Doom

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 delivers a compelling 1080p and 1440p experience in Doom, with 4K remaining viable for high-refresh-rate displays. The measured data shows a clear hierarchy across the four available presets, with the Medium preset offering the most balanced combination of visual fidelity and frame rate headroom. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 210 FPS average, which is 35 FPS higher than High and 65 FPS higher than Ultra, while still maintaining a minimum frame rate of 179 FPS. The jump from Medium to High costs 32 FPS, while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 33 FPS, indicating diminishing returns at the top end. At 2560x1440, Medium again provides the best experience, hitting 136 FPS average with a 116 FPS minimum, comfortably above the 100 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The 4K resolution sees the Medium preset produce 74 FPS average, which is playable, but the High preset at 62 FPS and Ultra at 51 FPS show the GPU struggling to maintain high refresh rates at this resolution. For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset is recommended across all resolutions, as it consistently provides the highest frame rate while still offering a substantial visual upgrade over Low, which only delivers marginal gains of 31 FPS at 1080p, 20 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K over Medium.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate achievable at 1920x1080 with this combo?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 241 FPS, achieved with the Low preset at 1920x1080. The Medium preset follows at 210 FPS, High at 178 FPS, and Ultra at 145 FPS.

Q: Does the combo maintain a playable frame rate at 4K with the Ultra preset?

A: Yes, the Ultra preset at 3840x2160 produces an average of 51 FPS. While this is below the 60 FPS threshold, it remains technically playable, though the Medium preset at 74 FPS and High at 62 FPS provide more comfortable margins.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 1440p on the Medium preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 210 FPS at 1920x1080 to 136 FPS at 2560x1440, representing a decrease of 74 FPS, or roughly 35% lower performance at the higher resolution.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like on the Medium preset?

A: The Medium preset shows a 63 FPS spread between minimum and maximum at 4K (63 to 85 FPS), a 40 FPS spread at 1440p (116 to 156 FPS), and a 63 FPS spread at 1080p (179 to 242 FPS). These ranges indicate stable performance without severe frame time spikes.

Q: Is the Low preset ever the recommended choice based on the data?

A: The Low preset offers the highest average frame rates at every resolution (241 FPS at 1080p, 156 FPS at 1440p, 85 FPS at 4K), but the gains over Medium are modest—31 FPS at 1080p, 20 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K—while sacrificing significant visual quality. The data suggests Medium is the better trade-off.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested combinations for this game?

A: The combo ranks 1314 out of 2930 tested combinations, placing it in the 45th percentile of all tested combos for Doom, which indicates it performs better than the median but is not in the top tier.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 is the primary driver of frame rate scaling in Doom, particularly at higher resolutions. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 624.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game's texture streaming demands. The GPU's boost clock of 2459 MHz and game clock of 2041 MHz, based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units, deliver a peak FP32 throughput of 25.18 TFLOPS. The measured data shows that the GPU's performance ceiling is reached at 4K, where the Ultra preset drops to 51 FPS average. This is a 34 FPS decrease from the Medium preset at the same resolution, highlighting that the GPU is the limiting factor at 3840x2160. At 1440p, the GPU still demonstrates strong scaling, with the Ultra preset achieving 94 FPS, which is 60 FPS higher than the 4K Ultra result. At 1080p, the GPU is not fully saturated, as evidenced by the 241 FPS Low preset result, which suggests the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at lower resolutions. The 16 GB VRAM capacity is never a constraint in these measurements, as even the 4K Ultra preset runs without any indication of memory-related performance drops. The GPU's percentile ranking of 58 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 15852, places it in a mid-range position, which aligns with the observed 4K performance being modest but 1440p performance being strong.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and AMD Radeon RX 7700 combination ranks 1314 out of 2930 tested combos for Doom, placing it in the 45th percentile of all tested combinations. This ranking indicates that the combo performs slightly below the median performance level for this game across all hardware combinations. The CPU component of this combo has a percentile rank of 94 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70879, which is exceptionally high. In contrast, the GPU has a percentile rank of 58 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 15852, which is closer to the median. The disparity between the CPU's top-tier ranking and the GPU's mid-range ranking suggests that the combo's overall position is constrained by the GPU's performance ceiling. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Xeon 6511P, has an average score of 71051, a delta of -0.2%, while the Intel Core i7-14700KF scores 70163, a delta of 1%, indicating the CPU is performing at a level comparable to other high-end processors. The GPU's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon R9 370X, scores 15862, a delta of -0.1%, while the AMD Radeon RX 9060 scores 16014, a delta of -1%, showing the GPU is performing within a tight band around its expected level. The combo's 45th percentile rank means that 55% of tested combos outperform it in Doom, which is consistent with the GPU being a mid-range part. For context, the combo sits in the lower half of the ranking distribution, but the measured frame rates at 1080p and 1440p are still respectable, indicating that the game is not particularly demanding on the CPU side and that the GPU is the determining factor for overall combo ranking.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data reveals a clear pattern of frame rate degradation as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, with the rate of decline becoming steeper at higher presets. On the Low preset, the average frame rate drops from 241 FPS at 1080p to 156 FPS at 1440p, a decrease of 85 FPS (35.3%), and then further to 85 FPS at 4K, a decrease of 71 FPS (45.5%) from 1440p. The Medium preset shows a similar proportional decline: 210 FPS at 1080p, 136 FPS at 1440p (a 74 FPS drop, 35.2%), and 74 FPS at 4K (a 62 FPS drop, 45.6% from 1440p). The High preset follows the same trend: 178 FPS at 1080p, 115 FPS at 1440p (a 63 FPS drop, 35.4%), and 62 FPS at 4K (a 53 FPS drop, 46.1% from 1440p). The Ultra preset demonstrates the largest absolute drops: 145 FPS at 1080p, 94 FPS at 1440p (a 51 FPS drop, 35.2%), and 51 FPS at 4K (a 43 FPS drop, 45.7% from 1440p). This consistent pattern—roughly a 35% reduction from 1080p to 1440p followed by a 45% reduction from 1440p to 4K—indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component as resolution increases. The pixel count increases by 78% from 1080p to 1440p and by 125% from 1440p to 4K, but the frame rate drops do not scale linearly with pixel count, suggesting that the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading throughput become increasingly taxed at higher resolutions. The fact that the percentage drops are nearly identical across all presets (35% and 45% respectively) indicates that the GPU's performance scaling is consistent regardless of settings, and the CPU is not introducing a bottleneck at any resolution. This is further supported by the observation that the minimum frame rates at 1440p and 1080p on Medium (116 FPS and 179 FPS) are still well above the corresponding averages at 4K, confirming that the GPU is the limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest performance across all presets. The Low preset achieves an average of 241 FPS, which is the single highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset. The Medium preset follows at 210 FPS, with a minimum of 179 FPS and a maximum of 242 FPS, showing a 63 FPS range. High produces 178 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 145 FPS average. The spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 96 FPS, indicating that the preset choice has a significant impact on performance at this resolution. Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 156 FPS, Medium averages 136 FPS with a minimum of 116 FPS and maximum of 156 FPS, High averages 115 FPS, and Ultra averages 94 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 62 FPS, which is narrower than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as resolution increases. At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 85 FPS, Medium averages 74 FPS with a minimum of 63 FPS and maximum of 85 FPS, High averages 62 FPS, and Ultra averages 51 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is 34 FPS, further confirming that the GPU's performance ceiling is being approached at this resolution. The Medium preset at each resolution shows the most stable frame time behavior, with the minimum frame rate being at least 75% of the average in all cases (179/210 at 1080p, 116/136 at 1440p, 63/74 at 4K). This consistency makes Medium the most predictable preset for competitive play. The data also shows that the Low preset's advantage over Medium diminishes at higher resolutions: 31 FPS at 1080p, 20 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K, indicating that the GPU's workload is increasingly dominated by resolution rather than settings at higher pixel counts.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is a high-end desktop processor with 20 cores and 20 threads, based on the Arrow Lake architecture manufactured on a 3 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB of L2 cache per core. The CPU's benchmark scores are exceptionally strong, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 35850 and a single-core score of 2020, placing it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 70879 is within 1% of its nearest rivals, including the Intel Xeon 6511P (71051, -0.2% delta) and the Intel Core i7-14700KF (70163, 1% delta). In the context of Doom, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic updates. The measured frame rates at 1080p, where the GPU is less stressed, show that the CPU can sustain frame rates above 240 FPS on the Low preset, indicating that it is not a bottleneck even at high refresh rates. The fact that the frame rate drops from Low to Medium at 1080p (241 to 210 FPS, a 31 FPS difference) is entirely attributable to the increased GPU workload, not CPU limitations. At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's headroom is even more apparent, as the frame rate differences between presets are driven by the GPU's rendering capabilities. The CPU's 20 cores and 20 threads provide ample parallel processing capacity for the game's engine, and its high single-core performance (Geekbench single-core score of 2713) ensures that the main game thread is not a limiting factor. The data shows no evidence of CPU-induced frame rate drops, as the minimum frame rates on the Medium preset (179 FPS at 1080p, 116 FPS at 1440p) are well above the averages at higher resolutions. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, provided by dual-channel DDR5 support, is sufficient for Doom's data streaming requirements, and the 30 MB L3 cache helps reduce memory latency for frequently accessed game data. Overall, the CPU's performance is more than adequate for this game, and the combo's overall ranking is determined by the GPU's mid-range capabilities rather than any CPU limitation.