Doom

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 delivers a robust 1080p experience in Doom, but the data reveals a clear scaling pattern that favors specific settings. At 1080p, the combination is capable of exceeding 200 FPS on Low settings, yet the transition to 4K demonstrates a significant performance drop, indicating that the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. For the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, the Medium preset emerges as the most practical choice across all tested resolutions, offering a substantial improvement over High settings while maintaining playable performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Doom with this specific CPU-GPU combination shows a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. The Ultra setting delivers the lowest average frame rates at every resolution, while Low provides the highest. However, choosing the optimal preset requires weighing the performance cost against the visual benefits, and the data strongly suggests that Medium is the sweet spot.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset achieves an average of 184 FPS, which is only 27 FPS lower than the Low preset's 211 FPS but a full 57 FPS higher than the Ultra preset's 127 FPS. The High preset sits at 155 FPS, making Medium the clear winner for high-refresh-rate displays. The minimum FPS recorded for Medium at this resolution is 156, ensuring that even in demanding scenes, the frame rate stays well above the 144 Hz threshold.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern holds. Medium produces an average of 119 FPS with a minimum of 101 FPS, which is adequate for most gaming monitors. The High preset drops to 101 FPS average, while Ultra falls to 82 FPS. The Low preset reaches 137 FPS, but the jump from Low to Medium costs only 18 FPS while providing significantly better visual quality. At this resolution, Medium remains the most balanced choice.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. No preset achieves a stable 60 FPS average. Medium leads with 65 FPS and a minimum of 55 FPS, which is technically playable but may show occasional stutter. High follows at 54 FPS, while Ultra drops to 45 FPS. The Low preset achieves 74 FPS, which is the only 4K option that clears the 60 FPS threshold, but it does so at the cost of visual quality. For 4K gaming, users should expect to compromise, and the data indicates that Medium is the best compromise between playability and fidelity.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 44 chip manufactured on a 4 nm process. It features 1792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation pipelines, along with 28 ray tracing cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1700 MHz, a game clock of 2400 MHz, and a boost clock of 2990 MHz. These specifications place the card in the mid-range segment, and the benchmark data confirms this positioning.

The GPU's memory configuration consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 2250 MHz with an effective data rate of 18 Gbps. This memory subsystem is adequate for Doom at 1080p and 1440p, but the 8 GB capacity may become a limiting factor at 4K with higher texture settings. The measured FPS data shows a consistent drop when moving from Medium to High settings, which is likely influenced by memory bandwidth and capacity constraints.

In terms of raw performance, the RX 9060 achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3322 and a Passmark G3D score of 17631. The Geekbench OpenCL score is 88183, while the Vulkan score is 39476. These synthetic benchmarks place the card at the 59th percentile among all GPUs. Compared to its nearest rivals, the RX 9060 trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti by 0.7% in average benchmark score, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 7700 by 1%. This puts the card in a competitive position for 1080p and 1440p gaming.

The GPU's compute performance is notable, with a Passmark GPU Compute score of 9919 and a floating-point performance of 21.43 TFLOPS. The pixel rate is 191.4 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 334.9 GTexel/s. These figures suggest that the card has sufficient compute power for modern game engines, but the 128-bit memory bus and 8 GB capacity may limit performance in memory-intensive scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent scaling pattern as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. This pattern provides insight into the limiting component at each resolution.

At the Low preset, the average FPS drops from 211 at 1080p to 137 at 1440p, a reduction of 74 FPS or approximately 35%. Moving to 4K, the average drops further to 74 FPS, which is a 46% reduction from the 1440p figure. This steep decline indicates that the GPU is becoming progressively more stressed as resolution increases, even at the lowest settings.

The Medium preset shows a similar trend. The average FPS drops from 184 at 1080p to 119 at 1440p, a 65 FPS reduction. At 4K, the average is 65 FPS, representing a 54 FPS drop from the 1440p figure. The percentage drop from 1440p to 4K is approximately 45%, which is comparable to the Low preset's scaling.

The High preset exhibits the most significant scaling penalty. The average FPS drops from 155 at 1080p to 101 at 1440p, a 54 FPS reduction. At 4K, the average falls to 54 FPS, which is a 47 FPS drop from 1440p. This represents a 47% reduction, suggesting that the High preset imposes additional memory bandwidth requirements that the GPU struggles to meet at higher resolutions.

The Ultra preset shows the steepest absolute decline. From 127 FPS at 1080p to 82 FPS at 1440p, the drop is 45 FPS. At 4K, the average is 45 FPS, which is a 37 FPS reduction from 1440p. This pattern indicates that the GPU is completely saturated at 4K with Ultra settings, and the 8 GB memory capacity likely causes texture swapping, leading to the low average.

The data clearly indicates that the RX 9060 is the limiting component at 1440p and 4K, while the Intel Core i7-14700F provides sufficient headroom at 1080p. The scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, with the CPU showing minimal impact on frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for Doom with the Intel Core i7-14700F and AMD Radeon RX 9060 is detailed below, organized by resolution and settings.

1920x1080:

• Low: 211 FPS average
• Medium: 184 FPS average, with a minimum of 156 FPS and a maximum of 212 FPS
• High: 155 FPS average
• Ultra: 127 FPS average

At 1080p, the performance is excellent across all settings. The Low preset achieves over 200 FPS, which is ideal for competitive play on high-refresh-rate monitors. The Medium preset maintains a minimum of 156 FPS, ensuring smooth gameplay even in intense combat scenarios. The High preset drops to 155 FPS, while Ultra remains above 120 FPS, making all presets playable at this resolution.

2560x1440:

• Low: 137 FPS average
• Medium: 119 FPS average, with a minimum of 101 FPS and a maximum of 137 FPS
• High: 101 FPS average
• Ultra: 82 FPS average

At 1440p, the performance remains strong, but the gap between presets widens. The Low preset achieves 137 FPS, while Medium drops to 119 FPS with a minimum of 101 FPS. The High preset falls to 101 FPS, which is still playable, but the Ultra preset's 82 FPS average may be below the refresh rate of some high-end monitors. The Medium preset provides the best balance, staying above 100 FPS with a comfortable margin.

3840x2160:

• Low: 74 FPS average
• Medium: 65 FPS average, with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 74 FPS
• High: 54 FPS average
• Ultra: 45 FPS average

At 4K, the performance drops significantly. The Low preset is the only option that exceeds 60 FPS, achieving 74 FPS. The Medium preset averages 65 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS, which may cause occasional dips below 60 FPS. The High preset averages 54 FPS, while Ultra falls to 45 FPS, making these presets less suitable for smooth gameplay. The data shows that 4K gaming requires compromises, and the Medium preset is the most viable option for maintaining near-60 FPS performance.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1080p gaming with this CPU-GPU combination?

A: The Medium preset provides the best experience at 1920x1080, achieving an average of 184 FPS with a minimum of 156 FPS. The Low preset offers 211 FPS, but the visual quality trade-off is significant, while High and Ultra deliver 155 FPS and 127 FPS respectively.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Doom?

A: The data shows that 4K gaming is possible but requires compromises. The Low preset achieves 74 FPS on average, while Medium reaches 65 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS. High and Ultra presets drop to 54 FPS and 45 FPS respectively, making them less suitable for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the RX 9060 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RX 9060 averages 16014 in benchmark scores, placing it at the 59th percentile among all GPUs. It trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti by 0.7%, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 7700 by 1% and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 by 2.1%.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The resolution scaling data indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 1440p and 4K. At 1080p, the frame rates are high enough to suggest the CPU provides sufficient performance, but as resolution increases, the GPU's memory bandwidth and capacity become the bottleneck.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 137 FPS, while Ultra drops to 82 FPS. This represents a 55 FPS difference, or approximately 40% lower performance. The Medium preset at 119 FPS provides a middle ground between the two extremes.

Q: Does the RX 9060's 8 GB VRAM affect performance in Doom?

A: The data suggests that the 8 GB memory capacity may impact performance at 4K with higher settings. The significant drop from Medium to High at 3840x2160 (65 FPS to 54 FPS) indicates that memory bandwidth and capacity constraints become more pronounced at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, manufactured on a 10 nm process. It features a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The processor supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory through a dual-channel memory bus, and it includes 33 MB of shared L3 cache.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i7-14700F demonstrates strong multi-threaded performance. It scores 35122 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4958 in single-core, while Geekbench results show 19620 multi-core and 2429 single-core. The Passmark multithread score is 41317, with a single-thread score of 4257. These results place the processor at the 91st percentile among all CPUs.

The CPU's performance relative to its nearest rivals is tight. It trails the Intel Xeon 6505P by 0.2% in average benchmark score, while leading the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 by 0.3% and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X by 0.6%. The AMD EPYC 7313P trails by 0.8%. This indicates that the i7-14700F is competitive with high-end server and desktop processors, despite its 65 W TDP.

In the context of Doom, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic. The measured FPS data suggests that the i7-14700F provides ample headroom at 1080p, where the GPU is the limiting factor. The high frame rates at Low settings (211 FPS) indicate that the CPU can handle the game's single-threaded demands without bottlenecking. The processor's high boost clock of 5.40 GHz is beneficial for this game, as Doom is known to be sensitive to single-thread performance.

The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads provide substantial multi-threading capability, which is useful for background tasks and streaming while gaming. The L3 cache of 33 MB helps reduce memory latency, which can improve frame pacing in fast-paced games. However, the measured FPS data does not show a scenario where the CPU becomes the bottleneck, even at 4K with Ultra settings, where the GPU's performance drops to 45 FPS.

The i7-14700F's memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5 allows flexibility in system building, but the actual memory bandwidth is not specified in the data. For Doom, the dual-channel memory configuration is sufficient, as the game's engine is not heavily memory-bandwidth dependent at 1080p or 1440p. The processor's 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a practical choice for a mid-range gaming system paired with the RX 9060.