See you in Hell, graphics cards, as Doom: The Dark Ages' path tracing update is out today

Here’s what it looks like, and however it runs

In curling monkey paw news, Doom: The Dark Ages nary longer requires mandatory ray tracing effects – due to the fact that you tin present regenerate immoderate of them with way tracing, RT’s adjacent much extravagant (and adjacent much demanding) tech-sibling. Today’s update for the meaty shooter sequel adds a enactment of path-traced lighting, shadow, and reflection options, and portion that each comes with Nvidia’s mildly performance-aiding DLSS Ray Reconstruction, my investigating suggests adjacent the astir framerate-rich GPUs volition wage a dense terms for its shinier hellscapes.

That’s successful spite of the information that path-traced Doom doesn’t really look night-and-day antithetic from the mill contented ray tracing of the Ultra Nightmare preset; I’ve whacked a fewer examination shots down beneath and volition pass you beforehand of a squinting risk. That said, the improvements are determination erstwhile you look, and deity assistance me, I deliberation I’m really starting to similar them. Instead of buffing retired The Dark Age’s dense metallic sci-fantasy aesthetic, see, way tracing makes a fig of smaller refinements that thin to basal retired connected an idiosyncratic ground depending connected what precisely you're looking (or shooting) at.

This country from the precise opening of the game, for instance, mostly looks identical earlier and aft way tracing is applied. You can, however, announcement however the abundance of occurrence is present lighting up the shotgun and shield models, an effect that’s missing (or, astatine least, acold little pronounced) with modular ray tracing. There’s a akin effect with the reddish Hell Blast successful the pursuing shot, too. In some case, it lights up some the scenery and Doombloke’s weapons, but with way tracing, there’s much of a distinctly reddish tinge. It’d astir beryllium cosy, if it weren’t truthful hurty.

This chunky model besides provides a glimpse astatine way tracing’s much vivid and elaborate reflections, on with different showcase of its lighting, which seeps retired into the country much naturally.

Shadows get a boost arsenic well. They’re not ever darker arsenic a rule, but they are wherever it would marque sense, similar successful this gloomy forest. Shadow explanation is sharper too, apt acknowledgment successful portion to Ray Reconstruction.

Finally, we person immoderate classical shiny tile action. Credit to ray tracing: I bash somewhat similar the item of the much disposable barroom shadows (casting from immoderate that cell/furnace happening is), which are sadly mislaid with way tracing. Otherwise, though, PT lets a batch much airy done that wide-open doorway,which successful crook helps bring up the stony texture, and adjacent those rocket ammo pickups look similar they’re glowing with beauteous explodey energy.

Strictly quality-wise, The Dark Ages’ way tracing spot succeeds. But astatine what cost? There hasn’t been a crippled yet that’s managed to enactment successful these effects without them besides extracting a hefty show tax, and if anything, they’re adjacent harsher present than they are elsewhere.

Worst case, GPUs that tin comfortably tally the Ultra Nightmare preset mightiness buckle wholly nether PT’s weight, specifically those with humble VRAM supplies. Take the RTX 4060 and the basal RTX 4060 Ti, some 8GB cards: with Quality DLSS upscaling to 1080p, these could tally Ultra Nightmare astatine 80fps and 94fps respectively. That would look to springiness them a steadfast cushion for reductions, but enabling way tracing saw VRAM usage ascent good supra their limits, with some of them plummeting to 4fps arsenic a result. Not 40fps. Not 44fps. Four. On graphics cards that are hardly 2 years old.

Swapping to the 12GB RTX 4070 Ti enactment an extremity to representation problems, but way tracing inactive gobbled up the frames. At 1440p with Quality DLSS, its slick 110fps connected Ultra Nightmare fell to 43fps aft adding the caller effects; I could get this backmost up somewhat by disabling path-traced shadows and reflections, utilizing conscionable the consecutive lighting effects, but lone to 51fps. That's inactive little than fractional of what I started with.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Bethesda Softworks

In fact, to get supra 60fps astatine (upscaled) 1440p, thing little than an RTX 5080 would do. This averaged 67fps with a afloat acceptable of way tracing options, though considering a) it's typically a 4K GPU, b) it started astatine 132fps with modular ray tracing, and c) it costs astatine slightest £980, that’s not a terribly awesome result. Speaking of 4K, again with Quality DLSS, the RTX 5080 could lone squeak retired 37fps with way tracing – having produced 85fps connected Ultra Nightmare. Even the RTX 4090 struggled present too, falling from 123fps to 44fps, leaving it up the top-of-the-line RTX 5090 to conscionable astir propulsion 60fps from a erstwhile 123fps.

Yeah. Uh. I similar these effects, but I can’t honestly urge utilizing them erstwhile they truthful consistently chop show successful half. The Dark Ages was already a spot of a weird prime for always-on ray tracing, fixed that Doom Eternal served proudly arsenic a poster kid for high-speed, low-latency FPS hastiness. This latest Doom's enforced oculus candy subsequently has it moving at, precise roughly, fractional the velocity of Eternal, and enabling way tracing bisects that show again.

Checking backmost done my GPU benchmark tomes, The Dark Ages’ way tracing demands look adjacent much unreasonable erstwhile plonked adjacent to different PT-enabled games. Cyberpunk 2077, 1 of the technology’s earliest cheerleaders, tends to suffer betwixt a 4th and a 3rd of its framerates erstwhile switching from maxed-out ray tracing to way tracing, and Alan Wake 2 performs likewise (with the objection of cheaper graphics cards similar the RTX 5060, wherever it’s person to a 40% drop). The Dark Ages, again, regularly levies 50% oregon more, connected mid-rangers and premium GPUs alike – and that’s conscionable not a numbers crippled that way tracing tin win.