Doom

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER delivers a highly playable experience in Doom, though the data reveals a clear shift in system bottleneck behavior as resolution climbs. At 1080p, the combination produces triple-digit frame rates across all settings, with the GPU often being the limiting factor only at the highest quality presets. Moving to 1440p and 4K, the frame rate drops follow a predictable curve that highlights the RTX 2060 SUPER’s memory bandwidth and compute limits. This analysis examines the measured FPS data to clarify how each component contributes to the final result.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a consistent and substantial penalty as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, which points directly to the GPU as the primary scaling bottleneck. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 138.6 FPS at 1080p to 89.3 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of approximately 36%. Pushing further to 4K High yields 52 FPS, which is a 62% drop from the 1080p result. This steep decline is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the rendering workload—dominated by pixel shading and memory throughput—scales nearly linearly with pixel count.

The pattern is even more pronounced at Ultra settings. The average FPS falls from 114.5 at 1080p to 73.8 at 1440p, and then to 39.1 at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest in the entire dataset, and it indicates that the RTX 2060 SUPER’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are being saturated by the combination of high resolution and maximum quality settings. Conversely, the CPU’s role in this scaling is minimal; the i7-12700KF’s 12 cores and 20 threads provide ample headroom even at lower resolutions where frame rates exceed 150 FPS.

At Low settings, the scaling behavior changes slightly. The 1080p Low result of 189.5 FPS drops to 122.1 FPS at 1440p and 66.1 FPS at 4K. The relative drop from 1080p to 1440p is less severe than at High settings, suggesting that at lower quality presets, the CPU begins to have a more noticeable influence on the upper frame rate ceiling. Still, the 4K Low result being less than half of the 1080p Low result confirms that the GPU remains the dominant constraint even when rendering load is reduced.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: The measured average FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings is 114.5 FPS, which is the lowest 1080p result in the dataset but still comfortably above 60 FPS.

Q: How does the 4K High result compare to the 1440p High result?

A: The 4K High average of 52 FPS is 41.8% lower than the 1440p High average of 89.3 FPS, illustrating a substantial performance penalty from increasing resolution by 2.25 times the pixel count.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU more likely to be the bottleneck at 1080p Low?

A: The 1080p Low result of 189.5 FPS is the highest score recorded, and given the i7-12700KF’s strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4091), it is unlikely the CPU is the limiting factor. The GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the more probable constraint even at Low settings.

Q: What is the largest frame rate gap between two adjacent settings at the same resolution?

A: At 4K, the gap between Low (66.1 FPS) and Ultra (39.1 FPS) is 27 FPS, but the largest single-step drop is from Medium (57.5 FPS) to High (52 FPS), a difference of 5.5 FPS. The most significant jump is from High to Ultra at 4K, where the average falls by 12.9 FPS.

Q: Does the RTX 2060 SUPER ever exceed 100 FPS at 1440p?

A: Yes, at 1440p Low the average FPS is 122.1, and at 1440p Medium it reaches 109.1 FPS. However, at High and Ultra settings, the averages drop to 89.3 and 73.8 FPS respectively, indicating that higher quality presets push the GPU past its comfort zone.

Q: How does the i7-12700KF’s multi-threaded performance relate to its gaming results?

A: The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979 places it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14400, scores 35336 with a deltaPct of 0.1. This level of multi-threaded performance is far beyond what Doom requires, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting component in this pairing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is the decisive component in this system’s Doom performance, and its specifications explain the measured FPS distribution. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. It also has 2176 shading units, 136 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, with base and boost clocks of 1470 MHz and 1650 MHz respectively. These figures produce a pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s, which directly govern how quickly the GPU can fill pixels and sample textures at high resolutions.

The benchmark data shows that the RTX 2060 SUPER sits in the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19774. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, scores 19706 with a deltaPct of 0.3, meaning the RTX 2060 SUPER is marginally ahead by 0.3%. The RTX 2070 trails by 0.5% with a score of 19680. This tight grouping indicates that the RTX 2060 SUPER performs slightly above its direct competitors, but the differences are small enough to be within measurement noise. In Doom, this translates to a GPU that can handle 1080p Ultra at 114.5 FPS, but at 4K Ultra the average falls to 39.1 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

The memory subsystem plays a critical role in the resolution scaling observed. At 4K, the 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the game’s textures, but the bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s becomes a limiting factor when the GPU must access large amounts of texture data each frame. This is evident in the 4K Medium result of 57.5 FPS, which is only 5.5 FPS higher than the 4K High result of 52 FPS, suggesting that the memory bandwidth is already saturated at Medium settings. The boost clock of 1650 MHz provides a moderate headroom over the base clock, but it does not compensate for the inherent compute limits of the TU106 chip at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset provides a granular view of how the system performs across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 114.5 at Ultra to 189.5 at Low. The progression is smooth: Low (189.5), Medium (168.7), High (138.6), and Ultra (114.5). The step from Low to Medium is a 20.8 FPS drop, while the step from High to Ultra is 24.1 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes a significant additional load on the GPU’s shading units and memory.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 122.1 (Low), 109.1 (Medium), 89.3 (High), and 73.8 (Ultra). The drop from Low to Medium is 13 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 15.5 FPS. The 1440p results show that the GPU is still capable of exceeding 100 FPS at lower settings, but the High and Ultra presets push it below the 90 FPS mark. The 1440p Ultra average of 73.8 FPS is the lowest result at this resolution, yet it remains above 60 FPS, providing a playable experience for most users.

At 3840x2160, the results are 66.1 (Low), 57.5 (Medium), 52 (High), and 39.1 (Ultra). This is the only resolution where the Low setting fails to reach 70 FPS, and the Ultra setting drops below 40 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 27 FPS, which is larger than the 18.7 FPS gap at 1440p and the 75 FPS gap at 1080p. This widening gap underscores the GPU’s inability to maintain performance as pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K. The data indicates that the RTX 2060 SUPER is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K requiring reduced settings to stay playable.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a high-end desktop processor that provides more than enough computational power for Doom, a game that is not particularly demanding on the CPU. The CPU features 12 cores and 20 threads, with base and boost clocks of 3.60 GHz and 5.00 GHz respectively. It is built on Intel’s 10 nm process with the Alder Lake architecture and has a 25 MB shared L3 cache. Its average benchmark score is 35355, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database are the Intel Core i5-14400 (avgScore 35336, deltaPct 0.1), the Intel Core i7-13800H (avgScore 35416, deltaPct -0.2), and the Intel Core i9-12900HX (avgScore 35289, deltaPct 0.2). These delta values are all within 0.3% of the i7-12700KF, indicating that the processor is performance-equivalent to its closest competitors. In gaming, this level of CPU performance is rarely a bottleneck, especially in a title like Doom that is optimized for high frame rates.

The measured FPS data confirms that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 189.5 FPS, which is a very high frame rate that would require a capable CPU to feed the GPU. The i7-12700KF’s single-thread performance, as measured by Cinebench R23 (4091) and Geekbench (2526), ensures that the CPU can keep up with the GPU’s rendering demands even at lower resolutions where frame rates are highest. The multi-threaded performance (Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979) is far above what any game requires, so even in CPU-intensive scenarios, the i7-12700KF would not be the weak link. The data shows that the RTX 2060 SUPER is the sole determinant of how the system scales across resolutions, and the CPU’s role is to provide a stable, high-bandwidth platform for the GPU to operate at its full potential.