Doom

The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile delivers a fascinating performance profile in Doom, one that clearly separates the CPU’s capabilities from the GPU’s raw throughput. This combination sits at rank 823 out of 3712 tested combos, placing it in the top 22% of all systems measured. The data reveals a machine that can obliterate 1080p and 1440p gaming but begins to show its limits at 4K, where the GPU’s thermal and power constraints start to dictate the experience more than its impressive specifications might suggest.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for this combo shows a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, though the curve is steeper than one might expect from a flagship mobile GPU. At 1080p with High settings, the system delivers 232 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops that to 150 FPS, a reduction of 82 FPS or roughly 35%. The jump to 4K High yields 81 FPS, which is a further drop of 69 FPS from 1440p, representing a 46% decrease. This progressive decline is far from linear, and the magnitude of the 4K penalty suggests the RTX 4090 Mobile is hitting a performance ceiling that is not purely about shader throughput.

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p across all settings tells a similar story. At Low settings, the system goes from 316 FPS at 1080p to 204 FPS at 1440p, a 112 FPS drop. At Medium, the drop is from 275 FPS to 178 FPS, a 97 FPS reduction. At Ultra, the decline is from 190 FPS to 123 FPS, a 67 FPS loss. The absolute FPS drops are larger at lower settings, which is counterintuitive if the GPU were the sole bottleneck. This points to a situation where at lower settings, the CPU is able to feed the GPU enough work to expose the GPU’s memory bandwidth limits, whereas at higher settings, the GPU’s compute units are more saturated and the relative drop is smaller.

The 4K scaling reveals the most telling detail. From 1440p to 4K, the FPS reductions are: Low from 204 to 111 (93 FPS drop), Medium from 178 to 96 (82 FPS drop), High from 150 to 81 (69 FPS drop), and Ultra from 123 to 67 (56 FPS drop). Notice that the absolute drop shrinks as settings increase. This indicates that at 4K, the GPU is becoming the dominant limiting factor across all settings, but the size of the penalty is mitigated by the fact that higher settings already have the GPU working harder. The data suggests that at 4K, the RTX 4090 Mobile is constrained by its 120W TDP, which limits how much additional work it can do when pixel count quadruples, leading to these severe FPS reductions.

Settings Recommendations

Analyzing the measured rows, the Medium preset emerges as the most balanced choice for this combo across all resolutions. At 4K Medium, the system maintains 96 FPS, which is only 15 FPS below the High preset’s 81 FPS but a substantial 29 FPS above the Ultra preset’s 67 FPS. The Medium setting at 4K also provides a minimum FPS of 82, which is higher than the average FPS of the Ultra preset, meaning the experience is more consistent. This suggests that Medium allows the hardware to operate in a more stable thermal and power envelope, avoiding the steep performance cliff that Ultra introduces.

For 1440p, the Medium preset delivers 178 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate displays. The Low preset at 204 FPS offers diminishing returns for the visual quality loss, while High at 150 FPS is perfectly playable but not dramatically better than Medium. The Ultra preset at 123 FPS is the only one that dips below the 150 FPS mark, making Medium the sweet spot for balancing visual fidelity and frame rate. The min FPS of 151 at Medium 1440p further reinforces its stability, showing no frame drops that would cause noticeable stutter.

At 1080p, the Medium preset’s 275 FPS is arguably overkill for most displays, but it does provide a substantial headroom above the 144Hz and 165Hz refresh rates common in gaming laptops. The High preset at 232 FPS is also more than sufficient, and the Ultra preset at 190 FPS is where the GPU starts to feel the pressure. For players prioritizing visual quality on a 1080p panel, Ultra is still viable, but the data indicates that Medium provides the best balance of frame rate stability and visual fidelity, especially given that the 4K row shows Ultra causing a disproportionate FPS penalty relative to its visual uplift.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 823rd out of 3712 tested configurations, which places it in the 77.8th percentile of all systems. This is a strong showing, but it is not the top-tier result one might expect from this specific hardware pairing. The CPU’s percentile versus all CPUs is 88, and the GPU’s percentile versus all GPUs is 84, yet the combined in-game rank is slightly lower at roughly 77.8 percentile. This discrepancy suggests that the combo is not perfectly balanced for Doom’s specific workload, or that other system factors such as memory bandwidth and thermal headroom are playing a role.

The CPU’s nearest rivals provide context for its processing power. The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H has an average benchmark score of 44466, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D at 44573 (a -0.2% delta) and slightly ahead of the Intel Core i9-13950HX at 44342 (a +0.3% delta). This places the Ultra X9 388H in a competitive position among high-end mobile and desktop CPUs, but it is not a leader. The GPU’s nearest rivals show a similar story, with the RTX 4090 Mobile’s average score of 43667 being just 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 and 0.9% ahead of the RTX 5050 Mobile, while being 0.9% behind the RTX A6000.

The gap between the combo’s rank and the individual component percentiles implies that Doom is particularly sensitive to the interaction between CPU and GPU, and that this pairing, while excellent, does not extract the maximum potential from either component. The data suggests that the RTX 4090 Mobile is being held back by the CPU in some scenarios, particularly at lower resolutions, while at higher resolutions the GPU’s own power limits become the bottleneck. This results in a combo that is consistently strong but never dominant in the rankings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of this combo’s performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 4K (3840x2160), the system delivers 111 FPS at Low, 96 FPS at Medium, 81 FPS at High, and 67 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset has recorded min and max FPS of 82 and 111, respectively, showing a range of 29 FPS. This is the only 4K row with complete min/max data, suggesting that the other presets may have had more variability or that the measurement methodology focused on the most stable configuration.

At 1440p (2560x1440), the performance scales as follows: 204 FPS at Low, 178 FPS at Medium, 150 FPS at High, and 123 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset again has the only min/max data, with a minimum of 151 FPS and a maximum of 205 FPS. This min FPS is notably high, indicating that the system does not experience significant frame drops at this resolution and preset combination. The 54 FPS range between min and max also shows some variability, but the minimum is still well above the threshold for smooth gameplay.

At 1080p (1920x1080), the performance is exceptional across the board: 316 FPS at Low, 275 FPS at Medium, 232 FPS at High, and 190 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset’s min FPS is 234, which is higher than the High preset’s average of 232, showing that Medium provides a more consistent experience than the step up to High. The max FPS of 316 matches the Low preset’s average, indicating that the system can reach its peak performance even at Medium settings. The data at 1080p suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck, as the GPU is able to produce these high frame rates without being limited by the processing power of the Ultra X9 388H.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo if I want to stay above 144 FPS?

A: At 1440p Medium, the system achieves 178 FPS with a minimum of 151 FPS, comfortably staying above the 144 FPS threshold. At 1080p, all settings exceed 190 FPS, so any preset works. At 4K, the maximum is 111 FPS at Low settings, which fails to reach 144 FPS.

Q: How does the Ultra preset at 4K compare to the Medium preset at 4K?

A: The Ultra preset at 4K delivers 67 FPS average, while the Medium preset delivers 96 FPS average. The Medium preset’s minimum FPS of 82 is actually higher than the Ultra preset’s average, indicating that Medium provides a more stable and faster experience than Ultra.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to be the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 1080p, as the FPS ranges from 190 to 316 depending on settings. The CPU’s benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18911 and a single-core score of 2200.5, are high enough to feed the GPU, and the 1080p FPS values scale directly with GPU workload.

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

A: At 1440p, the Low preset achieves 204 FPS, while the Ultra preset achieves 123 FPS. This represents a 81 FPS difference, or a 66% increase in performance when dropping from Ultra to Low, showing that Doom is heavily GPU-bound at this resolution.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 Mobile have enough VRAM for 4K gaming in Doom?

A: The RTX 4090 Mobile has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 576.0 GB/s bandwidth. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra is 67 FPS, which indicates that the VRAM capacity is sufficient, but the GPU’s 120W TDP limits its ability to maintain higher frame rates at this resolution.

Q: How does this combo’s rank compare to the individual component rankings?

A: The combo ranks 823rd out of 3712, placing it in the 77.8 percentile. The CPU is in the 88th percentile, and the GPU is in the 84th percentile, suggesting that the in-game performance is slightly below what the individual component rankings would predict.

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. It has a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, with a TDP of 25W. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. This configuration is notable for having no hyperthreading, which means the 16 threads match the 16 cores, a design choice that can affect how the CPU handles gaming workloads that may benefit from additional threads.

In Doom, the CPU’s role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and process game logic. The benchmark results show a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18911 and a single-core score of 2200.5. The single-core performance is critical for gaming, and this score places the Ultra X9 388H in a competitive position. The PassMark single-thread score of 4280 further confirms strong single-core capability. The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is not a limiting factor, as the FPS scales consistently with GPU settings.

However, the lack of hyperthreading could be a subtle issue. In Doom, which is an older title with a well-optimized engine, the 16 physical cores are likely sufficient. The 18 MB of L3 cache is ample for gaming, and the 153.6 GB/s memory bandwidth via LPDDR5X is decent for a mobile platform. The CPU’s benchmark scores are within 0.5% of its nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D and the Intel Core i5-13600, indicating that it performs as expected for its class. The data shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck in this combo, as the GPU’s performance limits are reached before the CPU’s processing capacity is exhausted.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile is the star of this combo, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC. It has 9728 shading units, 304 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, along with 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores. The GPU is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 576.0 GB/s. The base clock is 1335 MHz with a boost clock of 1695 MHz, and the memory runs at 2250 MHz, or 18 Gbps effective. The TDP is rated at 120W, which is a critical constraint for a mobile GPU of this caliber.

The GPU’s compute capabilities are substantial, with a FP32 performance of 32.98 TFLOPS and a texture rate of 515.3 GTexel/s. The pixel rate is 189.8 GPixel/s, and the memory bandwidth of 576.0 GB/s is sufficient for 4K gaming. However, the 120W TDP is the limiting factor in this combo’s performance. At 4K, the GPU’s power draw increases significantly, and the thermal and power envelope prevents it from sustaining the same clock speeds as at lower resolutions. This is reflected in the FPS data, where the drop from 1440p to 4K is more severe than the pixel count increase would suggest.

The GPU’s benchmark scores show a PassMark G3D score of 27212 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 180831. These scores place it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 and the RTX 5050 Mobile. The data indicates that the RTX 4090 Mobile is a high-end part, but its performance is constrained by power limits in sustained gaming workloads. The 16 GB VRAM is not the bottleneck, as Doom’s memory requirements are well within this capacity, but the GPU’s inability to maintain boost clocks at 4K due to power and thermal limits is the primary reason for the significant FPS drops at that resolution.