Doom

The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile delivers a dominant 1080p experience in Doom, but the data reveals a GPU-bound scaling curve that makes 1440p the practical sweet spot for high-refresh displays. At 1080p, the combo averages 288 FPS on Low and still manages 212 FPS on High, indicating that the 16-core Panther Lake processor is never the bottleneck at lower resolutions. However, the most balanced experience—where visual fidelity and frame rate align—is found at 2560x1440 with Medium settings, producing 162 FPS with a recorded minimum of 138 FPS. This setting avoids the 112 FPS Ultra dip while maintaining a comfortable margin above the 137 FPS High preset. For users prioritizing maximum smoothness over visuals, the 1080p Low preset at 288 FPS is the clear choice, but the 1440p Medium row offers the best combination of responsiveness and image quality without sacrificing the 150+ FPS target.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark matrix shows a clear hierarchy: Ultra presets consistently cost the most frames across all resolutions, while Low presets maximize throughput. At 4K, the gap between Low (101 FPS) and Ultra (61 FPS) is 40 FPS, which represents a 66% performance penalty for maximum fidelity. The Medium preset at 4K delivers 88 FPS, which is a reasonable compromise for 60 Hz displays, but the min FPS of 75 suggests occasional dips that could be noticeable. Moving to 1440p, the Ultra preset still manages 112 FPS, but the Medium preset’s 162 FPS average with a 138 FPS floor makes it the superior choice for 144 Hz panels. The High preset at 1440p (137 FPS) is nearly as good but lacks the documented minimum frame rate, making Medium the safer recommendation.

At 1080p, the situation changes dramatically. The Ultra preset produces 173 FPS, which is more than adequate for most displays, but the High preset at 212 FPS and Medium at 251 FPS show that the GPU has substantial headroom. The Low preset’s 288 FPS is the maximum measured value and indicates that the CPU can feed the GPU well beyond typical refresh rates. For competitive play, the 1080p Low or Medium presets are optimal, as the difference between 251 and 288 FPS is imperceptible on most monitors, but Medium offers better visual clarity. The data suggests that the RTX 4080 Mobile is the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, while the CPU begins to show its influence only at 1080p Low, where the 288 FPS result likely approaches the engine’s frame pacing limits.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo achieves in Doom?*

A: The maximum measured average FPS is 288, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is 36 FPS higher than the next-best result (251 FPS at 1080p Medium), indicating that the Low preset removes most GPU workload constraints.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra preset compare to the 1080p Ultra preset?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 61, while 1080p Ultra produces 173 FPS. This represents a 65% reduction in frame rate when scaling from 1080p to 4K at the same settings, highlighting the GPU’s workload sensitivity to pixel count.

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H a bottleneck in this game?

A: Based on the data, the CPU is not a bottleneck at most settings. At 1080p Low, the 288 FPS result indicates strong single-thread capability, but the 16-core processor’s 5.10 GHz boost clock and 18 MB L3 cache are sufficient to keep the GPU fed even at maximum frame rates. The CPU’s 88th percentile ranking among all tested CPUs supports this interpretation.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded across all tested configurations?

A: The lowest average FPS is 61, measured at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. This is the only configuration that falls below 60 FPS, and the lack of a recorded minimum frame rate suggests the average is stable enough to be playable on a 60 Hz display.

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

A: The combo ranks 1222 out of 3712 tested combinations, placing it in the top third of all systems. This rank reflects the strong performance of the RTX 4080 Mobile, which sits in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, and the CPU’s 88th percentile standing.

Q: Which resolution and settings provide the best frame pacing consistency?

A: The Medium preset at 1440p shows a minimum FPS of 138 and a maximum of 187, yielding a 49 FPS spread. At 1080p Medium, the spread is 76 FPS (213 to 289). The 1440p Medium configuration offers tighter frame pacing, making it the better choice for maintaining smooth motion.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 212 at 1080p to 137 at 1440p (-35%) and then to 74 at 4K (-46% from 1440p). This translates to a total reduction of 65% from 1080p to 4K, which is consistent with the pixel count increase of 4x. The RTX 4080 Mobile’s 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and 432.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to handle the texture loads at 4K, but the raw shading throughput—24.72 TFLOPS FP32—becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The scaling is less severe at lower settings. At Low, the drop from 1080p (288 FPS) to 1440p (186 FPS) is 35%, and then to 4K (101 FPS) is another 46%. This suggests that even with reduced shading work, the GPU’s memory subsystem and render output units (80 ROPs) are the primary constraints. The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 251 FPS at 1080p, 162 FPS at 1440p, and 88 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 35% and 46%, respectively, indicating a consistent scaling factor regardless of settings.

This uniformity points to the GPU as the definitive bottleneck. The CPU’s performance—16 cores, 16 threads, with a 5.10 GHz boost—does not change with resolution, yet the FPS drops exactly in line with pixel count. If the CPU were limiting, the 1080p results would show less scaling, but the data shows the same relative drops across all settings. The 4K Ultra result of 61 FPS is the only configuration that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, and even then, it’s only 1 FPS short, suggesting that the RTX 4080 Mobile is well-matched to this game at 4K with modest settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile achieves a rank of 1222 out of 3712 tested combos in Doom. This places it in the 67th percentile, meaning roughly one-third of tested systems perform better. Given that the GPU alone ranks in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, the combo’s lower overall rank suggests that the CPU may be holding back the system in some scenarios, or that the test pool includes many high-end desktop configurations that outperform mobile parts.

The CPU’s nearest rivals provide context for its performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D scores 44,573 on average, just 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H’s 44,466. The Intel Core i9-13950HX is 0.3% slower, and the AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 is 0.4% slower. This tight grouping indicates that the Ultra X9 388H is competitive with top-tier mobile and desktop processors, but it does not dominate. The 16-core, 16-thread configuration with a 2.10 GHz base and 5.10 GHz boost clock provides strong multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18,911.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show a different story. The RTX 4080 Mobile’s average benchmark score of 38,135 is 0.4% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 and 0.6% lower than the RTX 5080 Mobile, but 1.3% higher than both the RTX 4070 and Tesla P4. This clustering suggests that the RTX 4080 Mobile is a mid-to-high-tier mobile GPU, and its 81st percentile ranking confirms it outperforms most discrete GPUs. In Doom, this translates to the observed frame rates, which are playable at 4K and excellent at 1440p.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H is a 16-core, 16-thread processor based on the Panther Lake architecture, built on Intel’s 3 nm process. Its base clock of 2.10 GHz and boost clock of 5.10 GHz provide a wide frequency range, and the 18 MB L3 cache helps with game data locality. The CPU’s benchmark results show strong single-thread performance, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,200.5 and a PassMark single-thread score of 4,280. These figures align with the 88th percentile ranking among all CPUs, indicating that the processor is well-suited for gaming workloads.

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 its scalability, and the data shows that at 1080p Low, the CPU can sustain 288 FPS, which is near the practical limit for most displays. The 16 threads are more than sufficient for the game’s multi-threaded rendering, and the 5.10 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded tasks—such as game logic and AI—are handled with minimal latency.

The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 153.6 GB/s from dual-channel LPDDR5X is adequate for the game’s asset streaming, though it is lower than the GPU’s 432.0 GB/s. This asymmetry is expected in mobile platforms, and the benchmark results confirm that it does not create a bottleneck in practice. The PassMark multi-thread score of 36,811 and data compression score of 361,763 indicate that the CPU can handle background tasks without impacting game performance. Overall, the CPU provides a solid foundation for the RTX 4080 Mobile, enabling the GPU to reach its full potential at all tested resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear progression from Low to Ultra. Low settings produce an average of 288 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. Medium settings reduce this to 251 FPS, with a minimum of 213 FPS and a maximum of 289 FPS. High settings deliver 212 FPS, and Ultra settings bring the average down to 173 FPS. The frame rate drops of 13%, 16%, and 18% between successive settings indicate that each quality level adds a similar workload to the GPU.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern emerges but with lower absolute values. Low settings average 186 FPS, Medium averages 162 FPS (with a minimum of 138 FPS and a maximum of 187 FPS), High averages 137 FPS, and Ultra averages 112 FPS. The percentage drops from Low to Medium (13%), Medium to High (15%), and High to Ultra (18%) are slightly larger than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU becomes more sensitive to settings at higher resolutions. The Medium preset’s minimum of 138 FPS is notable, as it remains above the 120 FPS threshold for smooth motion on high-refresh displays.

At 3840x2160, the results show the GPU’s limits. Low settings average 101 FPS, Medium averages 88 FPS (with a minimum of 75 FPS and a maximum of 101 FPS), High averages 74 FPS, and Ultra averages 61 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 13%, from Medium to High is 16%, and from High to Ultra is 18%. The 4K Medium result is the only configuration that provides a documented minimum above 60 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K gaming. The 4K Ultra result of 61 FPS is borderline, and the lack of a minimum frame rate suggests that it may dip below 60 FPS in demanding scenes, making Medium the safer option for consistent performance.