Doom

# How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 sits at rank 781 out of 1681 tested combos for Doom, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database. This position reflects a balanced pairing where neither component dramatically bottlenecks the other, but where the system clearly trails the highest-end configurations. The combo's percentile placement is consistent with a mid-range CPU from the Ryzen 5000 series and a previous-generation enthusiast GPU, both of which remain capable for this 2016 title.

When contextualized against the broader pool of 1681 combos, the 781st rank indicates that roughly 46% of tested systems outperform this pairing, while 54% fall behind. That places this combo in a crowded competitive zone where small CPU or GPU differences can shift rankings significantly. The Ryzen 5 5500 itself holds a 79th percentile ranking among all tested CPUs, while the RTX 3070 sits at the 72nd percentile among GPUs, suggesting the CPU is slightly stronger relative to its peers than the GPU is relative to its own field. In a game like Doom, which relies heavily on both raw rasterization throughput and frame pacing, this balance means the system delivers solid but not exceptional results.

# GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture using the GA104 chip, fabricated on Samsung's 8 nm process with 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. Its memory configuration includes 8 GB of GDDR6 across a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock runs at 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1725 MHz, while memory operates at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These specifications translate into a peak FP32 throughput of 20.31 TFLOPS, which is substantial for a game released in 2016 that was optimized for much older hardware.

In Doom's benchmark results, the GPU's capabilities are evident in the scaling pattern across resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low settings, the system reaches 256.6 FPS, which is likely near the upper bound of what the Vulkan-based engine can extract from this hardware. The RTX 3070's 5888 shading units and 184 texture mapping units give it ample geometry and texture throughput for Doom's fast-paced environments. The 96 raster output units handle pixel fill at a rate of 165.6 GPixel/s, while the 317.4 GTexel/s texture rate ensures that the game's detailed surfaces render without visible streaming artifacts.

The GPU's 72nd percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 28238, places it close to the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (deltaPct 0.9) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (deltaPct 1). This proximity to older and newer cards at similar performance tiers highlights that the RTX 3070's strength in Doom comes as much from its architectural efficiency as from raw specifications. The GPU's end-of-life production status and 220 W TDP make it a known quantity, and the data reflects that consistency.

# Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how the balance between CPU and GPU shifts as resolution increases. At 1080p, the system delivers 256.6 FPS on Low, 225.4 FPS on Medium, 189.5 FPS on High, and 153.7 FPS on Ultra. The step from 1080p to 1440p shows a significant drop: Low falls to 164.8 FPS (a 35.8% reduction), Medium to 148 FPS (34.3% down), High to 124.7 FPS (34.2% down), and Ultra to 101.1 FPS (34.2% down). This consistent reduction of roughly one-third across all settings indicates that the GPU is becoming the primary limiter as pixel count increases, with the CPU still able to feed frames without becoming a bottleneck.

Moving from 1440p to 4K produces a larger relative decline. At 3840x2160, Low drops to 93.6 FPS (43.2% below the 1440p figure), Medium to 80.5 FPS (45.6% down), High to 69.2 FPS (44.5% down), and Ultra to 54.8 FPS (45.8% down). The more significant degradation at 4K confirms that the GPU is now fully saturated, with the 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth being exercised heavily at this resolution. The RTX 3070's 256-bit memory bus and 8 GB capacity are adequate for Doom at 4K, but the data shows diminishing returns as settings rise.

The pattern across resolutions indicates that at 1080p, the system is partially CPU-limited, especially at Low settings where the frame rate exceeds what most CPUs could sustain. At 1440p, the balance shifts toward GPU limitation, and at 4K, the GPU is the clear bottleneck. This is typical for a pairing where the CPU's 3.60 GHz base clock and 4.20 GHz boost clock provide sufficient single-thread performance for a game that does not scale heavily across cores.

# Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system produces its highest frame rates. Low settings yield 256.6 FPS average, Medium drops to 225.4 FPS, High to 189.5 FPS, and Ultra to 153.7 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 102.9 FPS, representing a 40.1% performance penalty for maximum quality. This suggests that Doom's Ultra settings introduce additional post-processing and shadow effects that tax the GPU's 5888 shading units without relying heavily on the 46 RT cores or 184 tensor cores, which are underutilized in this non-ray-traced title.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS figures are 164.8 (Low), 148 (Medium), 124.7 (High), and 101.1 (Ultra). The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 63.7 FPS, a 38.7% reduction. The relative consistency of the percentage drop across settings at this resolution indicates that the GPU's fixed-function units, particularly the 184 TMUs and 96 ROPs, are handling the increased pixel load proportionally, with no single setting causing a disproportionate hit.

At 3840x2160, the system delivers 93.6 FPS on Low, 80.5 FPS on Medium, 69.2 FPS on High, and 54.8 FPS on Ultra. The Ultra figure is the only one below 60 FPS, which is notable for a game as well-optimized as Doom. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 38.8 FPS, a 41.5% penalty, slightly larger than at lower resolutions. This indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s and 8 GB VRAM capacity are being pushed to their limits, with Ultra settings at 4K causing additional texture streaming demands that the memory subsystem struggles to satisfy fully.

# CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Cezanne, and fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. It operates at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, with a 65 W TDP, and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. These specifications, combined with its 79th percentile ranking among all CPUs, indicate a solid mid-range part that can handle Doom's demands without issue.

In Doom, the CPU's contribution is most apparent at 1080p Low settings, where the system reaches 256.6 FPS. The game's id Tech 6 engine is known for efficient multi-threading, and the Ryzen 5 5500's 12 threads allow it to distribute workload effectively. The CPU's 3dmark single-thread score of 836 and 3dmark 2-thread score of 1645 suggest that its per-core performance is sufficient for the game's primary simulation and physics tasks, while the 3dmark max-threads score of 5411 indicates that the 12 threads provide ample headroom for additional background processes.

The CPU's nearest rivals in the database include the Intel Core i5-12500 (deltaPct -0.1), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (deltaPct -0.1), AMD EPYC 7J13 (deltaPct 0.1), and Intel Core i5-12600T (deltaPct -0.2). The extremely small deltas—all within 0.2% of the Ryzen 5 5500's average benchmark score of 20875—show that the CPU is well-positioned among contemporary and near-contemporary parts. However, in Doom specifically, the GPU becomes the more significant factor at higher resolutions, meaning the CPU's 16 MB L3 cache and 4.20 GHz boost clock are rarely the limiting factor once the resolution exceeds 1440p.

The 65 W TDP of the Ryzen 5 5500 allows for sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling in most chassis, which is beneficial for maintaining consistent frame times in Doom's fast-paced combat scenarios. The CPU's PCIe Gen 3 interface, while not as fast as Gen 4, is sufficient for the RTX 3070's PCIe 4.0 x16 bus, as the bandwidth requirements of Doom at any resolution are well within the Gen 3 x16 limits. Overall, the data shows that this CPU-GPU combination delivers a well-rounded experience, with the CPU providing enough throughput to keep the GPU fed at 1080p and the GPU taking over as the primary performance driver at 1440p and 4K.