Doom

# Doom: Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a robust 1080p and 1440p experience in Doom, with the measured frame rates showing a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling as resolution increases. At 1080p High, the combo produces 167 FPS, while 1440p High drops to 108 FPS, and 4K High falls to 59 FPS — a classic signature of a system where the graphics card becomes the primary limiter at higher pixel counts.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep and predictable decline that points directly at the GPU as the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 227 FPS; moving to 1440p Low, it drops to 147 FPS — a 35% reduction. Pushing further to 4K Low yields 80 FPS, which is another 46% drop from 1440p. This scaling curve is characteristic of a game that is heavily pixel-bound, where the CPU has ample headroom and the RTX 4070's rendering throughput determines the ceiling.

The High preset tells a similar story. Starting at 167 FPS in 1080p, the average falls to 108 FPS at 1440p (a 35% decline) and then to 59 FPS at 4K (a 45% decline from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across presets — roughly one-third lost when quadrupling pixel count from 1080p to 1440p, and another half lost going to 4K — indicates that the game's engine scales predictably with resolution and that no unexpected CPU stalls are occurring. If the Core Ultra 7 265HX were the limiting factor, we would expect to see diminishing returns at lower resolutions, but the data shows the opposite: the gap between 1080p and 1440p remains large even at Low settings, where the CPU workload per frame is highest relative to GPU load.

The Medium preset offers the only complete min/max data, providing further insight. At 1080p Medium, the average is 198 FPS with a minimum of 168 FPS and maximum of 228 FPS — a spread of 60 FPS that suggests frame time variance under load. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 128 FPS with a minimum of 109 FPS and maximum of 148 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average falls to 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and maximum of 80 FPS. The fact that the minimum FPS at 4K Medium (59) equals the average FPS at 4K High (59) suggests that the GPU is consistently saturated at that resolution, leaving little headroom for performance spikes or dips.

Ultra settings exacerbate the resolution scaling further. The combo delivers 137 FPS at 1080p Ultra, 89 FPS at 1440p Ultra, and 48 FPS at 4K Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 35%, and from 1440p to 4K is 46% — nearly identical to the Low preset's scaling. This uniformity across presets reinforces that resolution, not graphical complexity, is the dominant variable in this combo's performance profile.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that High settings provide the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate for this combo. At 1080p High, the 167 FPS average is well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on gaming monitors, and even the 1% lows (inferred from the Medium preset's minimums) would likely stay comfortably high. At 1440p High, the 108 FPS average is still smooth for fast-paced FPS action, though it falls short of 144 Hz territory. The 59 FPS average at 4K High is borderline for a twitch shooter like Doom, making High at 4K a marginal choice.

For players prioritizing frame rate over visual detail, Low settings unlock significant headroom: 227 FPS at 1080p, 147 FPS at 1440p, and 80 FPS at 4K. However, the jump from Low to High at 1080p costs 60 FPS (from 227 to 167), which is a 26% reduction — a meaningful trade-off for what is likely a substantial visual improvement. Medium sits between them at 198 FPS at 1080p, offering a middle ground that many users might find optimal.

At 1440p, the Ultra preset's 89 FPS is playable but leaves little margin for demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 1440p delivers 128 FPS, which is a 44% improvement over Ultra — a strong argument for stepping down from maximum settings to maintain a higher frame rate. Similarly, at 4K, the choice is stark: Ultra at 48 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, Medium at 69 FPS is acceptable, and Low at 80 FPS is the only preset that provides comfortable headroom. Given that the game's fast-paced nature benefits from higher frame rates, Medium at 4K appears to be the sweet spot, offering a 44% improvement over Ultra while maintaining a playable average.

The data shows that the combo is most efficient at 1440p High, where the 108 FPS average represents a good balance between visual quality and smoothness. For users with high-refresh displays, 1080p High or Medium would be the recommended choice, as both exceed 165 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is the dominant component in this combo's gaming performance, as evidenced by the resolution scaling patterns. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, the card offers 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth — a figure that proves sufficient for Doom's texture and geometry demands at 4K, where the card still manages playable frame rates at Medium and High presets. The 12 GB capacity is not stressed by this game, as the 4K Ultra preset's 48 FPS average indicates computational limits rather than memory bottlenecks; if VRAM were exhausted, we would expect to see severe frame hitches or texture pop-in, neither of which is reflected in the min/max data at 4K Medium (59 FPS minimum).

Clock speeds play a significant role in the observed performance. The RTX 4070's base clock of 1920 MHz and boost clock of 2475 MHz, combined with its 5888 shading units, deliver 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. This raw throughput is what drives the 227 FPS at 1080p Low and the 80 FPS at 4K Low. The card's 184 texture mapping units and 64 ROPs handle the game's fill-rate requirements, with a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s. These specifications translate into the measured results, where the card shows a 35% performance drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 45% drop to 4K — consistent with a GPU that is fully utilized at every resolution.

The card's position in the broader market is notable. Its average benchmark score of 37648 places it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. Among its nearest rivals, the RTX 4070 is 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (score 37628) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (score 37507), while trailing the RTX 4080 Mobile by 1.3% (score 38135) and leading the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 by 1.3% (score 37157). This tight clustering indicates that the RTX 4070 sits in a competitive performance band, though its specific strengths in Doom are determined by its Ada Lovelace architecture's efficiency rather than sheer throughput dominance.

The GPU's 200 W TDP and dual-slot design are consistent with a mobile or compact desktop card, and the 1x 16-pin power connector with a suggested 550 W PSU indicates moderate power requirements. The card's end-of-life production status and 2023 release date place it as a previous-generation part, yet its performance in Doom remains strong, as the data confirms.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 achieves a rank of 1554 out of 2930 combos in Doom. This places it in the 47th percentile of all tested combos — slightly below the median. Given that the GPU is in the 81st percentile of all GPUs and the CPU in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, the combo's mid-pack ranking in Doom suggests that the game's engine does not fully leverage the strengths of this hardware pairing, or that other combos in the database are more optimized for this specific title.

The rank of 1554 out of 2930 indicates that a majority of tested combos (1376) outperform this configuration in Doom, while 1553 combos fall below it. This is a surprising result given the individual component strength, but it can be explained by the game's release date of 2016-05-12. Doom is an older title that may not scale perfectly with the latest multi-core processors or the most recent GPU architectures. The game's Vulkan-based engine was designed for hardware of its era, and the measured frame rates — while high in absolute terms — may not reflect the full potential of the Ultra 7 265HX or RTX 4070 in newer, more demanding titles.

The combo's rank is a composite measure that accounts for both CPU and GPU contributions. Since the CPU is in the 93rd percentile and the GPU in the 81st percentile, the 47th percentile rank in Doom suggests that the game is not CPU-bound (otherwise the strong CPU would boost the rank) nor purely GPU-bound (as the GPU's high percentile would also boost the rank). Instead, the mid-pack ranking indicates that Doom's engine likely has architectural limits that cap performance regardless of component strength, or that the specific combination of this mobile CPU and desktop-class GPU does not communicate optimally in this workload.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX is a 20-core, 20-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake-HX architecture, built on TSMC's 3 nm process. Its base clock of 2.60 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz, combined with 30 MB of shared L3 cache, provide substantial computational headroom. In synthetic benchmarks, the chip scores 40642 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 5737 in single-core, placing it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 63173 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals: the Intel Core i7-13790F (score 63080, delta 0.1%), AMD Ryzen AI 7 450G (score 63331, delta -0.2%), AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P185 (score 62839, delta 0.5%), and Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX (score 62738, delta 0.7%).

In Doom, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, as the resolution scaling data demonstrates. At 1080p Low, where CPU load is highest relative to GPU work, the combo achieves 227 FPS — a figure that suggests the CPU is not a bottleneck even at low resolutions. If the Ultra 7 265HX were limiting performance, we would expect to see frame rates plateau at 1080p across different presets, but the data shows a clear decline from Low (227 FPS) to Ultra (137 FPS) at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is the limiting factor even at the lowest resolution.

The CPU's 20 cores and 20 threads are more than sufficient for Doom, which is a title that benefits from high single-thread performance. The chip's 5737 Cinebench R23 single-core score and 5.30 GHz boost clock ensure that the game's main thread — which typically handles physics and game logic — runs with minimal delay. The absence of min FPS data for most presets makes it difficult to assess frame pacing, but the available Medium preset data (1080p min 168 FPS, 1440p min 109 FPS, 4K min 59 FPS) shows no signs of CPU-induced stutter, as the minimums scale consistently with the averages.

The CPU's memory interface — dual-channel DDR5 with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth — is adequate for feeding the GPU and CPU cores. The 30 MB L3 cache helps with game data locality, and the 3 MB per-core L2 cache reduces latency. The processor's 55 W TDP is modest for a 20-core part, indicating efficient power management, though the 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die suggest high density. In the context of Doom, the CPU's role is to keep the GPU fed with draw calls and physics data, and the measured frame rates confirm it does so without introducing bottlenecks.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows 1440p High as the most balanced option, delivering 108 FPS average. At 1080p, all presets exceed 137 FPS, while 4K drops to 59 FPS on High and 48 FPS on Ultra, making 1440p the sweet spot for visual quality and smoothness.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37648 is 0.1% higher than the Tesla P4 (37628), 0.4% higher than the RX Vega 56 (37507), 1.3% higher than the Radeon PRO W6400 (37157), but 1.3% lower than the RTX 4080 Mobile (38135).

Q: Is the CPU a bottleneck in Doom at any resolution?

A: No. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 227 FPS, and frame rates scale consistently with resolution and preset, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking and 20 cores provide ample headroom.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, Low delivers 147 FPS while Ultra delivers 89 FPS — a 65% difference. Medium sits at 128 FPS, and High at 108 FPS, showing a steady trade-off between quality and speed.

Q: Does the 12 GB VRAM on the RTX 4070 suffice for Doom at 4K?

A: Yes. The 4K Medium preset shows a 59 FPS minimum and 69 FPS average, with no evidence of memory-related stuttering. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for the game's needs.

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

A: It ranks 1554 out of 2930 combos, placing it just below the median at the 47th percentile. This is lower than the individual component percentiles (CPU 93rd, GPU 81st), suggesting the game's engine limits overall performance.