NVIDIA has announced that the highly anticipated Path Tracing Patch for Doom: The Dark Ages will come out in June 2025. This patch will also add support for NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction.
To showcase the benefits of Path Tracing and Ray Reconstruction, NVIDIA shared the following comparison screenshots. On the left, you can find the screenshots that have Path Tracing and Ray Reconstruction. On the right, we have the shots that are without them.
Let’s start with RR. Thanks to it, PC gamers will get higher quality reflections. Moreover, this denoiser will offer a sharper and more detailed image. This is one of its biggest features. So, I’m really glad about it as Doom: The Dark Ages could look a bit blurry at times, even at 4K.
As for Path Tracing… well… it’s Path Tracing. This comparison shot is better than the first one NVIDIA shared back in April. In this shot, we get to see the better shading and AO that comes with Path Tracing. We also see better reflections and Global Illumination.
Now, since this is Path Tracing, it will be quite heavy, even on high-end GPUs. As such, you will need to enable NVIDIA DLSS 4. I’m just saying this because some people have delusional expectations. I kid you not. Some expect to be running Path Tracing at Native 4K. No, you can’t do that even on an NVIDIA RTX 5090. And you won’t be able to come close to anything like that, even on an NVIDIA RTX 6090. It’s a miracle we have modern games that can run with Path Tracing.
In its current state, Doom: The Dark Ages runs incredibly well on the PC. Yes, the game requires a hardware Raytracing-capable GPU. However, at 1080p/Ultra, even an RTX 2080Ti can come close to a 60FPS experience. Oh, and there aren’t any traversal or shader compilation stutters. This game feels really smooth.
It’s also worth noting that the game supports NVIDIA DLSS 4. This means that you can use the Transformer Model to get an amazing image when using DLSS 4 Super Resolution. I’m not saying you should use Frame Gen. But, DLSS 4 Super Resolution should be the way to go on NVIDIA RTX GPUs. As for AMD fans, the game supports FSR 3.0. From what I know, though, there is no support for FSR 4.0 as of yet. So, right now, you cannot enable FSR 4.0 via the Adrenalin Control Panel.
I’ll be sure to test Doom: The Dark Ages with its Path Tracing effects when the patch comes out. So, stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email