Doom

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 pairing in Doom shows a system where the graphics card is the clear performance boundary at higher resolutions, while the processor provides ample headroom at 1080p. This analysis walks through the measured frame rates, the role of each component, and how this combination compares against other tested setups.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a predictable yet steep decline as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate drops from 95 FPS at 1080p to 61 FPS at 1440p, then falls to 33 FPS at 4K. That is a 36% reduction when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 46% drop from 1440p to 4K. The pattern holds across all settings presets.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced in absolute terms. The GTX 1070 delivers 158 FPS at 1080p, 102 FPS at 1440p, and 55 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is 56 FPS, while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 47 FPS. This suggests that at lower settings, the GPU is still the primary limiter, but the CPU begins to matter more at 1080p where frame rates exceed 150 FPS.

The Medium preset shows a similar trajectory: 137 FPS at 1080p, 89 FPS at 1440p, and 48 FPS at 4K. High settings produce 116 FPS at 1080p, 75 FPS at 1440p, and 41 FPS at 4K. The consistent pattern across all four presets indicates that resolution scaling is smooth and predictable, with no sudden bottlenecks appearing at any specific step.

The fact that 4K Ultra produces only 33 FPS while 4K Low produces 55 FPS highlights how sensitive this GPU is to pixel count. The GTX 1070 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus with 256.3 GB/s bandwidth. At 4K, the fill rate and memory bandwidth become critical, and the data shows the GPU struggling to maintain playable frame rates at higher quality settings.

The 1080p results, by contrast, show a system that is well-balanced for high-refresh-rate gaming. Even at Ultra, 95 FPS is achievable, and dropping to Low yields 158 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra (95 to 61 FPS) represents a 36% performance hit, which is close to the theoretical pixel count increase of 78%. This implies the GPU is the dominant factor, with the CPU contributing minimal overhead at these resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, built on the Pascal architecture with the GP104 chip, operates with a base clock of 1506 MHz and a boost clock of 1683 MHz. Its memory runs at 2002 MHz, translating to 8 Gbps effective, across an 8 GB GDDR5 frame buffer. The 256-bit bus provides 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The card has 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units, delivering a pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s.

In Doom, the GPU's role is evident from the measured FPS at 4K. The card's FP32 performance of 6.463 TFLOPS is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but at 4K Ultra, the average frame rate drops to 33 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold typically desired for smooth gameplay. The 4K Medium result of 48 FPS and 4K High result of 41 FPS reinforce that this GPU is not designed for 4K gaming at high quality settings.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 47th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 9780. Its nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro W5000 (avg score 9803, deltaPct -0.2), NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (avg score 9832, deltaPct -0.5), NVIDIA Tesla M10 (avg score 9724, deltaPct 0.6), and NVIDIA Tesla C2070 (avg score 9716, deltaPct 0.7). These deltas are all within 0.7%, indicating that the GTX 1070 sits in a tight performance cluster relative to its peers.

The GTX 1070's DirectX 12 benchmark score of 48 (out of a possible 100) and Vulkan score of 22121 from Geekbench provide context for its API-level performance. Doom uses the Vulkan API, and the measured frame rates suggest the card handles it well at lower resolutions. The 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for Doom's textures at all measured settings, as the game's requirements at 4K Ultra do not appear to exceed this capacity based on the frame rate behavior.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows allow for a clear recommendation based on target frame rates. At 1920x1080, all four settings presets produce playable results. Ultra averages 95 FPS, High averages 116 FPS, Medium averages 137 FPS, and Low averages 158 FPS. For a 60 Hz display, any preset works, but for a 144 Hz display, Medium or Low would be necessary to fully utilize the refresh rate. The Medium preset at 1080p offers a 44% improvement over Ultra (137 vs 95 FPS) with presumably minor visual differences.

At 2560x1440, the situation becomes more nuanced. Ultra averages 61 FPS, which is adequate for 60 Hz displays but leaves no headroom for frame time spikes. High averages 75 FPS, providing a more comfortable margin. Medium averages 89 FPS, and Low averages 102 FPS. For 1440p, High is the recommended preset if visual quality is a priority, as it stays above 60 FPS while offering better fidelity than Medium. The measured minimum FPS for Medium at 1440p is 75 FPS, which matches the average for High, indicating consistent performance.

At 3840x2160, no preset achieves 60 FPS. Ultra averages 33 FPS, High averages 41 FPS, Medium averages 48 FPS, and Low averages 55 FPS. For 4K gaming, Low is the only preset that approaches playable frame rates, but even then, the average of 55 FPS is below the 60 FPS target. Users with 4K displays would need to accept reduced settings or lower the resolution to 1440p for a better experience.

The data suggests that the sweet spot for this combo is 1440p with High settings, delivering 75 FPS average. This provides a balance between visual quality and performance. At 1080p, Medium offers the best compromise for high refresh rates, while at 4K, Low is the only viable option, and even then, performance is marginal.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank for this pairing in Doom is 3068 out of 3712 tested combinations. This places it in the lower 17% of all combos, indicating that this CPU-GPU pairing is not particularly well-suited for Doom at higher settings. The rank reflects the GTX 1070's age and performance tier relative to modern GPUs, despite the Ryzen 7 7700 being a capable processor.

The Ryzen 7 7700 itself performs well in synthetic benchmarks, with an average benchmark score of 40081 and a percentile rank of 87 among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (avg score 40048, deltaPct 0.1), Intel Core 5 221E (avg score 40144, deltaPct -0.2), AMD Ryzen 9 270 (avg score 40246, deltaPct -0.4), and Intel Core i9-13905H (avg score 40313, deltaPct -0.6). These deltas are all within 0.6%, meaning the CPU is competitive with its immediate peers.

However, the GTX 1070's percentile rank of 47 among all GPUs drags the combo down. The GPU's average benchmark score of 9780 is significantly lower than what modern GPUs achieve, and its nearest rivals are all older professional or mobile parts. This mismatch between a high-end CPU and a mid-range GPU from 2016 results in a combo rank that underperforms relative to the CPU's capabilities alone.

The combo rank of 3068 out of 3712 suggests that many other CPU-GPU pairings deliver better Doom performance. This is primarily due to the GPU being the limiting factor at all resolutions above 1080p. The data indicates that pairing the Ryzen 7 7700 with a more powerful GPU would yield substantially better results, as the CPU's benchmarks show it can handle demanding workloads without bottlenecking.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 7000 series, based on the Zen 4 architecture (codenamed Raphael). It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and provides 83.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache.

In Doom, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p Low settings, where the average frame rate reaches 158 FPS. This high frame rate indicates that the CPU can feed the GPU with enough data to keep it busy, even at lower graphical settings where the GPU workload is reduced. The Ryzen 7 7700's single-thread performance, as measured by 3DMark single-thread score of 1049 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1930, is strong enough to handle Doom's game logic and draw calls without becoming a bottleneck.

The CPU's multi-threaded performance is also impressive, with Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18760 and Geekbench multi-core score of 15371. Doom is known to scale well with multiple cores, and the 8-core, 16-thread configuration provides ample parallelism for the game's rendering threads. However, the measured FPS data shows that even with this powerful CPU, the GPU limits performance at higher resolutions.

At 4K, the CPU's role diminishes further, as the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck. The difference between 4K Low (55 FPS) and 4K Ultra (33 FPS) is entirely attributable to GPU workload, as the CPU has more than enough headroom to handle the game at any settings. The Ryzen 7 7700's benchmark scores, including PassMark multi-thread score of 34470 and 3DMark 16-thread score of 8484, confirm it is a high-performance processor that will not hold back a GTX 1070 in this title.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s and support for DDR5 further ensure that data transfer is not a limiting factor. The 32 MB of L3 cache helps with game asset access, reducing the need to fetch data from system memory. In Doom, this translates to consistent frame delivery, as evidenced by the minimum FPS values for Medium settings at each resolution (117 FPS at 1080p, 75 FPS at 1440p, 41 FPS at 4K), which are close to the average FPS values.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are as follows: Ultra averages 95 FPS, High averages 116 FPS, Medium averages 137 FPS, and Low averages 158 FPS. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 117 FPS and maximum of 158 FPS, indicating a range of 41 FPS across the sampling period. This wide range suggests some scene complexity variation, but the average remains solidly above 60 FPS for all presets.

At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 61 FPS, High averages 75 FPS, Medium averages 89 FPS, and Low averages 102 FPS. The Medium preset has a minimum of 75 FPS and maximum of 102 FPS, with a range of 27 FPS. This tighter range compared to 1080p indicates that the GPU is more consistently loaded at this resolution, reducing frame time spikes.

At 3840x2160, Ultra averages 33 FPS, High averages 41 FPS, Medium averages 48 FPS, and Low averages 55 FPS. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 41 FPS and maximum of 55 FPS, with a range of 14 FPS. The narrow range at 4K suggests that the GPU is fully saturated, and frame rates are limited by raw rendering throughput rather than scene complexity.

The total dataset includes 12 measured rows, with 4 settings presets at each of 3 resolutions. The High and Ultra presets do not have minimum or maximum FPS recorded, but the Medium preset provides both at all resolutions. This allows for a partial understanding of frame time consistency, though the missing data for High and Ultra limits a complete analysis.

Comparing the presets, the difference between Ultra and Low increases with resolution: 63 FPS at 1080p (158 vs 95), 41 FPS at 1440p (102 vs 61), and 22 FPS at 4K (55 vs 33). This diminishing absolute difference at higher resolutions confirms that the GPU is the bottleneck, as lowering settings has less impact when the pixel count is the primary constraint.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Doom?

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 with High settings delivers 75 FPS average, which is the highest resolution that maintains a comfortable frame rate above 60 FPS. At 3840x2160, the best result is 55 FPS at Low settings, which is below the 60 FPS target.

Q: How does the GTX 1070 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of benchmark scores?

A: The GTX 1070 has an average benchmark score of 9780, which is 0.2% lower than the AMD FirePro W5000 (9803), 0.5% lower than the NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (9832), 0.6% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla M10 (9724), and 0.7% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla C2070 (9716).

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 7700 a bottleneck for the GTX 1070 in Doom?

A: No. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 158 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it drops to 33 FPS. The CPU's benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18760 and single-core score of 1930, indicate it has sufficient performance to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at all measured settings.

Q: What is the frame rate range for Medium settings at each resolution?

A: At 1920x1080, Medium averages 137 FPS with a minimum of 117 and maximum of 158. At 2560x1440, Medium averages 89 FPS with a minimum of 75 and maximum of 102. At 3840x2160, Medium averages 48 FPS with a minimum of 41 and maximum of 55.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: This combo ranks 3068 out of 3712 tested combinations in Doom, placing it in the lower portion of results. This is primarily due to the GPU's 47th percentile ranking among all GPUs, despite the CPU's 87th percentile ranking.

Q: What are the GPU's clock speeds and memory specifications?

A: The GTX 1070 has a base clock of 1506 MHz and a boost clock of 1683 MHz. Its 8 GB GDDR5 memory runs at 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, providing 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth.