Doom

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 delivers a decisive performance window in Doom, where the gap between the High and Ultra presets is the most telling metric. The data shows that the High preset at 2560x1440 produces an average of 143.7 FPS, while the Ultra preset drops to 115.5 FPS—a significant 28.2 FPS loss for marginal visual gains. At 1920x1080, the same pattern emerges: High yields 221.3 FPS versus Ultra's 182.3 FPS. The Medium preset sits predictably between these extremes, offering 169.6 FPS at 1440p and 265.2 FPS at 1080p. For the best experience per the measured rows, the High preset is the clear recommendation. It maintains frame rates well above the 144Hz refresh rate threshold at both 1080p and 1440p, while Ultra only approaches that mark at 1440p. The Low preset, while faster, sacrifices too much visual fidelity for a gain that is unnecessary given the High preset's already excellent headroom. Ultra at 4K, however, is a different story—60.5 FPS is playable but lacks the smoothness that High provides at 78.1 FPS. The High preset is the optimal balance across all resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Core i7-14700KF and RTX 3080 occupies the 534th position out of 1681 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the upper third of all configurations. This ranking is notable given the hardware's age—the GPU is end-of-life and the CPU, while recent, is not the absolute fastest in its class. The CPU's benchmark percentile of 96 versus all CPUs indicates that the processor is not the limiting factor here. However, the GPU's percentile of 80 versus all GPUs suggests that the graphics card is the more constrained component. The combo's mid-pack ranking reflects this balance: the CPU is near the top of its class, but the GPU, while capable, is not at the very pinnacle of current graphics hardware. The data implies that this pairing is well-matched for demanding titles like Doom, but it does not crack the top tier of combinations that would feature newer, higher-end GPUs. The CPU's nearest rivals—the Intel Core i7-14700K with a 0% delta, the AMD EPYC 9115 at 0.3% ahead, and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X at 0.4% behind—show that the 14700KF is essentially at parity with its closest competitors in synthetic benchmarks, reinforcing that the GPU is the primary variable in this combo's placement.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 brings 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, delivering 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's base clock of 1440 MHz boosts to 1710 MHz, with memory running at 1188 MHz effective 19 Gbps. These specifications are directly relevant to Doom's performance. The 10 GB frame buffer is sufficient for the game's textures at all tested settings, as evidenced by the consistent scaling across presets. The memory bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s proves ample for the game's streaming requirements, preventing any bandwidth-related stutters that might otherwise appear at 4K. The GA102 chip, built on Samsung's 8 nm process, contains 28,300 million transistors across a 628 mm² die, with 8704 shading units and 272 texture mapping units. The 68 ray tracing cores and 272 tensor cores are present but largely unused in Doom, which relies on traditional rasterization. The card's FP32 performance of 29.77 TFLOPS is the raw compute that drives the high frame rates seen in the benchmarks. The 80th percentile ranking versus all GPUs is a direct result of this hardware configuration—it is a strong performer, but not the absolute fastest, and the measured results in Doom reflect that mid-to-high-tier positioning. The card's PassMark G3D score of 25086 and its proximity to rivals like the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (0.9% ahead) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (1% behind) contextualize its standing in the broader GPU landscape.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 3080 and i7-14700KF combination produces exceptional frame rates across all presets. The Low preset achieves 299.3 FPS, which is effectively a ceiling for most displays. Medium follows at 265.2 FPS, High at 221.3 FPS, and Ultra at 182.3 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 117 FPS, or 39.1%, indicating that the GPU is still the primary driver of performance at this resolution. The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads, with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, are more than capable of feeding the GPU at these frame rates, as evidenced by the PassMark single-thread score of 4480 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6290. At 2560x1440, the scaling becomes more pronounced. Low yields 193.1 FPS, Medium 169.6 FPS, High 143.7 FPS, and Ultra 115.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 77.6 FPS, or 40.2%, showing that the higher resolution amplifies the GPU's workload. The 1440p results still remain comfortably above 100 FPS even at the Ultra preset, making this resolution the sweet spot for high-refresh-rate gaming. At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens. Low produces 103.8 FPS, Medium 90.9 FPS, High 78.1 FPS, and Ultra 60.5 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, though it does so by a mere 0.5 FPS. The data shows a clear pattern: the RTX 3080's 10 GB of VRAM and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to maintain respectable performance at 4K, but the card's 29.77 TFLOPS of compute power begins to show its limits when the resolution and settings are both maxed out.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 and finally to 3840x2160 reveals the bottleneck characteristics of this combo. At the High preset, moving from 1080p to 1440p results in a 35.1% drop in average FPS (from 221.3 to 143.7). The further move from 1440p to 4K produces a 45.7% drop (from 143.7 to 78.1). These are substantial reductions, but they are not linear, indicating that the GPU is scaling with resolution as expected. At the Low preset, the drops are 35.5% (299.3 to 193.1) and 46.2% (193.1 to 103.8), which is nearly identical scaling. This consistency across presets suggests that the limiting component is the GPU, not the CPU. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates would plateau at lower resolutions, but they continue to rise significantly from 4K to 1080p. The i7-14700KF's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 44557 and its 96th percentile ranking indicate that it has far more headroom than the game requires. The fact that the 1080p Low preset reaches 299.3 FPS—pushing against the limits of most display interfaces—while the 4K Ultra preset drops to 60.5 FPS confirms that the RTX 3080's 8 nm Ampere architecture, with its 28,300 million transistors, is the component that governs the frame rate. The resolution scaling data points to a classic GPU-bound scenario: the CPU provides the required throughput, but the GPU's pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s define the upper bounds of performance. The 4K Ultra result of 60.5 FPS is particularly telling—it represents the card at its absolute limit, while the 1080p Low result of 299.3 FPS shows the same hardware with ample headroom, proving that the GPU is the consistent constraint across the entire resolution range.