Doom

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the Intel Arc B370 produces a profoundly GPU-limited experience in Doom, but the scaling patterns reveal a component relationship that is more nuanced than a simple bottleneck. The data shows a dramatic performance collapse as resolution increases, with the 1080p Low preset delivering 96 FPS average, while the 4K Ultra preset manages only 20 FPS average. This represents a 79% drop in frame rate from the lowest stress scenario to the highest, indicating that the Arc B370’s rendering capabilities are exhausted long before the i7-14700KF’s processing headroom becomes relevant. The scaling between 1080p and 1440p is relatively mild—a 35% reduction in average FPS across the four settings—but the jump from 1440p to 4K is catastrophic, with average frame rates falling by roughly 45% across all presets. This pattern strongly suggests that the limiting component is the graphics solution, as the CPU’s substantial 20-core, 28-thread configuration is unlikely to be the constraint at any resolution tested.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling curve in Doom for this combination is steep and unrelenting. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 96 FPS average, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. Moving to 1440p Low drops that figure to 62 FPS average—a 35% reduction that indicates the GPU is already beginning to struggle with pixel throughput. The 4K Low result of 34 FPS average represents a further 45% decline from the 1440p figure, and a 65% decline from the 1080p baseline. This progressive collapse is characteristic of a graphics processor with limited fill rate and memory bandwidth, both of which are system-dependent given the Arc B370’s shared memory architecture.

The High preset tells a similar story with slightly lower absolute numbers. At 1080p High, the combo produces 71 FPS average, falling to 46 FPS average at 1440p High (a 35% drop) and then to 25 FPS average at 4K High (a 46% drop from 1440p). The Medium preset follows the same trajectory: 84 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most punishing, with 58 FPS at 1080p, 37 FPS at 1440p, and a mere 20 FPS at 4K. The consistency of these percentage drops across settings—roughly 35% from 1080p to 1440p and another 45% from 1440p to 4K—indicates that the scaling is resolution-bound rather than settings-bound. The limiting component is unequivocally the GPU, as the i7-14700KF’s 5.60 GHz boost clock and 33 MB of shared L3 cache are more than sufficient for a 2016-era title like Doom.

What is notable is that the gap between Low and Ultra settings narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 38 FPS (96 vs. 58), representing a 40% performance penalty for the highest preset. At 1440p, that gap shrinks to 25 FPS (62 vs. 37), and at 4K it compresses to just 14 FPS (34 vs. 20). This convergence is a classic sign of pixel-bound performance: at higher resolutions, the GPU’s shading units and ROPs are saturated regardless of the complexity of the shaders being executed. The data suggests that even the Low preset at 4K is too demanding for the Arc B370, which explains why the Ultra preset’s additional visual workload has diminishing impact on the already-crippled frame rate.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is the dominant performance determinant in this pairing, and its specifications explain the observed results with remarkable clarity. The GPU operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2400 MHz, which is a substantial range that suggests adaptive clocking behavior under load. However, the memory configuration is the critical weakness: the Arc B370 uses System Shared memory, meaning it has no dedicated VRAM and relies on the system’s DDR4 or DDR5 memory through a bus width that is also System Shared. This architecture makes bandwidth System Dependent, which in practice means the GPU’s ability to feed its 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 ROPs is constrained by the CPU’s memory subsystem. The measured pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s are theoretical maxima that are unlikely to be achieved in real-world scenarios given the shared memory bottleneck.

The GPU’s 6.144 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 12.29 TFLOPS of FP16 performance (2:1 ratio) suggest a modest compute capability, consistent with its 5th percentile ranking among all GPUs in the database. The nearest rival data places the Arc B370 within 1% of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 and ATI Radeon HD 5770, both of which are legacy parts from a bygone era. This context is damning: the Arc B370 is competing with hardware that is over a decade old in terms of raw 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 scores (1184 for the Arc B370 versus 1186 for the HD 5570). The 10 ray tracing cores are present but likely underutilized in Doom, which was released in 2016 and does not feature ray-traced effects. The GPU’s support for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 indicates modern API compatibility, but the hardware’s throughput is insufficient to translate that compatibility into playable frame rates at demanding resolutions.

The relationship between the GPU's clocks and the measured FPS is revealing. At 1080p Low, the 96 FPS average suggests the boost clock of 2400 MHz is being sustained, but the 4K Ultra result of 20 FPS average indicates the GPU is spending the vast majority of its time waiting on memory transfers. The fact that the Arc B370’s TDP is a mere 25 W, with no power connectors required and a slot width of IGP, underscores its integrated-level power envelope. This is not a discrete gaming GPU in the traditional sense; it is a low-power part that happens to be paired with a high-end desktop CPU. The i7-14700KF, with its 125 W TDP and 20 cores, is capable of feeding the Arc B370 far more data than the GPU can process, making the GPU the unequivocal bottleneck in every single measured configuration.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s ranking in Doom is starkly poor. The data places this pairing at rank 2696 out of 2930 tested combos, which puts it in the bottom 8% of all configurations. This rank is surprising given the CPU’s strength—the i7-14700KF sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 70163—but it is entirely explained by the GPU’s weakness. The Arc B370’s 5th percentile ranking among GPUs drags the entire combo down, as Doom’s performance is overwhelmingly determined by the graphics solution. The nearest CPU rivals to the i7-14700KF are the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (0.2% slower), AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.4% slower), and AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.9% slower), while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is 1% faster. These CPU deltas are negligible compared to the GPU’s impact, which is why the combo’s rank is so low despite the CPU’s excellent synthetic scores.

The mismatch between CPU and GPU performance is the defining characteristic of this combo. In synthetic CPU benchmarks, the i7-14700KF achieves a multi-core score of 44167 in Cinebench R23 and 21462 in Geekbench multi-core, placing it among the top tier of desktop processors. In contrast, the Arc B370’s 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1184 is barely above the lowest-performing GPUs in the database. This imbalance means that in Doom, the CPU is likely idling or running at a fraction of its capacity while the GPU is fully saturated. The combo rank of 2696 out of 2930 is a direct consequence of this imbalance; if the CPU were paired with a mid-range discrete GPU, the ranking would improve dramatically, but as measured, the Arc B370 holds the entire system back.

The percentile data reinforces this interpretation. The i7-14700KF’s 94th percentile CPU ranking suggests it is a top-6% processor, while the Arc B370’s 5th percentile GPU ranking puts it in the bottom 5% of graphics solutions. The resulting combo rank in the bottom 8% is slightly better than the GPU’s standalone percentile, which indicates that the CPU’s strength provides a marginal uplift in this specific title. However, that uplift is insufficient to escape the GPU’s fundamental limitations. The data shows a combo that is severely imbalanced, and any analysis of its gaming performance must acknowledge that the GPU is the sole reason for its low standing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for Doom with the Intel Core i7-14700KF and Intel Arc B370 is as follows. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 96 FPS average, Medium delivers 84 FPS average with a minimum of 71 and maximum of 96, High delivers 71 FPS average, and Ultra delivers 58 FPS average. At 2560x1440, Low delivers 62 FPS average, Medium delivers 54 FPS average with a minimum of 46 and maximum of 62, High delivers 46 FPS average, and Ultra delivers 37 FPS average. At 3840x2160, Low delivers 34 FPS average, Medium delivers 29 FPS average with a minimum of 25 and maximum of 34, High delivers 25 FPS average, and Ultra delivers 20 FPS average.

The Medium preset is the only settings level where min and max FPS are recorded, and those values bracket the average perfectly. For example, at 1080p Medium, the min of 71 and max of 96 correspond exactly to the High and Low averages at that resolution, respectively. This suggests that the Medium preset is effectively a blend of the High and Low settings, which is a common design pattern in games of this era. The 1440p Medium min and max (46 and 62) likewise match the 1440p High and Low averages, and the 4K Medium min and max (25 and 34) match the 4K High and Low averages. This consistency validates the internal coherence of the measured data.

The 1080p results are the only ones that approach playable frame rates for a fast-paced FPS like Doom. The 96 FPS average at Low is excellent, and even the 71 FPS average at High is acceptable, though the 58 FPS at Ultra is borderline. The 1440p results are marginal at best: 62 FPS at Low is technically playable, but 46 FPS at High and 37 FPS at Ultra will result in noticeable stuttering during intense combat sequences. The 4K results are uniformly unplayable, with no preset exceeding 34 FPS average. The minimum FPS values recorded only for Medium settings—25 FPS at 4K, 46 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 1080p—provide additional context. The 4K minimum of 25 FPS is below the threshold for smooth motion, while the 1080p minimum of 71 FPS is comfortably above it.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU-GPU combo in Doom?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the only resolution where all presets achieve at least 58 FPS average. At 2560x1440, even Low settings only reach 62 FPS average, while at 3840x2160, no preset exceeds 34 FPS average. The 1080p resolution is the only viable option for playable frame rates.

Q: How does the Arc B370 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B370’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1184 is 0.2% lower than the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570’s 1186, 0.5% lower than the ATI Radeon HD 5770’s 1190, and 0.7% lower than the AMD Radeon HD 7650M’s 1192. It is 1.4% higher than the AMD FirePro M2000’s 1168.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-14700KF the bottleneck in this system?

A: No. The CPU ranks in the 94th percentile of all processors with an average benchmark score of 70163, while the GPU ranks in the 5th percentile with a score of 1184. The measured FPS scaling with resolution indicates the GPU is the limiting component, as frame rates drop by roughly 45% from 1440p to 4K regardless of settings.

Q: What is the combo’s overall ranking among tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 2696 out of 2930 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the bottom 8% of all configurations. This low ranking is attributable to the GPU’s weak performance, as the CPU’s nearest rivals are within 1% of its average score.

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 1080p?

A: Yes, but only on the Low and Medium presets. The 1080p Low preset delivers 96 FPS average, and the 1080p Medium preset delivers 84 FPS average with a minimum of 71 FPS. The High preset falls short at 71 FPS average, and the Ultra preset is below 60 FPS at 58 FPS average.

Q: How does the CPU’s performance compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The i7-14700KF’s average benchmark score of 70163 is 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F’s 69996, 0.4% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX’s 69875, and 0.9% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X’s 69515. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is 1% faster with a score of 70879.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings for this combo depend entirely on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset provides the best balance of visual quality and performance, with 84 FPS average and a minimum of 71 FPS that ensures consistent frame pacing during action sequences. The Low preset offers higher headroom at 96 FPS average, but the visual fidelity trade-off is substantial for a game like Doom, which features fast-moving demons and particle effects. The High preset at 71 FPS average is playable but leaves little margin for frame drops, and the Ultra preset at 58 FPS average is too close to the 60 FPS threshold for comfortable gameplay. The Medium preset’s recorded min and max of 71 and 96 FPS respectively indicate that it dynamically switches between High and Low quality levels, which is an efficient approach for this hardware.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset is the only recommendation, delivering 62 FPS average. The Medium preset at 54 FPS average is slightly below the ideal threshold, and the High preset at 46 FPS average will be noticeably less smooth. The Ultra preset at 37 FPS average is not recommended for any gameplay scenario. At 3840x2160, no preset achieves a playable frame rate; the Low preset’s 34 FPS average is the best result, but it falls well short of the 60 FPS target. Users who insist on 4K should consider lowering the resolution to 1440p or accepting a sub-30 FPS experience on the Medium preset, which at least provides a minimum of 25 FPS.

The data shows that the Medium preset at 1080p is the sweet spot for this combo. It delivers 84 FPS average, which is 12 FPS higher than the High preset and only 12 FPS lower than the Low preset, while offering better visual quality than Low. The minimum FPS of 71 at Medium matches the average FPS of the High preset, indicating that the Medium preset never drops below the High preset’s average performance. This suggests that the Medium preset provides a more stable experience than High, which has no recorded minimum but likely dips below its 71 FPS average during intense scenes. For users prioritizing frame rate above all else, the Low preset at 1080p is the safest choice, but for a balanced experience, Medium at 1080p is the recommended configuration.