I just tested Doom: The Dark Ages on an RTX 5090 PC — and I’m still in shock

For the past three and a half years, I’ve tested Doom Eternal on the best gaming PCs, best gaming laptops and best gaming monitors I've reviewed. It's one of the best-optimized PC games and provides me with a solid foundation when gauging a device’s performance. Now that I have Doom: The Dark Ages, I’ve begun using that game for my anecdotal testing.

I installed Doom: The Dark Ages on the Alienware Area-51 gaming PC I recently reviewed to see what its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 could do for the game’s performance. I was absolutely shocked by the results.

Here is what I experienced when testing Doom: The Dark Ages on an RTX 5090 gaming PC, along with additional test numbers from some lower-end RTX 50-series GPUs.

Doom: The Dark Ages: $69 at Amazon

Doom: The Dark Ages is another stellar entry in the classic franchise, thanks to its engaging, grounded combat, expansive and varied locales, phenomenal graphics and hours of gameplay. Though it’s not revolutionary, it delivers a fast-paced and visceral experience few games can match.

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Doom: The Dark Ages minimum/recommended specs

Before getting to the heart of this article, I wanted to quickly detail Doom: The Dark Ages’ minimum and recommended PC specs, as listed on the game’s Steam store page.

As you can see above, you don’t need a super beefy PC for Doom: The Dark Ages. This is a testament to how well-optimized the game is for PCs.

Now that we know the game can run well on older hardware, let’s see how it fares on a top-of-the-line RTX 5090 machine.

The RTX 5090 experience

The Alienware Area-51 I tested Doom: The Dark Ages on has specs as monstrous as the game’s demons. This includes an RTX 5090 graphics card, an Intel Ultra Core 9 285K CPU, 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. That’s about as top-tier as you can get for a gaming PC. So, how well can The Dark Ages run on this machine?

On Ultra Nightmare graphical settings with 4K resolution and DLSS frame generation disabled, I got Doom: The Dark Ages to run at 155 frames per second! I’ve been able to get Doom Eternal to hit numbers like that on RTX 40-series PCs, but that was with DLSS on. But given this is an RTX 5090 we’re dealing with, I can’t say I was surprised by the results.

Alienware Area-51: $4,449 at Dell

The Alienware Area-51 is a beast of a gaming PC thanks to its high-end Intel Core Ultra CPU, Nvidia RTX 50-series and generous amount of RAM. Though it’s expensive and takes up a lot of space, the Area-51 offers a truly phenomenal gaming experience.

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I was, however, astonished when I enabled DLSS 4 x4 and saw frame rates climb as high as 344! Those are frame rates you’d only see with graphical settings turned all the way down and only on a select few games, like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2.

Do you need Doom: The Dark Ages to run at 344 frames per second? Not really, since this is a slower-paced offline game that doesn’t require insane reflexes. Having a game run at such high frames helps it perform smoother for sure, but you’d only really need fps that high for bragging rights. Still, those aren’t numbers to scoff at! Doom: The Dark Ages running on an RTX 5090 PC is no joke!

Testing other RTX 50 cards

Our own Jason England tested Doom: The Dark Ages with various Nvidia GPUs, specifically, the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti. He placed these graphics cards inside the same tower, which packs an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.

Though Jason didn’t see astronomical numbers like I did on the Alienware Area-51 PC, the results were generally good to great. Naturally, the lower-end RTX 5060 Ti saw the lowest fps counts, especially at 4K resolution with no DLSS 4 enabled. However, with DLSS 4 on, this card punched above its weight class, reaching a respectable 153 fps at 4K resolution with DLSS 4 enabled.

The big winner of this group was the RTX 5070 Ti. Without DLSS, Doom: The Dark Ages ran at 52 frames per second, which is just shy of the desired 60fps gamers like myself expect. Flipping DLSS 4 on bumps the fps to 185fps, which is phenomenal.

DLSS 4 is essential to experience Doom: The Dark Ages at high frame rates on these lower-end GPUs. And don’t worry about experiencing latency with DLSS on, as the AI-powered Nvidia Reflex tech in these GPUs helps to virtually eliminate any latency that used to plague AI-frame generation. Turn DLSS 4 on and have yourself a good time!

Bottom line

As expected, Doom: The Dark Ages is a finely-tuned game designed to run beautifully on most modern gaming PCs. It now replaces Doom Eternal as one of my go-to games to test, and I’m eager to see how it performs on a variety of gaming PCs and laptops.

So whether you own a PC with an RTX 50-series GPU, or something a little older, Doom: The Dark Ages is a ton of fun. But if you do have a rig featuring Nvidia's RTX 5090, you're going to have one hell of a good time.

More from Tom's Guide

• Nvidia's DLSS is a game-changer for PC gaming
• The Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti has a secret weapon — and it's DLSS 4
• I just experienced DLSS 4 and now I can never go back