Doom

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT delivers a robust 1080p and 1440p experience in Doom, with 4K playable at reduced settings. This analysis draws exclusively from measured data for this specific combo. The CPU’s 24 cores and 5.80 GHz boost clock, combined with the GPU’s 12 GB VRAM and 2581 MHz boost, produce frame rates ranging from 49 fps at 4K Ultra to 230 fps at 1080p Low. The combo ranks 1506th out of 2930 tested configurations, placing it in the upper half of all pairings for this title.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows 2560x1440 as the sweet spot. At Medium settings, the average FPS is 130, with a minimum of 110 and maximum of 149. This keeps frame rates well above 60 while offering more detail than 1080p. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 200 fps on Medium, but the visual jump to 1440p is substantial for only a 70 fps drop.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Doom?

A: Yes, but only at lower presets. At 3840x2160, the combo achieves 81 fps on Low and 70 fps on Medium. High drops to 59 fps, and Ultra falls to 49 fps. For a consistent 60+ fps experience, Medium is the highest viable 4K preset, with Low offering more headroom.

Q: How does the CPU’s core count affect Doom’s performance?

A: The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has 24 cores and 24 threads. Doom benefits from high single-thread performance, and this CPU delivers a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7303. The multi-core score of 51731 also ensures no bottleneck at lower resolutions, where the GPU becomes the limiting factor.

Q: Is the RX 6700 XT’s 12 GB VRAM sufficient for Doom?

A: Yes. The measured data includes no VRAM-related stutters or frame drops beyond what settings dictate. At 4K Ultra, the 49 fps average suggests GPU compute limits rather than memory capacity issues. The 384.0 GB/s bandwidth and 192-bit bus handle Doom’s textures without issue across all tested presets.

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

A: The gap is significant. Low averages 149 fps, while Ultra averages 90 fps — a 59 fps difference. Medium sits at 130 fps, and High at 110 fps. The progression shows diminishing returns: the jump from Low to Medium costs 19 fps, but from High to Ultra costs 20 fps for marginal visual gains.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested configurations?

A: Out of 2930 combos tested in Doom, this pairing ranks 1506th. That places it just above the median. The GPU’s percentile vs all GPUs is 72, while the CPU’s percentile is 96, indicating the graphics card is the more limiting component in this pairing.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT uses the RDNA 2.0 architecture on a 7 nm process with 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Its memory configuration includes 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, yielding 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Clock speeds are set at 2321 MHz base, 2424 MHz game, and 2581 MHz boost. The pixel rate is 165.2 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 413.0 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 13.21 TFLOPS.

These specifications directly translate into Doom’s frame rates. The 3840x2160 results show a clear scaling pattern: Low at 81 fps, Medium at 70 fps, High at 59 fps, and Ultra at 49 fps. This 32 fps spread from Low to Ultra indicates that the GPU’s shading units and ROPs are the primary drivers at 4K. The 12 GB VRAM is never saturated, as evidenced by the smooth 60 fps minimum on Medium at 4K.

At 2560x1440, the GPU has more headroom. Low hits 149 fps, Medium 130 fps, High 110 fps, and Ultra 90 fps. The minimum at Medium is 110 fps, matching the High average, which suggests consistent frame pacing. The boost clock of 2581 MHz becomes more relevant here, as the GPU can sustain higher frequencies under lighter load.

The 1920x1080 results push the GPU to its limits relative to the CPU. Low averages 230 fps, Medium 200 fps, High 169 fps, and Ultra 138 fps. The minimum at Medium is 170 fps, which is higher than the High average. This implies that at 1080p, the RX 6700 XT is still the bottleneck, but the CPU’s high single-thread performance prevents any frame drops below the GPU’s output.

The GPU’s benchmark scores corroborate its gaming behavior. The Passmark G3D score is 19786, and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 2435. Geekbench Vulkan scores 93500, while OpenCL scores 44152. These synthetic results align with the measured FPS, showing a card that excels in traditional rasterization workloads like Doom’s id Tech engine.

The nearest rival comparisons show the RX 6700 XT’s position. It sits within 0.5% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 in average benchmark score (27425 vs 27565), and matches the RTX 4070 Mobile exactly at 27435. This indicates that for Doom specifically, the GPU performs above its class rank, given the game’s optimization for AMD hardware.

Settings Recommendations

For a 60 fps target at 3840x2160, the Medium preset is the optimal choice. The data shows 70 fps average with a 60 fps minimum, ensuring no drops below the refresh rate of most 4K displays. Low offers 81 fps but sacrifices visual quality that Medium restores. High and Ultra fall below 60 fps (59 and 49 respectively), making them unsuitable for smooth 4K play.

At 2560x1440, the recommendation shifts to High or Ultra depending on display refresh rate. High averages 110 fps, which suits 120 Hz monitors. Ultra averages 90 fps, still above 60 and suitable for 144 Hz displays with VRR. For maximum smoothness, Medium’s 130 fps average with a 110 fps minimum is the safest bet for competitive play.

At 1920x1080, any preset works. Low’s 230 fps average is ideal for 240 Hz panels, while Medium’s 200 fps and High’s 169 fps both exceed 144 Hz. Ultra’s 138 fps average is still above 120 Hz. The minimum at Medium is 170 fps, showing that even the most demanding moments stay well above standard refresh rates.

The measured data reveals diminishing returns from Medium to Ultra at all resolutions. At 4K, the drop from Medium to High is 11 fps, and from High to Ultra is 10 fps. At 1440p, the drops are 20 fps each step. At 1080p, the drops are 31 fps (Medium to High) and 31 fps (High to Ultra). The visual improvement from High to Ultra is often subtle in fast-paced shooters, so prioritizing frame rate is advisable.

For players with adaptive sync displays, the Medium preset at 4K or Ultra at 1440p offers the best balance. The minimum frame rates (60 fps at 4K Medium, 90 fps at 1440p Ultra) stay within VRR ranges, eliminating tearing. Without adaptive sync, matching the average FPS to the display’s native refresh rate is easier with Medium at 4K or High at 1440p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, with no frame time data beyond averages and select min/max values. Starting at 3840x2160, the combo produces 59 fps on High, 81 fps on Low, 70 fps on Medium with a 60 fps minimum and 81 fps maximum, and 49 fps on Ultra. The Medium preset’s minimum of 60 fps is notable because it matches the exact refresh rate of many 4K displays, ensuring no dropped frames.

At 2560x1440, the numbers scale predictably. Low averages 149 fps, which is exactly double the 4K Low average of 81 fps minus 13 fps. Medium averages 130 fps with a 110 fps minimum and 149 fps maximum. High averages 110 fps, and Ultra averages 90 fps. The progression from Low to Ultra is 149, 130, 110, 90 — a linear 20 fps drop per step, indicating consistent GPU scaling.

At 1920x1080, the combo reaches its highest frame rates. Low averages 230 fps, Medium averages 200 fps with a 170 fps minimum and 230 fps maximum, High averages 169 fps, and Ultra averages 138 fps. The Medium preset’s maximum of 230 fps matches the Low average, showing that the GPU can occasionally hit its ceiling even at higher settings. The minimum of 170 fps at Medium is higher than the High average of 169 fps, which suggests that the CPU’s single-thread performance is sufficient to feed the GPU without stutters.

Comparing resolutions, the scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings shows a 70 fps drop (200 to 130). From 1440p to 4K at Medium, the drop is 60 fps (130 to 70). This indicates that resolution scaling is slightly more efficient at higher resolutions, likely due to the GPU becoming more compute-bound rather than bandwidth-bound. The 384.0 GB/s bandwidth handles 4K textures without a disproportionate penalty.

The min/max data for Medium presets provides insight into frame consistency. At 4K, the 60 fps minimum and 81 fps maximum represent a 21 fps spread. At 1440p, the spread is 39 fps (110 to 149). At 1080p, the spread is 60 fps (170 to 230). This growing variance at lower resolutions suggests that the CPU’s role becomes more pronounced, with the 24 cores providing enough headroom to push frame rates higher but also introducing more variance.

For players targeting a specific refresh rate, the data offers clear milestones. 4K Medium hits 70 fps average, 1440p High hits 110 fps, 1440p Ultra hits 90 fps, 1080p High hits 169 fps, and 1080p Ultra hits 138 fps. The only preset that fails to reach 60 fps is 4K Ultra at 49 fps, which is the sole sub-60 result in the entire dataset.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank for this pairing in Doom is 1506 out of 2930 tested combinations. This places it at approximately the 51st percentile, meaning it outperforms just over half of all tested configurations. Given the GPU’s percentile of 72 and the CPU’s percentile of 96, the ranking indicates that the RX 6700 XT is the primary limiter, holding back the CPU’s potential.

The CPU’s nearest rivals provide context for its contribution. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has an average benchmark score of 84003, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (83807) and 1.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 4584PX (83090). It trails the AMD EPYC 7F72 by 1.3% (85072). These deltas are small, meaning that swapping to a 285K would likely produce nearly identical Doom frame rates, as the GPU remains the bottleneck.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show a similar story. The RX 6700 XT’s average benchmark score is 27425, which is 0.5% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (27565) and 1.5% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 (27839). It is 1.1% higher than the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell (27135) and exactly matches the RTX 4070 Mobile (27435). In Doom, the measured FPS suggests the RX 6700 XT performs closer to its 72nd percentile than its raw score might indicate.

The rank of 1506 out of 2930 means that 1424 other combos score higher in Doom. Given the CPU’s top-tier status (96th percentile), the ranking is entirely attributable to the GPU’s mid-range position. Upgrading the GPU while keeping the same CPU would likely move this combo significantly higher in the rankings, as the CPU has ample headroom for faster graphics cards.

The dataIsMeasured flag confirms that these FPS numbers come from actual testing, not estimation. This lends credibility to the rank, as it reflects real-world performance rather than synthetic predictions. The absence of min/max data for High and Ultra presets means the rank is based on average FPS, which could mask occasional stutters, but the consistent scaling across resolutions suggests stable performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC. Its base clock is 3.70 GHz, boosting up to 5.80 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 36 MB shared L3. Memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s. The CPU also includes Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 64EU, though Doom’s performance relies on the discrete GPU.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The 24 cores and 24 threads provide massive multi-threading headroom, but Doom is not heavily threaded. The single-core performance matters more, and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7303 reflects a high-end result. The multi-core score of 51731 ensures that any background tasks or game engine threads won’t cause bottlenecks.

The measured FPS data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 230 fps average. This is likely near the GPU’s maximum output, not the CPU’s limit. The Passmark single-thread score of 4823 and multithread score of 60860 both indicate a processor that can handle even the most demanding simulation-heavy games without issue.

The CPU’s benchmark scores provide additional context. Passmark integer math scores 166194, floating point math scores 214760, and extended instructions score 52338. Data compression scores 698346, and encryption scores 52563. These numbers suggest strong computational throughput, which is relevant for Doom’s enemy AI and physics systems, but the game’s frame rates are primarily GPU-bound.

The nearest rival comparisons for the CPU show that the 290K Plus is marginally faster than the 285K (0.2%) and the EPYC 4584PX (1.1%), but slower than the EPYC 7F72 (1.3%). In Doom, these differences would be imperceptible, as the GPU’s 72nd percentile ranking means that even a slower CPU would produce identical frame rates in most scenarios.

The CPU’s high boost clock of 5.80 GHz is particularly beneficial for Doom’s single-threaded render thread. The game’s id Tech engine benefits from high IPC and clock speed, and the 290K Plus delivers both. The 24 cores also ensure that any secondary threads, such as audio processing or input handling, never compete for resources with the main render thread.

At lower resolutions, the CPU becomes more important. At 1080p Low, the 230 fps average suggests the CPU can push frame rates well beyond what most displays support. If the GPU were upgraded to a faster model, the 290K Plus would likely allow even higher frame rates, given its single-thread score of 7303 in Cinebench R23 and Passmark single-thread score of 4823.

The CPU’s 125 W TDP and dual-channel DDR5 memory support are adequate for Doom’s system requirements. The 115.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is more than sufficient for the game’s asset streaming. The 36 MB L3 cache helps with repeated texture lookups, though the GPU’s 12 GB VRAM handles most game data directly.

In summary, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus provides a strong foundation for Doom, but its capabilities exceed what the RX 6700 XT can utilize in this title. The combo’s rank of 1506 out of 2930 reflects this imbalance. For players considering this pairing, the CPU offers future-proofing for GPU upgrades, while the current performance is solid for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K viable at Medium settings.