How to Optimize Your PC for DOOM: The Dark Ages

How to Optimize Your PC for DOOM: The Dark Ages
By Jess Blanchard, Owner – JB PC Repairs

That's a lot of text for someone to work through, and it can get confusing, but this game isn’t just intense—it’s demanding. Whether you're aiming to meet the minimum requirements or push for ultra settings, here are some essential tips and tricks to get your system DOOM-ready.

🔧 Upgrade Where It Matters

Let’s start with the basics. DOOM: The Dark Ages recommends:

• Intel i7-6700K or Ryzen 7 1800X

• 16GB RAM

• GTX 1080 / RTX 2060 / RX Vega56

• 50GB of storage

If you’re falling short in any of these areas, upgrading your storage, GPU and RAM is the best bang for your buck. I’ve seen countless systems bottleneck due to outdated graphics cards or insufficient memory.

Don't forget the Nvidia is removing hardware updates for the 1k series GPUs soon. So maybe it's a good time to update to something more modern. But we'll go over drivers later.

🚀 Swap to an SSD

Still using a hard drive? DOOM is going to make you feel the pain—literally. An SSD dramatically reduces load times and helps avoid stutters mid-game. Even a modest 500GB SATA SSD can make a huge difference in gameplay fluidity. This will literally change the way your computer feels and is the single biggest upgrade you can make to your computer and it can be as cheap as $50 in parts.

🌡 Watch Your Temps

This game pushes hardware. Download a monitoring tool like MSI Afterburner and keep an eye on GPU/CPU temps. Overheating kills performance—and your components. If temps are high, consider repasting your CPU/GPU, upgrading your cooling, or simply cleaning out dust. As always I'm happy to help out in this department.

🎮 Adjust In-Game Settings Smartly

If you can’t hit 60+ FPS reliably:

• Start by lowering shadow quality, anti-aliasing, and ambient occlusion

• Leave texture quality and draw distance higher if you want to keep visuals impressive

You don’t have to sacrifice everything—just tweak where it counts.

⚙ Update Drivers & Background Processes

I've found this is the most overlooked trick:

• Make sure your graphics drivers are fully up to date (check NVIDIA/AMD's site)

As of May 14, 2025, NVIDIA has released driver version 576.40 WHQL, which includes optimizations for DOOM: The Dark Ages. While the GTX 1000 series lacks dedicated ray tracing hardware, these cards can still run DOOM: The Dark Ages using traditional rasterization techniques. However, they won't support advanced features like DLSS 4 or path tracing, which require RTX-series GPUs.

• Disable background apps (especially auto-updaters, cloud syncs, and browser tabs)

Give DOOM full access to your system’s muscle.

Final Word

If you’re not sure where your system stands or what to upgrade, that’s what I’m here for. At JB PC Repairs, I’ll help you evaluate your rig, recommend upgrade paths, and install parts the right way—so you can jump into DOOM without lag, stutter, or frame drops.

Let’s turn your system into a demon-slaying machine.

— Jess
JB PC Repairs | Chemung County's Local Tech Expert