Doom: The Dark Ages is set to launch next week on Steam and Game Pass. Based on ID Tech 8, the game retains the signature slayer formula with ray-traced reflections and GI. Path tracing is planned for a future patch as well. We tested the press build and were satisfied with the results. Doom: The Dark Ages is highly optimized and scales well across a range of hardware.
Windows/System Settings to Optimize
- Enable Resizable BAR.
- Turn on Game Mode.
- Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
- Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
- Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
- Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
- Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.
- Our optimization guide follows the order:
- GPU benchmarks
- -> Graphics settings
- -> VRAM usage
- -> Optimized Settings.
Doom The Dark Ages: PC Specs (60 FPS)
1080p Low
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X|Intel Core i7 10700K.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super|AMD RX 6600.
- RAM: 16 GB.
- Storage: 100 GB.
1440p High
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X|Intel Core i7 12700K.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080|AMD RX 6800.
- RAM: 32 GB.
- Storage: 100 GB.
4K Ultra
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X|Intel Core i7 12700K.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4080|AMD RX 7900 XT.
- RAM: 32 GB.
- Storage: 100 GB.
Doom: The Dark Ages GPU Benchmark
Doom: The Dark Ages is quite taxing on lower-end GPUs, with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti failing to hit 60 FPS at 1080p “Ultra Nightmare” settings:
- The RTX 5060 Ti averages 62 FPS.
- The RTX 4070 nets 74.5 FPS.
- The RTX 4070 Ti yields 85 FPS.
- The RTX 5070 Ti averages 97 FPS.
- The RTX 4080 Super finishes with 103 FPS.
- The RTX 4090 sits at the top with 115 FPS.
Native 1440p pulls the RTX 4060 Ti and the 5060 Ti below 45 FPS at the Ultra Nightmare settings, making the RTX 4070 the baseline:
- The RTX 4070 averages 56 FPS at 1440p.
- The RTX 4070 Ti is slightly faster with 63 FPS.
- The RTX 5070 Ti is a class higher, averaging 71 FPS.
- The RTX 4080 Super reports 74 FPS.
- The RTX 4090 is 23% faster with 91 FPS.
4K UHD leaves only three graphics cards in the ring, none of them averaging 60 FPS at the ultra nightmare settings:
- The RTX 5070 Ti nets 40 FPS.
- The RTX 4080 Super yields 43 FPS.
- The RTX 4090 averages 56 FPS, 30% faster than the other two.
Graphics & Resolution Scaling
Doom: The Dark Ages shows remarkable resolution scaling, averaging 56 FPS at 4K, 91 FPS at 1440p, and 115 FPS at 1080p using the maximum quality settings. That’s over twice the frame rate going from 4K to 1080p, an indication of a well-optimized engine.
Test Setup
- CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K @ 5.3 GHz.
- Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
- Motherboard: MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI.
- Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
The graphics presets show relatively limited scaling. Ultra and higher perform the same, with High being marginally faster. Medium and Low grant mild to moderate performance gains over High and Ultra:
- Ultra Nightmare: 56 FPS.
- Nightmare: 56 FPS.
- Ultra: 57 FPS.
- High: 58 FPS (+3.6%).
- Medium: 61.5 FPS (+10%).
- Low: 68 FPS (+21%).
Async Compute & Motion Blur
Present From Compute enables asynchronous compute, which improves GPU utilization by running simultaneous graphics and compute queues. Although NVIDIA RTX GPUs are largely unaffected by it, enabling it can improve frame pacing and lows.
Disabling motion blur improves performance by 2-3%. The amount doesn’t impact frame rates, only the quality does, albeit slightly.
Texture Pool & Shadow Quality
Texture Pool sets the texture resolution in Doom: The Dark Ages. The differences are subtle, mainly affecting terrain, rocks, and buildings. Increasing it by two steps increases the VRAM usage by roughly a GB:
- Texture Pool 1536: 11.2 GB.
- Texture Pool 2560: 12.22 GB.
- Texture Pool 3584: 13.22 GB.
- Texture Pool 4096: 13.76 GB.
Shadow Quality sets the resolution and fidelity of in-game shadows. Lowering it can improve performance by ~3%:
- Low renders blurry, less defined silhouettes, often missing the finer ambient shadows.
- Medium renders more defined silhouettes, and low-detail ambient shadows (-2%).
- High further enhances shadow detail, particularly involving finer geometry (-3.3%).
- Ultra (-3.4%) and above add additional ambient shadows.
Reflections & Lights Quality
Doom: The Dark Ages uses screen space reflections to improve the detail of ray traced reflections for static and dynamic objects, including the slayer. Distant dynamic objects are updated less often for performance reasons. Ray traced reflections are enabled at medium and above:
- Low enables low-quality screen space and cubemapped reflections (-0.5%).
- Medium enables ray-traced reflections (-3.5%).
- High increases ray-traced reflection detail and distance (-7%).
- Ultra and Nightmare further improve reflection detail.
- Ultra Nightmare enables light reflection off diffuse surfaces (GI) and light bleeding (-7.5%).
Lights Quality adjusts the number of artificial light sources in the scene, including fire, hell sigils, and other sentinel-made lighting. It affects how many of these lights can illuminate their surroundings, improving scene visibility and occlusion. Minor performance implications.
Particles & Decal Quality
Particle Quality sets the destruction detail when firing weapons and demon giblets during combat. Most players shouldn’t have to lower it. If you experience frame rate drops during combat, particularly when firing the shotgun, reduce this a notch.
Decal Quality sets the quantity of combat effects, including bullet marks and blood stains. These tend to disappear after a few moments, minimally impacting performance.
Water & Volumetrics Quality
Water Quality sets the surface detail of water surfaces, including waves and ripples. Its performance impact is negligible. Low renders flat (smooth) water surfaces, while higher quality options implement tessellation to improve geometric detail.
Volumetrics Quality sets the resolution of light shafts and fog. Lower quality options produce blurrier light shafts and low-density fog. It doesn’t impact performance much.
Texture Filtering & Geometric Quality
Texture Filtering improves texture clarity by continuously sampling mipmaps. It’s mainly evident with textures perpendicular to the screen. The frame rates are hardly affected.
Geometric Quality adjusts the mesh detail of various objects, including grass, rocks, terrain, architecture, rubble, etc. The highest quality option is only 2% slower than the lowest.
Shading Quality & Directional Occlusion
Shading Quality adjusts terrain shaders, including parallax mapping and material blending. Higher quality options improve ground detail using tessellation and other techniques. The lowest option disables most puddles and minimizes rubble and terrain detail for a 3% FPS gain.
Directional Occlusion implements high-quality ambient occlusion by accounting for the direction of light rays in the scene. Disabling it grants an 8% FPS bump but removes all ambient shadows.
- Adjusting the quality doesn’t change the performance much.
- Higher quality options increase the shadow detail and intensity.
Upscaling & Frame Generation
Doom: The Dark Ages includes NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3, and Intel XeSS 2 upscaling technologies. Upscaling is highly effective due to the GPU-bound nature and deferred shading employed by the game. The quality mode is ~50% faster than native anti-aliasing, with balanced and performance modes increasing the lead to 64% and 77%, respectively.
Frame Generation grants massive performance boosts, ranging from 73% at native 4K to 60% when pairing with performance-mode upscaling. It will come in handy when path tracing is added to the game.
Multi-Frame Generation works well in this game. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti yields over 200 FPS using MFG 4x at 4K, up from 129 FPS using FG 2x and 85 FPS using performance mode upscaling. The high frame rates minimize latency and will be quintessential for path tracing.
The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti delivers similar figures, but at 1440p. From a paltry 43 at native 1440p, we get 74 FPS using upscaling, and 114 FPS using frame generation plus upscaling. MFG 3x boosts the frame rates to 153 FPS, with 4x just falling short of 200 FPS.
Doom The Dark Ages: VRAM Usage
Barring the texture pool settings, resolution is the only option that notably impacts VRAM usage in Doom: The Dark Ages. The GeForce RTX 4090 peaked at 14 GB at 4K, 11.5 GB at 1440p, and 10.5 GB at 1080p using the maximum quality settings.
Doom The Dark Ages: CPU Bottlenecks
Doom: The Dark Ages scales extremely well with multi-core CPUs. We observed 0% GPU-Busy deviation across all our benchmarks.
Doom The Dark Ages: Performance Summary
- Reflection Quality: If you’re struggling to hit your FPS target, reduce it to medium quality for a balanced experience.
- Directional Occlusion improves the visual fidelity by implementing high-quality ambient occlusion. However, if you’re facing frame rate drops, turning it off can drastically improve performance.
Doom: The Dark Ages – PC Optimized Settings
| Graphics Option | High-end | Midrange | Low-end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 4K (3840×2160) | 1440p (2560×1440) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
| FPS Target | 75 FPS | 60 FPS | 60 FPS |
| Texture Pool | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 (2560 for 8 GB) |
| Shadow Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Low |
| Reflections Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Low |
| Lights Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Particles Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Decal Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Water Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Volumetrics Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Texture Filtering Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Geometric Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Shading Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Directional Occlusion | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Upscaling | DLSS Performance | DLSS Balanced | DLSS Balanced |
| Frame Generation | On for 140 FPS | On for 100 FPS | On for 90 FPS |
| High-end (4K) | Mid-range (1440p) | Low-end (1080p) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Core i7-13700K|Ryzen 7 7700X | Core i5-12600K|Ryzen 5 7600 | Core i5-12400 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| GPU | GeForce RTX 4080 Super | GeForce RTX 4070 Super | RTX 3060|RTX 4060 |
| Memory | 32GB (dual-channel) | 16GB (dual-channel) | Less than: 16GB (dual-channel) |
Doom: The Dark Ages Optimized Settings for Low-end PC
Here’s a look at the game’s performance on entry-level and mid-tier PCs.
| Graphics Option | RTX 3060 8GB | RTX 4060 8 GB | RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 1080p (1920×1080) | 1080p (1920×1080) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
| FPS Target | 60 FPS | 60 FPS | 60 FPS |
| Texture Pool | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 |
| Shadow Quality | Low | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Reflections Quality | Low | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Lights Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Particles Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Decal Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Water Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Volumetrics Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Texture Filtering Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Geometric Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Shading Quality | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Directional Occlusion | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare | Ultra Nightmare |
| Upscaling | DLSS Balanced | DLSS Balanced | DLSS Balanced |
| Frame Generation | Off | On (Set Tx Pool to 2048) | Off |
