Doom

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 combination delivers a highly playable experience in Doom, though the system’s behavior across resolutions reveals a clear division of labor between the CPU and GPU. At 1080p, the pairing produces exceptional frame rates that stress the processor’s limits, while at 4K, the graphics card becomes the primary bottleneck. This analysis examines the measured FPS data, the role of each component, and what the numbers indicate about this specific hardware pairing for a 2016 FPS title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep performance curve as resolution increases, which is typical for a game like Doom that relies heavily on GPU fill rate. At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the system averages 137.4 FPS. Stepping up to 2560x1440 at the same settings drops the average to 88.3 FPS, a reduction of roughly 36%. Moving to 3840x2160 at Ultra yields 45.8 FPS, which is less than half of the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 4060’s 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory bus become increasingly taxed as pixel count rises.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings widens significantly at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low (227.1 FPS) and Ultra (137.4 FPS) is about 65%. At 1440p, that gap grows to roughly 69% (149.2 vs. 88.3 FPS). At 4K, the spread becomes more pronounced: Low produces 77.4 FPS while Ultra drops to 45.8 FPS, a difference of nearly 69%. These numbers suggest that the GPU’s shading units and memory bandwidth are the limiting factors at 4K, whereas at 1080p the CPU’s single-thread performance plays a larger role in maintaining high frame rates.

Notably, the 4K results remain mostly playable even at High settings, with 61.5 FPS. The drop to Ultra at 4K pushes the average below 60 FPS, which is a significant threshold for smooth gameplay. The data shows that this pairing is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where it can comfortably exceed 88 FPS even at maximum settings. The 4K Ultra result of 45.8 FPS indicates that users targeting 4K would need to compromise on quality settings to maintain fluid motion.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: The measured average is 137.4 FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings. This is the lowest 1080p result among the four quality presets tested, but it remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the system perform at 4K Ultra?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS drops to 45.8. This is the only tested configuration that falls below 60 FPS, indicating that the RTX 4060 struggles with the combination of high resolution and maximum quality presets.

Q: What is the highest FPS recorded in the dataset?

A: The highest average FPS is 227.1, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This result highlights the CPU’s ability to push very high frame rates when the GPU is not heavily burdened.

Q: Is there a large performance difference between Medium and High settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the difference is noticeable. At 2560x1440, Medium averages 125.6 FPS while High averages 107.1 FPS. This represents roughly a 17% performance drop when moving from Medium to High, which is a meaningful trade-off for visual quality.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4060’s average benchmark score is 23181, placing it at the 66th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rival is the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, which scores 23321 and is 0.6% faster. The Intel Arc B580 is 0.7% slower with a score of 23021.

Q: Does the CPU hold back performance at any resolution?

A: At 1080p, the CPU appears to be the limiting factor. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D scores 884 in the 3dmark single-thread test, and the combination of high FPS at Low settings (227.1) suggests the processor is near its ceiling. At 4K, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, as evidenced by the sharp FPS drop across all settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It operates with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.50 GHz, and it features a substantial 96 MB of shared L3 cache. This large cache is particularly beneficial for gaming workloads that rely on data locality, which is likely why the CPU performs well in Doom despite the game’s age.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5800X3D demonstrates strong multi-threaded capabilities. It scores 24063 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 3397 in single-core. The 3dmark tests show a clear scaling pattern: 1746 for 2 threads, 3392 for 4 threads, 5906 for 8 threads, and 7285 for max threads. This near-linear scaling up to 8 threads indicates that the processor can effectively utilize all its cores, which matters for games that spawn multiple worker threads.

The CPU’s performance percentile stands at 83, meaning it outperforms 83% of all CPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 26574 places it close to the Intel Core i9-11900K, which scores 26546 and is just 0.1% slower. The AMD EPYC 8024P is also within 0.1% with a score of 26555. These rivals are all desktop or workstation parts, confirming that the 5800X3D remains competitive in synthetic workloads.

For Doom, the CPU’s role is most evident at 1080p. With Low settings, the system produces 227.1 FPS, which is likely near the engine’s frame rate ceiling given the processor’s single-thread score of 884 in 3dmark. The gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is 30.5 FPS (227.1 vs. 196.6), which suggests that the CPU can still feed the GPU at these high rates. However, at 4K, the CPU’s influence diminishes, as the GPU’s rendering workload becomes the dominant factor. The 5800X3D’s 8 cores and 16 threads are more than sufficient for Doom’s engine, and the data indicates that it does not bottleneck the RTX 4060 until frame rates exceed roughly 200 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides a complete matrix of average FPS across four resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 227.1, Medium 196.6, High 166.8, and Ultra 137.4. These figures show a consistent step-down of roughly 30 FPS between each quality tier, indicating that the GPU’s shading workload scales predictably with settings.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 149.2, Medium 125.6, High 107.1, and Ultra 88.3. The percentage drop from Low to Ultra is about 41%, which is slightly less than the 39% observed at 1080p. This suggests that the GPU’s memory bandwidth (272.0 GB/s) becomes a more significant constraint at higher resolutions, flattening the performance curve.

The 3840x2160 results are the most demanding: Low 77.4, Medium 70.7, High 61.5, and Ultra 45.8. The difference between Low and Medium is 6.7 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is 15.7 FPS. This non-linear behavior points to the Ultra preset introducing effects that heavily tax the RTX 4060’s 8 GB frame buffer, causing a sharp drop in performance.

Across all resolutions, the High preset offers a balanced experience. At 1080p High, the system averages 166.8 FPS; at 1440p High, it achieves 107.1 FPS; and at 4K High, it maintains 61.5 FPS. Only the 4K Ultra setting falls below the 60 FPS mark, which is the key takeaway for users seeking a consistent frame rate. The data shows that this pairing can handle 4K High comfortably, but Ultra settings require a resolution drop to 1440p for optimal smoothness.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD107 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features 3072 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1830 MHz and boosts to 2460 MHz, with memory clocked at 2125 MHz (17 Gbps effective). The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory sits on a 128-bit bus, providing 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 4060 scores 19545 in Passmark G3D and 101030 in Geekbench OpenCL. Its average benchmark score is 23181, placing it at the 66th percentile among all GPUs. The nearest rival is the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, which is 0.6% faster with a score of 23321. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti is 0.7% faster at 23338, while the Intel Arc B580 is 0.7% slower at 23021. These close margins indicate that the RTX 4060 sits in a tightly contested performance tier.

The GPU’s role in Doom becomes clearer when examining the 4K results. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 45.8, which is below the 60 FPS threshold. The 8 GB frame buffer is likely a limiting factor here, as Doom’s Ultra textures can consume significant memory at 2160p. The 128-bit memory bus further constrains performance, as the 272.0 GB/s bandwidth must feed a large amount of pixel data at 4K.

At 1080p, the RTX 4060 has ample headroom. Even at Ultra settings, it produces 137.4 FPS, which is more than double the 4K Ultra result. This demonstrates that the GPU’s compute capacity (15.11 TFLOPS FP32) is sufficient for lower resolutions, but the memory subsystem becomes the bottleneck as pixel count grows. The pixel rate of 118.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 236.2 GTexel/s suggest that the GPU can handle high fill rates, but the memory bandwidth limits sustained performance at 4K.

The RTX 4060’s 24 RT cores and 96 tensor cores are not heavily utilized in Doom, which is a 2016 title without ray tracing or DLSS support. The data shows that the GPU’s rasterization performance is the primary driver of results, and its 48 ROPs are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p but struggle at 4K Ultra. Overall, the RTX 4060 is a capable 1080p and 1440p card for this game, with 4K performance requiring reduced settings to maintain playable frame rates.