Doom

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for this CPU-GPU combo in Doom at 1080p?

A: The data shows that Low settings produce the highest average FPS at 314, followed by Medium at 273, High at 231, and Ultra at 189. For the smoothest experience at 1080p, Low delivers the maximum frame rate, but Medium still provides a very high 273 FPS average with better visual quality.

Q: How much performance drops when moving from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 231 at 1080p to 150 at 1440p, a decrease of 81 FPS. At Low settings, it drops from 314 to 203, a decrease of 111 FPS. The relative drop is roughly 35% across settings, indicating the GPU becomes more stressed at higher resolution.

Q: What is the worst-case performance at 4K Ultra settings?

A: The lowest measured average FPS is 66 at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. This is the only measured configuration that falls below 80 FPS, and it remains above 60 FPS, suggesting a playable experience even at maximum quality.

Q: Does this combo show better performance at 1080p or 4K?

A: At 1080p, the average FPS across all settings ranges from 189 to 314, while at 4K it ranges from 66 to 110. The 1080p results are roughly three times higher, indicating that at lower resolutions the CPU has more headroom to drive frames.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 compare to its nearest GPU rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4070 has an average benchmark score of 37648, which is 1.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (score 38135) and 0.4% higher than the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (score 37507). The closest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla P4 with a score of 37628, just 0.1% behind.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking among tested configurations?

A: In Doom, this combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 860th out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the top 23% of all configurations.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Doom reveals a clear hierarchy across the four graphics presets at each resolution. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves 314 FPS average, which is the highest recorded frame rate for this combo. Medium delivers 273 FPS, High provides 231 FPS, and Ultra settles at 189 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs roughly 41 FPS, while the step from High to Ultra costs about 42 FPS. Given that even the lowest preset at this resolution produces a frame rate far beyond typical display refresh rates, the choice of preset should be driven by visual fidelity rather than raw performance.

At 1440p, the pattern shifts slightly. Low produces 203 FPS, Medium 177 FPS, High 150 FPS, and Ultra 122 FPS. All four presets remain above 120 FPS, which means gamers with high-refresh 1440p monitors can comfortably select Ultra without dropping below the 120 FPS threshold. The difference between Low and Ultra is 81 FPS, representing a meaningful trade-off, but the absolute floor of 122 FPS keeps the experience fluid.

At 4K, the situation changes more dramatically. Low achieves 110 FPS, Medium 96 FPS, High 81 FPS, and Ultra 66 FPS. Here, the Ultra preset dips close to the 60 FPS baseline, making it a borderline choice depending on the display's refresh rate. For 4K, the Medium preset appears to offer the best balance, delivering 96 FPS average with a documented minimum of 81 FPS, which keeps frame pacing consistent even during intense scenes. High at 81 FPS is also viable but leaves less headroom for dips. The data suggests that for the best experience per the measured rows, Medium at 4K provides solid performance without sacrificing as much visual quality as Low, while still maintaining a comfortable margin above 60 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K for this combo in Doom shows a steep decline that is consistent with a GPU-bound workload at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average FPS moves from 231 at 1080p to 150 at 1440p to 81 at 4K. This represents a 35% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 46% drop from 1440p to 4K. At Low settings, the numbers are 314, 203, and 110 respectively, showing drops of 35% and 46% as well, indicating that the scaling pattern is largely independent of the quality preset.

The fact that the relative performance drop is nearly identical across all presets suggests that the limiting component at higher resolutions is the GPU rather than the CPU. The RTX 4070 with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 192-bit bus width provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which becomes increasingly stressed as pixel count grows. At 4K, the rendering workload quadruples compared to 1080p, and the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (66 FPS) is roughly one-third of the 1080p Ultra result (189 FPS), confirming that the GPU is scaling almost linearly with pixel count.

The CPU's role appears minimal in this game, as the Ryzen 9 9950X3D with 16 cores and 32 threads has ample headroom even at 1080p where frame rates exceed 300 FPS. The single-thread performance, indicated by a Geekbench single-core score of 3064 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 1292, is more than sufficient for Doom's engine, which was released in 2016 and is not known for heavy multi-threaded demands. The data indicates that the GPU is the primary constraint as resolution rises, and the CPU's high clock speeds — with a base of 4.30 GHz and boost of 5.70 GHz — ensure that it never becomes a bottleneck even at 1080p Low where the GPU pushes 314 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

In the benchmark database, this specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 achieves a rank of 860 out of 3712 tested combos in Doom. This places the configuration in the top 23% of all recorded results, which is a solid showing given that the RTX 4070 is positioned as a mid-range GPU in NVIDIA's 40-series lineup.

The CPU itself ranks in the 95th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 75779. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (score 75738, just 0.1% lower) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (score 75716, also 0.1% lower). The Intel Core Ultra 9 285 trails by 0.4% with a score of 75488. This indicates that the 9950X3D is at the top of the CPU performance hierarchy, and any ranking limitations for the combo come from the GPU side.

The GPU, on the other hand, ranks in the 81st percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 37648. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla P4, is just 0.1% behind with a score of 37628, while the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is 0.4% behind. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is actually 1.3% ahead, but this is a mobile part, so the comparison is not directly relevant for desktop gaming. Given this GPU's percentile placement, the combo's 860th rank out of 3712 makes sense: the CPU is near the top, but the GPU holds the configuration back from the highest echelons of the ranking.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is built on the AD104 chip using the Ada Lovelace architecture on a 5 nm process from TSMC. It features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units, along with 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, producing a peak FP32 performance of 29.15 TFLOPS. The memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus, delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth with memory clocks running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective).

In Doom, the GPU's role is clearly dominant at higher resolutions. At 4K, the average FPS across settings ranges from 66 to 110, which is well below the 1080p range of 189 to 314. The 12 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for this game, as Doom is not known for excessive memory usage even at 4K Ultra. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, however, becomes a limiting factor when the pixel count rises, since the frame buffer demands increase proportionally with resolution.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark scores align with its in-game performance. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3854, and the Geekbench Vulkan score is 174152. These numbers, combined with the PassMark G3D score of 26927, place the GPU in the 81st percentile, indicating it performs well above average but not at the top tier. The measured FPS in Doom reflects this: at 1080p, the GPU can push frame rates beyond 300 FPS on Low settings, but at 4K Ultra it falls to 66 FPS, showing that the GPU's compute and memory resources are fully utilized in the most demanding scenarios. The boost clock of 2475 MHz helps maintain performance, but the 192-bit memory interface is a structural limitation that becomes apparent at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 314 FPS, which is the maximum measured result for this configuration. Medium produces 273 FPS with a documented minimum of 232 FPS and maximum of 314 FPS. High reaches 231 FPS, and Ultra drops to 189 FPS. All 1080p results exceed 180 FPS, ensuring a very fluid experience regardless of quality settings.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows a clear step down. Low averages 203 FPS, Medium averages 177 FPS with a minimum of 150 FPS and maximum of 204 FPS, High averages 150 FPS, and Ultra averages 122 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 81 FPS, which is the same absolute difference as at 1080p, suggesting consistent scaling across presets.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop significantly. Low averages 110 FPS, Medium averages 96 FPS with a minimum of 81 FPS and maximum of 110 FPS, High averages 81 FPS, and Ultra averages 66 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K provides the tightest frame pacing, with a minimum of 81 FPS ensuring no major stutters. The Ultra preset at 4K, at 66 FPS, is the only measured configuration that approaches the 60 FPS baseline, making it the least comfortable for high-refresh displays.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently shows the smallest gap between average and minimum FPS, indicating that this setting provides the most stable frame delivery. For example, at 1080p Medium, the minimum is 232 FPS versus an average of 273 FPS, while at 4K Medium, the minimum is 81 FPS versus an average of 96 FPS. This stability makes Medium the recommended preset for scenarios where frame pacing consistency matters more than peak frame rates.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It operates on the AMD Socket AM5 platform and is manufactured on a 4 nm process by TSMC, with a transistor count of 16,630 million spread across two chiplets, each measuring 70.6 mm². The CPU has a base clock of 4.30 GHz and a boost clock of 5.70 GHz, with a TDP of 170 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 128 MB of L3 cache. Memory support is DDR5 over a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth.

In Doom, the CPU's role is largely secondary, as evidenced by the FPS scaling pattern. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 314 FPS, which is far beyond the engine's typical requirements for a fast-paced FPS. The CPU's single-thread performance, measured at 1292 in 3DMark single-thread and 2259 in Cinebench R23 single-core, is more than adequate for the game's logic and rendering threads. The multi-thread performance is equally impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42018 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 26736, but Doom does not appear to leverage these many cores heavily.

The 128 MB of L3 cache is a notable feature, as it can reduce memory latency and improve performance in games that benefit from large cache footprints. However, the measured FPS data shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck at any resolution or setting. At 4K Ultra, where the GPU produces 66 FPS, the CPU has ample headroom — even if the GPU were replaced with a faster model, the CPU's 5.70 GHz boost clock and 32 threads would likely support higher frame rates. The CPU's percentile ranking of 95th among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 75779, confirms that it is among the fastest available, and its nearest rivals (the Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and 9755X3D) are within 0.1% of its score, indicating a tight cluster at the top of the CPU hierarchy.

The CPU's role in this combo is to provide a stable foundation for the GPU to operate without constraint. Given that the 1080p Low result of 314 FPS is the highest measured, and this is likely near the engine's upper limit, the CPU is not the limiting factor in any scenario tested. The data suggests that users could pair this CPU with a faster GPU without worrying about CPU-induced bottlenecks, as the 9950X3D's combination of high clock speeds, large cache, and 32 threads ensures it can keep up with even the most demanding graphics workloads.