Doom

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates for Doom with the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 show a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 339.4 FPS, Medium drops to 297.7 FPS, High settles at 252.8 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 205.3 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 134.1 FPS, which represents a substantial 39.5% performance penalty for the highest visual quality settings. Given that even the Ultra preset maintains an average above 200 FPS at 1080p, the data suggests that players prioritizing maximum fluidity on high-refresh displays should have no concerns about selecting Ultra, as the frame rate remains far beyond typical display refresh rate thresholds.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues with Low at 220.6 FPS, Medium at 190.7 FPS, High at 161.9 FPS, and Ultra at 129.7 FPS. The Ultra preset still delivers an average comfortably above 120 FPS, which aligns well with 144Hz-class monitors. The scaling from Low to Ultra at this resolution costs 90.9 FPS, a 41.2% reduction. This consistent penalty across resolutions indicates the settings presets scale predictably regardless of pixel count.

The 3840x2160 results introduce the first potential concern for Ultra settings. Here, Low produces 120.2 FPS, Medium drops to 104.2 FPS, High falls to 86.4 FPS, and Ultra dips to 71.3 FPS. At 4K, the Ultra preset approaches 60 FPS territory, though it still remains above that threshold. The data indicates that for 4K displays, High settings offer the best balance, providing 86.4 FPS while avoiding the steepest quality-to-performance trade-off seen at Ultra. For players targeting 120 FPS at 4K, Low settings at 120.2 FPS is the only preset that clears that bar, while Medium at 104.2 FPS remains viable for 100Hz-class panels. The recommendation based on measured data is Ultra for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with High being the sensible choice for 4K unless the user specifically prioritizes frame rate over visual fidelity.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using a 5 nm process from TSMC, with a die size of 263 mm² containing 31,100 million transistors. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2325 MHz and boosts to 2512 MHz, paired with 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus delivering 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. These specifications translate into a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s, with FP32 compute rated at 30.87 TFLOPS.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 41687. Its nearest rivals in aggregate performance include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, which trails by 0.6%, and the AMD Radeon Pro 5300, which leads by 0.2%. The RTX 5070's 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores provide dedicated hardware for the visual effects present in Doom, though the game's release in 2016 predates widespread RT implementation. The 12 GB VRAM capacity, while not fully stressed by Doom's relatively modest memory requirements, ensures ample headroom for texture streaming at all tested resolutions and settings.

The GPU's role in Doom becomes evident when examining the measured FPS across settings. At any given resolution, the delta between Low and Ultra settings represents the GPU's ability to handle increased shading, texture filtering, and post-processing loads. The consistent 39-41% performance gap between these extremes at 1080p and 1440p, narrowing slightly to 40.7% at 4K, indicates the RTX 5070 scales predictably with increasing GPU workload. The boost clock of 2512 MHz and the high memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s work in tandem to sustain the high frame rates observed, particularly at 1080p where the GPU is less likely to be the primary bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The progression from 1080p to 4K reveals how this combination scales with pixel count. At High settings, the average FPS moves from 252.8 at 1920x1080 to 161.9 at 2560x1440, then to 86.4 at 3840x2160. This represents a 36.0% drop from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a 46.6% drop from 1440p to 4K. The cumulative loss from 1080p to 4K is 65.8% of the original frame rate. This steep decline indicates the rendering workload scales super-linearly with resolution, as expected given the increase in pixel count from roughly 2.07 million to 8.29 million.

The Low preset shows similar behavior: 339.4 FPS at 1080p, 220.6 FPS at 1440p, and 120.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 35.0% and 45.5% respectively, closely mirroring the High preset's scaling. This consistency across settings suggests the resolution scaling is primarily driven by the GPU's fillrate and memory bandwidth capabilities rather than settings-dependent effects. The RTX 5070's 201.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are the limiting factors at higher resolutions.

At 4K, even the Low preset at 120.2 FPS shows the GPU working substantially harder than at lower resolutions. The fact that 4K Ultra at 71.3 FPS remains playable indicates the RTX 5070 has sufficient resources for this game at 4K, but the data clearly shows diminishing returns. The frame rate drop from 1440p to 4K at Ultra is 45.1%, nearly identical to the Low preset's 45.5% drop. This uniformity suggests that Doom's rendering pipeline at this combination is consistently GPU-bound across all settings, with the CPU providing adequate headroom even at lower resolutions where frame rates exceed 300 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 achieves a combo rank of 326 out of 1681 tested combinations in Doom. This places the pairing in the top 19.4% of all tested configurations, indicating it outperforms approximately four out of every five combinations in the database. The rank reflects the strong synergy between this mid-range CPU and upper-mid-range GPU, delivering frame rates that exceed what either component could achieve with a less capable partner.

The CPU's individual standing shows it performs almost identically to its nearest rivals. The Intel Core i7-9700 posts an average benchmark score of 19831, a mere 0.1% below the i5-12400's 19850. The Intel Core i7-8700 scores 19894, which is 0.2% higher. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX scores 19928, 0.4% higher, while the Intel Core i5-11600K scores 19771, 0.4% lower. These sub-1% deltas indicate the i5-12400 sits in a performance plateau where no single rival holds a meaningful advantage in aggregate CPU benchmarks.

The GPU's ranking similarly shows tight competition. The AMD Radeon Pro 5300 scores 41610, just 0.2% below the RTX 5070's 41687. The NVIDIA Tesla M40 scores 41897, 0.5% higher. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 scores 41441, 0.6% lower, and the AMD Radeon Pro 580X scores 41991, 0.7% higher. The RTX 5070's 83rd percentile standing among all GPUs, combined with the i5-12400's 77th percentile among all CPUs, explains why this combo ranks in the top fifth of all tested systems. The balanced nature of this pairing, with neither component dramatically outperforming the other, allows Doom's engine to fully utilize both resources without a significant bottleneck.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 provides 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process with a die size of 163 mm². It operates at a base clock of 2.50 GHz and boosts to 4.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration and connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-12400 demonstrates strong single-thread performance with a 3DMark single-thread score of 910 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2249. Multi-threaded results show a 3DMark max-threads score of 5890 and a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15935. The PassMark multi-thread score of 18747 and single-thread score of 3456 further characterize the CPU's capabilities. The 77th percentile standing among all CPUs places it in the upper quartile, with its average benchmark score of 19850 being essentially tied with its nearest rivals.

In Doom, the CPU's role becomes apparent when examining the highest frame rates. At 1080p Low, the combination achieves 339.4 FPS, a figure that approaches the limits of what the CPU can feed to the GPU. The 6-core, 12-thread configuration with a 4.40 GHz boost clock provides sufficient processing power to keep the RTX 5070 well-utilized at lower resolutions. The fact that the frame rate scales consistently as resolution increases indicates the CPU maintains adequate headroom even at 1080p, where GPU load is lowest. The 18 MB of shared L3 cache helps maintain low-latency access to frequently used game data, contributing to the consistently high frame pacing observed across all settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates are 339.4 FPS for Low, 297.7 FPS for Medium, 252.8 FPS for High, and 205.3 FPS for Ultra. The step between Low and Medium is 41.7 FPS, between Medium and High is 44.9 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 47.5 FPS. Each settings tier incurs a progressively larger performance cost, with the Ultra preset demanding 39.5% fewer frames than Low.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates drop to 220.6 FPS for Low, 190.7 FPS for Medium, 161.9 FPS for High, and 129.7 FPS for Ultra. The deltas between consecutive settings are 29.9 FPS, 28.8 FPS, and 32.2 FPS respectively. The percentage penalty from Low to Ultra at this resolution is 41.2%, slightly higher than at 1080p, indicating the increased pixel count amplifies the cost of higher quality settings.

At 3840x2160, the results are 120.2 FPS for Low, 104.2 FPS for Medium, 86.4 FPS for High, and 71.3 FPS for Ultra. Here, the absolute deltas shrink to 16.0 FPS between Low and Medium, 17.8 FPS between Medium and High, and 15.1 FPS between High and Ultra. The percentage penalty from Low to Ultra reaches 40.7%, similar to the other resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 71.3 FPS remains above the 60 FPS threshold, while 4K High at 86.4 FPS offers a more comfortable margin. Across all resolutions and settings, the data shows a consistent pattern: each settings tier costs roughly 10-15% of the previous tier's frame rate, with the absolute impact growing larger at lower resolutions where base frame rates are higher.