Doom

The Core Ultra 5 225 and Radeon RX 7800 XT pairing delivers a high-refresh-rate experience in Doom, with the data showing 247 FPS at 1080p Medium and 209 FPS at 1080p High. The measured results indicate that the game runs exceptionally well across all tested presets, with the minimum FPS recorded at 210 for the 1080p Medium preset, ensuring consistent frame pacing. For the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, the Medium preset proves optimal, offering a 38 FPS advantage over High while maintaining a minimum FPS of 210, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data presents a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves 284 FPS, Medium delivers 247 FPS, High reaches 209 FPS, and Ultra drops to 171 FPS. The Medium preset represents the sweet spot, sacrificing only 37 FPS compared to Low while providing substantially better visual quality. The minimum FPS of 210 at Medium ensures that even the most demanding scenes remain fluid, whereas the High preset’s average of 209 FPS sits dangerously close to this minimum, suggesting potential dips below 200 FPS during intense combat.

Moving to 1440p, the pattern holds. Medium delivers 160 FPS with a minimum of 136, while High achieves 135 FPS. The 25 FPS gap between these presets makes Medium the clear choice for players with 144Hz monitors, as it provides headroom above the refresh rate. Ultra at 1440p drops to 110 FPS, which is still playable but represents a 50 FPS penalty over Medium for what is typically a marginal visual improvement in Doom’s fast-paced environments.

At 4K, the scaling becomes more pronounced. Medium delivers 87 FPS with a minimum of 74, while High achieves 73 FPS. The Ultra preset falls to 60 FPS, which is exactly at the threshold for 60Hz displays but leaves no room for frame drops. The data suggests that Medium at 4K is the recommended preset, as it provides a 14 FPS advantage over High and a 27 FPS advantage over Ultra, while still maintaining a minimum FPS above 70.

The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates at every resolution (284 FPS at 1080p, 184 FPS at 1440p, 99 FPS at 4K), sacrifices too much visual quality for a game like Doom where fast-moving demons benefit from higher texture detail. The measured data shows that Medium offers the best experience-per-performance ratio across all three resolutions, making it the universal recommendation for this hardware combination.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7800 XT brings 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 624.1 GB/s of bandwidth. This generous memory allocation proves significant in Doom, as the game’s texture-heavy environments benefit from the available VRAM headroom. The GPU’s 3840 shading units and 96 ROPs contribute to its rasterization performance, with the boost clock reaching 2430 MHz and the game clock set at 2124 MHz.

The GPU’s 37.32 TFLOPS of FP32 compute provides ample raw power for Doom’s Vulkan-based rendering. The benchmark results show that the RX 7800 XT scales well with resolution, maintaining playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra with 60 FPS. The 51st percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the mid-range tier, yet its performance in Doom exceeds expectations, suggesting the game is well-optimized for RDNA 3.0 architecture.

The GPU’s 60 RT cores and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate indicate future-proofing, though Doom’s original 2016 release does not utilize ray tracing. The memory clock of 2438 MHz (19.5 Gbps effective) ensures that the 256-bit bus delivers the full 624.1 GB/s, preventing memory bandwidth from becoming a bottleneck even at 4K resolution. The pixel rate of 233.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 583.2 GTexel/s provide the fill rates necessary to sustain the high frame rates observed in the measured data.

Interestingly, the nearest rivals for the RX 7800 XT in the benchmark database include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 and AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, both of which are significantly lower-tier cards. This discrepancy highlights how the RX 7800 XT’s average benchmark score of 11627, while only at the 51st percentile, still delivers exceptional gaming performance in Doom due to the game’s efficient engine and the card’s substantial memory bandwidth.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 features 10 cores and 10 threads, operating at a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. This Arrow Lake-S architecture, built on TSMC’s 3 nm process, provides strong single-threaded performance as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3655. The 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which benefits gaming workloads that rely on quick data access.

The CPU’s 85th percentile ranking among all processors indicates solid overall performance, with the nearest rival being the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F at a delta of 0%. The Core Ultra 5 225’s multi-threaded capabilities, demonstrated by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25891, ensure that background tasks do not interfere with gaming performance. The PassMark multi-thread score of 30459 and single-thread score of 4412 further support its gaming credentials.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The game’s id Tech 6 engine is known for being GPU-bound at higher resolutions, but at 1080p, the CPU can become a limiting factor. The measured data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 284 FPS, suggesting that the Core Ultra 5 225 has sufficient headroom to push frame rates well beyond 240 FPS when the GPU is not constrained.

The CPU’s 65W TDP and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth provide adequate memory throughput for gaming. The boost clock of 4.90 GHz ensures that single-threaded performance remains competitive, which is crucial for Doom’s physics and AI calculations. The 3 nm process node from TSMC contributes to power efficiency, allowing the CPU to sustain high clocks without thermal throttling during extended gaming sessions.

How This Combo Ranks

The Core Ultra 5 225 and RX 7800 XT combination ranks 925th out of 2930 tested combos in Doom, placing it in the 68th percentile of all tested systems. This ranking is notable given that the individual components sit at the 85th (CPU) and 51st (GPU) percentiles respectively, indicating that the combination performs better than either component’s standalone ranking might suggest.

The combo’s position in the top third of all tested systems reflects the synergistic relationship between the CPU’s strong single-threaded performance and the GPU’s substantial memory bandwidth. While the GPU’s average benchmark score of 11627 places it just above mid-range, its performance in Doom is disproportionately strong, likely due to the game’s efficient rendering engine and the card’s 16 GB VRAM capacity.

Compared to the GPU’s nearest rivals, the RX 7800 XT’s deltaPct values range from -1.8% (AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT) to +1.3% (NVIDIA Tesla K20c), indicating that its average benchmark score is closely clustered with lower-tier cards. However, the measured FPS data in Doom tells a different story, with the combo achieving over 200 FPS at 1080p High, which would likely place it well above the 925th rank if only gaming performance were considered.

The CPU’s nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and Ryzen 5 5500X3D, show deltaPct values of 0% and -0.2% respectively, suggesting that the Core Ultra 5 225’s performance is comparable to these chips. The combination of this CPU with the RX 7800 XT creates a balanced system where neither component becomes a significant bottleneck, as evidenced by the smooth scaling from 1080p to 4K in the measured data.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of resolution scaling that highlights the GPU as the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 247 at 1080p to 160 at 1440p (a 35% decrease) and further to 87 at 4K (a 65% decrease from 1440p). This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the CPU has sufficient headroom to maintain frame rates but the GPU’s rendering capabilities become constrained at higher pixel counts.

The High preset shows a similar trend, with FPS decreasing from 209 at 1080p to 135 at 1440p (35% decrease) and 73 at 4K (46% decrease from 1440p). The percentage drops between resolutions remain relatively consistent, suggesting that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are the limiting factors rather than CPU performance. The RX 7800 XT’s 624.1 GB/s of memory bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming but becomes strained at 4K, where the demand for texture data increases substantially.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced, with FPS dropping from 284 at 1080p to 184 at 1440p (35% decrease) and 99 at 4K (46% decrease from 1440p). This consistent percentage decrease across all presets indicates that the GPU’s compute capabilities, specifically its 37.32 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, are the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The CPU’s boost clock of 4.90 GHz and strong single-threaded performance ensure that it does not become a bottleneck even at lower resolutions where frame rates exceed 280 FPS.

The minimum FPS data at Medium settings further supports the GPU-bound analysis. At 1080p, the minimum FPS of 210 represents 85% of the average, while at 1440p, the minimum of 136 represents 85% of the average, and at 4K, the minimum of 74 represents 85% of the average. This consistent ratio suggests that the GPU’s frame pacing remains stable across resolutions, with the CPU providing consistent frame delivery.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this hardware in Doom?

A: The data shows that Medium settings at 1440p provides the best balance, achieving 160 FPS average with a minimum of 136 FPS. This combination offers high refresh rate performance while maintaining visual quality, with the 4K Medium preset at 87 FPS as a viable alternative for higher resolution displays.

Q: How does the RX 7800 XT compare to its closest rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The RX 7800 XT has an average benchmark score of 11627, with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 at 11680 (a -0.5% delta), the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT at 11842 (a -1.8% delta), and the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M at 11528 (a +0.9% delta). The RX 7800 XT sits at the 51st percentile among all GPUs.

Q: Is the Core Ultra 5 225 sufficient for high-refresh-rate gaming in Doom?

A: Yes, the CPU’s 4.90 GHz boost clock and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3655 provide ample processing power. The measured 1080p Low FPS of 284 indicates that the CPU can support frame rates well above 240 FPS without becoming a bottleneck.

Q: What is the performance drop when moving from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 247 at 1080p to 87 at 4K, representing a 65% decrease. The minimum FPS at 4K is 74, compared to 210 at 1080p, showing that the GPU becomes progressively more constrained at higher resolutions.

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

A: The combination ranks 925th out of 2930 total combos, placing it in the 68th percentile. This ranking is higher than the GPU’s individual 51st percentile, indicating that the CPU-GPU pairing works well together for this game.

Q: Does the 16 GB VRAM on the RX 7800 XT provide any advantage in Doom?

A: The 16 GB GDDR6 memory with 624.1 GB/s bandwidth ensures that texture data is readily available even at 4K resolution. The measured 4K Ultra FPS of 60 suggests that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor, as the GPU’s compute power becomes the constraint instead.