Doom

Doom’s 2016 engine is famously scalable, and the measured results for the Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT confirm this, but the scaling pattern reveals a system that shifts character dramatically depending on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the combo is clearly CPU-bound at lower settings, while at 3840x2160, the GPU takes over as the primary limiter, creating a steep performance curve that players must navigate based on their display and refresh rate goals.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not uniform across settings, which tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 288.7 at 1920x1080 to 185.6 at 2560x1440, then to 100.1 at 3840x2160 — a total reduction of 188.6 FPS, or roughly 65% lower from the baseline. This steep decline indicates that at Low settings, the GPU is being asked to do proportionally more work as pixel count rises, and the RX 6800 XT’s raw throughput becomes the deciding factor.

At Ultra settings, the drop is less severe in absolute terms: 173.3 FPS at 1080p, 114.9 at 1440p, and 58.5 at 4K. That is a 114.8 FPS difference between 1080p and 4K, but the percentage loss is similar (about 66%), suggesting that the game’s Ultra preset adds a consistent GPU workload on top of the resolution scaling. The interesting anomaly is at High settings, where the 1080p result of 214.4 FPS drops to 137.8 at 1440p (a 35.7% reduction) and then to 76.8 at 4K (a 44.2% reduction from 1440p). This non-linear pattern implies that at 1080p High, the i7-14700K is still feeding frames faster than the GPU can render, but once resolution climbs, the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth become the wall.

The data strongly suggests that at 1920x1080, the CPU is the limiting component for Low and Medium settings, where frame rates exceed 252 FPS. The i7-14700K’s 20 cores and 28 threads, with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, are more than capable of driving the game’s simulation and draw calls, but the RX 6800 XT cannot translate that into proportional FPS gains. Conversely, at 3840x2160, the GPU is unequivocally the bottleneck; even at Low settings, the 100.1 FPS result is a fraction of the 288.7 FPS seen at 1080p, showing that pixel throughput, not CPU speed, dictates the ceiling.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT brings 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. For a 2016 title like Doom, this is far beyond what the game requires, even at 4K Ultra, so VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor in these results. The GPU’s boost clock of 2250 MHz and game clock of 2015 MHz are the more relevant specs, as they determine how quickly the 4608 shading units can process the game’s geometry and textures. The measured 4K Ultra average of 58.5 FPS aligns with the GPU’s position at the 87th percentile among all GPUs, indicating that while the card is strong, it is not top-tier for maxed-out 4K in this engine.

The RDNA 2.0 architecture, built on TSMC’s 7 nm process with 26,800 million transistors, delivers 20.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. This raw throughput explains why the card performs so well at 1440p, where it achieves 114.9 FPS at Ultra and 185.6 FPS at Low. The 128 ROPs and 288 TMUs are also well-suited to Doom’s fast-paced rendering, as the game relies heavily on texture fill and pixel output rather than complex compute shaders. The measured data shows that the GPU’s performance headroom is best exploited at 2560x1440, where the gap between Low and Ultra is only 70.7 FPS, compared to 115.4 FPS at 1080p — a sign that the card is operating in a more balanced range at that resolution.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

For players targeting high refresh rates at 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers the highest measured average at 288.7 FPS, but the Medium preset’s 252.4 FPS is only 36.3 FPS slower while likely offering noticeably improved visuals. The High preset at 214.4 FPS still exceeds most 144Hz monitors, making it a viable choice for competitive play. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset’s 166.7 FPS is the sweet spot for 144Hz displays, while High at 137.8 FPS remains playable but falls short of that mark. Ultra at 1440p drops to 114.9 FPS, which is fine for 60Hz but not ideal for high-refresh panels.

At 3840x2160, the situation is more constrained. The Low preset’s 100.1 FPS is the only setting that clears 100 FPS, while Medium achieves 90.7 FPS and High manages 76.8 FPS. The Ultra preset’s 58.5 FPS is just below the 60 FPS threshold, making it a marginal choice for 4K gaming unless the player prioritizes visual fidelity over smoothness. Based on the measured data, the best experience for a 144Hz monitor at 1440p is the Medium preset, as it provides a 51.8 FPS advantage over Ultra while remaining above the refresh rate. For 4K, Low or Medium are the only presets that offer a comfortable frame rate cushion above 60 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the average frame rates are: Low at 288.7 FPS, Medium at 252.4 FPS, High at 214.4 FPS, and Ultra at 173.3 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 115.4 FPS, which indicates that the CPU is able to feed the GPU well above its rendering capacity at the lower settings, but the Ultra preset’s additional shader work brings the GPU closer to its limits. At 2560x1440, the numbers are: Low at 185.6 FPS, Medium at 166.7 FPS, High at 137.8 FPS, and Ultra at 114.9 FPS. The gap narrows to 70.7 FPS between Low and Ultra, showing that resolution scaling is beginning to tax the GPU more evenly across settings.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 100.1 FPS, Medium at 90.7 FPS, High at 76.8 FPS, and Ultra at 58.5 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 41.6 FPS, which is the smallest absolute gap of any resolution, confirming that the GPU is the dominant constraint. Interestingly, the percentage drop from 1080p to 4K is steepest at Low settings (65.3% reduction) and least steep at Ultra (66.2% reduction), but the absolute FPS loss is far bigger at Low (188.6 FPS lost) than at Ultra (114.8 FPS lost). This suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU is leaving massive GPU headroom on the table, while at 4K Ultra, both components are closer to their respective ceilings.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

Among the 1681 tested combinations in the database, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700K and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT ranks 604th for Doom. This places it in the upper-middle tier of all tested systems, which is a slight underperformance relative to what the individual components might suggest. The CPU alone sits at the 96th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 70074, while the GPU is at the 87th percentile with an average score of 49982. The fact that the combo ranks 604th out of 1681 (roughly the 64th percentile) indicates that the pairing is not perfectly balanced for this game — the CPU is far stronger than the GPU, and Doom’s engine does not fully leverage the i7-14700K’s 20-core, 28-thread configuration.

The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-14700KF, which scores nearly identically (70104 vs 70074, a 0% delta), and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X at 70420 (a -0.5% delta). The GPU’s nearest rivals are the Intel Arc A550M (0.5% higher average score) and the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti SUPER (2.6% lower). This suggests that swapping the GPU for a slightly stronger or weaker card would shift the combo’s rank more noticeably than changing the CPU, since the GPU is the limiting factor in higher resolutions. The rank of 604 implies that many other combos with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs outperform this pairing in Doom, particularly at 1440p and 4K where the RX 6800 XT’s 512.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes the bottleneck.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves at 1080p?

A: The maximum measured average is 288.7 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset.

Q: Can this system run Doom at 4K Ultra above 60 FPS?

A: No, the measured average at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings is 58.5 FPS, which falls just below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Which resolution offers the best balance between settings and frame rate?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 166.7 FPS on average, which is well above 144Hz and only 18.9 FPS lower than Low, making it the most balanced option.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the primary bottleneck at 4K?

A: The GPU is the limiting component at 3840x2160, as evidenced by the tight spread between Low (100.1 FPS) and Ultra (58.5 FPS) compared to the much wider gaps at 1080p.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all tested systems in Doom?

A: It ranks 604th out of 1681 tested combinations, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded for this pairing?

A: The lowest measured average is 58.5 FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor from the Raptor Lake Refresh generation, running on the Intel Socket 1700 platform. Its base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz are the key figures for gaming, as Doom is not heavily multithreaded despite its 2016 release. The CPU’s 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, but the game’s performance at 1080p Low (288.7 FPS) shows that the processor can generate frames faster than the GPU can render them. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44534 and single-core score of 6287 highlight the CPU’s strength, yet these numbers do not translate into proportional FPS gains at higher resolutions because the GPU becomes the limiter.

The CPU’s 125 W TDP and support for DDR4/DDR5 memory are secondary considerations, as the measured data does not indicate any memory bandwidth constraints. The fact that the combo ranks 604th suggests that the i7-14700K is overkill for Doom at 4K, where even a much weaker CPU would likely achieve similar frame rates when paired with the RX 6800 XT. However, at 1080p Low and Medium, the CPU’s high boost clock ensures that the GPU is fed with as many frames as it can handle, though the 288.7 FPS ceiling is still GPU-limited. Overall, the data implies that this processor is not the bottleneck in any resolution tested, but its performance headroom is wasted in this particular game and GPU pairing, especially at higher resolutions where the RX 6800 XT’s 16 GB VRAM and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth are the decisive factors.