Doom

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers exceptional performance in Doom, a title that scales aggressively with both CPU and GPU capabilities. The measured frame rates across all settings and resolutions are remarkably high, indicating that this combination is overqualified for the game’s demands. The data shows a system that prioritizes raw throughput, with the GPU often being the primary driver of performance at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s solid multi-threading ensures no bottleneck at lower settings.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data clearly indicates that the Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding the lowest average frame rates at each resolution. At 4K, the Ultra preset produces an average of 75.7 FPS, which is playable but noticeably lower than other options. In contrast, the High preset at 4K delivers 87.9 FPS, a significant improvement, while Medium pushes that to 109.7 FPS. The Low preset at 4K reaches 122.7 FPS, showing a 62.1% performance uplift over Ultra.

For the best experience balancing visual fidelity and smoothness, the High preset at 1440p is the standout choice. It achieves an average of 163.5 FPS, which is well beyond the threshold for high-refresh-rate monitors. Moving to 1080p, the Medium preset hits 306.2 FPS, while High reaches 254.8 FPS. The Low preset at 1080p is the absolute peak at 351.3 FPS, but the visual compromises are unnecessary given the headroom. The data suggests that High settings at 1440p offer the most balanced experience, providing 163.5 FPS without sacrificing the visual quality that the Ultra and High presets bring. For 4K users, Medium at 109.7 FPS is the sweet spot, as it maintains fluid motion while staying ahead of the 75.7 FPS Ultra result.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, equipped with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. Its boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1980 MHz allow it to sustain high throughput, which is reflected in its Passmark G3D score of 29995 and an average benchmark score of 42576, placing it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs. The GPU’s architecture, Ada Lovelace, includes 7168 shading units and 80 ROPs, contributing to a pixel rate of 198.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 554.4 GTexel/s.

In Doom, the GPU’s role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the CPU has enough headroom to push frame rates past 300 FPS on lower presets, but the GPU still manages the load efficiently. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, as frame rates drop from 254.8 FPS (High, 1080p) to 87.9 FPS (High, 4K). This 65.5% reduction in performance underscores the GPU’s workload at higher pixel counts. The 12 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for this title, as even at 4K Ultra the frame rate remains playable, indicating no memory-related stuttering or bottlenecks. The GPU’s performance relative to its nearest rivals shows it is within 0.2% of the NVIDIA RTX A6000 and 0.3% of the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE, confirming its competitive standing.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p High, the combo produces 254.8 FPS; at 1440p High, it drops to 163.5 FPS (a 35.8% decrease); and at 4K High, it falls to 87.9 FPS (a 65.5% decrease from 1080p). This pattern holds across all presets. For instance, at Ultra settings, the frame rate goes from 207.8 FPS at 1080p to 133.8 FPS at 1440p and finally to 75.7 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is proportionally larger than from 1080p to 1440p, which is expected given the quadratic increase in pixel count.

This data indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates would remain more constant across resolutions. Instead, the consistent scaling suggests the GPU is fully utilized, especially at 4K where the workload quadruples compared to 1080p. The RTX 4070 SUPER’s 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is being taxed heavily at 4K, but it still delivers playable frame rates even on Ultra. The Low preset at 4K yields 122.7 FPS, which is higher than the Ultra preset at 1440p (133.8 FPS), showing that settings have a more significant impact than resolution on this hardware.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination ranks 303rd out of 1681 tested combos in Doom. This places it in the top 18% of all configurations, which is a strong result given the game’s optimization and the hardware’s capabilities. The combo’s performance is driven by the GPU’s high percentile ranking (84th) and the CPU’s solid 77th percentile among all CPUs.

The CPU’s average benchmark score of 19850 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, with a delta of 0.1% against the Intel Core i7-9700 and -0.2% against the Intel Core i7-8700. This indicates that the i5-12400 is not a bottleneck in this pairing. The GPU’s average score of 42576 is similarly close to its rivals, with a -0.2% delta versus the NVIDIA RTX A6000. The combination of a high-performing GPU and a capable CPU ensures that the system does not leave performance on the table. In Doom, this translates to frame rates that are consistently above 75 FPS even at 4K Ultra, which confirms the hardware’s synergy. The rank of 303 suggests that while there are faster combos, this pairing is well above the median for the 1681 configurations tested.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 features 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its Alder Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process, includes 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15935 and a single-core score of 2249, with a Passmark multithread score of 18747. These figures place it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19850.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with enough data to maintain high frame rates, especially at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 351.3 FPS, which is likely near the CPU’s limit for frame generation, but the 12 threads handle the game’s logic efficiently. The CPU’s performance relative to its rivals shows a delta of 0.1% versus the Intel Core i7-9700, meaning they are effectively equal in average scores. However, the i5-12400’s higher boost clock of 4.40 GHz provides excellent single-thread performance, which is crucial for Doom’s engine. At 4K, the CPU’s workload decreases as the GPU takes on more responsibility, and the frame rates at 4K High (87.9 FPS) are still high, indicating no CPU bottleneck. The CPU’s 65 W TDP suggests it runs efficiently, but the data shows it is more than capable of keeping up with the RTX 4070 SUPER across all tested settings.