How to Fix FPS Drops in Doom: The Dark Ages on PC

Most FPS drops in Doom: The Dark Ages come from three sources: a Texture Pool Size set higher than your graphics card’s VRAM can hold, GPU or CPU spikes during big ray-traced arena fights, and shader or driver problems right after a patch. The fastest fix is to match Texture Pool Size to your VRAM, run an upscaler with dynamic resolution scaling, and update to the driver the current patch expects.

Why this game drops frames differently from Doom Eternal

Doom: The Dark Ages runs on id Tech 8. Unlike Doom Eternal, it always uses hardware ray tracing: ray-traced global illumination and ray-traced reflections are part of the lighting, and there’s no non-RT mode to switch to. Even the minimum spec needs a GPU with hardware ray tracing and 8GB of VRAM. So your options are texture memory, resolution scaling and a few expensive settings.

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The game has also changed a lot since launch. Update 4 arrived on July 7, 2026, alongside the Revelations expansion. On PC it added dynamic resolution scaling for DLSS, FSR and XeSS, upgraded DLSS to version 4.5, and added 5x and 6x frame generation modes on compatible NVIDIA GPUs. Its PC notes list NVIDIA driver 610.74 or newer, and they also list two known issues: crashes when switching between fullscreen and borderless while OBS is running, and crashes on some AMD driver installs that a factory-reset reinstall clears up.

All three tiers call for an NVMe SSD with about 100GB free. If you’re running from a SATA SSD or a hard drive, expect streaming hitches no matter how you set the graphics.

Checks: find out what kind of drop you have

Turn on a performance overlay that shows GPU usage, VRAM usage and frame time, then play one large arena fight. What the overlay shows tells you which fix to try first.

• VRAM usage at or near your card’s capacity, with drops when you turn the camera or enter a new area: the texture pool is spilling into system RAM. Go to Fix 1.

• GPU usage pinned at 95–99% while FPS falls in heavy fights: you’re GPU-bound. Go to Fixes 2 and 3.

• GPU usage falling to 60–70% during drops while one or two CPU threads max out: you’re CPU-bound. This is common on 6-core chips, which are below the 8-core minimum. Go to Fix 6.

• Short, sharp hitches the first time you see a new effect after a driver or game update: shaders are compiling. Go to Fix 5.

• Drops or crashes after alt-tabbing or changing display mode with OBS or another overlay open: this matches the known Update 4 issue. Go to Fix 6.

Fixes, in the order that usually helps most

Fix 1: Set Texture Pool Size to match your VRAM

Texture Pool Size reserves VRAM, in megabytes, for streamed textures. If you set it higher than your card can hold alongside the ray tracing data and frame buffers, the overflow goes to system memory over PCIe, and you get sudden drops whenever new textures stream in. NVIDIA’s own advice for 8GB RTX 50 cards is to set it to 1536, which costs little image quality. Each larger step uses roughly another half-gigabyte of VRAM.

Frame generation needs extra memory too. In published analyses, peak VRAM at 4K went up by several gigabytes once frame generation was on. So if you enable it, drop Texture Pool Size one step.

Fix 2: Use an upscaler with dynamic resolution

Since Update 4, every upscaler in the game supports dynamic resolution scaling. Pick DLSS on GeForce RTX cards, FSR on Radeon, or XeSS on Intel. Start at Quality, then enable dynamic resolution with a target that matches your goal: 60 fps on minimum-spec cards, or 90–120 on stronger ones. The internal resolution drops only in the heaviest moments, so the image stays sharp the rest of the time instead of being locked to one preset that’s blurry everywhere or too slow when a fight peaks.

Fix 3: Lower the expensive settings first

Most of the menu barely affects frame rate. Water, decals, volumetrics, texture filtering and geometry each move FPS only a few percent at most. The settings worth changing are below. The costs are approximate figures from launch-era performance analyses, and they’ll vary with your GPU, resolution and patch.

Change one setting at a time and replay the same fight. If nothing helps, the limit is probably VRAM or the CPU, not GPU load.

Fix 4: Use frame generation only on a stable base frame rate

Frame generation multiplies the frames you already have, and it multiplies the stutter too. A base of 40 fps with spikes becomes 80 or 160 fps with the same spikes, plus extra input delay. Get the base frame rate stable at about 60 fps or higher first, then try 2x. Save 3x, 4x and the newer 5x and 6x modes for high-refresh monitors. Keep NVIDIA Reflex on, because it offsets some of the latency frame generation adds. On an 8GB card, frame generation and a large texture pool together often bring back the very drops you’re trying to fix.

Fix 5: Rebuild shaders and clean up drivers

• Update to NVIDIA 610.74 or newer, or to the latest Radeon driver. On Radeon cards that crash or hitch after a recent driver update, reinstall with the factory reset option, which is the fix id Software gives for that known issue.

• In the NVIDIA Control Panel, set Shader Cache Size to 10GB or more so compiled shaders aren’t thrown away between sessions.

• Expect the first level after any patch or driver change to hitch more than usual. Judge performance from the second run, not the first.

Fix 6: Background load, CPU limits and Windows

• Close OBS before switching display modes, and disable overlays you don’t need. Turn on Windows Game Mode.

• Enable Resizable BAR in the BIOS, and turn on the XMP or EXPO memory profile. Slow RAM hurts CPU-bound fights noticeably.

• Try Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling both on and off. Guides disagree on it, and the better setting depends on your system.

• If you’re CPU-bound, lower Particles Quality and Lights Quality, then cap the frame rate a little below your typical minimum. A steady 90 feels smoother than a frame rate swinging between 90 and 140.

• On laptops, plug in, use the High Performance power mode, and set the MUX switch or Advanced Optimus to use the discrete GPU directly.

Starting points by GPU class

These are starting points, not guaranteed frame rates. Actual results depend on your CPU, driver and the current patch. Pick your row, play one heavy arena, and adjust using the checks above. Fixing the texture pool and turning on dynamic resolution usually clears up the worst drops.