Doom

The Intel Core i5-14600K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is a combination that sits in the upper-middle tier of tested systems for Doom, ranking 1333 out of 3712 combos. That places it in the 64th percentile of all tested hardware pairings for this title, meaning it outperforms roughly two-thirds of the configurations in the database while trailing the high-end and enthusiast setups. The ranking reflects a balance where the GPU’s 8 GB of GDDR6X memory and the CPU’s 14 cores produce frame rates that are very playable at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K remaining viable at reduced settings. This is a classic mid-to-high-range pairing that punches above its weight in a well-optimized engine like the one powering Doom, but it is not without limitations at the most demanding presets.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3712 tested combinations, this CPU-GPU pairing lands at position 1333 for Doom specifically. That rank is not a reflection of poor performance — it simply indicates that a large number of configurations in the database use more powerful components, particularly newer GPUs with larger memory pools. The RTX 3070 Ti’s percentile among all GPUs is 75, meaning it sits above three-quarters of all graphics cards tested, while the i5-14600K’s percentile is 90 among all CPUs, putting it in the top tenth of processors. When combined, the two deliver a system that is stronger on the CPU side than the GPU side, which becomes evident in how the frame rates scale across resolutions.

The nearest rival CPUs in average benchmark score give context to the i5-14600K’s positioning. The Intel Xeon Gold 5318H scores 48698, a mere 0.2% higher, while the AMD EPYC 4345P scores 48470, 0.3% lower. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX and Ultra 5 245 are also within one percentage point, with scores of 48287 and 48995 respectively. This clustering shows that the i5-14600K’s processing power is essentially on par with several server and workstation chips, which is impressive for a desktop part. On the GPU side, the RTX 3070 Ti’s nearest rivals are similarly tight: the RTX 5070 Mobile scores 29928 (0.1% higher), the RX 6800 scores 30095 (0.5% higher), and the RTX 2080 Ti scores 29783 (0.5% lower). These deltas are negligible in real-world gaming, meaning the 3070 Ti trades blows with cards from both the previous and next generations.

For Doom specifically, the combo’s rank of 1333 out of 3712 is heavily influenced by the game’s scalability. The id Tech engine scales well across a wide range of hardware, so even mid-range parts achieve high frame rates. This pairing’s rank reflects that it is neither a bottleneck-limited budget build nor an overkill enthusiast setup — it sits comfortably in the sweet spot for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming, with enough headroom to handle 4K at lower presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture, using the GA104 chip manufactured on Samsung’s 8 nm process. The GPU contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, with a transistor density of 44.4 million per square millimeter. Its clock speeds are set at a base of 1575 MHz and a boost of 1770 MHz, with memory running at 1188 MHz, which translates to 19 Gbps effective. The 8 GB of GDDR6X memory sits on a 256-bit bus, delivering 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is the single most important factor in how the card performs in Doom at high resolutions.

The card’s compute resources include 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units. It also features 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores. The pixel rate is 169.9 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 339.8 GTexel/s. Floating point performance is rated at 21.75 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 (at 1:1 ratio). These specifications place the card in a strong position for a game like Doom, which relies heavily on raw rasterization throughput rather than ray tracing. The 8 GB VRAM is adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K with Ultra settings, the memory capacity and bandwidth become limiting factors, as shown in the measured FPS data.

The GPU’s power draw is 290 W TDP, with a suggested PSU rating of 600 W. It connects via PCIe 4.0 x16 and uses a single 12-pin power connector. The card is dual-slot and measures 267 mm in length and 112 mm in height. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, all of which are relevant for Doom’s modern rendering pipeline. The card’s production status is end-of-life, and its launch MSRP was 599 USD, a figure that reflects its positioning at the time of release but not its current market value.

In benchmark tests, the RTX 3070 Ti scores 23356 in Passmark G3D and 11601 in Passmark GPU compute. Its Geekbench scores are 119718 in OpenCL and 139541 in Vulkan. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3478. These numbers align with the card’s 75th percentile ranking among all GPUs, confirming that it is a solid performer but not a top-tier part. For Doom, the GPU’s role is to push frame rates at 1080p and 1440p with high settings, while at 4K, the 8 GB VRAM becomes a constraint that forces users to lower settings to maintain playable performance.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for this combo shows clear scaling patterns across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the average FPS is 271. Dropping to 2560x1440 at Low reduces that to 176 FPS, a 35% decrease. At 4K (3840x2160) with Low settings, the average is 95 FPS, which is 65% lower than 1080p. This scaling indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases, because the CPU has enough headroom to feed frames at lower resolutions.

At High settings, the scaling is similar: 200 FPS at 1080p, 129 FPS at 1440p (a 35.5% drop), and 70 FPS at 4K (a 65% drop from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and High settings suggests that the GPU’s rendering load grows proportionally with pixel count, and the CPU is not introducing a bottleneck until the frame rates exceed roughly 270 FPS at 1080p Low. The fact that 1080p Low achieves 271 FPS while 1080p High achieves 200 FPS shows that the CPU can still keep up at high frame rates, but the GPU’s workload increases with settings.

The drop from 1440p to 4K is particularly steep. At Medium settings, 1440p yields 153 FPS, while 4K yields 83 FPS, a 45.8% reduction. At Ultra settings, 1440p yields 106 FPS, and 4K yields 57 FPS, a 46.2% reduction. This pattern confirms that 4K is where the RTX 3070 Ti’s 8 GB VRAM and 256-bit memory bus start to struggle. The game’s texture and shading demands at 4K exceed what the card can comfortably handle, forcing the average frame rate below 60 FPS at Ultra and only slightly above that at High.

What this resolution scaling tells a builder is that the combo is optimized for 1440p gaming. At 1440p High, the 129 FPS average is well above the 120 Hz refresh rate of many monitors, and even 1440p Ultra at 106 FPS is smooth on a 100 Hz display. At 1080p, the card is almost overkill, with frame rates above 200 FPS at High settings, making it ideal for competitive play on 240 Hz monitors. At 4K, the card is usable but not ideal — users will need to choose between High settings at 70 FPS or Low settings at 95 FPS, with Ultra being borderline unplayable at 57 FPS average.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a complete picture of how this combo performs across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the lowest tested resolution, the average frame rates are 271 at Low, 236 at Medium, 200 at High, and 163 at Ultra. The Medium setting has a minimum FPS of 201 and a maximum of 272, showing that the frame pacing is consistent with only a 35 FPS spread between minimum and average. The Low setting averages 271 FPS, which is close to the maximum of 272 seen at Medium, indicating that the CPU is capable of pushing frame rates well beyond 270 FPS when the GPU is not heavily loaded.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop to 176 at Low, 153 at Medium, 129 at High, and 106 at Ultra. The Medium setting shows a minimum of 130 and a maximum of 176, which is a tighter range than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor. The 106 FPS average at Ultra is still above the 100 FPS threshold, making 1440p Ultra a viable option for users with high-refresh-rate monitors. The 129 FPS at High is particularly noteworthy because it means this combo can drive a 120 Hz 1440p display without dropping below that refresh rate on average.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 95 at Low, 83 at Medium, 70 at High, and 57 at Ultra. The Medium setting has a minimum of 70 and a maximum of 95, which shows that even at 4K, the frame pacing remains stable, but the averages are significantly lower. The 70 FPS at High is playable, but the 57 FPS at Ultra is below the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay. The 95 FPS at Low is interesting because it shows the card can still push nearly 100 FPS at 4K when settings are minimal, but this sacrifices visual quality.

Comparing the settings at each resolution, the difference between Low and Ultra is 108 FPS at 1080p (271 vs 163), 70 FPS at 1440p (176 vs 106), and 38 FPS at 4K (95 vs 57). This narrowing gap at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU’s raw compute limits are being reached, and the settings have less relative impact on frame rates. At 1080p, the GPU has enough headroom that lowering settings yields large FPS gains; at 4K, the GPU is saturated, and settings changes produce smaller absolute improvements.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core, 20-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, specifically the Raptor Lake-R refresh. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it features ECC memory support, which is unusual for a desktop part. It uses the Intel Socket 1700 and supports PCIe Gen 5 with 16 CPU lanes. The integrated graphics are UHD Graphics 770, though these are irrelevant for gaming with a discrete GPU.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-14600K scores 24491 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 2064 in single core. Its Cinebench R20 scores are 13709 multicore and 1935 single core. Geekbench results show 16673 multicore and 2491 single core. The Passmark suite shows a multithread score of 38682, a single-thread score of 4270, and a physics score of 2473. The CPU’s average benchmark score is 48618, which places it at the 90th percentile among all CPUs. This is a very strong showing, particularly in single-thread performance, which is critical for games like Doom that rely on a few high-frequency cores.

The CPU’s role in this combo is to provide enough single-thread and multi-thread throughput to avoid bottlenecking the GPU. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 271 FPS, which suggests the CPU can handle high frame rates without becoming a limiting factor. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 163 FPS, and the difference between Low and Ultra is 108 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution. At 1440p and 4K, the CPU’s influence diminishes further as the GPU becomes more loaded.

The nearest rival CPUs in average benchmark score are all within 1% of the i5-14600K, which confirms that its processing power is competitive with a range of enterprise and workstation parts. The Intel Xeon Gold 5318H and AMD EPYC 4345P are both server-oriented chips, yet they score nearly identically to the i5-14600K in overall benchmarks. This means that for gaming, the i5-14600K’s high boost clock of 5.30 GHz provides an advantage in single-threaded tasks, while its 14 cores and 20 threads handle multi-threaded workloads effectively. For Doom, which is not heavily multi-threaded, the CPU’s single-core performance is what matters most, and the 2064 Cinebench R23 single-core score reflects that capability.

In practice, the CPU’s role is to feed the RTX 3070 Ti with enough data to keep it busy. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p, the combo is GPU-limited at all settings, meaning the CPU has excess capacity. At 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes even more dominant, and the CPU’s load decreases. However, the CPU’s 14 cores and 20 threads ensure that background tasks, streaming, or other applications running concurrently will not interfere with game performance. The 24 MB of L3 cache also helps with game data residency, reducing the need to fetch data from main memory.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this CPU-GPU pairing in Doom?

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 at High settings provides an average of 129 FPS, which is ideal for 120 Hz monitors. At 1920x1080, High settings yield 200 FPS, and Ultra settings yield 163 FPS, both suitable for high-refresh-rate competitive play. At 4K, High settings give 70 FPS, which is playable but not ideal, while Ultra drops to 57 FPS.

Q: Is this combo capable of 4K gaming in Doom?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K Low, the average FPS is 95, and at 4K Medium it is 83. At 4K High, the average drops to 70 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold, but 4K Ultra averages only 57 FPS, which is below that threshold. Users seeking 4K should use High settings or lower.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 Ti compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti’s average benchmark score is 29945. Its nearest rival, the RTX 5070 Mobile, scores 29928 (0.1% higher), the RX 6800 scores 30095 (0.5% higher), and the RTX 2080 Ti scores 29783 (0.5% lower). These differences are minimal, meaning the 3070 Ti performs nearly identically to these cards in average benchmarks.

Q: Does the Intel Core i5-14600K bottleneck the RTX 3070 Ti in Doom?

A: The FPS data suggests no CPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 271 FPS, and at 1080p High it achieves 200 FPS. The CPU’s 90th percentile ranking and high single-core performance (2064 in Cinebench R23 single-core) indicate it has sufficient headroom to keep the GPU fed at all tested resolutions and settings.

Q: What is the CPU’s memory and cache configuration?

A: The i5-14600K supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. Its cache includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache. The L3 cache is particularly relevant for gaming, as it stores frequently accessed data closer to the cores.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all tested systems for Doom?

A: Out of 3712 tested combinations, this pairing ranks 1333rd. That places it in the upper third of all systems tested for Doom, which is a strong result considering the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and the CPU’s mid-to-high-end positioning. The rank reflects that the combo is well-suited for 1440p gaming with high refresh rates, while 4K requires settings adjustments.