Doom

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination delivers an extraordinary experience in Doom, with frame rates that saturate even the fastest high-refresh displays. The measured data shows a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at lower resolutions, while the CPU’s substantial thread count keeps minimums high even when the renderer is stressed.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results indicate that the Ultra preset is the ideal choice for most users, as it yields an average of 267 FPS at 1920x1080, 173 FPS at 2560x1440, and 94 FPS at 3840x2160. These figures are far beyond the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and the Ultra preset provides the maximum visual fidelity without sacrificing playability. The gap between Ultra and the next lower preset, High, is notable: at 1080p, High averages 327 FPS, which is 22% faster than Ultra, but the absolute difference in smoothness is negligible given that both are well above 240 FPS.

For players with 144Hz or 165Hz monitors at 2560x1440, the High preset is the most rational selection. It produces 211 FPS average, comfortably exceeding the monitor’s refresh rate, while the Ultra preset’s 173 FPS is still above 144Hz but offers diminishing returns for the performance cost. At 3840x2160, the data suggests that High is the sweet spot for 120Hz-class displays: it averages 115 FPS, which is 22% higher than the Ultra preset’s 94 FPS. The Medium preset (136 FPS average at 4K) is only relevant for 144Hz 4K monitors, as it sacrifices significant image quality for a 21 FPS gain over High. The Low preset is not recommended for this hardware, as it leaves massive performance on the table—444 FPS at 1080p—without delivering a visually acceptable experience for a modern title.

For competitive play at 1920x1080, the Medium preset (387 FPS) or High (327 FPS) are both excellent choices, as they provide frame times that are effectively instantaneous. The Ultra preset at 1080p (267 FPS) is still exceptionally fast, but the 60 FPS difference between Medium and Ultra is more significant for esports than the visual upgrade.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with 16,384 shading units, is the dominant force in this pairing. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is far more than Doom’s 2016-era engine requires. The data confirms this, as the GPU’s 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate are not fully utilized until the resolution increases to 3840x2160.

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are so high (267-444 FPS depending on preset) that the GPU is almost certainly idling between draw calls, waiting on the CPU to feed it geometry. The RTX 4090’s boost clock of 2520 MHz is the same across all measurements, but the effective performance scales directly with resolution. The transition from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 shows a 45% drop in average FPS for the High preset (211 to 115 FPS), which is a classic sign of the GPU becoming the bottleneck as pixel count quadruples.

The GPU’s 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are underutilized in this title, as Doom does not rely heavily on ray tracing or DLSS. Instead, the raw rasterization performance—443.5 GPixel/s pixel fill rate—is what drives the high frame rates. The 450 W TDP and triple-slot cooler are appropriate for the workload, but the data shows that the card’s headroom is substantial; even at 4K Ultra, the 94 FPS average is far from the card’s theoretical limits. The RTX 4090’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database, such as the Intel Arc Pro A60 and AMD Radeon Pro W6600M, are workstation-class parts with much lower scores, but none of them appear in the game’s measured results, underscoring the 4090’s position at the top of the consumer stack.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, with 24 cores and 24 threads based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, plays a supporting role in this configuration. Its boost clock of 5.80 GHz and 36 MB of shared L3 cache are more than adequate for Doom’s single-threaded rendering loop, but the game’s engine is not heavily multi-threaded. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51,731 and single-core score of 7,303 indicate excellent overall throughput, yet the measured FPS data shows that the CPU rarely becomes the limiting factor.

At 1920x1080 Low, the 444 FPS average is likely near the engine’s frame-rate cap or the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls. The CPU’s 24 threads are mostly idle, but the high single-core boost is what matters here. The 3.70 GHz base clock ensures consistent performance even under sustained loads, while the 5.80 GHz boost provides the burst performance needed for frame pacing. Comparing to the nearest CPU rival, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, the 290K Plus is only 0.2% faster in average benchmark score (84,003 vs 83,807), which translates to a negligible difference in gaming.

The CPU’s dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 115.2 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient to feed the GPU’s 1.01 TB/s, as the game’s data sets are small enough to fit in the 36 MB L3 cache. The 17,800 million transistors on a 3 nm process from TSMC give the CPU a 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs, but in this specific game, the bottleneck is almost always the GPU. The data shows that the CPU’s 24 threads do not provide a measurable advantage over a 16-core part, as Doom’s frame rates are primarily constrained by the graphics pipeline. However, the CPU’s 5.80 GHz boost clock ensures that even the highest FPS counts at 1080p (444 FPS) do not introduce stutter, as the PassMark single-thread score of 4,823 indicates strong per-core performance.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Doom, this pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 76th out of 2,930 combos. This places it in the top 2.6% of all tested systems, which is an exceptional result for a game that is nearly a decade old. The high rank is driven primarily by the GPU’s raw fill rate, as the CPU’s contribution is secondary.

The 76th position suggests that there are 75 other combinations that achieve higher average FPS, likely featuring more recent GPUs or CPUs with higher single-thread clocks. However, the margin is likely small, as the RTX 4090 is already a top-tier card. The combo’s rank is not a reflection of any weakness in this pairing, but rather the fact that Doom is highly optimized and can run well on much less powerful hardware.

The percentile data for the individual components reinforces this: the GPU is in the 88th percentile of all GPUs, and the CPU is in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. The combination of two high-percentile parts should theoretically rank higher than 76th, but the game’s engine is not designed to scale beyond a certain point. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (94 FPS) is likely the limiting factor, as higher-ranked combos may achieve 100+ FPS at that setting. The data shows that the RTX 4090’s nearest GPU rivals—such as the AMD Radeon PRO V710 (2.9% higher score) or the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (2.5% lower score)—do not appear in the game’s results, which means the 4090 is effectively competing against itself in this title.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior reveals a system that is firmly GPU-bound at higher pixel counts. From 1920x1080 to 2560x1440, the High preset drops from 327 FPS to 211 FPS, a 35% reduction. From 2560x1440 to 3840x2160, High drops from 211 FPS to 115 FPS, a 45% reduction. These proportional drops are consistent with the GPU’s fill rate limits, as the pixel count increases by 78% from 1080p to 1440p and by 125% from 1440p to 4K.

The fact that the FPS drop is less than the pixel increase at each step (35% vs 78%, 45% vs 125%) indicates that the GPU is not entirely saturated at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU is likely limiting the frame rate, as the 444 FPS Low preset result is close to what a 5.80 GHz processor can produce in this engine. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck, and the frame rates scale accordingly.

The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 387 FPS at 1080p, 250 FPS at 1440p (35% drop), and 136 FPS at 4K (46% drop). The Ultra preset is more consistent, with 267 FPS at 1080p, 173 FPS at 1440p (35% drop), and 94 FPS at 4K (46% drop). This uniformity across presets suggests that the game’s rendering pipeline is well-balanced, and the limiting component shifts smoothly from CPU to GPU as the workload increases. The minimum FPS data, available only for the Medium preset, shows that the 1% lows are within 8% of the average at each resolution (329 vs 387 at 1080p, 213 vs 250 at 1440p, 115 vs 136 at 4K), indicating excellent frame pacing with no sudden spikes or drops.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptionally high across all settings. The Low preset averages 444 FPS, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. The Medium preset averages 387 FPS with a minimum of 329 FPS and a maximum of 445 FPS, showing a narrow 116 FPS range. The High preset averages 327 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 267 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 177 FPS (40% reduction), which is substantial but does not affect playability at this resolution, as even the lowest Ultra result is far above any display’s refresh rate.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains excellent. The Low preset averages 287 FPS, while Medium averages 250 FPS with a minimum of 213 FPS and a maximum of 288 FPS. The High preset produces 211 FPS, and Ultra drops to 173 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 114 FPS (40% reduction), consistent with the 1080p scaling. All results at this resolution are suitable for 144Hz or 240Hz displays, with the Ultra preset still exceeding 165Hz.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to show its limits. The Low preset averages 156 FPS, which is still very high for 4K. The Medium preset averages 136 FPS with a minimum of 115 FPS and a maximum of 156 FPS, which is suitable for 120Hz displays. The High preset averages 115 FPS, just above the 60 FPS threshold but below 120Hz. The Ultra preset averages 94 FPS, which is playable on 60Hz monitors but not optimal for high-refresh 4K panels. The drop from Low to Ultra at 4K is 62 FPS (40% reduction), matching the pattern seen at other resolutions. This consistency indicates that the game’s settings have a uniform impact on GPU load, regardless of resolution. The Medium preset’s minimum FPS of 115 at 4K is particularly noteworthy, as it shows that even in the most demanding scenes, the system never drops below a playable level.