Doom

# Doom Performance Analysis: Intel Core i5-11400F + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

The data shows a classic mid-range pairing from different generations, with the GTX 1070's Pascal architecture and the i5-11400F's Rocket Lake silicon combining to deliver playable frame rates across most settings at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K remains a challenge. The combination ranks 3068th out of 3712 tested combos for this game, placing it in the lower half of the database, though the measured results indicate the GPU is the primary constraint at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimal settings across resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 158 FPS average, while Medium drops to 137 FPS and High to 116 FPS. The Ultra preset yields 95 FPS average. For competitive play, the High preset at 1080p offers the best balance—116 FPS average remains well above the 60 FPS threshold, and the visual improvement over Low is substantial given the 42 FPS difference between those presets. The Medium preset at 137 FPS is also viable, but the step from Medium to High costs only 21 FPS while providing noticeably better image quality.

At 2560x1440, the situation shifts. The Low preset achieves 102 FPS average, Medium reaches 89 FPS, High delivers 75 FPS, and Ultra drops to 61 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p is the recommended choice here—89 FPS keeps the experience smooth, and the 13 FPS cost from Low to Medium is worth the visual upgrade. The High preset at 75 FPS remains playable, but the 14 FPS drop from Medium to High is steeper in relative terms. Ultra at 1440p sits right at 61 FPS, which is borderline for fast-paced FPS gameplay; the data shows the headroom is insufficient for demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, no preset achieves 60 FPS. The Low preset reaches 55 FPS, Medium 48 FPS, High 41 FPS, and Ultra 33 FPS. For 4K, the Low preset is the only acceptable option, and even then, the average FPS is below the ideal threshold for a game like Doom. The 7 FPS penalty from Low to Medium at 4K is proportionally significant, making Medium a poor trade for the visual gain. Users with 4K displays should strongly consider running at 1440p with Medium or High settings rather than accepting sub-60 FPS at native resolution.

FAQ

Q: Can this combination run Doom at 60 FPS on a 1080p monitor?

A: Yes. The measured data shows the High preset at 1920x1080 achieves 116 FPS average, and even Ultra reaches 95 FPS. All four presets at 1080p exceed 60 FPS, with Low at 158 FPS and Medium at 137 FPS.

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

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 delivers 89 FPS average, which is the sweet spot. Low achieves 102 FPS but sacrifices visual quality, while High drops to 75 FPS and Ultra falls to 61 FPS. The 14 FPS gain from Medium to High does not justify the visual downgrade for most players.

Q: Is 4K playable with the GTX 1070 and i5-11400F?

A: Not at 60 FPS. The best 4K result is the Low preset at 55 FPS average. Medium drops to 48 FPS, High to 41 FPS, and Ultra to 33 FPS. None of these meet the 60 FPS standard, so 1440p is the realistic ceiling for this pairing.

Q: How does the GTX 1070's performance compare to its GPU benchmark rivals?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 9780, placing it in the 47th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD FirePro W5000, scores 9803 with a delta of -0.2%, meaning the GTX 1070 trails by a negligible margin. The NVIDIA Quadro M2000M scores 9832 (delta -0.5%), while the Tesla M10 and Tesla C2070 score 9724 and 9716 respectively.

Q: How does the i5-11400F's processing power compare to its CPU rivals?

A: The CPU's average benchmark score is 17177, placing it in the 71st percentile of all CPUs. The closest rival is the AMD EPYC 7H12 at 17120 (delta 0.3%), meaning the i5-11400F is marginally ahead. The Intel Core i5-12450H scores 17239 (delta -0.4%), while the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U score 17278 and 17074 respectively.

Q: What resolution scaling penalty should users expect when moving from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 116 at 1080p to 75 at 1440p, a 41 FPS reduction. At Low, the drop is from 158 to 102 FPS (56 FPS difference). The proportional cost is roughly 35-40% of the original frame rate, indicating the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute limits become more apparent as pixel count increases.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F provides six cores and twelve threads operating from a 2.60 GHz base clock to a 4.40 GHz boost clock. The Rocket Lake architecture, built on Intel's 14 nm process with a 276 mm² die size, includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration with 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for feeding the GTX 1070's 256.3 GB/s memory subsystem.

Benchmark results show the CPU's multithreaded capability is strong for its class. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 14340 and the 3DMark 16-thread score of 5619 indicate that the processor does not bottleneck in most gaming scenarios. The single-thread performance, measured at 2024 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 868 in 3DMark single-thread, is sufficient for Doom's engine, which relies heavily on a few primary threads for game logic and physics.

In Doom specifically, the data suggests the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 1440p to 4K follows a pattern consistent with GPU-bound rendering: as resolution increases, the frame rate drops proportionally to the pixel count increase. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain relatively constant across resolutions. Instead, the 116 FPS at 1080p High dropping to 75 FPS at 1440p and 41 FPS at 4K indicates the GPU's rendering pipeline is saturated before the CPU's processing capacity is exhausted.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-11400F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 ranks 3068th out of 3712 tested combinations for Doom, placing it in the 17th percentile of all tested systems. This rank reflects the age of the GPU relative to modern hardware—the GTX 1070's 47th percentile GPU benchmark standing drags the combo down despite the CPU's respectable 71st percentile ranking.

Compared to the CPU's nearest rivals, the i5-11400F's performance is competitive. The AMD EPYC 7H12, which scores within 0.3% of the i5-11400F in average benchmark score, would likely produce similar frame rates in Doom when paired with the same GPU. The Intel Core i5-12450H, at -0.4% delta, and the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G, at -0.6%, are also close in raw processing power. The GPU's nearest rivals—the AMD FirePro W5000 (-0.2%), NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (-0.5%), and Tesla M10 (+0.6%)—are all professional or workstation cards that would not be typical gaming choices, but their benchmark proximity suggests similar gaming performance in compute-limited scenarios.

The rank of 3068 out of 3712 means that approximately 83% of tested combos outperform this pairing in Doom. This is expected given that the GTX 1070 is now several generations old, but the measured data shows the combo still delivers acceptable performance at 1080p and 1440p, which is notable for a system that would not be considered high-end by current standards.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across resolutions reveals a consistent pattern of GPU-bound scaling. At the High preset, the average FPS goes from 116 at 1920x1080 to 75 at 2560x1440 to 41 at 3840x2160. The drop from 1080p to 1440p represents a 35% reduction in frame rate, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is a 45% reduction. These percentages align closely with the pixel count increases: 1440p has 78% more pixels than 1080p, and 4K has 125% more pixels than 1440p.

This scaling behavior indicates that the GTX 1070's rendering throughput, rather than the CPU's processing capability, determines the frame rate at each resolution. The GPU's 256.3 GB/s memory bandwidth and 6.463 TFLOPS of FP32 compute become progressively more strained as the resolution increases. The 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus is sufficient for the texture data at 4K, but the shading rate and fill rate limits become apparent.

At the Low preset, the scaling is slightly different: 158 FPS at 1080p, 102 FPS at 1440p, and 55 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 35%, and the 1440p to 4K drop is 46%. The Low preset reduces the pixel shading work, but the memory bandwidth requirements for higher resolutions still impose a significant penalty. The fact that 4K Low (55 FPS) is close to 1440p Ultra (61 FPS) suggests that the GPU's memory subsystem and ROP throughput are the hard limits at high pixel counts, regardless of the shading workload.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS across presets is as follows: Low achieves 158 FPS, Medium reaches 137 FPS with a minimum of 117 FPS and maximum of 158 FPS, High delivers 116 FPS, and Ultra produces 95 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 117 FPS indicates that even in demanding scenes, the frame rate stays well above 100 FPS, providing a consistent experience. The gap between Ultra and Low is 63 FPS, which represents the full range of performance available at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the data shows: Low at 102 FPS, Medium at 89 FPS with a minimum of 75 FPS and maximum of 102 FPS, High at 75 FPS, and Ultra at 61 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 75 FPS means that even the lowest frame rates remain playable, though the gap between minimum and maximum (27 FPS) indicates more variance than at 1080p. The Ultra preset at 61 FPS is exactly at the threshold of 60 FPS, which could dip below during intense combat sequences.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 55 FPS, Medium at 48 FPS with a minimum of 41 FPS and maximum of 55 FPS, High at 41 FPS, and Ultra at 33 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 41 FPS shows that the frame rate can drop significantly below the average, making the experience feel inconsistent. The 22 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is the smallest of any resolution, indicating that the GPU is so heavily constrained that even reducing settings cannot fully compensate for the pixel load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, based on the GP104 chip with 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die, operates at a base clock of 1506 MHz and a boost clock of 1683 MHz. The Pascal architecture includes 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, delivering a pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s. The memory subsystem consists of 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth, running at 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective).

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 47th percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 9780. The DirectX 11 score of 100 and DirectX 12 score of 48 indicate that the card performs better in older APIs, which is relevant for Doom's Vulkan support—the game's Vulkan mode can leverage the card's asynchronous compute capabilities more effectively than DirectX 11. The Vulkan benchmark score of 22121 and OpenCL score of 44700 suggest the card has strong compute throughput for its generation.

In Doom, the GPU is clearly the dominant factor in determining frame rates. The measured FPS scaling across resolutions follows the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth limits rather than CPU constraints. The 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for all presets at all tested resolutions, as no scene shows evidence of texture thrashing. The 33 FPS at 4K Ultra represents the card's absolute limit in this game, while the 158 FPS at 1080p Low shows the card's ceiling when the pixel workload is light.

The GTX 1070's 150 W TDP and dual-slot design are modest by modern standards, but the card's age is evident in the benchmark comparisons—the nearest rivals are professional cards like the FirePro W5000 and Quadro M2000M, which are not designed for gaming but occupy similar performance tiers. The 6.463 TFLOPS FP32 performance is the key metric for Doom's rendering workload, and the data shows this is sufficient for smooth gameplay at 1080p and 1440p but insufficient for 4K at high quality settings.