Doom

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination delivers exceptional performance in Doom, with the measured data indicating that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium produces 273 FPS average, which is only 41 FPS below the Low preset’s 314 FPS but provides substantially better visual quality. The gap narrows at higher resolutions, where Medium at 1440p delivers 177 FPS versus 203 FPS on Low, and at 4K the difference shrinks to just 14 FPS (96 versus 110). Ultra settings, while playable, show a significant performance cost; at 1080p Ultra drops to 189 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 66 FPS, which approaches the lower bounds of high-refresh-rate gaming. The High preset sits between these extremes, offering 231 FPS at 1080p and 150 FPS at 1440p, but its 81 FPS at 4K is barely above the Medium preset’s 96 FPS, making Medium the superior choice for 4K users.

Settings Recommendations

The data reveals a clear hierarchy where Medium consistently provides the best compromise between frame rate and visual fidelity. At 1080p, the jump from Medium to High costs 42 FPS (273 to 231), while the jump from Low to Medium costs 41 FPS (314 to 273) — nearly identical penalties, but Medium offers the richer visual experience. At 1440p, Medium’s 177 FPS exceeds High’s 150 FPS by 18%, and both remain well above the 122 FPS Ultra floor. The most compelling case for Medium emerges at 4K, where it achieves 96 FPS compared to High’s 81 FPS — a 15 FPS advantage that pushes the experience past the 90 FPS threshold many gamers consider smooth for fast-paced shooters. Ultra settings, while technically playable at all resolutions, show diminishing returns; the 66 FPS at 4K represents a 31% drop from Medium, which is a substantial penalty for marginal visual gains. For competitive play, Low at 1080p (314 FPS) or 1440p (203 FPS) maximizes refresh-rate headroom, but the measured data suggests Medium is the default recommendation, with High reserved for users who prioritize image quality over the extra 40+ FPS that Medium provides.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus delivers 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves more than sufficient for Doom’s demands, as evidenced by the consistent scaling across settings. The GPU’s base clock of 1920 MHz and boost clock of 2475 MHz, combined with 5888 shading units, drive the frame rates observed. The architecture’s 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for this title, which does not leverage ray tracing or DLSS in the measured scenarios, yet the raw rasterization performance — 29.15 TFLOPS FP32 and a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s — clearly carries the workload. The texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s aligns with the game’s texture-heavy environments, and the 64 ROPs handle the fill-rate requirements at 4K without bottlenecking, as the 81 FPS High result at 3840x2160 demonstrates. The GPU’s percentile rank of 81 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37648, places it slightly above the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37507, +0.4%) and NVIDIA Tesla P4 (37628, +0.1%), while trailing the RTX 4080 Mobile (38135, -1.3%). These synthetic scores corroborate the in-game results: the RTX 4070 is a high-midrange part that excels at 1440p and remains viable at 4K, though not without some concessions in settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS degradation from 1080p to 4K reveals a GPU-bound workload that scales predictably with pixel count. At Medium settings, the transition from 1080p (273 FPS) to 1440p (177 FPS) represents a 35% reduction, and further to 4K (96 FPS) another 46% drop — cumulative 65% loss from 1080p to 4K. Low settings show steeper relative declines: 314 FPS at 1080p falls to 203 FPS at 1440p (-35%) and 110 FPS at 4K (-65% from 1440p), indicating that at lower settings the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the limiting factor more acutely. High settings exhibit similar patterns, with 231 FPS dropping to 150 FPS (-35%) at 1440p and 81 FPS (-46%) at 4K. The consistency of these percentage drops across settings — roughly 35% for the 1080p-to-1440p step and 46-48% for the 1440p-to-4K step — strongly suggests the RTX 4070’s 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, as the 4K pixel count (8.3 million) requires proportionally more memory traffic than the 3.7 million pixels at 1440p. Interestingly, the 4K Medium result (96 FPS) exceeds the 4K High result (81 FPS) by 18.5%, but the 1440p Medium (177 FPS) is only 18% above 1440p High (150 FPS), indicating that the GPU’s compute resources scale more efficiently with resolution than its memory subsystem. The data implies that at 1080p, the Ryzen 9 5900X’s 12 cores and 24 threads provide ample headroom, but as resolution increases, the RTX 4070’s fill rate and bandwidth become the dominant factors.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this combo?

A: Medium settings provide the best 4K experience, delivering 96 FPS average with a minimum of 81 FPS. This outperforms High (81 FPS average) by 15 FPS and Ultra (66 FPS) by 30 FPS, while only sacrificing 14 FPS compared to Low (110 FPS).

Q: How does the RTX 4070 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4070’s average benchmark score of 37648 places it 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (37628) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37507), but 1.3% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38135).

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 5900X a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data suggests minimal CPU bottleneck, as the 1080p Low preset achieves 314 FPS, which is likely near the engine’s upper limits. The CPU’s multi-threaded score of 16262 in Cinebench R23 and 10075 in 3DMark max threads indicates substantial headroom for this era of gaming.

Q: What are the minimum FPS values for Medium settings across resolutions?

A: The measured minimums are 232 FPS at 1080p, 150 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. These minimums correspond exactly to the average FPS of the High preset at each resolution, suggesting a predictable performance envelope.

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

A: The combo ranks 860th out of 3712 tested combinations, placing it in the top 23% of all configurations tested for Doom.

Q: What memory configuration does the RTX 4070 use, and does it suffice?

A: The RTX 4070 uses 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth. The measured FPS data indicates this is sufficient, as even at 4K Ultra the game maintains 66 FPS without signs of memory swapping or stutter.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination achieves a rank of 860 out of 3712 tested combos in Doom, positioning it in the 77th percentile of all configurations. This ranking reflects the synergy between the 12-core, 24-thread CPU (which holds an 87th percentile rank among all CPUs) and the RTX 4070 (81st percentile among GPUs). The combo’s rank is slightly lower than the CPU’s individual percentile, indicating that the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing. The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (average score 41263, +0.3% delta), performs nearly identically in synthetic tests, yet the 5900X’s 12 physical cores provide more consistent frame pacing in real-world gaming scenarios. The GPU’s nearest rival, the RTX 4080 Mobile (38135, -1.3% delta), would likely achieve a higher in-game rank due to its superior bandwidth, but this desktop RTX 4070 still delivers excellent results. The 860th ranking out of 3712 means this combo outperforms approximately 2,852 other tested configurations, which is notable given the game’s 2016 release date and the hardware’s modern architecture. The data suggests that for Doom specifically, this combo sits in a sweet spot where neither component severely bottlenecks the other, though the 4K Ultra result of 66 FPS indicates the GPU’s limits are reached at maximum settings.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 5900X, built on TSMC’s 7 nm process with 8,300 million transistors across a dual-die design (2x 74 mm²), provides 12 cores and 24 threads with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost up to 4.80 GHz. Its 64 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth ensure the GPU is fed with data efficiently. In synthetic tests, the CPU achieves a multi-threaded score of 16262 in Cinebench R23 and 14118 in Geekbench multicore, with a single-thread score of 1527 in R23 and 2083 in Geekbench. The 3DMark results show scaling from 1852 (2 threads) to 10075 (max threads), indicating strong multi-core utilization. For Doom, a game optimized for high frame rates, the CPU’s single-thread performance (941 in 3DMark single thread, 3469 in PassMark single thread) is crucial for maintaining high average FPS. The measured 314 FPS at 1080p Low demonstrates that the CPU can drive frame rates beyond the refresh rates of most monitors, meaning the 5900X does not constrain the RTX 4070’s output. The CPU’s percentile rank of 87 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 41376, places it 0.3% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (41263) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 440 (41208), while trailing the Intel Core i7-14650HX (41576) by 0.5%. These margins are negligible in gaming, confirming that the CPU’s role in this combo is to provide consistent, high-frequency performance rather than raw throughput.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the combo delivers its fastest results. Low settings produce 314 FPS average, Medium achieves 273 FPS with a minimum of 232 FPS and maximum of 314 FPS, High reaches 231 FPS, and Ultra drops to 189 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 125 FPS, representing a 40% reduction in frame rate for maximum visual quality. The Medium preset’s minimum FPS of 232 matches the High average exactly, suggesting that Medium’s frame pacing is consistent with the High preset’s performance.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low settings yield 203 FPS, Medium delivers 177 FPS with a minimum of 150 FPS and maximum of 204 FPS, High achieves 150 FPS, and Ultra produces 122 FPS. The Medium preset’s maximum of 204 FPS nearly matches Low’s average of 203 FPS, indicating that Medium at 1440p can occasionally match Low’s performance in less demanding scenes. The 55 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution (203 to 122) is less pronounced than at 1080p, showing that GPU limitations begin to blur the settings differentiation.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low settings produce 110 FPS, Medium achieves 96 FPS with a minimum of 81 FPS and maximum of 110 FPS, High delivers 81 FPS, and Ultra falls to 66 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 81 FPS equals the High preset’s average, and its maximum of 110 FPS matches Low’s average, demonstrating that Medium at 4K provides highly variable performance that occasionally dips to High-tier levels. The 44 FPS spread from Low to Ultra (110 to 66) is the smallest of all resolutions, confirming that at 4K, the RTX 4070’s 504.2 GB/s bandwidth and 158.4 GPixel/s pixel rate are the dominant factors, regardless of settings. The data shows that Ultra at 4K (66 FPS) is only 14% faster than the 4K Medium minimum (81 FPS), suggesting that even the lowest settings cannot fully escape the GPU’s memory bandwidth constraints at this resolution.