Doom

# Doom — AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER

The measured frame rates for this combination show a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at higher resolutions, while the processor's 12-core, 24-thread configuration with a 5.50 GHz boost clock ensures that CPU-side bottlenecks are largely absent even at 1080p. At 4K Ultra the average drops to 31 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold many players target, yet at 1080p Low the average reaches 148 FPS, indicating that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary limiting factor once resolution and settings are reduced.

Resolution Scaling

The progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a steep performance curve that clearly identifies the GPU as the binding constraint. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 109 FPS at 1080p to 70 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of 39 FPS, and then further to 38 FPS at 4K, which represents a 71 FPS total drop from the starting resolution. This pattern is consistent with a graphics card whose 6 GB GDDR6 memory and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are being saturated as pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K.

The Low settings row shows the same trend with amplified magnitudes: 148 FPS at 1080p, 96 FPS at 1440p, and 52 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 52 FPS, and from 1440p to 4K it is 44 FPS. These are near-linear declines in performance, which suggests that the rendering workload scales predictably with resolution and that the GTX 1660 SUPER's 1408 shading units are the throughput ceiling. In contrast, the CPU's performance in 3DMark single-threaded tests (1269 score) and multi-threaded tests (13795 score at max threads) indicates ample headroom for feeding frames at these rates.

At Medium settings, the measured minimum FPS values provide additional insight into frame pacing. At 4K Medium, the average is 45 FPS with a minimum of 38 FPS and a maximum of 52 FPS, showing a 14 FPS spread between min and max. At 1440p Medium, the average is 83 FPS with a 71–96 FPS range, and at 1080p Medium, the average is 129 FPS with a 110–148 FPS range. The consistency of the min-to-max spread across resolutions—roughly 27–38% of the average—implies that the GPU's memory subsystem, rather than the CPU or DRAM latency, is responsible for the frame time variability.

The scaling behavior also tells a story about the game's engine efficiency. Doom, released in May 2016, was designed to run well on hardware of that era, and the data shows that even a mid-range GPU from late 2019 can push high frame rates at 1080p. The fact that the 4K Ultra average (31 FPS) is less than half the 1080p Ultra average (89 FPS) indicates that the game's ultra preset introduces additional shading and texture work that disproportionately taxes the GTX 1660 SUPER's 5.027 TFLOPS FP32 throughput.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combination achieves in Doom?

A: The highest measured average is 148 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next highest is 129 FPS at the same resolution with Medium settings, followed by 109 FPS at High and 89 FPS at Ultra.

Q: Does this system maintain 60 FPS at 1440p across all settings?

A: No. At 1440p, the average frame rates are 96 FPS for Low, 83 FPS for Medium, 70 FPS for High, and 58 FPS for Ultra. The Ultra preset falls just short of 60 FPS, while the other three presets exceed that threshold.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 12986, which places it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs. Its closest rival is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile with an average score of 12940 (0.4% higher), followed by the AMD Radeon RX 580 at 12928 (0.4% higher) and the AMD Radeon 740M at 12870 (0.9% lower).

Q: What is the performance difference between the CPU and its closest rival?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D has an average benchmark score of 54762, which is 0.6% lower than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (55093). It is 1.3% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54053) and 2% higher than the Intel Xeon 6505P (53701).

Q: Is the 4K Ultra setting playable with this hardware?

A: The measured average at 3840x2160 Ultra is 31 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay in a fast-paced FPS. For comparison, 4K Medium achieves 45 FPS and 4K Low reaches 52 FPS, so lower presets are required for playable 4K performance.

Q: What is the frame rate range at 1080p Medium, and does it indicate stability?

A: At 1920x1080 Medium, the average is 129 FPS, with a minimum of 110 FPS and a maximum of 148 FPS. The 38 FPS spread suggests moderate frame time variance, but the floor of 110 FPS ensures consistent high-refresh-rate gameplay on a 144 Hz monitor.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip fabricated on a 12 nm process at TSMC. The card's base clock is 1530 MHz with a boost clock of 1785 MHz, and it carries 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s. These specifications place it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 12986, making it a mid-range part that is now end-of-life.

In Doom, the GPU's role is decisive. At 1080p Low, the average of 148 FPS approaches the memory's effective 14 Gbps data rate limit, but it is the shading units and texture units that govern the scaling. The card has 1408 shading units, 88 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs, with a pixel rate of 85.68 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 157.1 GTexel/s. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (31 FPS) is only 21% of the 1080p Low result, which aligns with the fact that 4K has 4 times the pixels of 1080p and the Ultra preset increases per-pixel work.

The GPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores are the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (0.4% higher), the RX 580 (0.4% higher), and the Tesla M2090 (0.7% lower). In practical terms, these differences are within noise, so the GTX 1660 SUPER's performance in Doom is representative of its class. The 6 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K with High or Ultra settings, the memory bus width of 192 bits and the GDDR6 bandwidth become limiting factors, as evidenced by the 31 FPS Ultra result.

The GPU's compute performance in synthetic tests—Geekbench OpenCL score of 52490 and Vulkan score of 57102—shows that the card is well-suited to modern APIs, which Doom's Vulkan path leverages. The PassMark G3D score of 12699 and DirectX 12 score of 50 indicate that the card's driver and hardware support for DX12 is functional but not the strongest area, which may explain why the Ultra preset at 4K yields such low averages.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy for settings selection based on resolution. At 1920x1080, all settings deliver playable frame rates, but the best experience depends on the display's refresh rate. For a 144 Hz monitor, Medium settings (129 FPS average) offer the highest quality that remains above the refresh threshold, while Low (148 FPS) provides a small margin for frame drops. High (109 FPS) and Ultra (89 FPS) are better suited to 60 Hz displays, as they exceed 60 FPS but do not consistently hit 144 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the recommended preset is High, which averages 70 FPS and provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. Medium (83 FPS) is also viable for higher-refresh displays, while Ultra (58 FPS) falls just below the 60 FPS threshold and may introduce noticeable stutter in fast-paced scenes. Low (96 FPS) is the best option for competitive play if visual fidelity is sacrificed for smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the situation is more constrained. Low settings produce an average of 52 FPS, which is the only preset that approaches 60 FPS, though it still falls short. Medium (45 FPS) and High (38 FPS) are borderline playable on a 60 Hz display with adaptive sync, but Ultra (31 FPS) is not recommended for a game like Doom that relies on quick reflexes. For 4K, the data suggests that Low is the only viable preset, and even then, players should expect occasional dips below 50 FPS.

The trade-off between settings is also reflected in the min/max values at Medium settings, which show consistent spreads across resolutions. The 1080p Medium range (110–148 FPS) indicates that the GPU can sustain high frame rates without severe drops, making it the best balance of quality and performance for most users. The 1440p Medium range (71–96 FPS) is similarly stable, while the 4K Medium range (38–52 FPS) has a narrower but lower absolute performance window.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER ranks 2497 out of 2930 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the 85th percentile of all combinations. This ranking reflects the fact that the GPU is the dominant bottleneck, as the CPU is a high-end part that ranks in the 91st percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 54762.

The CPU's nearest rivals—the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (0.6% higher), Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (1.3% lower), Intel Xeon 6505P (2% lower), and Intel Core i7-14700F (2.1% lower)—all have similar synthetic scores, yet the game's frame rates are not meaningfully different from what a lower-end CPU might achieve with the same GPU. This indicates that the combo's rank is determined almost entirely by the GTX 1660 SUPER's performance ceiling.

In the context of all tested combos, the 2497 rank means that only 433 combinations perform worse in Doom. This is a low position for a system with a flagship-class CPU, but it is expected given that the GPU's 53rd percentile standing limits the overall frame rates. The data suggests that upgrading the GPU would yield a significant rank improvement, while upgrading the CPU would have negligible impact on Doom's performance.

The rank also highlights the asymmetry between the components. The CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads with 128 MB of L3 cache are far more than Doom requires, as the game's engine is not heavily multithreaded. The GPU's 6 GB VRAM and 192-bit bus are the limiting factors, and the measured FPS data confirms that the system behaves like a GPU-bound configuration across all resolutions and settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are 148 FPS for Low, 129 FPS for Medium, 109 FPS for High, and 89 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset also recorded a minimum of 110 FPS and a maximum of 148 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 59 FPS drop, with the largest single-step decline being 20 FPS from Medium to High, followed by 20 FPS from High to Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 96 FPS for Low, 83 FPS for Medium, 70 FPS for High, and 58 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset has a range of 71–96 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p reduces frame rates by 35–39% across settings, which is consistent with the 1.78x increase in pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 52 FPS for Low, 45 FPS for Medium, 38 FPS for High, and 31 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset has a range of 38–52 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K reduces frame rates by 46–47%, which is slightly more severe than the pixel count increase of 2.25x, indicating that the GPU's memory bandwidth is being taxed beyond its linear scaling.

The full data set shows that the difference between Low and Ultra settings grows with resolution. At 1080p, the gap is 59 FPS; at 1440p, it is 38 FPS; and at 4K, it is 21 FPS. This narrowing gap suggests that at higher resolutions, the GPU is so saturated that even reducing settings cannot fully compensate for the pixel load, as the 4K Low average of 52 FPS is still below the 1080p Ultra average of 89 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor from the 9000 series, based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) and manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a 120 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in dual-channel mode with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and it includes 128 MB of L3 cache, which is a defining feature of the X3D series.

In Doom, the CPU's role is minimal due to the game's moderate threading requirements. The processor's 3DMark single-thread score of 1269 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6739 indicate strong per-core performance, which is sufficient to avoid CPU bottlenecks even at 1080p Low where the GPU is producing 148 FPS. The multi-threaded scores—Cinebench R23 multicore of 47737 and Geekbench multicore of 22884—show that the CPU has enormous headroom for other tasks, but Doom does not utilize this capacity.

The CPU's 91st percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54762, places it just below the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (55093) and above the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54053). These rivals have similar core counts and clock speeds, and the deltaPct values are within 2.1%, meaning that real-world gaming differences are negligible. For Doom specifically, the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads are far more than necessary, and the measured FPS data shows no evidence of CPU limitation at any resolution or settings level.

The CPU's cache hierarchy—80 KB L1 per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 128 MB L3—is designed to reduce memory latency for gaming workloads. However, Doom's engine does not appear to benefit significantly from the large L3 cache, as the frame rates are consistent with GPU-bound scaling. The 4 nm process and 16,630 million transistors contribute to the CPU's efficiency, but these factors do not translate into higher FPS in this title when paired with a mid-range GPU.