The 1440p Medium minimum of 188 FPS is notably higher than the 4K Medium minimum of 126 FPS, indicating more consistent frame pacing at the lower resolution.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS is 170 on Low, 148 on Medium, 125 on High, and 102 on Ultra. The Medium preset records a minimum of 126 FPS and a maximum of 170 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 68 FPS, a 40.0% reduction, which is the largest percentage drop of any resolution. This indicates that at 4K, the settings have a much greater impact on performance, as the GPU is more heavily loaded.

Comparing across resolutions, the Low setting at 1080p (268 FPS) is 57.6% faster than Low at 4K (170 FPS). The High setting at 1080p (241 FPS) is 92.8% faster than High at 4K (125 FPS). The Ultra setting at 1080p (224 FPS) is 119.6% faster than Ultra at 4K (102 FPS). These ratios show that higher settings amplify the resolution penalty, which is typical for a GPU-bound workload. The data also shows that the Ryzen 5 3600 can feed the RTX 5090 D well enough to maintain high frame rates at 1080p, but the absolute ceiling appears to be around 268 FPS, which is likely a CPU limitation given the 6-core, 12-thread configuration.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 3000 series, built on Zen 2 architecture with the Matisse codename. It is manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC, with 3,800 million transistors on a 74 mm² die. The base clock is 3.60 GHz with a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, and it has a 65 W TDP. The cache configuration includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support is DDR4 with dual-channel access and a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s.

In benchmark tests, the Ryzen 5 3600 scores 696 in 3DMark single-thread and 4,605 in 3DMark max threads. Cinebench R23 results show 2,124 single-core and 15,045 multi-core. Geekbench scores are 1,536 single-core and 7,372 multi-core. Passmark single-thread is 2,562, and passmark multithread is 17,700. These numbers place the CPU at the 71st percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 17,035. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Core i7-1260P (17,007, 0.2% slower), Intel Core i5-11400 (17,067, 0.2% faster), AMD EPYC 7573X (17,070, 0.2% faster), and AMD EPYC 7742 (16,998, 0.2% slower). The differences are negligible, meaning the Ryzen 5 3600 performs essentially identically to these chips in aggregate.

In Doom, the CPU's role is evident from the FPS scaling. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 268, which is the highest measured result. This suggests the CPU is the limiting factor, as the RTX 5090 D is capable of much higher frame rates in less CPU-intensive scenarios. The 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient for Doom, which is not heavily multithreaded, but the single-thread performance of 2,124 in Cinebench R23 and 696 in 3DMark single-thread sets a ceiling. The boost clock of 4.20 GHz helps, but it is not enough to push frame rates beyond the 268 FPS mark at 1080p Low.

At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes. The frame rates at 4K Ultra (102 FPS) and 4K High (125 FPS) are primarily determined by the GPU's rendering capabilities, as the increased resolution shifts the bottleneck away from the CPU. The Ryzen 5 3600's 32 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s are adequate for feeding the GPU at these resolutions. The data shows that the combo is well-balanced for 1440p and 4K gaming, where the CPU can keep up with the GPU's demands, but at 1080p, the CPU becomes the constraining factor. This is a common pattern for older CPUs paired with top-end GPUs, and it is reflected in the measured FPS data.