Doom: The Dark Ages is an expertly-crafted PC release – and flies even on modest hardware

Doom: The Dark Ages is a masterfully crafted PC release that manages to run well on low-end hardware, while avoiding the typical issues we associate with game engines possessing high-end rendering features. The launch version manages to achieve a high level of fidelity even without the path tracing feature that’s set to arrive later, and perhaps unsurprisingly the game can be relatively heavy when simply pushed to its maximum settings on low to mid-range hardware. Therefore, optimised settings are worth exploring to strike a better balance between graphical niceties and a responsive HFR experience.

Before we get into our recommended settings for three tiers of PC hardware, it’s worth discussing exactly how the new Doom sets itself apart from its peers in terms of user experience, graphics techniques and performance.

Most critically, Doom: The Dark Ages suffers from zero traversal hitches or shader compilation stutter, two common bugbears of modern PC releases – especially those built on the industry-favourite Unreal Engine. By contrast, the id Tech 8 engine remains blissfully smooth even on mainstream hardware, and I played through the game mostly on a lower-end PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and RTX 4060 graphics card, opting for a 1440p output resolution using DLSS 4 in quality mode and max settings – including RTGI and RT reflections. This setup remained GPU-limited through the first six hours of play, which typically translates into a smoother experience than CPU-limited scenarios, with frame-rates in the 50s to 90s.

Despite the absence of shader compilation stutter, there’s no lengthy shader precompilation on first boot, and game loads are extremely rapid – clocking in at maximum four seconds for a full chapter load, which is impressive for a triple-A game running on a six-year-old CPU and PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD. On higher-end kit with a 9800X3D CPU and PCIe 4.0 SSD, load times halved to two seconds.