Doom

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-14600K brings 14 cores and 20 threads to this Doom configuration, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. This hybrid architecture, built on Raptor Lake-R with a 10 nm process, pairs performance cores with efficiency cores to handle both the single-threaded rendering paths common in id Tech engines and the background tasks that can otherwise cause frame-time spikes. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache are directly relevant here, because Doom's heavily optimized Vulkan renderer tends to be sensitive to memory latency, and the large cache hierarchy helps keep frequently accessed geometry and texture data close to the cores.

At 1080p, the CPU's influence is most visible. The benchmark data shows that dropping settings from Ultra to Low at 1920x1080 yields a massive jump from 204.3 FPS to 338.1 FPS — a difference of more than 130 FPS. That scaling pattern suggests that at lower settings, the game is increasingly limited by how quickly the CPU can feed draw calls to the GPU, rather than by pixel throughput. The i5-14600K's single-thread performance, evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 2803 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4642, is strong enough to keep the RTX 5070 well-fed at these frame rates, but the upper ceiling is still governed by the CPU's ability to process game logic and submit rendering commands.

The CPU's multithreaded capabilities matter less for Doom's average FPS but still contribute to frame consistency. With a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32881 and a Passmark multithread score of 38682, the i5-14600K ranks in the 93rd percentile against all CPUs. This headroom means that even when the game spawns numerous enemies or complex physics interactions, the 14 cores can distribute the workload without starving the main rendering thread. The data indicates that this CPU is not a bottleneck in this pairing; rather, it provides ample reserve that lets the RTX 5070 operate near its potential.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-14600K with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 achieves a combo rank of 353 out of 1681 tested combinations in Doom. That places it in the top 21% of all tested configurations, which is a strong showing for a mid-range CPU paired with a current-generation GPU. The ranking reflects that this combo outperforms the vast majority of alternatives, but it also indicates that there are still faster combinations ahead — typically those pairing higher-end CPUs with more powerful GPUs.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals provides context for what this rank means. The i5-14600K's average benchmark score of 49166 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at 49062 (a delta of 0.2% in favor of the Intel part) and the Intel Core i5-14600KF at 49367 (where the non-F variant trails by 0.4%). Against the AMD EPYC 4345P at 49595, the i5-14600K is 0.9% behind, and it leads the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H at 48698 by 1%. These marginal differences mean that swapping the CPU to any of these near-equivalents would produce almost no measurable change in Doom's frame rates, reinforcing that the combo's rank is driven more by the GPU than by the processor.

For the GPU side, the RTX 5070's average benchmark score of 41687 sits close to the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 at 41610 (0.2% ahead) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 at 41441 (0.6% ahead), while trailing the NVIDIA Tesla M40 at 41897 by 0.5% and the AMD Radeon Pro 580X at 41991 by 0.7%. These rival comparisons suggest that the RTX 5070 performs at a level comparable to the previous flagship RTX 3090 in raw compute terms, which helps explain why this combo ranks as high as it does. The combination of a top-quartile CPU and a GPU that matches prior-generation flagship performance places this system in a strong position for high-refresh-rate Doom play.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data reveals a clear shift in bottleneck behavior as resolution increases. At 1080p with High settings, the combo delivers 248.5 FPS; at 1440p High, it drops to 162 FPS; and at 4K High, it falls to 87.8 FPS. This represents a 65% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is a much larger drop than what would be expected if the GPU were the sole limiting factor at all resolutions. The fact that 1080p High produces 248.5 FPS while 1080p Low reaches 338.1 FPS indicates that at lower resolutions, the CPU is beginning to cap performance — the GPU has enough headroom to render more frames, but the CPU cannot issue commands fast enough.

Moving to 1440p, the picture changes. At this resolution, Low settings still produce 219.5 FPS, which is only 35% below the 1080p Low figure of 338.1 FPS. This smaller relative drop suggests that the GPU is starting to take over as the primary constraint, but the CPU still has some influence. By 4K, the limiting component is unambiguously the GPU. At 4K Low, the combo manages 116.8 FPS, whereas 4K High drops to 87.8 FPS and 4K Ultra falls to 69.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 47.3 FPS, which is nearly identical in percentage terms to the gap at 1440p (86.3 FPS between Low and Ultra) — indicating that once resolution climbs high enough, performance scales almost entirely with GPU workload.

The data strongly suggests that for users targeting 1080p or 1440p with this combo, the CPU will occasionally limit maximum achievable frame rates, particularly at lower settings. At 4K, however, the RTX 5070 is the definitive bottleneck, and the i5-14600K's performance headroom becomes irrelevant to the average FPS. This is typical behavior for a well-balanced mid-high-end pairing, where the CPU is fast enough to avoid becoming a nuisance at standard resolutions but not so overpowered that it wastes potential at lower settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the full settings sweep shows the following average frame rates: Low delivers 338.1 FPS, Medium reaches 295.3 FPS, High produces 248.5 FPS, and Ultra drops to 204.3 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 42.8 FPS (a 12.7% reduction), while the step from Medium to High costs another 46.8 FPS (15.8%), and High to Ultra costs 44.2 FPS (17.8%). The consistency of these drops indicates that each settings tier imposes a similar incremental load on the hardware, with no single tier causing a disproportionate collapse.

At 2560x1440, the numbers scale down but remain high: Low achieves 219.5 FPS, Medium hits 191.7 FPS, High produces 162 FPS, and Ultra falls to 133.2 FPS. The relative gaps are smaller in percentage terms than at 1080p — Low to Medium is 12.7% lower, Medium to High is 15.5% lower, and High to Ultra is 17.8% lower — but the absolute differences remain substantial. Notably, 1440p Ultra at 133.2 FPS is still above 60 FPS by a wide margin, making this resolution viable for even the most demanding visual settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens considerably. Low produces 116.8 FPS, Medium reaches 105.4 FPS, High drops to 87.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 69.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is only 11.4 FPS (9.8%), while Medium to High costs 17.6 FPS (16.7%), and High to Ultra costs 18.3 FPS (20.8%). At 4K, the Ultra preset still manages nearly 70 FPS, which is playable, but the data shows that High is the last tier that maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. The 4K results also reveal that the game's settings have diminishing impact at lower quality tiers, suggesting that Medium and Low are already pushing the GPU near its limits in certain scenes.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, featuring 31,100 million transistors on a 263 mm² die. Its 12 GB of GDDR7 memory runs at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) across a 192-bit bus, yielding 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is directly relevant to Doom's performance at 4K, where large texture sets and high-resolution geometry can stress memory bandwidth. The fact that 4K Ultra still holds above 69 FPS indicates that the 672.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for this game, even at maximum settings.

The GPU's clock speeds are modest on paper — a base of 2325 MHz and a boost of 2512 MHz — but the architecture's efficiency compensates. The 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines combine to produce a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s. These figures explain why the RTX 5070 can push 338.1 FPS at 1080p Low: the raw throughput is high enough to saturate the CPU's command submission rate at lower resolutions. At 4K, the GPU's 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 compute becomes the dominant factor, and the measured scaling from Low to Ultra follows a pattern consistent with compute-bound rendering.

The RTX 5070's 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores are present but not heavily utilized in Doom, which was released in 2016 and uses traditional rasterization. The DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 API support means the GPU can run the game's Vulkan path optimally, and the Passmark DirectX 12 score of 108 and DirectX 11 score of 277 suggest strong API-level performance. The GPU's 83rd percentile ranking against all GPUs, combined with an average benchmark score of 41687, positions it as a solid performer that exceeds the requirements of this title.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience. At 1080p, every preset delivers well above 200 FPS, so the choice is purely about visual fidelity versus refresh rate headroom. Ultra at 204.3 FPS is arguably the best option for 1080p users with high-refresh monitors, as it still far exceeds 144 Hz and provides the richest visual detail. However, if the goal is maximum competitive performance, Low at 338.1 FPS offers a 65.6% advantage over Ultra, which could matter for esports-style play.

At 1440p, the recommendation shifts toward High settings. High produces 162 FPS, which comfortably exceeds 144 Hz, while Ultra drops to 133.2 FPS — still smooth but below the 144 Hz threshold. The gap between High and Ultra at 1440p is 28.8 FPS, and the visual difference between these two presets in Doom is typically subtle. For users with 144 Hz monitors, High is the sweet spot; for those with 120 Hz displays, Ultra remains viable.

At 4K, the data points to High as the optimal preset. High delivers 87.8 FPS, which is above 60 FPS with substantial margin, while Ultra falls to 69.5 FPS — still playable but closer to the edge. Low at 116.8 FPS is the only preset that breaks 100 FPS at 4K, but the visual compromise is significant. The measured rows show that Medium at 105.4 FPS is a reasonable middle ground, offering 20% more performance than High while retaining more visual quality than Low. For most 4K users, High provides the best balance, with Medium as a fallback if headroom is needed for demanding scenes.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Doom at 4K 60 FPS?

A: Yes, with room to spare. The measured data shows 87.8 FPS at 4K High and 69.5 FPS at 4K Ultra, both above the 60 FPS threshold. Even at maximum settings, the combo maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS.

Q: What is the best resolution for a 144 Hz monitor?

A: 1440p with High settings is the strongest choice. The measured 162 FPS at 1440p High exceeds 144 Hz, while 1080p High at 248.5 FPS also works but leaves performance on the table. At 4K, no preset reaches 144 Hz — the fastest is Low at 116.8 FPS.

Q: How does the i5-14600K compare to the Ryzen 9 5950X in this context?

A: The two CPUs are virtually identical in average benchmark score. The i5-14600K scores 49166 versus the Ryzen 9 5950X's 49062, a delta of 0.2% in favor of the Intel part. This difference is negligible for Doom's frame rates.

Q: Is the RTX 5070's 12 GB of VRAM sufficient for Doom at 4K?

A: The measured results indicate yes. The combo maintains 87.8 FPS at 4K High and 69.5 FPS at 4K Ultra, with no indication of memory-related stuttering. The 672.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth appears adequate for this game's requirements.

Q: Why does 1080p Low produce 338.1 FPS but 4K Low only 116.8 FPS?

A: The 65% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU's 5.30 GHz boost clock and 14 cores are sufficient to feed the GPU, but at 4K, the GPU's rendering workload dominates.

Q: Should I enable Ultra settings at 1440p or stick with High?

A: The data shows 1440p Ultra at 133.2 FPS versus High at 162 FPS. If your monitor is 120 Hz, Ultra is viable; if it is 144 Hz, High is the better choice to avoid missing the refresh rate target. The 28.8 FPS difference between these presets is the deciding factor.