Doom

# Doom with Intel Core i5-9400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070

The measured frame rates for this combination show a system that scales predictably across the three tested resolutions, with the RTX 5070 clearly dominating the workload in most settings. The data indicates that the GPU's raw throughput is the primary driver of performance, while the six-core i5-9400 keeps pace without becoming a bottleneck at lower resolutions and settings. Across all twelve measured configurations, the average FPS ranges from 71 at 4K Ultra to 254 at 1080p Low, revealing a wide operational envelope that suits different display capabilities and quality preferences.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows show that Medium settings offer the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 3840x2160 Medium, the system produces an average of 102 FPS with a recorded minimum of 87 and maximum of 118, which indicates a playable and reasonably consistent frame pacing. Moving up to High at 4K drops the average to 87 FPS, a 15 FPS reduction that may be acceptable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes. The jump from Medium to Ultra at 4K is more punishing, with the average falling to 71 FPS, a 30% decrease relative to Medium — this suggests that Ultra is best reserved for users who prioritize visual fidelity over frame smoothness at 4K.

At 2560x1440, Medium delivers a 189 FPS average with a minimum of 161 and maximum of 217, matching the frame time consistency seen at 4K Medium. High at 1440p reaches 160 FPS, while Ultra drops to 131 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at this resolution spans 217 down to 131 FPS, meaning even the heaviest preset remains comfortably above the 100 FPS threshold. For 1920x1080, Medium produces 242 FPS average with minimum 205 and maximum 278, while High reaches 228 and Ultra 202. The data supports Medium as the recommended preset for this combo: it consistently sits within 5-10% of High performance while offering the largest measured frame time stability, as indicated by the min/max values being present only for Medium settings across all resolutions.

Low settings provide the highest frame rates — 254 at 1080p, 217 at 1440p, and 118 at 4K — but the relative gains over Medium shrink as resolution decreases. At 1080p, Low is only 12 FPS faster than Medium, while at 4K the difference grows to 16 FPS. This pattern suggests that Medium is the most efficient use of the hardware's capability, as the additional FPS from Low comes with a substantial visual quality reduction for a modest perf improvement at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 features 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's base clock is 2325 MHz with a boost of 2512 MHz, and it has 6144 shading units paired with 192 texture mapping units and 80 ROPs. Its 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores are present but not directly measured in this game's FPS data. The GPU's memory capacity and bandwidth appear sufficient for all tested configurations, as no configuration shows signs of memory-related stutter or degradation beyond expected scaling.

The RTX 5070's measured FPS profile across this game's settings shows a consistent relationship between quality presets. At 1080p, the difference between Low (254 FPS) and Ultra (202 FPS) is 52 FPS, a 20.5% reduction. At 1440p, that spread widens to 86 FPS (217 to 131), a 39.6% reduction, and at 4K it becomes 47 FPS (118 to 71), a 39.8% reduction. This pattern indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor when moving from Low to Ultra at higher resolutions, while at 1080p the CPU may be constraining the upper bound of Low and Medium settings — the 254 FPS at Low is the highest measured value, but the gap to Ultra is proportionally smaller.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 40377 places it in the 82nd percentile among all GPUs, and its nearest rivals by average score are the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (40318, 0.1% delta), AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (40063, 0.8% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (40870, -1.2% delta), and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (39568, 2% delta). These small deltas indicate the RTX 5070 sits in a dense performance cluster in synthetic benchmarks, yet in this game it delivers frame rates that are far above typical 60 FPS targets at all tested settings except 4K Ultra.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 brings six cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost of 4.10 GHz. Its 9 MB shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth are modest by modern standards, but the measured game performance suggests this is not a limiting factor for most configurations. The CPU's average benchmark score is 2254, placing it in the 47th percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (2259, -0.2% delta), Intel Core i7-10710U (2248, 0.3% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2246, 0.4% delta), and Intel Core i3-10305 (2264, -0.4% delta). These tiny deltas show the i5-9400 is firmly mid-pack in synthetic CPU tests.

In this game, the CPU's role becomes apparent when examining the scaling from 1080p to higher resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 254 FPS, which is the highest measured value across all configurations. At 1080p Medium, 242 FPS, and at 1080p High, 228 FPS — the difference between Low and High is only 26 FPS. This relatively small spread at 1080p suggests the CPU may be approaching its limit around the 250 FPS range, as the GPU is capable of far higher frame rates based on its synthetic scores. The 6-core, 6-thread configuration without hyper-threading may limit performance in scenes with heavy draw call overhead, though the measured data shows no min FPS values at Low, High, or Ultra to confirm frame time consistency.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes as the GPU takes over the rendering burden. The 4K Low result of 118 FPS is less than half of the 1080p Low result, which aligns with the pixel count scaling (3840x2160 has four times the pixels of 1920x1080). This indicates that at higher resolutions, the RTX 5070's fill rate and bandwidth are the determining factors, while the i5-9400 maintains adequate frame delivery without bottlenecking.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 ranks 987th out of 3712 tested combos in this game, placing it in the top 26.6% of all configurations. This rank reflects the strong GPU performance offset by a mid-range CPU that does not boost the combo into the upper echelon. The CPU's 47th percentile ranking contrasts with the GPU's 82nd percentile, suggesting the pairing is GPU-heavy in terms of relative capability.

The combo rank of 987 indicates that there are 986 configurations that achieve better performance in this game, likely featuring newer high-core-count CPUs paired with similarly powerful GPUs. However, the measured FPS data shows this combo is far from struggling — even at the most demanding tested setting (4K Ultra), it maintains 71 FPS, which is above the standard 60 FPS console-style target. The rank also reflects that many combinations with weaker GPUs but stronger CPUs may match or exceed this combo at lower resolutions where CPU-bound scenarios occur, but the measured data here shows no such limitation at 1080p Medium and above.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial across all settings. At Medium settings, the average FPS goes from 242 at 1080p, to 189 at 1440p, to 102 at 4K — a reduction of 21.9% from 1080p to 1440p, and 46.0% from 1440p to 4K. At High settings, the progression is 228 to 160 to 87, representing a 29.8% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 45.6% drop from 1440p to 4K. For Ultra, the values go from 202 to 131 to 71, with drops of 35.1% and 45.8% respectively. Low settings show 254 to 217 to 118, with drops of 14.6% and 45.6%.

The percentage drop from 1440p to 4K is remarkably consistent across all settings, hovering around 45-46%. This consistency indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component at these resolutions, as the pixel count increase from 1440p (3.7 million pixels) to 4K (8.3 million pixels) is a 2.25x increase, and the FPS drops by roughly half — suggesting near-linear scaling limited by GPU throughput. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is less consistent, ranging from 14.6% at Low to 35.1% at Ultra, which suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU is partially limiting the frame rate, while at 1080p Ultra, the GPU workload is high enough to become the primary constraint.

The 1080p Low result of 254 FPS is notable because it represents the ceiling of this combination — the CPU's ability to feed the GPU is likely the cap. If the GPU were the sole limiter at 1080p, the FPS would be expected to scale proportionally with the 1440p results, but the 254 FPS at 1080p Low versus 217 at 1440p Low shows only a 17% increase, far less than the 2.25x pixel reduction. This indicates that at the lowest settings and resolution, the i5-9400 becomes a bottleneck, preventing the RTX 5070 from reaching its full potential.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the measured average FPS values are: Low 118, Medium 102 (with min 87, max 118), High 87, and Ultra 71. The Medium preset at 4K is the only configuration with recorded min/max values, showing a frame time range of 31 FPS between the 87 minimum and 118 maximum. This range matches the Low preset's average exactly, which may indicate that during demanding scenes, Medium performance can dip to the Low preset's average level.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 217, Medium 189 (min 161, max 217), High 160, and Ultra 131. The Medium preset's min of 161 is notably lower than the High preset's average of 160, showing that frame time variability at Medium can produce dips that match the overall average of the next-highest preset. The max of 217 matches the Low preset's average, again showing the range of performance within Medium.

At 1920x1080, the averages are: Low 254, Medium 242 (min 205, max 278), High 228, and Ultra 202. The Medium preset at 1080p has the largest absolute min/max spread of any configuration, with a 73 FPS range from 205 to 278. This wide range suggests that at 1080p Medium, the system alternates between CPU-bound scenarios (around 205 FPS) and GPU-bound scenarios (up to 278 FPS). The 278 FPS max is the highest recorded value across all settings, exceeding the Low preset's average of 254 by 24 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo if I want to stay above 100 FPS average?

A: Both 1080p and 1440p achieve over 100 FPS at all settings. At 4K, only Low (118 FPS) and Medium (102 FPS) exceed 100 FPS average, while High (87 FPS) and Ultra (71 FPS) fall below.

Q: How much faster is the RTX 5070 compared to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5070's average benchmark score is 40377, which is 0.1% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (40318) and 0.8% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (40063). It is 1.2% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (40870) and 2% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (39568).

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any tested configuration?

A: The data suggests a CPU bottleneck at 1080p Low, where the average of 254 FPS is only 17% higher than the 1440p Low result of 217 FPS, despite a 2.25x reduction in pixel count. At higher settings and resolutions, the scaling aligns more closely with GPU limitations.

Q: What is the frame time consistency at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, min/max values are recorded for all three resolutions. At 1080p, the range is 205 to 278 (73 FPS spread). At 1440p, it is 161 to 217 (56 FPS spread). At 4K, it is 87 to 118 (31 FPS spread). The absolute spread narrows as resolution increases.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations in this game?

A: This combo ranks 987th out of 3712 tested combinations, placing it in the top 26.6% of all configurations. The CPU's 47th percentile and GPU's 82nd percentile indicate a GPU-heavy pairing.

Q: What is the FPS drop from 1440p to 4K across settings?

A: The drop is roughly consistent across settings: Low goes from 217 to 118 (45.6% reduction), Medium from 189 to 102 (46.0% reduction), High from 160 to 87 (45.6% reduction), and Ultra from 131 to 71 (45.8% reduction). This consistency indicates the GPU is the limiting factor at these resolutions.