Doom

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate for this combo at 1080p Ultra settings?

A: The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT delivers an average of 203 FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, which is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common in high-performance displays.

Q: How much performance is gained by dropping from Ultra to Low at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, moving from Ultra (71 FPS average) to Low (119 FPS average) yields a 48 FPS improvement, representing a roughly 68% increase in average frame rate, demonstrating that this GPU is heavily burdened by the highest preset at 4K.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: The data indicates minimal CPU limitation. The i3-12100F has 4 cores and 8 threads with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, and the measured FPS scales strongly with resolution, suggesting the GPU is the primary performance driver across most settings.

Q: What is the best preset for 1440p gaming with this combo?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset produces an average of 161 FPS, while Ultra drops to 132 FPS. The High preset provides a smoother experience for high-refresh-rate monitors, though both remain playable.

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

A: This pairing ranks 710th out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the top 19% of all configurations tested for this game, a strong result given the CPU's relatively modest multi-threaded benchmark scores.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded at 1080p Medium settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Medium settings, the minimum recorded frame rate is 251 FPS, with an average of 295 FPS and a maximum of 339 FPS, indicating exceptional frame pacing consistency.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its memory configuration plays a crucial role in Doom's performance. The GPU features 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, delivering 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This substantial memory subsystem ensures that texture streaming and high-resolution asset loading never become a bottleneck, even at 4K resolutions where the data demands are greatest.

Clock speeds further define the GPU's behavior. The card operates with a base clock of 1387 MHz, a game clock of 2025 MHz, and a boost clock of 2394 MHz. The boost behavior is particularly relevant: the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (71 FPS average) versus 4K Low (119 FPS average) shows a 48 FPS swing, indicating that the GPU's clock speeds scale with workload intensity. At lower presets, the card can sustain higher effective clocks, whereas Ultra settings at 4K push the GPU to its thermal and power limits, reducing sustained performance.

The RDNA 3.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, provides 5376 shading units and 192 ROPs. These specifications translate directly to the pixel throughput required for Doom's fast-paced rendering. The 459.6 GPixel/s pixel rate and 804.4 GTexel/s texture rate explain why the card handles 1080p with such ease — at 1920x1080 Low, the average FPS reaches 338, which is nearly three times the 4K Ultra result.

The GPU's 51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is more than sufficient for this 2016 title, even at modern resolutions. The measured results show that the card is never compute-bound at 1080p, where the average FPS at High (249) is limited more by CPU draw-call overhead than by GPU raw throughput. However, at 4K, the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors, as evidenced by the 71 FPS average at Ultra settings.

The VRAM capacity of 20 GB is far beyond what Doom requires, even at 4K with Ultra textures. This headroom means there are no texture-pop-in events or streaming stutters caused by memory pressure. The 800.0 GB/s bandwidth ensures that even the most detailed scenes at 3840x2160 can be rendered without memory-related frame drops, as confirmed by the minimum FPS of 88 recorded at 4K Medium.

Settings Recommendations

For 4K displays, the data clearly favors the Medium preset. At 3840x2160, Medium delivers an average of 103 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS and maximum of 119 FPS. The High preset at 4K drops to 87 FPS average, while Ultra falls further to 71 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K provides the best balance: it maintains an average above the 100 FPS threshold while keeping minimums comfortably above 60 FPS, which is critical for consistent gameplay in a fast-paced FPS.

At 1440p, the High preset emerges as the optimal choice. With an average of 161 FPS, it offers significantly better visual fidelity than Medium (191 FPS average) while still providing frame rates that exceed 144 Hz displays. The Ultra preset at 1440p (132 FPS average) also remains viable, but the 29 FPS penalty over High may not justify the marginal visual improvements in this title.

For 1080p users, the High preset at 249 FPS average is the sweet spot. While Low (338 FPS) and Medium (295 FPS) deliver higher frame rates, the High preset still exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all gaming monitors. The Ultra preset at 1080p (203 FPS average) also remains above 200 FPS, making it a reasonable choice for those prioritizing image quality over raw frame rates.

The measured data reveals a consistent pattern: the gap between Medium and High is smaller than the gap between High and Ultra across all resolutions. For example, at 1440p, Medium to High costs 30 FPS (191 to 161), while High to Ultra costs 29 FPS (161 to 132). This suggests that the Ultra preset introduces disproportionately expensive effects that yield diminishing returns, making High the recommended preset for most users seeking the best experience per the measured rows.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo demonstrates exceptional performance across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 338 FPS, which represents the fastest measured result in the entire dataset. Medium settings produce an average of 295 FPS with a minimum of 251 FPS and maximum of 339 FPS, showing tight frame pacing. High settings deliver 249 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 203 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra is 135 FPS, indicating that the GPU has substantial headroom even at the highest preset.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably. Low settings yield 219 FPS average, which is a 119 FPS reduction from the 1080p Low result. Medium maintains 191 FPS average with a minimum of 162 FPS and maximum of 219 FPS. High settings produce 161 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 132 FPS average. The 1440p results show that the GPU remains highly capable at this resolution, with even Ultra settings staying well above the 120 FPS threshold.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to show its limits. Low settings still achieve 119 FPS average, which is playable but not ideal for high-refresh-rate displays. Medium settings produce 103 FPS average with a minimum of 88 FPS and maximum of 119 FPS, making it the only 4K preset with recorded minimum FPS data. High settings drop to 87 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 71 FPS average. The 4K results show a 48 FPS difference between Low and Ultra, representing the largest relative performance gap across all resolutions.

The scaling factors between resolutions are consistent. At High settings, moving from 1080p to 1440p reduces average FPS by 88 (249 to 161, a 35% reduction), and moving from 1440p to 4K reduces average FPS by 74 (161 to 87, a 46% reduction). This nonlinear scaling suggests that the GPU's memory bandwidth becomes increasingly constrained as pixel count grows, consistent with the 800.0 GB/s bandwidth specification.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT ranks 710th out of 3712 tested combos for Doom, placing it in the top 19.1% of all configurations. This is a strong result, particularly when considering the CPU's relatively modest benchmark scores. The i3-12100F achieves a 68th percentile ranking among all CPUs, while the RX 7900 XT earns a 55th percentile among all GPUs — yet their combined performance in Doom exceeds what these individual rankings might suggest.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for its performance class. The Intel Core 3 N355 scores nearly identically (13492 vs. 13494, a 0% delta), while the Intel Core i5-9500 is just 0.3% behind, and the Intel Core 5 120UL is 0.7% ahead. These comparisons indicate that the i3-12100F performs in line with mid-range processors from several generations, despite having only 4 cores and 8 threads.

The GPU's rival comparisons show a different story. The AMD Radeon 660M scores 0.5% higher, the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile also scores 0.5% higher, and the AMD Radeon RX 570X is 0.9% higher. Interestingly, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT scores 1.5% lower in the GPU benchmark database, suggesting that the RX 7900 XT remains competitive with newer hardware in synthetic tests.

The rank of 710 out of 3712 is particularly noteworthy because Doom is a well-optimized title that scales well across hardware. The fact that this combo achieves top-quartile performance despite the CPU's low thread count indicates that the game's engine efficiently utilizes the available cores and that the GPU's raw power compensates for any potential CPU limitations.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F brings a modest but effective configuration to this pairing. With 4 cores and 8 threads, it relies on hyper-threading to handle the game's workload. The base clock of 3.30 GHz and boost clock of 4.30 GHz provide strong single-thread performance, which is critical for Doom's game logic and draw-call processing. The 12 MB of shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency, though the CPU's overall cache configuration is limited compared to higher-tier processors.

The CPU's benchmark results reveal its strengths and weaknesses. The single-thread score of 893 in 3DMark and 1674 in Cinebench R23 indicate solid per-core performance. The multi-threaded results are less impressive: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 11860, and the 3DMark 8-thread test scores 4026, which is nearly identical to the max-thread score of 4023, confirming that the 4-core/8-thread configuration is fully utilized without additional scaling.

In Doom specifically, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 338 FPS average, which is likely near the game engine's maximum frame rate limit. The fact that increasing resolution from 1080p to 4K reduces FPS by roughly 65% at Low settings (338 to 119) demonstrates that the GPU becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases, while the CPU maintains consistent performance.

The 58 W TDP of the i3-12100F is notably low for a desktop processor, which means it generates minimal heat and allows the GPU to operate without thermal interference in the system. The CPU's support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory provides flexibility, though the memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor in this game based on the measured results.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 68 among all CPUs, combined with its average benchmark score of 13494, places it in the upper-mid range of processors. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core 3 N355, scores 13492 (0% delta), while the Intel Core i7-1250U scores 13351 (1.1% lower). This indicates that the i3-12100F's performance is competitive with newer low-power and mobile processors, even though it lacks the core count of higher-tier desktop chips.

The benchmark results show a clear pattern: the CPU's single-thread performance is strong (PassMark single-thread score of 3444), while its multi-thread performance is adequate but not exceptional (PassMark multithread score of 14015). In Doom, which is a well-threaded game but not heavily dependent on core count, this configuration proves sufficient to keep the GPU well-fed at all tested resolutions and settings.