Doom

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 delivers a high-refresh-rate experience in Doom, with the measured data showing that the 1440p Medium preset is the sweet spot for balancing visual quality and frame rate. At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo produces an average of 170 FPS with a minimum of 144 FPS, which aligns perfectly with the refresh rate of most high-end gaming monitors. While the High preset at the same resolution still delivers a strong 143 FPS average, the Medium preset provides a more comfortable buffer above the 144 FPS threshold, ensuring smoother frame pacing during intense combat sequences. For users with 1080p displays, the Low preset pushes the engine to its limits at 301 FPS average, but the Medium preset at 262 FPS offers a better visual experience while remaining far above any competitive refresh rate ceiling.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data clearly indicates that the Medium preset is the most practical choice for this hardware combination, particularly at 1440p where the difference between settings is most pronounced. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset yields an average of 170 FPS with a recorded minimum of 144 FPS, which is the only preset at this resolution that maintains a floor at or above the 144 FPS mark. The High preset drops slightly to 143 FPS average, which means it will frequently dip below the refresh rate threshold of 144Hz monitors, causing visible stutter. The Ultra preset at this resolution falls to 117 FPS average, which is still playable but sacrifices the responsiveness that Doom's fast-paced gameplay demands.

At 3840x2160, the Medium preset again proves to be the optimal choice, delivering an average of 92 FPS with a minimum of 78 FPS and a maximum of 106 FPS. This is the only 4K preset that maintains playable frame rates across the entire measured range, as the High preset averages 78 FPS and the Ultra preset drops to 63 FPS. The Low preset at 4K reaches 105 FPS average, but the visual degradation at this resolution is significant enough that most users will prefer the Medium settings for a better balance of image quality and performance. For 1080p users, the Medium preset at 262 FPS average provides an excellent experience, though the Low preset at 301 FPS will be preferred by competitive players seeking maximum frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 1054 out of 3712 tested combos for Doom, placing it in the top 28% of all configurations tested. This ranking reflects a strong but not elite pairing, as the RTX 3080's 68th percentile ranking among all GPUs and the i7-12700K's 84th percentile ranking among all CPUs combine to produce solid but not class-leading performance in this title. The CPU's average benchmark score of 35287 places it in a tight cluster with its nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i5-13600T at 35305 (0.1% higher), the Intel Core i7-12700KF at 35365 (0.2% higher), and the Intel Core i7-13700T at 35403 (0.3% higher). These marginal differences of less than 1% indicate that the i7-12700K is performing exactly as expected for its position in the market, with no notable anomalies in its processing capabilities.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 23172 places it among competitors like the NVIDIA P106-100 at 23249 (0.3% higher), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 at 23250 (0.3% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 6600M at 23273 (0.4% higher). These rivals show similarly negligible performance deltas, confirming that the RTX 3080 is delivering consistent results relative to its peer group. The combination's rank of 1054 out of 3712 indicates that roughly 2658 other configurations outperform it in this specific game, which is expected given that Doom is a well-optimized title that scales well with both CPU and GPU resources. The data suggests that this pairing is well-balanced for Doom, with neither component creating a significant bottleneck that would drag the overall ranking down further.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 serves as the primary driver of frame rate in Doom, with its 10 GB of GDDR6X memory over a 320-bit bus providing 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is more than sufficient for the texture and geometry demands of Doom at all tested resolutions, as evidenced by the consistent scaling between settings presets. The GPU's GA102 chip on an 8 nm process from Samsung contains 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die, with a transistor density of 45.1M per mm². The 8704 shading units operating at a boost clock of 1710 MHz deliver 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, which translates to 164.2 GPixel/s pixel rate and 465.1 GTexel/s texture rate.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K resolution, where frame rates drop significantly across all settings presets. At 3840x2160, the difference between Low and Ultra settings is 42 FPS (105 to 63), which represents a 40% performance swing that is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios. The RTX 3080's 68th percentile ranking among all GPUs indicates that it sits above the median but below the top-tier cards, which explains why it cannot maintain 144 FPS at 4K in this title. The GPU's 68 RT cores and 272 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for features that Doom does not heavily utilize, so the raw rasterization performance of the 96 ROPs and 272 TMUs is what primarily determines the frame rates seen in the measurements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combination delivers exceptional performance across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 301 FPS, which represents the absolute ceiling for this configuration at this resolution. The Medium preset produces 262 FPS average with a minimum of 223 FPS and a maximum of 301 FPS, showing that the frame pacing remains consistent even when settings are increased. The High preset drops to 221 FPS average, while the Ultra preset settles at 181 FPS average. These results indicate that even at maximum settings, the hardware maintains frame rates well above 144 FPS, making 1080p gaming entirely GPU-bound with no CPU-related bottlenecks.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably. The Low preset yields 195 FPS average, the Medium preset produces 170 FPS average with a minimum of 144 FPS and a maximum of 195 FPS, and the High preset delivers 143 FPS average. The Ultra preset drops to 117 FPS average, which is the first setting where the frame rate falls below the 144 FPS threshold. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 78 FPS spread (195 to 117), demonstrating that the GPU's compute resources are increasingly taxed as visual fidelity increases at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops more dramatically. The Low preset averages 105 FPS, the Medium preset averages 92 FPS with a minimum of 78 FPS and a maximum of 106 FPS, the High preset averages 78 FPS, and the Ultra preset bottoms out at 63 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is 42 FPS, which is proportionally similar to the 1440p spread but represents a much larger percentage drop because the absolute values are lower. The 4K Medium preset's minimum of 78 FPS is the lowest recorded frame rate across all tested configurations, indicating that this resolution pushes the RTX 3080 to its limits.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals important information about the system's bottleneck characteristics. At 1080p Medium, the combination produces 262 FPS average. Moving to 1440p Medium, the frame rate drops to 170 FPS, representing a 35% reduction. Moving further to 4K Medium, the frame rate falls to 92 FPS, which is a 46% reduction from 1440p and a 65% reduction from 1080p. This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, as the CPU's performance headroom at lower resolutions becomes less relevant when pixel count increases.

The low resolution data provides the clearest evidence of CPU capability in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the combination achieves 301 FPS average, which is likely near the engine's maximum frame rate ceiling for this CPU. The fact that increasing from 1080p Low to 1080p Medium only reduces the frame rate by 39 FPS (301 to 262) suggests that the CPU can feed the GPU with enough data to maintain high utilization even at lower graphical settings. However, the jump from 1080p Medium to 1080p High (262 to 221 FPS) and then to 1080p Ultra (221 to 181 FPS) shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as settings increase, since the CPU has ample headroom at these frame rates.

The 4K data confirms that the RTX 3080 is the primary constraint at high resolutions. The drop from 4K Low (105 FPS) to 4K Medium (92 FPS) to 4K High (78 FPS) to 4K Ultra (63 FPS) shows a steady degradation that is purely attributable to GPU rendering load. The CPU's role at 4K is diminished, as the i7-12700K's 12 cores and 20 threads are more than sufficient to keep up with the GPU's output at these frame rates. The measured data indicates that users seeking higher 4K performance would need a more powerful GPU, while users at 1080p or 1440p could potentially benefit from a faster CPU if they are chasing maximum frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K provides the computational foundation for this gaming configuration, with its 12 cores and 20 threads operating at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. This Alder Lake-S architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, features 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's 125W TDP reflects its desktop-class positioning, and its support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus gives system builders flexibility in memory configuration. The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 19784 and a single-core score of 1850.5.

In the context of Doom's performance, the CPU's role is most evident at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the limiting factor. The 3DMark results show a single-thread score of 1043 and a max-thread score of 9979, indicating that the CPU scales well with increased thread utilization. The PassMark single-thread score of 4013 and multi-thread score of 34404 further confirm that this processor can handle the game's physics and AI calculations without creating a bottleneck. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking among all processors places it well above average, and its nearest rivals all show performance deltas of less than 0.5%, indicating that the i7-12700K is a consistent performer in its class.

The measured FPS data at 1080p Low (301 FPS average) suggests that the CPU is capable of supporting frame rates well beyond what most displays can show. However, the fact that the 4K Ultra preset drops to 63 FPS average demonstrates that the GPU, not the CPU, determines the playable experience at high resolutions. The CPU's boost clock of 5.00 GHz provides the single-thread performance that Doom's engine requires for game logic updates, while the 20 threads handle background tasks and streaming. The data shows that this CPU-GPU pairing is well-matched for Doom, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom at all tested settings to avoid becoming the primary performance limiter.