Doom

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 produces a workable but constrained experience in Doom, with outcomes heavily dependent on resolution and quality expectations. The data indicates this combo sits near the bottom of the tested ladder, ranking 1552 out of 1681 combinations, which places it in the bottom 8% of all tested hardware pairings. This is not a rig for chasing high-refresh-rate 4K gaming, but it can still deliver a smooth 1080p session if the settings are chosen with discipline.

Settings Recommendations

For this specific CPU-GPU pairing, the measured FPS rows point to a clear sweet spot at 1920x1080 with Medium settings, where the average frame rate hits 89.7 FPS. This is the most balanced configuration in the dataset: it provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold while leaving enough headroom to avoid the sharp performance cliff seen at Ultra. The difference between Medium and High at 1080p is 14.4 FPS (89.7 vs 75.3), so stepping down one notch from High to Medium buys a significant stability buffer without a dramatic visual penalty.

At 2560x1440, the recommendation shifts to Low settings, which yields an average of 65.8 FPS. This is the only 1440p preset that stays clearly above 60 FPS; Medium drops to 58.1 FPS, and High falls to 48.1 FPS. If a 1440p monitor is the target, Low is the only practical choice for consistent playability. Ultra settings are not advisable at any resolution—at 1080p it produces 60.9 FPS, which is borderline, but at 1440p it collapses to 39.5 FPS and at 4K it becomes nearly unplayable at 19.8 FPS.

For 3840x2160, the data shows that even Low settings only manage 38.8 FPS, which is below the threshold for a fluid experience in a fast-paced FPS. The recommendation is to avoid 4K entirely with this combo unless the user accepts a slideshow-like experience. The practical takeaway is simple: stick to 1080p Medium for the best combination of visual fidelity and frame rate, or fall back to 1440p Low if pixel density matters more than quality presets.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 580 is the primary bottleneck in this pairing, and the benchmark results reflect that clearly. With a base clock of 1257 MHz and a boost clock of 1340 MHz, the GPU’s 2304 shading units and 32 ROPs are working hard to push frames. The 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p but becomes strained as resolution climbs. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 13559 places it at the 53rd percentile among all GPUs, meaning it sits almost exactly in the middle of the pack—neither a standout nor a laggard.

The measured FPS scaling tells the story of a GPU that is running out of compute headroom. Moving from 1080p Medium (89.7 FPS) to 1440p Medium (58.1 FPS) is a 35% drop, and the jump to 4K Medium (33.9 FPS) is another 42% reduction. This steep decline is characteristic of a GPU that is fill-rate limited, not CPU limited. The RX 580’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database—the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (deltaPct 0) and GTX 950 (deltaPct 0.1)—are similarly aged parts, confirming that this GPU is operating at the lower end of modern performance expectations. Its 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the ceiling for this combo, and Doom’s demanding effects push that ceiling down quickly at higher presets.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 8400F is not the limiting factor here, and the data supports that conclusion. This 6-core, 12-thread processor with a base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz delivers strong synthetic scores: a Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 20851 and a single-core score of 2943. Its average benchmark score of 25064 puts it at the 82nd percentile among all CPUs, a much healthier position than the GPU’s 53rd percentile. The nearest CPU rivals—the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (deltaPct 0) and Ryzen 5 7500F (deltaPct 0.3)—show that the 8400F is trading blows with older and more expensive parts, which speaks to its efficiency on the Zen 4 architecture.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The fact that FPS drops so dramatically from 1080p to 4K—from 104 FPS at 1080p Low down to 38.8 FPS at 4K Low—indicates that the CPU is keeping up fine at lower resolutions and the GPU is the one choking at higher pixel counts. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see FPS plateau across resolutions, but instead the numbers fall linearly with pixel count. The 8400F’s 16 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are more than sufficient for a game from 2016, even one as well-optimized as Doom. This CPU has headroom to spare; the RX 580 is what holds the combo back.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1552 out of 1681 tested combinations is a sobering statistic. This places the pairing in the bottom 7.7% of all tested hardware combinations, which aligns with the expectation that a 2017 mid-range GPU paired with a 2024 budget CPU is going to be heavily lopsided. The rank reflects the GPU’s limitations more than the CPU’s capabilities; the 8400F’s 82nd percentile CPU ranking is drastically better than the RX 580’s 53rd percentile GPU ranking, and the combo suffers accordingly.

What this means in practice is that this pairing is not competitive for modern gaming at high settings, but it is serviceable for older titles or esports-level demands at lower presets. The data shows that the combo is 0% away from the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X in CPU performance, yet the GPU is essentially tied with a GTX 570 from 2010 in average score. This mismatch means that upgrading the GPU alone would yield massive gains, while upgrading the CPU would produce negligible improvements in Doom. The rank serves as a warning: do not pair this CPU with a GPU this old if you intend to play demanding FPS titles at high quality.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a textbook GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 104 FPS; at 1440p Low, it drops to 65.8 FPS (a 36.7% reduction); and at 4K Low, it falls to 38.8 FPS (a further 41% reduction). This near-linear drop with pixel count is the signature of a GPU that is saturated. The CPU is not the constraint here—if it were, we would see smaller gaps between resolutions as the GPU waits on the processor.

The settings scaling within each resolution reinforces this. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra costs 43.1 FPS (104 down to 60.9), which is a 41% hit that is entirely attributable to GPU shading load. At 4K, the same Low-to-Ultra transition drops from 38.8 FPS to 19.8 FPS, a 49% reduction. The fact that the percentage loss increases at higher resolutions confirms that the GPU is running out of raw compute and memory bandwidth. The RX 580’s 256.0 GB/s bandwidth is simply insufficient to feed a 4K framebuffer with high-quality textures, and the 32 ROPs cannot rasterize fast enough. Resolution scaling here is a straight-line function of GPU workload, with no CPU interference.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured dataset shows a clear hierarchy. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 104 FPS, Medium 89.7 FPS, High 75.3 FPS, and Ultra 60.9 FPS. These numbers confirm that 1080p is the native resolution for this combo, with even Ultra barely touching the 60 FPS line. The step from Medium to High costs 14.4 FPS, while the step from High to Ultra costs another 14.4 FPS—a consistent linear penalty that suggests each quality tier adds a similar GPU load.

At 2560x1440, the figures are: Low 65.8 FPS, Medium 58.1 FPS, High 48.1 FPS, and Ultra 39.5 FPS. Only Low remains comfortably above 60 FPS, and Medium is close but below the line. The gap between Low and Medium here is 7.7 FPS, which is smaller than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is already struggling with the higher pixel count and additional settings are compounding the load. High and Ultra are both below 50 FPS, which would be noticeable in a fast-paced shooter.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low 38.8 FPS, Medium 33.9 FPS, High 28.4 FPS, and Ultra 19.8 FPS. Even Low is below 40 FPS, making 4K essentially unplayable for a game that demands quick reactions. The delta between Low and Ultra at 4K is 19 FPS, which is smaller in absolute terms than at 1080p but represents a 49% performance loss. This breakdown underscores the verdict: this is a 1080p-focused pairing, with 1440p Low as a secondary option, and 4K is not a viable target under any settings.