Doom

The pairing of AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HX mobile processor with NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU produces an intriguing dataset in Doom, a title whose 2016 engine scales broadly across hardware. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet one where the 16-core CPU still manages to push well past the 200 FPS mark at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the resolution scaling, compares the combo’s standing among nearly three thousand tested combinations, and examines the individual roles of the GPU and CPU in shaping these results.

Resolution Scaling

The performance curve from 1080p to 4K shows a textbook case of GPU saturation. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo delivers an average of 330 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops that figure to 214 FPS, a 35% reduction. Stepping up to 4K reduces the average further to 116 FPS, which is 65% below the 1080p baseline. This steep decline indicates that the graphics card is the primary limiting factor as pixel count increases; the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at lower resolutions, but the RTX 5090’s rendering workload becomes the bottleneck at 4K.

The pattern persists across all settings presets. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate falls from 198 FPS at 1080p to 128 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 70 FPS at 4K. The delta between 1080p and 4K at Ultra is 128 FPS, a 65% drop, mirroring the Low setting ratio. This consistency suggests that the scaling penalty is primarily a function of resolution rather than the complexity of the settings themselves; the engine’s render pipeline scales uniformly with pixel throughput.

The 4K results are particularly telling. With the RTX 5090’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, there is no memory capacity or bandwidth wall evident—the frame rates are purely a product of the shader and rasterization workload. The 70 FPS average at 4K Ultra is playable, but it is far from the high-refresh-rate territory the system achieves at lower resolutions. Meanwhile, the 1080p results, peaking at 330 FPS on Low, suggest that the CPU is still keeping pace, but the GPU’s fill rate is the ceiling.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of 2,930 tested processor and graphics card combinations for Doom, this specific pairing holds the 584th position. That rank places it in the top 20% of all combos, which is a strong showing given the mobile nature of the CPU. The ranking reflects a system that is capable of high refresh rates at 1440p and solid 4K performance, but it is not at the absolute top tier, where desktop-class components with higher power envelopes typically dominate.

The combo’s rank is likely influenced by the CPU’s mobile designation. While the Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread part with a 5.40 GHz boost clock, it is constrained by a 55W TDP, which limits sustained all-core performance compared to desktop counterparts. However, Doom is not a heavily threaded title, and the benchmark results show that the CPU’s single-thread performance is sufficient to avoid being a major bottleneck at 1080p. The rank of 584 out of 2,930 combos suggests that there are many desktop pairings with higher raw GPU throughput, but this mobile combo still outperforms a majority of the field.

The percentile data for the individual components provides context. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 76,212 places it in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU’s average score of 79,842 puts it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The game-specific rank is slightly lower than either component’s general percentile, implying that Doom’s engine does not fully exploit the strengths of this pairing, likely due to the engine’s age and its rendering path not scaling perfectly with the latest Blackwell architecture. The combo is strong, but it is not maximizing the potential of its parts in this specific title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications align closely with the observed frame rates. The GPU features 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 render output units. Its boost clock of 2407 MHz, combined with a 512-bit memory bus and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, provides the raw throughput necessary for high-resolution rendering. The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory is ample for any setting, and the data shows no signs of texture thrashing or memory-related stutters, as the minimum FPS values at Medium settings are proportionally close to the averages.

The GPU’s 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is a key driver of the frame rates. At 4K High, the average of 85 FPS suggests that the card is fully utilized, with the pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s being the limiting factors. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K—116 FPS versus 70 FPS—shows a 46 FPS spread, indicating that the GPU’s shading and texturing workload scales significantly with the settings preset. The RTX 5090’s performance here is consistent with its position in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, though its nearest rivals in the synthetic benchmarks—the Tesla P100 variants—are not representative of gaming performance.

The GPU’s role is further clarified by the scaling from 1440p to 4K. At High settings, the drop from 157 FPS to 85 FPS is a 46% reduction, which is slightly less than the theoretical pixel count increase of 2.25x, suggesting that the GPU has some headroom at 1440p that allows it to absorb the resolution jump more gracefully. However, at Ultra settings, the drop from 128 FPS to 70 FPS is a 45% reduction, showing a similar pattern. The GPU is clearly the bottleneck at 4K, but it is a capable one, maintaining playable frame rates across all presets.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo in Doom?

A: The highest average is 330 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo delivers an average of 70 FPS.

Q: What is the combo’s rank among all tested processors and graphics cards in Doom?

A: The combo ranks 584th out of 2,930 combinations.

Q: Is there a significant difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the average frame rate drops from 214 FPS on Low to 128 FPS on Ultra at 2560x1440, a 40% reduction.

Q: Does the GPU have enough memory for this game?

A: Yes, the GPU has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory, which is more than sufficient for the game’s requirements, as indicated by the stable minimum FPS values.

Q: What is the GPU’s boost clock speed?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 has a boost clock of 2407 MHz.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates provide a complete picture of the combo’s capabilities across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the performance is exceptionally high, with an average of 330 FPS on Low, 287 FPS on Medium, 243 FPS on High, and 198 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset also recorded a minimum FPS of 244 and a maximum of 331, indicating a tight frame pacing that is well-suited for competitive play.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 214 FPS on Low, 186 FPS on Medium, 157 FPS on High, and 128 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset’s minimum and maximum FPS were 158 and 214, respectively, showing a slight increase in variance compared to 1080p but still maintaining a smooth experience. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across settings, with an average reduction of roughly 35-36%.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 116 FPS on Low, 101 FPS on Medium, 85 FPS on High, and 70 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset recorded a minimum of 86 FPS and a maximum of 116 FPS. This resolution shows the largest performance gap between Low and Ultra, with a 46 FPS difference. The 4K results are playable across all presets, but the Ultra preset dips below the 72 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate displays.

The data shows no anomalies or performance spikes, suggesting that the combination of the Ryzen 9 8945HX and RTX 5090 is well-balanced for this title, with the GPU handling the brunt of the workload at higher resolutions and the CPU providing sufficient frame generation at lower resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, codenamed Dragon Range. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a 64 MB L3 cache. In Doom, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics updates, and the benchmark results show that it does so effectively. The 1080p Low average of 330 FPS is an indicator that the CPU is not a limiting factor at lower resolutions, as the engine’s single-threaded performance is well-served by the high boost clock.

The CPU’s synthetic benchmarks reinforce its capability. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42,713 and single-core score of 6,030 place it in the 95th percentile of all CPUs. The PassMark single-thread score of 3,907 is particularly relevant for Doom, which is known to be sensitive to single-core performance. The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX, has an average score that is 0.1% higher, indicating a near-tie in general processing power, but the AMD part’s high boost clock gives it an edge in lightly threaded workloads.

The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s is not a bottleneck in this game, as Doom does not require heavy data streaming. The processor’s 55W TDP is low for a 16-core part, but in this title, the power constraints do not manifest as performance issues, as the frame rates at 1080p are exceptionally high. The data shows that the CPU is capable of delivering over 300 FPS in the most favorable conditions, which is more than sufficient for any current display technology. The combo’s rank of 584 out of 2,930 confirms the CPU’s ability to keep pace with the flagship GPU, ensuring that the system’s overall performance is not hamstrung by its mobile processor.