Doom

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a combination that pits a mid-range, power-efficient Zen 4 desktop processor against NVIDIA’s flagship Blackwell GPU. This pairing yields extreme frame rates in Doom, a 2016 FPS title that is far more forgiving on the CPU than modern releases. The benchmark data shows a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at higher resolutions, but reveals the CPU's capabilities as a bottleneck only at 1080p, where frame rates soar past the 300 FPS mark.

FAQ

Q: How fast is this combo in Doom?

A: The measured average frame rates range from 97.5 FPS at 4K Ultra to 387.4 FPS at 1080p Low. This indicates the system is capable of delivering a highly responsive experience at all tested settings, with performance scaling down as resolution and graphical fidelity increase.

Q: Is the RTX 5090 the main performance driver here?

A: Yes, the data points to the GPU being the primary bottleneck. For instance, at 1440p High the combo achieves 216.8 FPS, while at 4K High it drops to 118.9 FPS. This significant drop with resolution is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios, where the graphics card's rendering workload dictates the final frame rate.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 8400F hold back the RTX 5090?

A: The data suggests the CPU is less of a limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 1080p High, the system hits 341.3 FPS, but at 4K High, performance falls to 118.9 FPS. The relatively smaller gap between 1080p and 1440p results compared to the jump to 4K indicates the CPU is sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU's workload becomes the dominant constraint at 4K.

Q: What is the best settings preset for this game?

A: The "High" preset appears to offer the best balance. At 1440p, it delivers 216.8 FPS, and at 4K it maintains 118.9 FPS. While "Medium" and "Low" presets are faster, "High" provides a substantial visual upgrade over "Medium" for a relatively smaller performance cost compared to "Ultra".

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 8400F compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: Its average benchmark score of 25064 places it nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, which scores 25057. It is also very close to the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F, which has a score of 24993 and a deltaPct of 0.3, meaning the 8400F is fractionally ahead.

Q: Is the 32GB of VRAM on the RTX 5090 useful for Doom?

A: While Doom is not a demanding title by modern standards, the 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on the RTX 5090 ensures that VRAM capacity is a non-issue. The card's 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth and 512-bit bus width are more than sufficient to handle the game's texture data at any resolution, leaving performance to be decided by raw compute power.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combos for Doom, this specific pairing of the Ryzen 5 8400F and RTX 5090 ranks at #26 out of 1681 combos. This places the system in the top 1.5% of all tested configurations, proof of the sheer power of the RTX 5090. The ranking reflects the GPU's dominance in this title, where the 8400F's role is to provide a stable platform without introducing a significant bottleneck.

The fact that it ranks this high despite using a more budget-oriented CPU highlights how well the Ryzen 5 8400F performs in this specific game. The CPU's percentile rank of 82 against all CPUs is respectable, but its performance in Doom is more than adequate to support the GPU's output. In contrast, the RTX 5090's percentile rank of 94 against all GPUs demonstrates its elite status. The combination of a top-tier GPU with a competent mid-range CPU is enough to secure a top-30 finish, proving that for this game, the graphics card is the primary driver of the combo's overall standing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the undisputed star of this configuration. Its massive 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides a staggering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, ensuring that data transfer is never a bottleneck. The GPU's boost clock of 2407 MHz, coupled with its 21760 shading units, allows it to process the game's geometry and effects with immense speed.

The benchmark results show a clear pattern: the GPU's performance scales predictably with resolution. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 387.4 FPS, but this is likely a limit imposed by the CPU's ability to issue draw calls. As the resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU's rendering workload becomes the primary constraint. The drop from 216.8 FPS at 1440p High to 118.9 FPS at 4K High illustrates this scaling. The GPU is so powerful that even at 4K Ultra, it manages to produce a highly playable 97.5 FPS. The data suggests the RTX 5090 has enough headroom to handle even more demanding titles, but in Doom, it operates at a level where the CPU is the only thing that can potentially hold it back.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the High preset is the recommended choice. The measured data shows that at 1440p, the High preset delivers 216.8 FPS, which is a 40 FPS improvement over the Ultra preset's 176.9 FPS. This is a significant gain for a visual step down that is often imperceptible in fast-paced action. At 4K, the High preset maintains a smooth 118.9 FPS, which is well above the 97.5 FPS of the Ultra preset.

While the Medium preset offers even higher frame rates, the visual quality reduction is more noticeable. The jump from Medium to High at 1440p costs about 40 FPS (from 256.6 to 216.8), but the increase in texture detail and shadow quality is substantial. The Low preset should be avoided unless the user is chasing maximum refresh rates on a 360Hz+ monitor, as it provides a marginal increase over Medium at 1080p (387.4 vs 370.7 FPS) at the cost of significant visual fidelity. The Ultra preset is best reserved for users with high-refresh-rate 4K displays who prioritize image quality over raw frame rate, as it still provides a playable experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured average FPS data is as follows:

1920x1080:

• Low: 387.4 FPS
• Medium: 370.7 FPS
• High: 341.3 FPS
• Ultra: 278.6 FPS

2560x1440:

• Low: 298.3 FPS
• Medium: 256.6 FPS
• High: 216.8 FPS
• Ultra: 176.9 FPS

3840x2160:

• Low: 159.3 FPS
• Medium: 142.5 FPS
• High: 118.9 FPS
• Ultra: 97.5 FPS

The data reveals a consistent pattern of performance scaling. At 1080p, the frame rates are extremely high, suggesting the CPU is nearing its limit. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 108.8 FPS, indicating a GPU-side cost for higher settings. Moving to 1440p, the frame rates drop by roughly 30-40% across all settings, which is a typical penalty for a 78% increase in pixel count. The 4K results show another significant drop, with the gap between Low and Ultra narrowing to 61.8 FPS, demonstrating that at this resolution, the GPU is fully saturated and the CPU has less influence on the final frame rate.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture. Its base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz are respectable, but the CPU's modest 16 MB of shared L3 cache is a key spec for gaming. In Doom, which is not heavily multi-threaded, the CPU's single-thread performance (a 3dmark_single_thread score of 951) is more relevant than its multi-thread capabilities (a cinebench_r23_multicore score of 20851).

The benchmark data in Doom shows that the CPU is generally sufficient to keep up with the RTX 5090 at 1440p and 4K, as the frame rates are primarily dictated by the GPU's rendering speed. However, at 1080p, the system's frame rates plateau. For example, at 1080p High, the system hits 341.3 FPS, but at 1440p High, it still manages 216.8 FPS. The large gap between these two resolutions suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is becoming the limiting factor, unable to issue enough draw calls to push the frame rate even higher.

This is consistent with the CPU's average benchmark score of 25064, which puts it in the 82nd percentile of all CPUs and nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. While the 8400F is not a top-tier gaming CPU, its performance is more than adequate for a game like Doom. The data indicates that the 8400F is a capable partner for the RTX 5090, providing enough processing power to avoid severe bottlenecks except in the most CPU-intensive, low-resolution scenarios.