Doom

# FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS for this combo at 1080p with Ultra settings in Doom?

A: At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 delivers an average of 122 FPS. That is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and it suggests the system has headroom for high-refresh-rate monitors at this preset.

Q: How does the RTX 5050 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score is 21,035, which places it just 0.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL (21,153) and 1% behind the AMD Radeon HD 8970M (21,237). It is 1.6% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (20,713) and 1.6% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile (21,379). The deltas are tight, indicating near-identical raw compute performance among these four.

Q: What is the combo’s ranking among all tested CPU-GPU pairings for Doom?

A: This combination ranks 1,766th out of 2,930 tested combos in Doom. That places it in the 40th percentile overall, meaning roughly 60% of tested systems deliver higher frame rates in this title. The ranking reflects a mid-pack position, not a top-tier or bottom-tier result.

Q: Does the CPU outperform its nearest rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The i7-12700KF has an average benchmark score of 35,365. It is essentially tied with the Intel Core i7-13700T (35,403, delta of -0.1%) and the Intel Core 5 213PE (35,428, delta of -0.2%). It edges out the Intel Core i5-13600T (35,305, delta of +0.2%) and the Intel Core i7-12700K (35,287, delta of +0.2%). The differences are under a fraction of a percent, so performance parity is the takeaway.

Q: What are the minimum and maximum FPS recorded at 1440p Medium settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the measured average is 114 FPS, with a minimum of 97 FPS and a maximum of 131 FPS. The narrow 34 FPS spread between min and max indicates consistent frame pacing, which is valuable for a fast-paced FPS like Doom.

Q: How much VRAM does the RTX 5050 have, and what memory type does it use?

A: The RTX 5050 comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 320.0 GB/s. For Doom, a 2016 title, this capacity is sufficient, but the data shows frame rates still drop significantly at 4K Ultra, suggesting memory bandwidth or compute limits rather than pure capacity constraints.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB207 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 2,560 shading units, 80 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, alongside 20 ray tracing cores and 80 tensor cores. The base clock runs at 2,317 MHz, boosting to 2,572 MHz, while memory operates at 2,500 MHz (20 Gbps effective). These specs translate to a pixel rate of 82.30 GPixel/s, a texture rate of 205.8 GTexel/s, and 13.17 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

In Doom, the GPU’s role is evident in the frame rate scaling across settings. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 202 at Low to 122 at Ultra, a 39.6% drop. At 4K, the range narrows to 71 at Low down to 43 at Ultra, a 39.4% drop. The consistency of this drop percentage across resolutions suggests that the GPU’s compute throughput is the primary limiter when settings increase, rather than memory bandwidth or CPU bottlenecks. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is not stressed by Doom’s textures at these settings, but the 320.0 GB/s bandwidth may become a factor at 4K where pixel throughput demands are higher.

The benchmark scores reinforce the GPU’s mid-range positioning. The passmark G3D score of 17,326 and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,502 indicate the card is competitive with the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT and the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile, as shown in the nearestRivals data. The GPU’s percentile rank of 66 against all GPUs means it outperforms two-thirds of the database, but it is not a high-end part. In Doom, this translates to playable but not exceptional 4K performance, with Ultra settings dipping to 43 FPS average.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1,766 out of 2,930 places this system in the lower-middle tier of all tested configurations for Doom. This ranking is surprising given that the GPU percentile is 66 and the CPU percentile is 85, both above average. The discrepancy suggests that Doom’s engine is either more demanding on the GPU than the synthetic benchmarks indicate, or that the combination of this specific CPU and GPU creates a bottleneck that limits overall performance.

Looking at the CPU’s nearest rivals, the i7-12700KF is functionally tied with the i7-13700T, i5-13600T, and i7-12700K in average score. The GPU’s nearest rivals are similarly close in score. Yet the combo rank implies that other pairings with similar component scores achieve better frame rates in Doom. This could be due to driver optimizations, memory configuration, or the specific way Doom’s Vulkan renderer utilizes the hardware. The data does not include rival combo rankings, so the exact cause remains speculative, but the rank suggests that raw synthetic scores do not perfectly predict in-game performance for this title.

The 1,766th rank out of 2,930 means this combo is in the 40th percentile of tested systems. For a 2016 FPS game, this is a modest result. It indicates that while the components are individually capable, the combination is not optimized for Doom’s specific workload. Players seeking higher ranks would likely need a stronger GPU, as the CPU’s high percentile suggests it is not the limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS shows a clear hierarchy across settings. Low settings deliver 202 FPS average, Medium drops to 176 FPS, High falls to 149 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 122 FPS. The Medium preset records a minimum of 150 FPS and a maximum of 203 FPS, showing a tight 53 FPS spread. The step from Low to Medium (26 FPS drop) is larger than from Medium to High (27 FPS drop), but the High to Ultra step (27 FPS drop) is consistent, suggesting each settings tier imposes a similar computational cost.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 131 FPS at Low, 114 FPS at Medium, 96 FPS at High, and 79 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset shows a min of 97 FPS and a max of 131 FPS, a 34 FPS spread. The percentage drop from Low to Ultra is 39.7%, which is nearly identical to the 39.6% drop at 1080p. This consistency implies that the GPU is scaling predictably with settings, and the resolution increase is not altering the relative cost of each preset.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 71 FPS at Low, 62 FPS at Medium, 52 FPS at High, and 43 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset shows a min of 52 FPS and a max of 71 FPS. The Low to Ultra drop is 39.4%, again consistent with lower resolutions. The absolute numbers at 4K are notable: only Low settings achieve a 60+ FPS average, while Medium, High, and Ultra all fall below that threshold. For a game as fast-paced as Doom, this means 4K gaming requires Low settings for smoothness, or accepting sub-60 FPS at higher presets.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial and reveals the GPU’s limitation. At Low settings, the average FPS goes from 202 at 1080p to 131 at 1440p (a 35.1% drop) and then to 71 at 4K (a 45.8% drop from 1440p). At Ultra settings, the sequence is 122 at 1080p, 79 at 1440p (a 35.2% drop), and 43 at 4K (a 45.6% drop from 1440p). The consistent percentage drops at each resolution step across all settings indicate that the scaling is resolution-bound, not settings-bound.

This pattern points firmly at the GPU as the limiting component. The RTX 5050’s 320.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 13.17 TFLOPS of compute are simply insufficient to maintain high frame rates as pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K. The CPU’s role in this scaling is minimal, as the i7-12700KF has ample headroom—its 12 cores and 20 threads are more than adequate for Doom’s engine at any resolution.

The data implies that the transition from 1080p to 1440p is manageable, with FPS remaining above 79 at all settings. However, the jump to 4K is punishing, with even High settings unable to reach 60 FPS average. For 4K gaming, the user must accept Low settings for a 71 FPS average, which is playable but sacrifices visual fidelity. The scaling behavior suggests that if the user upgraded to a GPU with higher bandwidth, the 4K numbers would improve disproportionately, as the current card is clearly pixel-bound at that resolution.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It features 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. Its benchmark scores are strong: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28,838 and a single-core score of 4,071, alongside a Geekbench multi-core score of 14,367 and single-core of 2,255. These place the CPU in the 85th percentile of all CPUs.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is likely secondary given the game’s age and the GPU’s clear bottleneck at higher resolutions. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (202 FPS) is high enough that the CPU could become a factor if the frame rate were higher, but the RTX 5050 caps performance below that threshold. At 4K, the CPU is definitely not the limiter, as the GPU’s compute and bandwidth constraints dominate.

The CPU’s nearest rivals show it is evenly matched with the i7-13700T, i5-13600T, and i7-12700K in average benchmark score. In a CPU-bound scenario, these would all perform similarly, but Doom at these settings does not present such a scenario. The data suggests that a weaker CPU could be paired with the RTX 5050 without significantly altering Doom’s frame rates, as the GPU is the binding constraint. Conversely, upgrading the GPU would likely require a CPU at this level or better to avoid introducing a new bottleneck at lower resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

For 1080p gaming, the data supports Ultra settings as the best experience. The 122 FPS average is well above the 60 FPS threshold, and the visual fidelity of Ultra is the highest available. Even with the drop from 202 FPS at Low, the 122 FPS average provides smooth gameplay on standard 60 Hz or 144 Hz monitors. The Medium preset’s 176 FPS average is also excellent for high-refresh-rate displays, but Ultra’s 122 FPS is sufficient for most users.

At 1440p, the recommendation shifts to High settings. The 96 FPS average is playable, and the jump to Ultra at 79 FPS is still above 60 FPS but with diminishing returns. The Medium preset at 114 FPS is an alternative for those prioritizing smoothness over visuals. However, High offers a balance: 96 FPS is smooth, and the visual improvements over Medium are noticeable. Choosing Ultra at 1440p sacrifices 17 FPS for marginal visual gains, which may not be worth it in a fast-paced shooter.

At 4K, the data clearly indicates Low settings as the only option for a consistently smooth experience. The 71 FPS average at Low is the only preset above 60 FPS, while Medium at 62 FPS is borderline, and High at 52 FPS or Ultra at 43 FPS fall short. For 4K, the user must accept Low settings or reduce the resolution to 1440p. The measured data shows that Medium at 4K (62 FPS) is close to playable, but the minimum FPS would likely dip below 60 in intense scenes, making it a risky choice for competitive play. Low settings at 4K provide the best balance of smoothness and resolution, even if visual quality is reduced.