Doom

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for Doom reveal a clear hierarchy across the four available presets, and the data suggests that High is the optimal balance point for this Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination. At 3840x2160, the High preset delivers 120.3 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while leaving headroom for demanding scenes. Dropping to Medium at the same resolution yields 138.7 FPS, a 15.3% improvement, but the visual fidelity loss may not justify the gain given that High already clears the refresh-rate targets of most displays.

Ultra is the most demanding preset, and the data shows it exacts a heavy toll: at 4K it falls to 96.2 FPS, at 1440p it manages 178.7 FPS, and at 1080p it reaches 276.2 FPS. These are still playable numbers, yet the gap between Ultra and High is substantial—at 1080p, the difference is 64.8 FPS (341.0 vs 276.2), representing a 19% penalty for the highest settings. For a fast-paced FPS like Doom, where reaction time matters, the High preset appears to offer the best experience per the measured rows: it maintains high frame rates across all resolutions while presumably retaining most of the visual enhancements.

Low settings, by contrast, push frame rates to extremes—415.2 FPS at 1080p—but this comes at the cost of reduced graphical detail that undermines the game’s atmospheric presentation. The sweet spot is High, particularly for 1440p and 4K displays, where it delivers 220.0 and 120.3 FPS respectively. Medium sits between Low and High in every resolution, but its marginal gains over High (18.4 FPS at 4K, 40.1 FPS at 1440p) are less compelling than the visual step up that High provides over Medium. The data implies that users should default to High and only consider Ultra if they have a 120Hz+ 1080p panel and prioritize fidelity over frame rate headroom.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a monster of a graphics card, and its specifications are central to understanding these benchmark results. It carries 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s—an enormous pool that ensures Doom’s textures and geometry never come close to exhausting VRAM, even at 4K Ultra. The GPU’s clock behavior is equally telling: a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). These clocks, combined with 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs, produce a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s.

In Doom, a game from 2016, the RTX 5090 is operating well within its comfort zone. The benchmark results indicate that the GPU is rarely the limiting factor—at 1080p Low, the combo hits 415.2 FPS, which is likely constrained by CPU or engine overhead rather than raw GPU throughput. The RTX 5090’s FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS is overkill for a title of this era, yet the measured FPS still scales meaningfully with resolution, suggesting the card’s immense bandwidth and shading power are being utilized efficiently. The GPU’s 94th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84,306, places it near the top of the stack, and its nearest rivals—the RTX 5090 D (0.1% ahead) and RTX 5050 Mobile (0.2% ahead)—are separated by margins so small they are effectively noise.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i7-12700KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 13 out of 1,681 combos tested in Doom. That places it in the top 0.8% of all configurations, a remarkable position that underscores how well-matched these components are for this title. The rank reflects the aggregate performance across all measured settings and resolutions, and it suggests that few other CPU-GPU pairings can match this combo’s ability to push frame rates at high resolutions.

The data shows that the combo’s strength is most pronounced at 1440p and 1080p, where it clears 200 FPS on High settings (220.0 and 341.0 FPS respectively). At 4K, the rank is still impressive—120.3 FPS on High—but the absolute numbers are lower, which is expected given the pixel count. What is notable is that even at 4K Ultra, the combo maintains 96.2 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS standard and suitable for high-refresh-rate 4K displays. This rank of 13 out of 1,681 combos indicates that only a handful of configurations—likely those with even more powerful CPUs or identical GPUs paired with faster processors—can outperform this setup in Doom.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data paints a detailed picture across three resolutions and four settings levels. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 415.2 FPS on Low, 395.9 FPS on Medium, 341.0 FPS on High, and 276.2 FPS on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a drop of 139.0 FPS, or 33.5% from the Low baseline. At 2560x1440, the numbers are 298.5 FPS (Low), 260.1 FPS (Medium), 220.0 FPS (High), and 178.7 FPS (Ultra). The spread here is 119.8 FPS, which is proportionally similar to 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates become more moderate: 160.9 FPS on Low, 138.7 FPS on Medium, 120.3 FPS on High, and 96.2 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 64.7 FPS, a 40.2% reduction. This breakdown reveals that the settings impact is consistent across resolutions—Ultra always costs roughly 30-40% of the Low-settings frame rate—but the absolute headroom diminishes as resolution increases. The High preset at 4K (120.3 FPS) is nearly identical to the Ultra preset at 1440p (178.7 FPS) in terms of frame rate, which hints at where the bottleneck shifts.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K shows how this combo scales with pixel count. At High settings, the FPS drops from 341.0 at 1080p to 220.0 at 1440p (a 35.5% reduction) and then to 120.3 at 4K (a 64.7% reduction from 1080p). This scaling is steeper than the pixel count increase would suggest—4K has four times the pixels of 1080p—which indicates that the system is not purely GPU-bound at lower resolutions.

At 1080p, the CPU is likely the dominant constraint. The Intel Core i7-12700KF, with its 12 cores and 20 threads, is powerful, but Doom’s engine may not fully utilize all threads, and the 415.2 FPS ceiling on Low suggests a CPU-side limit. As resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes more loaded, and the RTX 5090’s capabilities come to the fore. The fact that 4K High (120.3 FPS) is only 35% of 1080p High (341.0 FPS) despite a 4x pixel increase implies that the GPU is scaling efficiently, but the CPU is holding back the lower-resolution results. This resolution scaling analysis points to the CPU as the limiting component at 1080p, with the GPU taking over as the primary constraint at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel’s 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. Its cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU’s benchmark scores are strong: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28,979 and a single-core score of 4,091, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is most evident at 1080p and in the Low settings preset, where frame rates exceed 400 FPS. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1,043 and multi-thread score of 9,983 indicate that the processor has both strong single-core performance (critical for game logic) and ample multi-core headroom for background tasks. The nearest rivals—the Intel Core i5-14400 (0.1% ahead), Intel Core i7-13800H (0.2% behind), and Intel Core i9-12900HX (0.2% ahead)—are all within a fraction of a percent of the 12700KF’s average benchmark score of 35,355, meaning the CPU is not a differentiator in this combo.

What matters is that the 12700KF provides enough single-thread throughput to feed the RTX 5090 at 1080p, achieving 415.2 FPS on Low. The boost clock of 5.00 GHz is likely the key factor here, as Doom’s engine is not heavily threaded. At 4K, the CPU’s impact diminishes, and the GPU’s 32 GB of VRAM and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth become the primary drivers of performance.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for this combo in Doom?

A: Based on the measured FPS, High is the best balance. It delivers 120.3 FPS at 4K, 220.0 FPS at 1440p, and 341.0 FPS at 1080p, all well above playable thresholds.

Q: How does the RTX 5090’s memory configuration affect Doom’s performance?

A: The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which ensures that Doom’s textures are never a bottleneck. Even at 4K Ultra, the combo maintains 96.2 FPS, indicating ample memory headroom.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the CPU is the limit at 1080p. The frame rate on Low (415.2 FPS) is far higher than at 4K (160.9 FPS), but the scaling from 1080p to 1440p (a 28% drop for High settings) is less than the pixel increase, implying the CPU constrains lower resolutions.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: It ranks 13th out of 1,681 combos tested in Doom, placing it in the top 1% of all configurations in the database.

Q: What is the FPS difference between High and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High delivers 220.0 FPS while Ultra delivers 178.7 FPS, a difference of 41.3 FPS or 18.8% lower for Ultra.

Q: Does the RTX 5090’s high boost clock help in Doom?

A: The boost clock of 2407 MHz contributes to the GPU’s pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s, which is critical for maintaining high FPS at 4K. The 4K High result of 120.3 FPS demonstrates that the clock speed is sufficient for this title.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-thread performance impact results?

A: The 3DMark single-thread score of 1,043 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,091 indicate strong single-core performance, which is essential for Doom’s game logic. This is reflected in the 415.2 FPS result at 1080p Low.