Doom

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-11400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combo a top-tier performer in Doom?

A: The combination ranks 1054th out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the top 28.4% of all tested systems for this game. This is a solidly above-average result, though not elite-tier.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-11400F scores 17177 on the average benchmark score, sitting within 0.6% of its closest competitors. It trails the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G by 0.6% and the Intel Core i5-12450H by 0.4%, while leading the AMD EPYC 7H12 by 0.3% and the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U by 0.6%.

Q: What is the GPU's overall performance percentile relative to all other GPUs?

A: The RTX 3080 sits in the 68th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 23172. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA P106-100, scores nearly identically at 23249, just 0.3% higher.

Q: What is the best 4K result achieved by this combo in Doom?

A: At 3840x2160 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 105 FPS. The Medium preset delivers 92 FPS, High delivers 78 FPS, and Ultra drops to 63 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU hold back the GPU at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo reaches 301 FPS average, which suggests the CPU is still capable of driving extremely high frame rates. The Ultra preset at this resolution drops to 181 FPS, indicating the GPU becomes the limiting factor as settings increase.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its single-threaded performance?

A: The CPU scores 14340 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2024 in single-core, a ratio of roughly 7:1. Its 3DMark scores show a similar pattern: 5652 with max threads versus 868 single-thread, indicating strong scaling across its 6 cores and 12 threads.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 brings substantial firepower to Doom, and the measured results reflect that. With 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, the card offers 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth — ample for a 2016 title that was designed around far more modest hardware. The memory clock runs at 1188 MHz, or 19 Gbps effective, which helps sustain high frame rates even when texture detail spikes.

The GPU's architecture is Ampere, built on Samsung's 8 nm process, with 8704 shading units, 272 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units. These figures translate to a pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s. The FP32 throughput of 29.77 TFLOPS gives the card headroom for compute-heavy effects, though Doom's Vulkan-based engine doesn't necessarily stress all of these resources equally.

The boost clock of 1710 MHz (base 1440 MHz) is modest by modern standards, but the sheer width of the chip compensates. In practice, the data shows the GPU scaling predictably with settings: at 4K, dropping from Ultra to Low raises the average from 63 FPS to 105 FPS, a 66.7% improvement. That's a clear sign the GPU is the primary driver of performance at this resolution, as the CPU has less influence when pixel throughput dominates.

At 1080p, the picture changes. The Low preset yields 301 FPS, but Ultra drops to 181 FPS — a 39.9% reduction. This narrowing gap between settings at lower resolutions suggests the CPU begins to matter more, though the RTX 3080 still has enough muscle to push well beyond 144 Hz at every preset at 1440p. The GPU's role is dominant, but not exclusively so; the system's overall balance determines where the bottleneck sits.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1054 out of 3712 tested combinations places it in the upper third of all systems evaluated for Doom. This is not a top-100 result, but it is respectable for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU from a previous generation. The data indicates that the RTX 3080 carries most of the weight, as the i5-11400F's 71st percentile among all CPUs suggests it is a competent but not exceptional partner.

Comparing the GPU's standing helps contextualize the combo's position. The RTX 3080 sits in the 68th percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU sits slightly higher at 71st. When combined, the pair achieves a result that is roughly in line with what each component's individual percentile would predict — neither is dramatically overperforming nor underperforming in this specific title.

The nearest rival combos, based on the GPU's synthetic scores, include the NVIDIA P106-100 and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16, both within 0.3% of the RTX 3080's average benchmark score. This suggests that in Doom, the combo's ranking is driven more by the GPU than the CPU, as those rival GPUs would likely pair with very different processors. The 1054th rank out of 3712 indicates that while many systems outperform this setup, a substantial majority of tested combinations fall behind it.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data offers a clear picture of how each preset performs across resolutions. For players targeting 4K, the Medium preset is the standout choice: it delivers 92 FPS average with a minimum of 78 FPS and maximum of 106 FPS, providing a smooth experience with decent visual fidelity. High at 4K drops to 78 FPS average, which is still playable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes. Ultra at 4K falls to 63 FPS, which may dip below 60 in intense moments — risky for a fast-paced FPS.

At 1440p, the High preset is the sweet spot. It achieves 143 FPS average, comfortably above the 144 Hz refresh rate of many monitors, while Medium hits 170 FPS and Low reaches 195 FPS. Ultra at 1440p drops to 117 FPS, still smooth but notably lower. The 144 FPS minimum on Medium suggests that even the most demanding scenes stay above common high-refresh thresholds.

For 1080p, any preset delivers excellent performance. Low reaches 301 FPS, Medium 262 FPS, High 221 FPS, and Ultra 181 FPS. The recommendation depends on the display: if the monitor is 144 Hz, Ultra is the best choice, as it stays well above the refresh limit. If the display is 240 Hz or higher, Medium or Low becomes necessary to fully utilize the refresh rate, with Medium providing a better visual balance at 262 FPS.

The data shows that Medium is the most versatile preset across all resolutions, offering the best compromise between visual quality and frame rate. At 4K, it's the only preset with a recorded minimum FPS above 60 (78 FPS), making it the safest choice for consistent performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080: The lowest resolution tested shows the combo's full potential. Low settings produce 301 FPS average, Medium 262 FPS (min 223, max 301), High 221 FPS, and Ultra 181 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra is 120 FPS, a 39.9% drop, indicating that GPU load scales significantly with settings even at 1080p.

2560x1440: Performance remains strong at this resolution. Low delivers 195 FPS, Medium 170 FPS (min 144, max 195), High 143 FPS, and Ultra 117 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 78 FPS, a 40% reduction — proportionally similar to 1080p, suggesting the GPU is still the primary scaling factor.

3840x2160: At 4K, the combo starts to feel the strain. Low achieves 105 FPS, Medium 92 FPS (min 78, max 106), High 78 FPS, and Ultra 63 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 42 FPS, a 40% drop from Low. Interestingly, the percentage drop from Low to Ultra is nearly identical across all three resolutions (around 40%), which points to a consistent GPU-bound scaling pattern.

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded min/max values across all resolutions, and those values show tight clustering: 223-301 at 1080p, 144-195 at 1440p, and 78-106 at 4K. This consistency suggests the combo maintains stable frame pacing without severe drops, even when settings or resolution increase.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Rocket Lake architecture, built on Intel's 14 nm process. Its base clock of 2.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.40 GHz provide reasonable single-thread performance, reflected in a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2024 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 868. The 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 512 KB L2 per core help with game-level data locality, though Doom is not particularly cache-sensitive.

In Doom, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo reaches 301 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's practical limit for this game engine. The fact that dropping from Low to Ultra at 1080p reduces FPS by 39.9% while the same settings change at 4K reduces FPS by 40% suggests the GPU is consistently the bottleneck, but the CPU still needs to feed enough draw calls to sustain those high frame rates.

The CPU's multi-threaded scores are solid: Cinebench R23 multi-core at 14340, 3DMark max threads at 5652, and Geekbench multi-core at 7737. These numbers indicate the 6-core, 12-thread configuration handles modern game engines well, though Doom's 2016 engine was designed for quad-core CPUs. The 12 threads may provide headroom for background tasks, but the game itself likely doesn't utilize all of them.

The CPU's 71st percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17177, places it slightly above the RTX 3080's 68th percentile. This alignment means neither component is drastically mismatched; the system is well-balanced. The nearest CPU rivals — all within 0.6% in average score — include server and mobile parts, which shows the i5-11400F holds its own against a wide range of processors.

Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a clear scaling pattern as resolution increases. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by roughly 35% across all settings: Low goes from 301 to 195 (35.2% drop), Medium from 262 to 170 (35.1%), High from 221 to 143 (35.3%), and Ultra from 181 to 117 (35.4%). This consistent ~35% reduction indicates the GPU is the limiting factor, as resolution scaling directly affects pixel throughput.

From 1440p to 4K, the drops are steeper: Low falls from 195 to 105 (46.2% drop), Medium from 170 to 92 (45.9%), High from 143 to 78 (45.5%), and Ultra from 117 to 63 (46.2%). The larger drop at 4K is expected, as the pixel count increases by 2.25x from 1440p to 4K, and the GPU's fill rate becomes the dominant constraint.

The fact that the percentage drop from Low to Ultra is nearly identical at each resolution (around 40%) suggests that settings and resolution affect performance independently. This is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the RTX 3080's compute and memory resources are the primary determinants of frame rate.

The CPU's influence is visible in the diminishing returns at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 120 FPS; at 1440p, it's 78 FPS; at 4K, it's 42 FPS. This narrowing gap means the GPU has less headroom to differentiate between settings as resolution rises, but it also means the CPU is less likely to bottleneck at higher resolutions. The data suggests that for this combo, the RTX 3080 is the consistent bottleneck across all tested configurations, with the i5-11400F providing sufficient single-thread performance to avoid limiting frame rates — even at 301 FPS.