Doom

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti produces a fascinating dataset for Doom (2016), a game known for its scalability. This combination ranks 1839th out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the 50th percentile of all system configurations tested for this title. The data reveals a system that is capable of high refresh rate gaming at 1080p and remains surprisingly playable at 4K, though the bottlenecks shift dramatically depending on resolution and settings.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) using a 4 nm process at TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The processor features a 32 MB shared L3 cache along with 1 MB of L2 cache per core and 80 KB of L1 cache per core. It supports DDR5 memory on a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9700X demonstrates strong single-thread performance with a 3dmark_single_thread score of 1280 and a cinebench_r23_singlecore score of 2211. Its multi-threaded capabilities are equally robust, as shown by a cinebench_r23_multicore score of 20485 and a 3dmark_max_threads score of 9771. The CPU holds an 86th percentile ranking versus all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37943. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i9-14901E (avg score 37911, deltaPct 0.1) and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (avg score 37904, deltaPct 0.1), indicating the 9700X sits at the top of a tightly clustered group of high-performance processors.

For Doom, the CPU's high boost clock of 5.50 GHz is likely the more critical factor than the core count. The game's id Tech 6 engine is well-optimized for multi-threading, but the measured FPS data suggests that at lower resolutions, the CPU is doing significant work. At 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 236 FPS average, which drops to 174 FPS at High settings. This 62 FPS gap between Low and High at 1080p indicates that the CPU has headroom to feed the GPU, but the framerate is still high enough to suggest the CPU is not severely limiting the system at this resolution. The 9700X's strong single-core performance, evidenced by its geekbench_singlecore score of 3023, likely helps maintain high minimum framerates, though minFps data is not available for most rows.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

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

A: The measured average FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings is 142 FPS. This is the lowest average at 1080p among the four settings presets, showing that Ultra preset costs a significant 94 FPS compared to Low settings at the same resolution.

Q: How does the 4K Medium preset compare to the 1080p Ultra preset in terms of average FPS?

A: At 3840x2160 with Medium settings, the average FPS is 72, while at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 142. This represents a 70 FPS difference, with the 4K Medium preset delivering roughly half the average framerate of the 1080p Ultra preset.

Q: What is the ranking of this CPU-GPU combination among all tested combos for Doom?

A: The combination of AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ranks 1839th out of 3712 tested combos in Doom. This places it at approximately the 50.5th percentile of all tested system configurations for this game.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded for this combo across all tested settings?

A: The lowest average FPS is 50 FPS, which occurs at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings. This is the only measured configuration that dips below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo across all tested settings?

A: The highest average FPS is 236 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This shows the system's maximum potential for high refresh rate displays at the lowest graphical preset.

Q: How much does the average FPS improve when going from 1080p High to 1440p High?

A: At 1920x1080 with High settings, the average FPS is 174, while at 2560x1440 with High settings, the average FPS drops to 113. This is a 61 FPS decrease when moving from 1080p to 1440p at the same High preset.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

Examining the High settings preset across all three resolutions reveals the scaling behavior of this combo. At 1080p High, the average FPS is 174. Moving to 1440p High drops this to 113 FPS, a 35% reduction. At 4K High, the average FPS falls to 61 FPS, which is a 46% further reduction from 1440p and a 65% total reduction from 1080p. This pattern strongly suggests that the RTX 3060 Ti becomes the primary limiting factor as resolution increases.

The 1440p to 4K drop is particularly telling. The pixel count increases by 2.25 times from 1440p to 4K, yet the FPS drops from 113 to 61, a 46% reduction. This is less than the pixel scaling would suggest, indicating that the CPU is still contributing some performance headroom, but the GPU is clearly struggling with the increased pixel throughput.

When examining the Low settings preset, the scaling is even more pronounced. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 236. At 1440p Low, it drops to 153 FPS, and at 4K Low, it falls to 83 FPS. The 4K Low result of 83 FPS is notably higher than the 4K High result of 61 FPS, showing that reducing settings at 4K yields a 36% performance gain. This suggests that at 4K, lowering settings can effectively shift the bottleneck back toward the CPU, which is better equipped to handle the game's logic than the GPU's fill rate capabilities.

The data implies that at 1080p, the Ryzen 7 9700X's strong single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 1280) is sufficient to push the RTX 3060 Ti to its limits, evidenced by the 236 FPS Low preset result. However, the 142 FPS Ultra preset at 1080p shows that the GPU still has ample headroom when settings are maxed. The bottleneck at 1080p Ultra is more balanced, while at 4K, the GPU's 8 GB of VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth become the clear constraint.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ranks 1839th out of 3712 tested combos for Doom. This rank places the system in the 50.5th percentile of all tested configurations, meaning it performs better than roughly half of all combos tested for this game.

This middle-of-the-pack ranking is somewhat surprising given the individual strengths of the components. The CPU holds an 86th percentile ranking versus all CPUs, and the GPU holds a 59th percentile ranking versus all GPUs. The combination's 50.5th percentile ranking for Doom suggests that the game's specific demands do not fully leverage the strengths of either component, or that the RTX 3060 Ti's 59th percentile GPU ranking drags down the overall system performance.

The RTX 3060 Ti's nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark database include the AMD Radeon RX 9060 (avg score 16014, deltaPct 0.7) and the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (avg score 16351, deltaPct -1.4). These close scores indicate the 3060 Ti sits in a competitive performance band, but not at the top tier. The CPU's nearest rivals, the Intel Core i9-14901E and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, have avg scores within 0.1% of the 9700X, showing the CPU is at the apex of its performance class.

The rank 1839 out of 3712 suggests that for Doom, the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing. The CPU's high performance, as evidenced by its cinebench_r23_multicore score of 20485, is not fully utilized by the game's engine, which appears to be more GPU-bound in this configuration. The data implies that pairing the 9700X with a higher-tier GPU would yield a significantly better combo ranking, while pairing the 3060 Ti with a lower-tier CPU might not substantially reduce Doom's performance, given the GPU's apparent bottleneck role.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture using an 8 nm process at Samsung, featuring 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. It has a base clock of 1410 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The GPU comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The GPU's 4864 shading units, 152 TMUs, and 80 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 133.2 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 253.1 GTexel/s. Its FP32 performance is 16.20 TFLOPS, with FP16 performance also at 16.20 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The 38 RT cores and 152 tensor cores support ray tracing and DLSS features, though Doom (2016) does not utilize these features. The GPU holds a 59th percentile ranking versus all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 16129, placing it near the AMD Radeon RX 9060 (avg score 16014) and AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (avg score 16351).

In Doom, the GPU's 8 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for all tested settings at all resolutions, as no VRAM-related crashes or stutters are indicated in the measured data. The 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is likely sufficient for the game's texture streaming, even at 4K. However, the GPU's compute capabilities, as shown by its passmark_gpu_compute score of 10006, may be the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The measured FPS data shows the GPU's performance ceiling. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 50, which is below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay. This suggests that the GPU's 16.20 TFLOPS FP32 performance is insufficient for maxed-out 4K settings in Doom. At 4K Low, the average FPS improves to 83, showing that reducing settings can bring the GPU's workload to a more manageable level. The fact that the 1080p Low preset achieves 236 FPS indicates the GPU is capable of very high framerates when the pixel workload is low, but its fill rate and shading power become bottlenecks as resolution increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

1920x1080:

• Low: 236 FPS average
• Medium: 206 FPS average (min 175, max 237)
• High: 174 FPS average
• Ultra: 142 FPS average

2560x1440:

• Low: 153 FPS average
• Medium: 133 FPS average (min 113, max 153)
• High: 113 FPS average
• Ultra: 92 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 83 FPS average
• Medium: 72 FPS average (min 61, max 83)
• High: 61 FPS average
• Ultra: 50 FPS average

The 1080p results show a clear progression from Low to Ultra, with a 94 FPS spread between the lowest and highest settings. The Medium preset at 1080p has min and max values of 175 and 237, respectively, indicating a 62 FPS range. This is the only resolution where the Medium preset's min FPS (175) is higher than the High preset's average FPS (174), suggesting that the Medium preset provides more consistent performance than the High preset at this resolution.

At 1440p, the spread narrows to 61 FPS between Low (153) and Ultra (92). The Medium preset at 1440p shows min and max values of 113 and 153, respectively, which perfectly match the High preset's average (113) and the Low preset's average (153) at this resolution. This suggests that the Medium preset's performance range encompasses the entire span of the other presets' averages.

At 4K, the spread is 33 FPS between Low (83) and Ultra (50). The Medium preset at 4K has min and max values of 61 and 83, respectively, which again match the High preset's average (61) and the Low preset's average (83) at this resolution. The 4K Medium preset's 72 FPS average is exactly halfway between the High and Low averages, showing a linear scaling pattern at this resolution.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Analyzing the measured data, the 1080p Medium preset stands out as the most balanced option for this combo. With an average FPS of 206 and a minimum of 175, it provides a 62 FPS safety margin above the 144 Hz refresh rate that many gaming monitors offer. The max FPS of 237 shows the system has headroom to handle demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 1080p achieves 206 FPS, which is 32 FPS higher than the High preset's 174 FPS average, while the visual quality difference between Medium and High in Doom is typically less pronounced than the framerate difference.

For 1440p, the Medium preset with an average of 133 FPS and a minimum of 113 FPS is the recommended choice. This provides a smooth experience on 120 Hz or 144 Hz displays, with the minimum FPS staying above the 100 FPS threshold. The High preset at 1440p drops to 113 FPS average with a minimum that would likely fall below 100 FPS, making it less suitable for high refresh rate displays. The Ultra preset at 1440p (92 FPS average) is only recommended for 60 Hz displays or when visual fidelity is prioritized over framerate.

At 4K, the Medium preset delivers 72 FPS average with a minimum of 61 FPS, which is the only 4K preset that maintains a playable framerate above 60 FPS for the entire duration. The High preset at 4K averages 61 FPS, which is borderline playable but may dip below 60 in intense scenes. The Ultra preset at 4K (50 FPS average) is not recommended for competitive play or smooth gameplay, though it may be acceptable for slower-paced exploration.

The data suggests that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this combo across all resolutions. At 1080p, it offers a 32 FPS improvement over High with a minimum FPS of 175 that exceeds the High preset's average. At 1440p, the Medium preset's 133 FPS average is 20 FPS higher than High, with a minimum of 113 FPS that is equal to the High preset's average. At 4K, the Medium preset is the only option that consistently stays above 60 FPS, making it the safest choice for maintaining smooth gameplay while still enjoying improved visual quality over the Low preset.