Doom

The Intel Core i5-13400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT delivers a remarkably smooth experience in Doom, consistently pushing frame rates far beyond what standard displays can show. The data indicates that this combination is heavily overqualified for the game’s engine, making the choice of settings more about balancing visual fidelity against diminishing returns than about chasing playable frame rates. The measured results show a system that excels at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K remaining highly playable but requiring a more careful selection of presets to maintain the highest refresh rates. This analysis provides a clear path for configuring the game to match a user's display capabilities and performance preferences.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals that the most demanding preset, Ultra, is the only one that brings the frame rate below the 100 FPS mark at 4K, hitting an average of 71 FPS. At 1440p, the Ultra preset delivers 132 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors, but it still represents a significant drop from the other settings. For users targeting a consistent 144 FPS or higher at 1440p, the High preset is the optimal choice, providing an average of 161 FPS with no minimum frame rate recorded, suggesting a stable experience. The Medium preset offers a middle ground at 191 FPS, but the jump from Medium to High is a mere 30 FPS, while the visual difference between these two presets in most games is often less impactful than the difference between High and Ultra.

At 1080p, the situation is entirely different. Every preset, including Ultra, exceeds 200 FPS on average. The Low preset reaches 338 FPS, Medium hits 295 FPS, High manages 249 FPS, and Ultra still delivers 203 FPS. Given this abundance of performance, the recommendation is to prioritize visual quality. The Ultra preset should be the default choice for any 1080p display, as its 203 FPS average is still far beyond the refresh rate of all but the most specialized esports monitors. The gap between High and Ultra at this resolution is 46 FPS, but the extra visual fidelity from the Ultra preset is generally worth the performance cost when the absolute frame rate is already so high.

For 4K, the recommendation shifts. The Ultra preset’s 71 FPS average is perfectly playable on a 60Hz display, but it is not sufficient for a 120Hz or 144Hz panel. The High preset at 87 FPS is a better choice for those seeking a smoother experience, though it still falls short of the 120 FPS threshold. The Medium preset provides the best balance for high-refresh 4K gaming, with an average of 103 FPS and a minimum of 88 FPS, ensuring that frame pacing remains consistent during intense combat sequences. The data strongly suggests that there is no reason to use the Low preset at any resolution, as the performance gains are unnecessary given the capability of this hardware, and the visual compromise is severe.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the primary driver of frame rates in Doom, and its specifications explain the substantial performance headroom observed. The GPU features 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 800.0 GB/s. This vast amount of memory ensures that texture loading and data streaming are never bottlenecks, even at 4K resolution with the High or Ultra presets, which often demand significant video memory. The GPU’s boost clock of 2394 MHz and game clock of 2025 MHz enable the raw compute throughput needed to push hundreds of frames per second at lower resolutions.

The GPU’s architecture, RDNA 3.0, with 5376 shading units and 192 ROPs, is clearly well-suited to Doom’s engine. The pixel rate of 459.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 804.4 GTexel/s indicate that the card can handle the fill-rate requirements of the game’s fast-paced environments without breaking a sweat. The benchmark scores reflect this, with a Passmark G3D score of 29009 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 71068, which are indicative of strong DirectX 12 and Vulkan performance, the APIs that Doom utilizes.

While the GPU is powerful, its percentile ranking of 55 versus all GPUs is misleading in this context, as the nearest rivals listed are substantially lower-end mobile or older desktop parts. The delta percentages against rivals like the AMD Radeon 660M and NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile are negligible (0.5% or less), but this is a statistical artifact of the average benchmark score, which includes compute tests that may not reflect gaming performance. In Doom, the data shows the RX 7900 XT is not the limiting factor; the frame rates at 1080p and 1440p are so high that they suggest the CPU is beginning to cap performance, particularly at the Low preset where the GPU has minimal work to do.

FAQ

Q: Is the Ultra preset viable for competitive play at 1440p?

A: Yes, the data shows an average of 132 FPS at 1440p with the Ultra preset. This is well above the 120 FPS threshold commonly sought for competitive shooters, ensuring a responsive and fluid experience without sacrificing visual quality.

Q: What is the best way to achieve 144 FPS at 4K?

A: The measured results indicate that no preset achieves a 144 FPS average at 3840x2160. The closest option is the Medium preset, which delivers an average of 103 FPS, suggesting that a 120Hz 4K display is the realistic target for this hardware combination.

Q: How much performance is lost when switching from High to Ultra at 1080p?

A: The average frame rate drops from 249 FPS on High to 203 FPS on Ultra at 1920x1080. This represents a 46 FPS reduction, which is significant in raw numbers but less impactful as a percentage when the starting point is already above 200 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more important for this game at 4K?

A: The data suggests the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K. The frame rate drops from 119 FPS on Low to 71 FPS on Ultra, a change of 48 FPS, which is directly correlated with the increased graphical load on the GPU, while the CPU workload remains relatively constant.

Q: Can this system handle a 360Hz monitor at 1080p?

A: The data shows that the Low preset reaches an average of 338 FPS, and the Medium preset reaches 295 FPS. Both are below the 360 FPS target, so a 360Hz monitor would not be fully utilized, but a 240Hz monitor would be saturated by the Low, Medium, and High presets.

Q: Does the Low preset offer any benefit at 1440p?

A: The Low preset provides an average of 219 FPS, which is 28 FPS higher than the Medium preset and 58 FPS higher than the High preset. This could be beneficial for a 240Hz monitor, but the visual quality compromise is substantial given the High preset already offers 161 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates exceptional performance across all settings. The Low preset yields an average of 338 FPS, with the Medium preset following at 295 FPS and a minimum of 251 FPS. The High preset delivers 249 FPS on average, and the Ultra preset remains highly playable at 203 FPS. The data shows a clear, linear progression of performance loss as settings increase, but the absolute floor of 203 FPS means that even the most demanding preset is suitable for high-refresh-rate gaming.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally with the increased pixel count. The Low preset maintains an average of 219 FPS, while the Medium preset averages 191 FPS with a minimum of 162 FPS. The High preset is a strong contender for 1440p, providing 161 FPS on average, and the Ultra preset still delivers a smooth 132 FPS. The pattern remains consistent, with a 50 FPS difference between the High and Ultra presets, but all settings are viable for 144Hz displays.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to feel the pressure, but the results are still impressive. The Low preset achieves an average of 119 FPS, which is notable for 4K. The Medium preset averages 103 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS, making it the best option for a buttery-smooth experience on a 120Hz panel. The High preset drops to 87 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 71 FPS, both of which are perfectly playable on a 60Hz monitor. The minimum frame rates recorded for the Medium presets across all resolutions indicate that the frame pacing remains stable, avoiding sudden hitches during fast action.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial, but the scaling is not linear across all presets, revealing important insights about the system’s bottleneck. At the Low preset, the average frame rate falls from 338 FPS at 1080p to 119 FPS at 4K, a reduction of 219 FPS, or roughly 65%. This steep decline indicates that the GPU is becoming the primary limiting factor as the pixel count quadruples, even with minimal graphical effects enabled. The GPU’s pixel rate of 459.6 GPixel/s is being taxed heavily by the 4K resolution, despite the low complexity of the scene.

For the High preset, the drop from 249 FPS at 1080p to 161 FPS at 1440p and then to 87 FPS at 4K shows a more moderate scaling curve. The transition from 1440p to 4K results in a 74 FPS loss, which is a 46% reduction. This suggests that at 1440p, the CPU is still contributing significantly to the frame rate, but at 4K, the GPU’s workload dominates. The Ultra preset follows a similar pattern, with 203 FPS at 1080p, 132 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K, a 65% drop from 1080p to 4K.

The data indicates that the limiting component changes depending on the resolution. At 1080p, the CPU is likely the bottleneck, as the frame rates exceed what the GPU can render when unconstrained, especially at the Low preset where the GPU has little work. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, as the frame rates are much closer to what the GPU’s raw compute and memory bandwidth can deliver. The fact that the Low preset at 4K (119 FPS) is higher than the Ultra preset at 1080p (203 FPS) confirms that the GPU is fully utilized at 4K, while the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F plays a crucial role in ensuring that the GPU is not starved of data, particularly at lower resolutions. With 10 cores and 16 threads, the CPU provides ample parallelism for Doom’s multi-threaded engine. The boost clock of 4.60 GHz ensures that single-threaded performance is strong, which is critical for game logic and physics calculations. The 3DMark single-thread score of 960 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3191 indicate that the CPU has the per-core performance necessary to handle the game’s main thread without becoming a bottleneck.

The CPU’s benchmark results show a solid foundation for gaming. The Passmark multithread score of 25032 and the Cinebench R23 multicore score of 22604 demonstrate that the CPU can handle background tasks and game threads simultaneously without impacting frame rates. The 20 MB of shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for the game’s data-heavy scenes. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 77 versus all CPUs places it in the upper quartile, and its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS and AMD Ryzen 7 6800H, show a delta percentage of 0 to 0.4, indicating that the i5-13400F is competitive with higher-tier mobile processors.

The evidence that the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p is strong. At the Low preset, the GPU is rendering frames at 338 FPS on average, but the CPU’s capabilities in handling draw calls and game logic appear to cap the frame rate there. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 135 FPS difference, but the CPU’s contribution remains constant, suggesting that the GPU is the only variable. At 4K, the CPU has more time to prepare frames, and the GPU becomes the bottleneck, as evidenced by the larger frame rate differences between presets. The CPU’s 65W TDP and 10nm process node indicate that it can sustain these performance levels without thermal throttling, ensuring consistent results over long gaming sessions.