Doom

# Doom: AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + AMD Radeon RX 580 — Benchmark Analysis

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 produces a playable but resolution-limited experience in Doom, with the GPU acting as the clear performance ceiling at every tested setting. The data shows a system that delivers 102 FPS at 1080p Low but falls to just 22 FPS at 4K Ultra, a spread that indicates the RX 580's aging Polaris architecture is the dominant constraint while the Ryzen 7 9700F's eight Zen 5 cores sit largely underutilized. This combo ranks 2675th out of 2930 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 9% of the database, a position driven almost entirely by the GPU's mid-range standing rather than the CPU's top-tier percentile.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates expose a steep and consistent drop as resolution climbs from 1080p to 4K, a pattern that unequivocally points to the RX 580 as the limiting component. At 1080p High, the combo produces 75 FPS, but moving to 1440p High reduces that to 49 FPS — a 35% decline. Pushing further to 4K High yields just 26 FPS, a 65% reduction from the 1080p baseline. These losses are far larger than what a CPU-bound system would show, because the Ryzen 7 9700F's compute resources are not being stressed by the increasing pixel count; instead, the RX 580's 256-bit memory bus and 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput become the bottleneck.

The scaling pattern across all settings reinforces this conclusion. From 1080p Low (102 FPS) to 1440p Low (66 FPS) is a 35% drop, and 4K Low (36 FPS) represents a 65% loss from 1080p. The consistency of these percentages — roughly one-third lost at 1440p and two-thirds lost at 4K regardless of quality preset — indicates that the GPU's raw fill rate and shader throughput are being saturated uniformly. The RX 580's pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s and texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s are simply insufficient to feed a 4K display at acceptable frame rates, regardless of how much the CPU could theoretically support.

Notably, the gap between 1440p and 4K is more punishing than the gap between 1080p and 1440p. At Medium settings, 1080p delivers 89 FPS, 1440p drops to 58 FPS (a 35% loss), but 4K collapses to 31 FPS — a 47% further reduction from 1440p. This non-linear degradation suggests that the RX 580's 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth are being overwhelmed at 4K, where the sheer number of pixels requires more memory throughput than the Polaris 20 chip can provide. The 4K Ultra result of 22 FPS is effectively unplayable, and even 4K Low at 36 FPS falls below the smoothness threshold for an FPS title.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F brings substantial processing power to this pairing, but Doom's benchmark results show that the CPU is rarely the limiting factor. With 8 cores, 16 threads, a base clock of 3.80 GHz, and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, this Zen 5 architecture chip (Granite Ridge, 4 nm process) delivers a Passmark single-thread score of 4691 and a multithread score of 36470. These figures place the CPU in the 94th percentile of all processors, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.2% faster), Intel Core i7-14700KF (0.2% slower), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.7% faster), and Intel Core i7-14700K (0.9% faster). The CPU's performance headroom is vast compared to what the RX 580 can utilize.

Evidence of CPU headroom appears in the frame rate scaling. If the Ryzen 7 9700F were the bottleneck, FPS would remain roughly flat across resolutions at a given setting, since the CPU's work per frame is resolution-independent. Instead, the data shows dramatic FPS decreases with each resolution step, confirming that the GPU is saturated while the CPU idles. At 1080p Low, the system hits 102 FPS — a solid result that still does not approach the CPU's theoretical maximum in this game. The 89 FPS at 1080p Medium and 75 FPS at 1080p High further indicate that the CPU can comfortably feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the RX 580's output ceiling is reached well before the 9700F's capacity.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s via dual-channel DDR5 and its PCIe Gen 5 interface (24 lanes) provide ample data transfer capability for the GPU. However, the RX 580 is a PCIe 3.0 x16 device, so the system operates at the older standard's bandwidth, which does not appear to hinder results given the GPU's other limitations. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB per-core L2 cache are more than sufficient for Doom's engine, which is not known for cache-sensitive workloads. In short, the Ryzen 7 9700F is overqualified for this pairing, and its performance percentile (94th) contrasts sharply with the GPU's 53rd percentile, underscoring the imbalance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for optimizing the Doom experience with this hardware. At 1080p, the sweet spot is High settings, which delivers 75 FPS — comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while maintaining visual fidelity. The jump from Medium (89 FPS) to High (75 FPS) costs only 14 FPS, but the visual improvement in an FPS title is typically worthwhile. Ultra at 1080p drops to 62 FPS, which is still playable but leaves little margin for demanding scenes, and the 13 FPS penalty over High is not justified by the incremental quality gain in Doom's fast-paced action.

At 1440p, Medium settings at 58 FPS represent the best balance, as High (49 FPS) and Ultra (40 FPS) fall below the smoothness threshold for competitive play, while Low (66 FPS) sacrifices too much visual quality for only 8 FPS more than Medium. The 1440p Medium result includes a minimum FPS of 49 and maximum of 66, indicating some frame-time variance but generally acceptable performance for a single-player FPS. For users who prioritize frame rate over visuals, 1440p Low at 66 FPS is the safer choice, but Medium offers a superior experience without dropping below 49 FPS at the minimum.

At 4K, no setting is truly playable, but Low at 36 FPS is the only option that approaches playability, and even that falls short of the 40 FPS minimum for a tolerable experience. Medium (31 FPS), High (26 FPS), and Ultra (22 FPS) are all below acceptable thresholds. The recommendation is to avoid 4K entirely with this combo, as the RX 580's 8 GB VRAM and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot sustain smooth frame rates at that resolution. The 1080p High preset is the overall best experience, offering a 75 FPS average that is both smooth and visually detailed, with 1440p Medium as the alternative for users with higher-resolution monitors who can tolerate slightly lower frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 2675 out of 2930 tested combinations places it in the bottom 8.7% of the database, a position that reflects the GPU's age and tier rather than the CPU's capability. The Ryzen 7 9700F alone sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, but the RX 580's 53rd percentile among GPUs drags the overall system ranking down dramatically. This disparity is the defining characteristic of the pairing: a modern, high-end CPU shackled to an end-of-life GPU from 2017.

In the context of Doom specifically, the rank indicates that most tested combos outperform this one, which is expected given the game's optimization for a wide range of hardware. The RX 580's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (0.1% faster), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (0.4% faster), AMD Radeon 740M (0.5% slower), and AMD FirePro W5100 (0.6% slower). These deltas are all within 1%, meaning the RX 580 performs essentially on par with a mobile RTX 3050 Ti and a desktop GTX 1660 SUPER in synthetic benchmarks, but Doom's specific workload may favor one over the other.

The CPU's nearest rivals — Ryzen 9 7940HX, Core i7-14700KF, Ryzen 9 7950X, and Core i7-14700K — are all within 1% of the 9700F's average benchmark score of 69996, confirming that the CPU is delivering performance consistent with top-tier desktop processors. However, this CPU performance does not translate into a high combo rank because the GPU cannot leverage it. The 62 FPS at 1080p Ultra and 102 FPS at 1080p Low are respectable for the GPU but far below what the CPU could support with a faster graphics card.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the decisive factor in this combo's performance, and its specifications explain the measured results. Built on the Polaris 20 chip with GCN 4.0 architecture at 14 nm, the GPU features 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. Its base clock of 1257 MHz and boost clock of 1340 MHz, combined with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus providing 256.0 GB/s bandwidth, yield a peak FP32 throughput of 6.175 TFLOPS. These are mid-range figures for 2017, and they show their age in 2025's Doom benchmarks.

The GPU's percentile rank of 53rd among all tested GPUs places it almost exactly in the middle of the database, with an average benchmark score of 12928. Its nearest rivals include the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (0.1% faster), GTX 1660 SUPER (0.4% faster), Radeon 740M (0.5% slower), and FirePro W5100 (0.6% slower). This clustering indicates that the RX 580 is competitive with entry-level modern GPUs but trails dedicated mid-range and high-end cards by a wide margin. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1005 and Passmark G3D score of 8813 further quantify its position.

The GPU's memory configuration is a particular weakness at higher resolutions. The 8 GB capacity is sufficient for Doom, but the GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz (8 Gbps effective) provides 256.0 GB/s bandwidth, which is insufficient for 4K workloads. The measured 4K results — 36 FPS at Low, 31 FPS at Medium, 26 FPS at High, and 22 FPS at Ultra — all fall below playable thresholds, and the memory bandwidth is likely the primary culprit. At 1080p, the GPU can deliver 102 FPS at Low settings, indicating that the shader and texture units are adequate for lower pixel counts, but the memory subsystem becomes a bottleneck as resolution increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo in Doom is as follows:

At 1920x1080, the results across settings are: Low averages 102 FPS, Medium averages 89 FPS with a minimum of 76 and maximum of 103, High averages 75 FPS, and Ultra averages 62 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 40 FPS drop (from 102 to 62), a 39% reduction. The Medium setting's minimum of 76 FPS indicates that even in demanding scenes, the frame rate stays well above the 60 FPS threshold, making 1080p the only resolution where all settings are playable. The Ultra result of 62 FPS is the tightest margin, but it still clears the 60 FPS bar.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low averages 66 FPS, Medium averages 58 FPS with a minimum of 49 and maximum of 66, High averages 49 FPS, and Ultra averages 40 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 26 FPS (from 66 to 40), a 39% reduction, mirroring the 1080p scaling pattern. However, only Low and Medium achieve averages above 60 FPS and 50 FPS, respectively. The Medium minimum of 49 FPS suggests occasional frame dips that could be noticeable in fast action, while High and Ultra both fall below the smoothness threshold.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low averages 36 FPS, Medium averages 31 FPS with a minimum of 27 and maximum of 36, High averages 26 FPS, and Ultra averages 22 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 14 FPS (from 36 to 22), a 39% reduction, again consistent with the other resolutions. None of these averages reach 40 FPS, making 4K unplayable across all settings. The Medium minimum of 27 FPS is particularly low, indicating frame times that would cause noticeable stuttering. The data across all resolutions shows a consistent 39% performance penalty from Low to Ultra, but the absolute frame rates at 4K are too low for practical use.