Doom The Dark Ages system requirements

If you're worried about meeting the Doom The Dark Ages system requirements, fear not, as while they start much higher than we're typically used to, there is still plenty of scope for playing on mid-to-budget gaming PCs.

As befits a stalwart of the PC gaming world, the Doom: The Dark Ages system requirements are detailed, with developer id Software breaking down the specs into handy minimum, recommended, and ultra/4K listings. Also noted is the user experience you should expect for each of these settings, in terms of resolution and frame rate. Detail is also provided about the overall CPU and GPU specs, as well as specific examples of options that fit those requirements. However, with relatively demanding specs, an upgrade to one of the best graphics card options you can buy now, as well as the best gaming CPU you can afford, might be required.

Here are the Doom: The Dark Ages system requirements for PC:

The Doom: The Dark Ages minimum system requirements are a step above what we've come to expect from many new games recently, even as we move into 2025. Crucially, this game stipulates that a ray tracing-capable graphics card is required for all levels of play. Yes, we're sad to report that a classic performance-oriented FPS like Doom has gone the way of forcing performance-killing ray tracing upon you.

As such, the examples the developer provides of GPUs you'll need to run this game, even at minimum settings, are the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 and AMD Radeon RX 6600. Those are both relatively old and modest GPUs anyway, but ray tracing performance on both isn't stellar, and the latest Steam hardware survey still reports the GTX 1060 as being the 12th most popular card on the platform. That's why id states this is the level of hardware needed to achieve just 60fps at 1080p with low settings in this new Doom game.

As for CPUs, it's a similar story, with a chip packing at least eight cores being a requirement even for minimum specs. The CPU must also be at least as young as AMD Zen 2 or Intel 10th gen, which means those with CPUs older than six years will struggle to run this title smoothly.

More reasonable is the requirement for 16GB of RAM, as this has moved to being essentially the minimum we'd recommend for a gaming PC anyway. Plus, it's easy and cheap to upgrade to 16GB of the best gaming RAM these days, with a basic 2x8GB kit available for under $30. You can learn how to install PC RAM via our how to build a gaming PC guide.

Stepping up to the Doom The Dark Ages recommended system requirements, we again see a far higher level of gear than with the vast majority of new games. You'll get to play at 1440p at 60fps with medium detail settings, but some powerful hardware is required to do so.

Just how powerful? Well, the required level of graphics card is one with at least 10GB, with developer id suggesting the mighty Nvidia RTX 3080 or more modest AMD RX 6800 as options to choose from. The RTX 3080 was a $650 card at launch, and of course, it's only five years old. The fact that a card such as the RTX 3070 isn't deemed to have enough power to hit the recommended system requirements to play at 1440p is, frankly, shocking.

On the CPU front, the situation is less dramatic, as the requirement is still only for an eight-core CPU, which is what we'd reasonably consider a mid-range CPU option these days - yes, the 9800X3D is the best gaming CPU in the world and has only eight cores while costing over $450, but far cheaper eight-core chips are available. A recommended option is the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, while for Intel, the devs suggest the Intel Core i7-12700K.

A move up to 32GB of RAM may seem like another higher-end requirement than you might expect, but again, RAM upgrades are cheap right now, so whether you're running DDR4 or DDR5, an upgrade should be an easy option that will benefit everything you do on your PC.

Finally, we come to the Doom The Dark Ages Ultra/4K system requirements, and as you might expect, these require some really serious hardware. To hit a 2160p resolution at 60fps with ultra video settings, you'll need a high-end PC that's under four years old.

Leading the charge for ultra settings is a graphics card with 16GB of VRAM or more, with id suggesting the Nvidia RTX 4080 or AMD RX 7900 XT - both cards that launched just over two years ago for over $900. At least the CPU requirements for these settings aren't any tougher, as they're exactly the same as those for the recommended tier. It's the same story for RAM.

Whatever settings you're hoping to enable in this game, you'll need a decent-sized SSD. The Doom The Dark Ages download size is  100GB, with the developer recommending a 512GB drive and that an SSD is required.

The game may still work loading from a hard drive, but to give yourself plenty of space and to avoid slow loading times, you should grab one of the best gaming SSD options from our buying guide anyway to boost your storage capacity and loading speed. A good option for this is the WD Black SN850X, which offers great performance at a reasonable cost as a modest PC upgrade.

You might want to check out our best gaming PC guide next, if you've ultimately decided your system is in need of a complete upgrade.

Take our Doom: The Dark Ages system requirements PC benchmark test to answer the question… Can I run Doom: The Dark Ages?

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