DOOM Eternal PC Graphics Benchmark

Doom Eternal is the series’ latest demon-killing romp, bringing more weapon variety, more movement possibilities, a plethora of new demons to face off against — some pulled from the original Doom games, some entirely fresh — and exciting new environments to explore. Today we’re taking 25 graphics cards to see how they perform in Doom Eternal using the latest optimized GPU drivers.

We may be a little late to the party on this one, but there’s a good reason. Although it was possible to gain early access to the game and we could have provided an in-depth benchmark analysis ahead of release, we would have wasted our time and yours by doing so. Nvidia didn’t release GeForce game ready drivers with day-one optimizations for Doom Eternal until the actual launch.

The current GeForce 442.74 driver offers big performance gains for GeForce owners. Some early benchmarks showed the 5700 XT beating even the RTX 2080 Super, but as it turns out that information is no longer accurate. AMD also released a new Adrenalin driver that boosts performance in Doom Eternal by up to 5%, though that’s when using the Ultra Nightmare settings.

Doom Eternal was built on top of id Tech 7, id Software’s latest iteration of their impressive in-house game engine. The id Tech 7 engine is exclusively Vulkan-based, meaning OpenGL has been dropped which has saved developers time to focus entirely on this API. The new engine features ten times the geometric detail of its predecessor (used in 2016 Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus) along with higher texture fidelity. Improving immersion is a new system called “Destructible Demons” that as the name suggests, sees enemies’ bodies deteriorated as they take damage. The game features proper HDR support, and global illumination capabilities have been enhanced.

The game does look amazing and appears to run very well on modern hardware. There’s a good degree of customization along with half a dozen presets and for testing today we’ll be using the third highest option labeled “Ultra,” but with resolution scaling set to off. The reason we’re using this preset is that the game imposes a VRAM restriction on cards without enough memory to run at the higher settings. For example, 6GB cards can’t use the next higher preset ‘Nightmare’, at resolutions above 1080p. Ideally we want to provide apples-to-apples data, so you can see how much faster an RTX 2070 Super is compared to a GTX 1070, for example, and this is the best way to provide that information.

With the “Ultra” preset we can run up to 4K with 6GB cards. However, for 4GB and lower models, the ultra preset isn’t an option as 5.2 GB is used at 1080p. You’ll need to drop down to “High” for 4GB graphics cards. Just to be clear here, you cannot exceed the VRAM limits, so it’s not possible to test a 4GB RX 570 with the Nightmare or Ultra Nightmare presets, without manually lowering certain settings such as textures to reduce VRAM consumption.

We’ll provide some preset scaling results using the RTX 2080 Ti and Radeon VII, as both cards feature fat VRAM buffers. We’ll also provide some results using the dynamic resolution scaling feature, though we won’t be looking into visual quality comparisons.

For testing we’ve used an early section of the game, right after the first Hell Priest has been terminated we’re having a 60 second pass, with all results based on a 3-run average. Testing took place on our usual GPU test rig which features a Core i9-9900K clocked at 5 GHz with 16GB of DDR4-3400 memory.

Benchmarks

We’ll start by testing at 1080p and the good news is pretty much any modern GPU, as long as it has at least 6GB of VRAM, can deliver playable performance at 1080p. Here we see the GTX 1060 6GB averaging 65 fps, which is about the same level of performance offered by the 5500 XT. The Radeon RX 580 was 14% faster than the 1060, averaging 74 fps and never dipping below 60 fps. That’s a nice smooth experience for the mainstream sub-$200 GPU.

The GTX 1660 Super is a standout modern GPU in the ~$200 price range, pumping out well over 80 fps at all times for 106 fps on average. It would appear that Nvidia has yet to optimize Maxwell-based GPUs as the 1660 Super smashed the GTX 980 Ti out of the park, not something you’d expect to see.

The Radeon 5600 XT matched the 1660 Super which isn’t ideal for AMD, given that the RTX 2060 was 9% faster. Not a huge margin and both averaged over 100 fps, so pretty solid performance.

Offering between 110 and 120 fps we saw a number of GPUs including Radeon Vega 56 & Vega 64, RX 5700, GTX 1070/1070 Ti and the GTX 1660 Ti.

The 5700 XT was more impressive, averaging 146 fps, making it a few fps faster than the RTX 2060 Super. The RTX 2070 Super was almost 20% faster and although it does cost about 25% more, that’s still a good result for Nvidia. Naturally the RTX 2080 Ti dominated everything, pushing 20% higher frames than the RTX 2080 Super. Still I have to say, the GTX 1080 Ti still looked very good, coming in just being the RTX 2070 Super.

Naturally, the jump to 1440p pushes those graphics cards on the cusp of 60 fps well below. Now for that smoother 60 fps experience you’ll require a GTX 1660 or 5600 XT. The GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1070 and RTX 2060 are all evenly matched, and we’re looking at just a frame or two more with Vega 56, the GTX 1070 Ti, Vega 64 and the RX 5700.

For the next big step up in performance you will require the RTX 2060 Super, Radeon VII or 5700 XT. Beyond that, it’s all Nvidia with products such as the GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2080, and so on.

For those wanting to play Doom Eternal at 4K without any kind of resolution scaling trickery, you can get ~60 fps and above with an RTX 2060 Super, though ideally something more like the 5700 XT. Meanwhile, the RTX 2070 Super kept frame rates above 60 fps throughout the duration of our test while the RTX 2080 Ti powered through with ease.

Testing 4K with preset scaling

Here’s a brief look at preset scaling performance with the RTX 2080 Ti and 5700 XT. Interestingly, the Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare settings have virtually no performance impact on the 2080 Ti. The performance hit for the 5700 XT is small, though we do see up to an 8% drop here.

Also, the “High” preset boosted performance with the RTX 2080 Ti by 12%, whereas we see just a 7% boost with the 5700 XT. Typically, you’d expect to see a bigger boost with the slower GPU. It’s the same story with the medium and low presets, the RTX 2080 Ti sees the bigger performance boosts using these settings.

Testing 4K with dynamic resolution scaling

Finally, here’s a look at the performance impact of dynamic resolution scaling (DRS). These numbers are only half the story though, the impact on image quality still needs to be investigated.

What’s interesting is that at 4K, setting the dynamic target to 60 fps with the 5600 XT, we saw a solid 38% boost to the frame rate. However, targeting 120 fps provided no additional performance. That’s strange because the 8GB 5700 only saw a 10% boost when targeting 60 fps, though it did of course have a higher starting point at 48 fps. However, when targeting 120 fps we observed a massive 62% performance boost over the 60 fps target, so we’re not sure what’s limiting the 5600 XT here.

The RTX 2060 also enjoys big performance gains with DRS enabled, receiving a big 38% push with a 60 fps target and then a further 35% with a 120 fps target.

Smooth Gameplay

That’s how the current generation of GPUs perform in Doom Eternal, at least those with 6GB of VRAM or more. For parts such as the 4GB 5500 XT or GTX 1650 series, we’ll have to test later to see how they perform along with a wide range of older GPUs.

Those of you gaming with a GTX 1060, or something of equivalent performance, the point of this test is to give you an idea of what you will need to upgrade to, in order to boost your performance by the desired amount, whether that boost is 30%, 40% or more.

For example, at 1440p the GTX 1060 averaged 48 fps with the ultra preset, a 65% boost can be had with the GTX 1660 Super, pushing over 70 fps in our test. So, for around $230 that’s a good way to get strong 1440p performance. There’s also dynamic resolution scaling which can boost performance dramatically, but how much this impacts visual quality, or at least how noticeably, will be an article for another day.

Both AMD and Nvidia hardware performs exceptionally well in this title. As long as you have enough VRAM, you’re good to go. In some preliminary testing we have noticed however that older hardware struggles on Doom Eternal, even with the “Low” quality preset, but we plan to follow up with that testing shortly. That low preset still looks pretty good, though on the other hand, there isn’t a ton of extra performance to be gained by dropping from ultra to low. When we tested this using a 5700 XT we saw a mere 21% boost, which is nothing considering we’re dropping the preset down three levels.

Doom Eternal destroys 2GB graphics cards using the lowest quality settings. To cite one example, the GTX 770 isn’t able to deliver playable performance at 1080p, often dipping well below 30 fps. For now you can get by using a 6GB GTX 1060 or 8GB RX 580 at 1080p using the ultra quality settings, and of course, there’s also the dynamic resolution scaling setting to play around with for an extra boost if needed.

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