Transcription
Hey guys, today we're going to be taking a look at Doom: The Dark Ages on the 9070 XT. You can see all the specs for the 9070 XT over here in GPUZ. 16 GB of GEDR6, and we are using the ASRock Steel Legend version of the card. It is not a designated OC model. So, when compared to those OC models, it will have a slightly lower base and boost clock.
Over here in MSI Afterburner, you can see that we are on the latest AMD drivers, not applying any sort of overclock, just leaving the card stock and default. And up here, you can see we're pairing with the 9800 X3D and 64 GB of DDR5.
Now, in the Adrenaline software, it does detect Doom: The Dark Ages. However, it does not allow us to inject FSR4. Doom: The Dark Ages uses the Vulcan API, and to my understanding, FSR4 is not supported by the Vulcan API at all. So, unfortunately, there is not any FSR4 support, and it doesn't seem likely that it will be included or added anytime in the near future. So, for any sort of upskilling that we are going to be using, we are going to have to rely on older forms of FSR. So let's go ahead and jump on in.
All right. So, just to quickly go over the settings we're going to be using. We'll be starting off here at 1080p. Going to set present from compute to on. For our upscaling, we're actually going to be using FSR, and when playing at native, we'll keep it at native AA. This does have a slight performance impact as opposed to using TAA. So, just keep in mind if you were okay with slightly less, you know, good-looking anti-aliasing, you could go for TAA, and you will get a slight FPS boost. Our motion blur will be off. We're going to increase our texture pool size all the way up to 4 GB, and we're starting off at the low settings here.
So, starting off here, we're getting, you know, certainly very, very strong FPS. Of course, at 1080p low, not a huge surprise considering, you know, how good a GPU that we're working with here. Obviously, you know, hopefully definitely hoping that we'd be able to get, you know, a solid FPS here at 1080p low. And we're just starting from the beginning of the game here for this quick little run we're going to be doing. And really, the main thing that you'll notice is how smooth the frames are actually being delivered.
So, while the FPS is of course pretty high here at a 160 FPS average, really the most notable thing is our 1% lows being very, very high and our frame time graph being essentially flat. These Doom games on PC are typically really well optimized. So, it's definitely nice to see that even, you know, such a great-looking game here. And keep in mind, this is on low settings is getting, you know, such a nice image and such a smooth image. And the anti-aliasing is seemingly working like really well. I don't really notice any sort of jaggies on any of the fine details up in the trees or anything like that. Definitely a real strong experience here at 1080p low. This is also one of those games that really doesn't look that bad even on low settings. In fact, I almost wish that the low settings offered, you know, like pretty terrible-looking visuals just to, uh, actually give us a, you know, pretty substantial performance increase. But, you know, we are using a very strong GPU here, so not a huge surprise that it's performing well. But finishing up our little run here at 165 FPS average here at 1080p. Game looks incredible, and really, you know, super super fluid and smooth experience. Really nothing really at all to complain about.
All right, now bumping up from low to medium. And as you can see, we actually have six different presets. So we'll go through these kind of quickly just so you know, we don't spend too much time on them. But the, you know, actual difference between the different presets is not super noticeable, um, you know, from one to another. In fact, I do encourage you to actually compare low to ultra nightmare when we get there and kind of see if it's even worth the performance hit, if we even do get a performance hit. Um, but as you can see, you know, so far so good. So, let's see how we perform here at medium.
So, medium settings here, we are actually using quite a bit of video memory. Just about 10 GB worth of video memory, which is actually pretty high for, you know, um, for a 1080p image. But again, you know, we're not using any sort of upscaling whatsoever. So, it is a complete native 1080p image, and there's certainly a lot of effects and things going on on the screen, and it's rendering all them incredibly nicely. Our 1% lows are pretty close to our average, and so much so that really it feels like an incredibly fluid experience. So, so far here, getting around 139 looks like, on our FPS average with 1% lows down to 114. Everything looks real sharp here at 1080p native, of course. And our frame time graph is locked pretty flat here. So here at medium settings, still no need for any sort of upscaling whatsoever. Getting a super strong FPS right about 140. And because we don't have FSR4, unfortunately, I wouldn't really recommend turning on FSR if we can help it. We may have to do that, of course, as we go into, you know, higher settings and higher resolutions, but hoping that it doesn't, you know, look too bad, you know, especially once we're there at the higher resolutions. But, you know, here ending up here FSR native and around 143 FPS average. Really, really strong performance here. Um, going from low to medium and sticking with native anti-aliasing here.
And now bumping up to the high preset. And here on the high preset, still, of course, everything looks super great. I really think this game looks pretty solid even on low settings. So, you know, going up to high or even more than that, still, you know, everything looks really sharp. And our video memory seems to be right about, you know, sitting around 10 gigabytes. Even, you know, going from uh low up to high doesn't seem to really make a huge difference as far as our video memory. So, finishing this area with about 120 FPS average. On a game like this, I kind of want to be right around 120 FPS. Although this is a single-player game, and, you know, you certainly could make an argument for saying, you know, 60 FPS is totally fine. And, you know, in many cases that is true. I do think that this game in particular, for whatever reason, that you know, maybe it's the just how fast-paced the actual combat is, but I do think it really shines when you go kind of like closer to that closer to that like more high refresh rate 120 FPS type gameplay. But finishing off averaging around 130 FPS here at high settings and still no need for any upscaling. It looks absolutely phenomenal. Really, really pleased so far. Sticking with native for now still and moving from high up to the ultra preset, and we'll go ahead and get started and start counting here.
Game of course still looks great. Can't really tell much of a difference honestly between all the graphics presets, and I don't know if that's because, you know, there being six different presets. They're pretty gradual, and you know, maybe if I jumped immediately from low over to ultra or higher setting might be able to tell a little bit better. But still, in my opinion, you know, they all look pretty solid. And while our FPS average is going down, which is no surprise here, you know, given the fact that we are going to higher presets, our actual like smoothness of how those frames are being delivered is remaining really, really strong. Finishing off this area here at ultra around 120 FPS on our average. And moving forward, we're getting a bit higher now around 124 FPS. This is interestingly like this game doesn't really seem to have like super huge swings as far as our FPS. Sure, you know, if we like look up at the sky, it'll shoot up, but typically just going from one area to another, it seems to pretty much hang around like the same kind of FPS that we're getting, which definitely results in a very, very smooth experience. So, finishing off here around 127 FPS on our average. Really, really solid performance here at ultra as well. Still sticking with native here.
And now going up to the nightmare setting. And here on nightmare, everything looks great. Like all these ground effects, super detailed, and you know, our video memory seems to be sitting right around the same regardless of kind of where we are uh putting our preset on. So, right around 10 GB seems to be kind of where we're sticking as far as our video memory usage here at 1080p. So, again, while our FPS is kind of dipping down slowly, we are still getting like really consistent frame time. So, still feels like an incredibly fluid experience. Now, I'll kind of keep a general rule of thumb that I will start to implement some sort of upscaling when we dip below 120 FPS. So, doesn't look like we're there yet. Looks like actually this may be the last setting or we'll have to see what Ultra Nightmare has in store, but looks like this might be the last one where we can kind of get away with 120 FPS average at native resolution here. And again, keep in mind, you know, we are using FSR anti-aliasing. So, if you were okay with using TAA, you could still play at native with, you know, a bit less good-looking anti-aliasing and get slightly higher FPS. And as we kind of wrap up a bit here, looks like we are averaging out above that 120 FPS, right around 124. So, here at nightmare settings, still, you know, above our target 120 FPS and looks absolutely phenomenal here at uh these nightmare settings.
All right, sticking with native for now. But we'll see if we do have to change that. And now bumping up to ultra nightmare, which are the highest possible settings for this title. So, I'm certainly hoping that we can still get away with using native here. Getting that 120 fps is what I'm really looking for. Strong start here as we are right around the 120s. And moving forward here, even some of like these more visual effects like this ship coming in and crashing does dip us a bit about 10 FPS, but it really does it climbs back up pretty quickly. And it does look like we're still right about that 120 FPS average here even at ultra nightmare settings. Does look like actually with a bit more going on here, a bit more enemies, we're going slightly below. And yeah, it does look like we're just barely under that 120 FPS. So, just because this is slightly below our target here, I am going to just throw on some light upscaling. So here at native, right around pretty much right around 120. You can see now we're getting a bit higher depending on where we're looking, but averaging out from our count FPS around 118. So, we'll go ahead and stop counting here, and we're just going to come in here and apply quality upscaling.
Now, with quality upscaling, unfortunately, the image does look quite a bit softer because we don't have, you know, that advanced level of FSR. We're still using kind of these older models, but we are getting a massive FPS boost. So, obviously, you know, you could play like this. And honestly, it doesn't look too bad. While the older models of FSR are certainly nowhere near as good as the newer models, it's still a nice thing to have at your disposal. And definitely a game like this, while it does look great and it still looks good here with FSR quality, doesn't look too bad. You know, I could understand someone wanting this super fluid gameplay. And as you can see now, our 1% lows or 157 feels absolutely buttery smooth. And really, you know, using like FSR3 or older FSR models, really all I'm really trying to avoid is using anything lower than quality. I think even when you get into like balanced territories on a lot of games, it doesn't look great. So, here at quality though, we are getting, you know, around 185 FPS average. Certainly more than enough for most people. And while it doesn't look quite as good as that native anti-aliasing solution, it doesn't look too bad.
All right, next up, moving to 1440p. Back at native resolution here using that FSR native AA and starting with the low preset.
All right. And here on the low preset at 1440p, we are getting right around 120 fps to begin with. So it doesn't bode super well for us wanting to target that uh 120 fps all the time. See our video memory is right about at 11 GB here at low settings 1440p. So, unfortunately, it does look like we are going to be below that, you know, 120 FPS average there that I've been kind of trying to stick around. A bit unfortunate due to the fact that, you know, this is a pretty like well-performing GPU, honestly. And while the FPS is not super surprising, the fact that we don't have FSR4 to rely on, that we do have to rely on some, you know, not quite as good upscaling methods, it's a bit disappointing. But honestly here, you know, 114 FPS, I'd probably prefer playing this at native and just deal with the fact that I'm not quite getting 120. I think it's close enough that I'd be pretty happy here. And I do know that there is, you know, there's optal that can kind of force FSR4 into unsupported games. I'm not 100% sure if that works in Vulcan games, but regardless, I know that was a comment on uh my last 9070 XT video, you know, to recommend using Optiscaler. So that is definitely something that I do want to make like a dedicated video on, but just kind of want to focus on the native experience to begin with. So around 115 FPS. So let's go ahead and throw on that quality upscaling.
So again, just moving from native over to quality. And now getting, you know, much much higher FPS. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it is not so great of an FSR model. It is a bit of a blurrier-looking image. I don't know if it's it's super easy to tell um on the recording, but it is definitely a softer-looking image. We do have our sharpness slider here. So, let's see how this looks if we just drag it to say like around 40%. And at 40% here, it does actually look quite a bit better. So, maybe that was part of the problem. Just the fact that slider set to 0% sharpness to begin with. So, you know, getting around 190 looks like here with quality upscaling. Maybe a bit lower as we actually begin moving around a little bit. Close to 180. Um, but definitely not terrible so long as you do, you know, maybe mess with that slider a slight bit.
Back to native resolution here. And now on the medium preset. And here at the medium preset, we're still above 100 FPS to kind of begin with here. So certainly, you know, still what I'd consider to be a pretty high FPS. And our video memory, honestly, it doesn't really seem to be changing all that much when it comes to our different presets here. Still hanging out right around 11 gigabytes. Of course, here, you know, well below that 120 FPS average here, closer to right around 100. Still, you know, very playable FPS, but I don't know, you know, Doom is just one of those games that I do kind of prefer to play at like very high FPS. I think it feels absolutely phenomenal at higher FPS, but due to the fact that our frame time graph throughout all these settings and all these different presets has remained really consistent and really flat, even at these kind of like quote-unquote lower FPS's like sub 120, it still feels like an incredibly fluid experience. So averaging out looks like right around 100 here. So definitely where I would probably, you know, personally want a bit higher. So let's go ahead and throw on that upscaling.
So again, we're going to come in here and just apply the quality upscaling with our 41% sharpness. We do also have frame generation that we will save as a last resort when we need it, probably at our 4K settings. And here, you know, after I did make that change with the sharpness, I am actually noticing that it doesn't look quite as bad as it did without the sharpness. I think a lot of the reason that the uh FSR quality didn't look so good before was just due to the fact that it was a bit of a softer image. So, here we're getting, you know, 160 at our medium settings here. And definitely looks pretty solid here. Um, and really not too far off of native.
All right, going back to our native anti-aliasing. And now moving up from medium to high settings. And here at high settings, we are, you know, pretty solidly below 100 FPS. Still, you know, pretty respectable FPS. Definitely, you know, certainly a playable experience here. Right around 90 or so. And again, you know, I know I'm a broken record kind of saying the same things through these settings, but really the reason that I keep reiterating how smooth the frame time is because I don't think it can really be overstated just how much consistent frame times really result in a smooth experience. You know, high FPS is important, and it that is one thing that definitely contributes to a smooth experience and gives you some like wiggle room and options for how to kind of get there. But really stuttering and consistent frame times is not something that's easy to kind of replicate even with upscaling. So the fact that we are able to get this smooth of an experience is really really great. So finishing off our kind of first little combat area here right around 90 FPS. So certainly serviceable and you know pretty solid FPS. Wouldn't mind playing the game at 90 fps whatsoever. I don't want to be a snob about it, but uh let's go ahead and throw on that quality upscaling here a little bit earlier and just see where that gets us.
So again, throwing on just that quality upscaling here at our high settings. And this is now getting us well above our 120 FPS target while looking pretty solid. It is a bummer that we don't have FSR4, you know, for just using quality upscaling. It's not super far off of native, and I don't really think you need FSR4 if you're using, you know, pretty mild upscaling. I do think FSR4 and that machine learning upscaling is more useful when using, you know, performance and things like that, like more aggressive upscaling patterns. But here, just a quality upscaling. I do think like the older versions of FSR are okay. So, averaging out now right around 147 with the quality upscaling.
And now back on native anti-aliasing and our ultra preset. Starting off here at ultra, right around 90 fps or so. Again, not a super huge difference as far as our visuals go when we're going from, you know, high to ultra, but certainly nice to see that we are still getting well above 60 fps in this uh, you know, more demanding type area. Yeah, I do think 9070 XT is kind of a 1440p card. So, being able to get, you know, ultra settings, 60 plus FPS is kind of what you want. It's kind of your general target. And finishing off this first little combat area here, right around 86 FPS average. Pretty solid experience here. But again, let's go ahead and just throw on that quality upscaling.
So, again, just changing native anti-aliasing over to quality. And this does get us right around looks like about 150 FPS. And continuing on a little bit more with the run here. Looks like we are dropping down slightly here. So, looks like we're averaging out finishing up right around maybe a little bit beneath 150, closer to 140 FPS.
Going back to native resolution here. And now bumping up to nightmare settings. And even here on nightmare settings at native, not using too much more video memory and well under our 16 GB threshold. And starting off here getting around 90 FPS. See how that kind of performs as we kind of go into an area with a bit more enemies. And looks like after that bit of combat there, dipped down a bit now into 85 on our average. So let's go ahead again and just throw on that quality upscaling.
So quality FSR here and nightmare settings. And now this does get us well above that 120 FPS target sitting right around 140 here entering into our last little combat zone. So definitely, you know, even here at nightmare settings. Again, the FSR quality, it doesn't look amazing. Doesn't look the same as native, but honestly, it doesn't look too bad. And especially with how fast the action is moving in the game like this. While it is nice to come up to a Vista and kind of like take it in and have like a native resolution for things like that, typically, you know, you're better off kind of using a bit of this upscaling in my opinion to get a higher refresh rate. And honestly, as long as you, you know, play with that sharpness slider, get it to where you like it to where, you know, kind of, you know, fixes, I guess I was going to say smooth out the edges, but kind of the opposite of smoothing out edges, more like sharpens up the edges. Uh, you certainly can get there with even these uh older FSR models.
And last setting here, FSR native anti-aliasing on the max settings here at 1440p ultra nightmare. And even here at ultra nightmare, completely maxed out settings. And again, you know, it's nice to say that, but in my opinion, the settings don't really make a huge difference, you know, between low and even ultra nightmare. It's not like night and day difference. It is certainly nice to see that we can play native and get a high FPS, not 120 FPS, you know, like that super high refresh rate that I kind of want to be at on a game like this, but definitely still a pretty high FPS and a really solid and smooth experience. And again, you know, really what's more important is the fact that we're doing all this while maintaining really solid frame times without really any major stuttering or really any stuttering at all. And that's certainly more significant than, you know, I'd prefer even a smooth, you know, frame time graph even if that was at the cost of like 20 or 30 FPS. So to still get, you know, in the 80s here, um, with such a smooth frame time graph at native is really a pretty solid experience. So here with everything cranked maxed out, you can see we're getting right around 87 FPS on our average. And let's just come in here and just throw on that quality upscaling.
And with the quality upscaling, we are still getting well above that 120 FPS target that I was kind of looking for. Sitting right around 140, which does make this a pretty good candidate for some frame generation. So, let's go ahead and throw on our FSR frame generation. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. So, looks like frame generation actually crashed our game for some reason. So, unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have to do a restart and see if we can get uh frame generation to work once we kind of reboot here. Now, this is the early access release of this game. So, I'm hoping that maybe they work out some of those issues. Enabling frame generation shouldn't crash our game, even though we did do it in-game, not in the menu. But, uh, we'll try see if we can, you know, load in fresh, and maybe that'll fix it.
All right. Now, in the uh main menu, before loading in, just confirming frame generation is selected to be on. Let's make sure that this actually works now. So, it crashed again doing this. Just kind of freezes the game. So, I'm not sure if maybe it is due to the fact that um as soon as I bring up the performance overlays when it kind of crashes there. So, we'll go ahead and we'll try to use the built-in uh performance metrics to kind of get a bit of a more accurate representation. So, it does seem to be our overlay that's causing that issue. So, I won't fault the game too bad for that. Kind of strange, but we do have luckily, you know, built-in overlay. So, we'll go ahead and just put on the the high overlay here. So, as you can see, we're getting around 2 or so FPS here. And honestly, the frame generation implementation seems pretty solid. Really doesn't feel uh too bad whatsoever. You know, probably due to the fact that we are coming from such a high base resolution, both using that quality upscaling and the frame generation. So, let's go ahead and let's turn off the upscaling and just solely rely on the frame generation. And now at native with the frame generation still feels very very smooth. And as you can see we are getting around 150 fps or so. So definitely, you know, frame generation here is another
Option that you could use. And the thing with frame generation is that it does work really well with high FPS, really anything above 50, which we were, you know, pretty rock solid above 50 regardless of settings here. So there are different ways of kind of maxing out the card, getting max performance here and actually going and getting, you know, really high FPS without really making any too severe of compromises.
The other thing too is, you know, with really smooth frame times, that's another thing that makes frame generation feel really solid. So definitely a viable option here using the uh the frame generation as opposed to the FSR. And it may be a more compelling option considering the fact that we don't have these more uh, you know, mature FSR uh more mature FSR models. You know, the fact that we are limited, you know, not able to use FSR4, you may actually want to go for the frame generation route instead. So that's totally understandable. And we don't have an average here, but getting, you know, right around 150 to 160 FPS by the looks of it. Definitely, you know, a really strong performer here at uh 1440p. No questions asked.
And moving over to our final resolution here, 4K. Starting off at FSR native anti-aliasing and the low graphics preset. And here we're getting right around 60 fps, which honestly it feels okay. I think when you move to 4K, you are going to have to start accepting that you're probably not getting 120 FPS here. You know, I did test this card or this game rather on a 5090 even and even then I wasn't getting even close to 120, more like, you know, 80 or 90 fps. So getting here 60 fps certainly not a terrible experience and with absolutely no upscaling you can see we are still getting, you know, well within our video memory limits. So you can display this, you know, native 4K image here at around a 60 fps average with some dips. You can see our frame time graph is still incredibly smooth even all the way up here at 4K, but we're not quite at that 60 fps territory.
So, I would at this point like to introduce a bit of that upscaling. So, again, let's just go for that quality setting. And quality upscaling does get us to about 110 FPS on our average here. Definitely a very nice experience here. And honestly, it's not super tough to tell or rather it's not super easy to tell the difference here between, you know, quality upscaling and native to my eye. So, yeah, right around 110 FPS. Maybe a slight bit lower here. This particular scene seems to be a bit more demanding than the others. And let's bump down even more, slightly more aggressive upscaling, down to balanced. And here at the balanced preset, we are now getting a 120 fps average. And honestly, you know, depending on how closely I'm looking, you probably could fool me into thinking this is a native 4K image. That sharpness slider is certainly nice to have in game. Really drives me nuts when there isn't that option in game. So, it's certainly nice to be able to kind of adjust that to your needs.
So, here at 4K low, you know, definitely have some options to get up to a real high FPS. Back on our FSR native resolution and now on the medium preset. And here on medium, we're getting honestly about the same FPS. Slightly lower once we actually start, you know, some actual gameplay here. But, uh, as you can see, our video memory is still, you know, well under our actual threshold here, right about 13 GB. So, still, you know, well under our 16 GB. 16 GB does seem to kind of be for most games a pretty safe spot. You don't really typically run out of video memory even at 4K using, you know, 16 GB of video memory. But now at medium we are getting some dips into even the 40s. So not a super smooth experience. You know, you can see our frame time graph. Although it's relatively smooth with its dips up and down, it is dipping up and down a bit more than I would prefer. So definitely would like to, you know, implement that uh upscaling, not just for the FPS boost, but also just for the actual consistency boost.
So, here at native, averaging out right around 52 FPS after this first portion here. And again, let's just go ahead and apply our quality preset here for FSR. And quality seems to get us right about 100 FPS or so. Continuing on a little bit, we're slightly lower than 100 now, right about 95 in this bit more demanding area here. So, let's go ahead and bump down to balance now. And here at balance, we're well over, over uh that 100 FPS even in this more demanding area. So, stopping here with our quality preset. Um or rather our balanced preset, right around 105 FPS on our average. And still looks really sharp. You know, all the detail on the gun and everything with all these shadows looks absolutely amazing. All these weather effects, everything looks really, really solid. And honestly, looks pretty close to 4K native. Close enough that I wouldn't really mind playing here at balanced.
Back on native here. And now on the high preset. So here at high, even, you know, starting off here in what I believe to be our least demanding area, we're right away getting under 60 FPS. And for this game, I would actually say under 60 FPS is what I would consider to be, you know, my opinion, unplayable. Maybe unplayable is kind of harsh, but definitely not what I would personally like to play at, with even some dips into the 40s. Not even dips. Pretty consistently staying down into the 40s at times. So, definitely not a super pleasant experience. While our frame time graph and our 1% lows are still pretty respectable, leading to pretty fluid gameplay, it doesn't feel quite as responsive. And you know, our the response times at 40 FPS, especially on a game like Doom that I'm used to playing at such a high FPS definitely does not feel very good.
So, here at native, right around 48 FPS or so. And let's go ahead and jump in and bump down immediately over to quality. So, changing our FSR from native to quality now. And quality FSR does give us above 60 FPS and a pretty noticeable improvement to our general feel of the game, definitely well shy of that like 120 high refresh rate gaming experience but certainly pretty good here. So here, you know, using quality sitting right around 86 or so. Now at this point, rather than bumping down to balance, let's go ahead and turn on frame generation. And again, for whatever reason, the frame generation does not like my RTSS. So let's just go ahead and throw on the low performance metrics which will give us just a real simple FPS counter in the top right. And as you can see now, just for that quality upscaling, we are getting a pretty high FPS sitting right around 140 or so. And because we are coming from a pretty high base FPS, it doesn't feel too bad, honestly. The input latency, it's somewhat noticeable. It's not like I can tell it's, you know, I can tell it's there, but it's not really like impacting my performance to a super meaningful degree. So, right around 140 or so on the FPS with that frame generation turned on.
Back on native here and now on the ultra preset. All right, on here on ultra we are getting again, you know, starting off no surprise here at not a super great experience, right around 50 FPS, dropping down now into a 49 FPS average. Looking at some of these effects does tank our FPS slightly. It's not a huge difference, just a few, you know, FPS or so. But it looks like we are now averaging pretty much solidly in the 40s, not really even touching the 50s. So, not a super great experience if I uh I'm being completely honest. It doesn't seem like anything native 4K unless you're using TAA. Uh really, you're not going to be getting a 60 fps experience beyond medium settings and certainly not here at ultra settings. So, going through our first little combat area here, averaging right around 47 FPS. So, let's go ahead and throw on our quality upscaling here. And quality upscaling does get us well above 60 fps. While again, not really making a huge difference when it comes to the image quality. It doesn't look quite as good as native, but it's not super super noticeable. It's not like, you know, I don't know. It's not nearly as bad as some other FSR implementations I have seen to be honest. Sitting right around the high 80s here as we kind of enter our last area here, which is again our more demanding area. So here we're getting a little bit lower into like the low 80s. So, right around 86 or so on our average, definitely not a terrible experience, but not really one that you'd want to have on a game like this. So, you do have, you know, more aggressive upscaling. So, if we did go ahead and throw in balanced, so just changing quality over here to balanced, that does now get us at, you know, around 90 or so. And this is again what I found to be a more intense area with all that fire going on into some of these areas. As you can see, we're getting a bit higher here, more in like the high 90s, even though 100 out here. So, depending on the scene, you can get 100 plus FPS. So, balance preset does still look pretty solid. It's not quite as good as native, but honestly, it's not too terrible either.
And starting off again here at native and now on the nightmare setting. Starting off right around 50 or so, slightly less now into the 40s. And I imagine as we kind of go through this beginning area, we will be solidly in kind of like these high 40s, mid-40s kind of area. So, you know, definitely not a super great experience here. I mean, certainly playable. You can play like this. It's not like an unplayable experience. Like I, I know I said that before. It's really just probably my preferences. I think Doom is just a game that I've really enjoyed playing on PC at super high refresh rates. So, you know, playing it at 40 feels pretty bad, not what I would like to play at, but you certainly can still play it. It's not like you really are required to make any super super fast movements or anything like that. Really, what's moving the fastest is you, your character. So, it does feel good to kind of, you know, have that kind of experience at a high refresh rate. But here, you know, averaging around 47 doesn't feel super great. So, let's again go in and immediately apply that quality preset. So, throwing on FSR quality now. And that does bring us above 60 fps while actually maintaining a very very clean image. So here quality sitting around 85 fps or so. This is definitely a much more playable experience than the, you know, high 40s to like 50 fps that we were getting before. Still not like stellar here at 84. Not really amazing but definitely not too bad. So let's go ahead and bump down one more down to balanced. And now balanced we're getting right around 90. This feels much much better.
So really, you know, this is one off of our max preset. And here at, you know, balance preset here with our FSR, everything still looks really good. You know, the sharpness and the detail, all the buildings and things like that. Even zooming in, you know, it still looks really sharp. All the effects look great. You know, not too many like weird visual artifacts going on. No ghosting around my weapon or anything like that. Nothing I can really tell. So, honestly, the FSR implementation is pretty solid. No major complaints there.
And our last setting we'll test here back to native and now using our completely maxed out settings which is ultra nightmare. And really what I'll be interested to see here is just how much video memory this actually uses. And it does look like starting off here even with our pool, you know, our texture pool size set to max here we are getting no issues as far as our video memory. So luckily the video memory is not at all concerned. 16 GB of video memory seems to be, you know, more than enough even at 4K. So, I'm definitely happy that the 9070 XT has those 16 GB. And it is pretty interesting just to see, you know, even between these different settings, it's only like maybe like 10 15 FPS difference between low and ultra nightmare here at native. So, you know, the the settings are pretty comparable when you look them uh across the board. And once again, you know, here in this area, playing at native certainly looks great, but unfortunately at, you know, in the 40s for our FPS doesn't really feel super great. Now, these are completely maxed out settings and our GPU is being fully utilized, so it is nice to see that the game is well optimized enough to actually be pulling all, you know, the work it can from our GPU. And I'll say, not too terrible of performance. You know, the 970 XT is certainly not what I'd consider to be really a 4K card, maybe a 4K card for like some older games or last generation games or some super well optimized esports titles, but for AAA single player games like this, getting 4K native is not really what you'd typically really expect, especially at the complete max settings. So, the fact that we're even getting a playable experience is actually kind of reassuring. But again, around 47 FPS on our average here, not super great. So, let's go ahead and adjust our FSR settings just to that quality setting.
So again, just changing from native anti-aliasing to quality for our FSR. And here at quality FSR, we are getting a 60fps average here. So it is nice to see that, you know, just utilizing some of that light upscaling. While I do wish that, you know, AMD could figure out a way to make Vulcan work on FSR4, it is nice to see that even the older model of FSR does work pretty good. We also do have XSS if we wanted to try that. Of course, that would be a whole another video benchmarking that upscaling, but you know, that might be worth kind of experimenting with to see what actually looks better under a microscope. But here, you know, at complete max settings and our quality upscaling, getting 80 fps is actually pretty good. You know, it feels good. It feels responsive. No major input latency or lag issues. So, here at a quality, I do want to go ahead and I do want to test what balance might look like. So, just switching quality over to balanced here. And here at balance kind of running around the same area we are getting right around 100 FPS or so, sometimes dipping beneath it, closer to the 90s, sometimes a bit above it. Looks like we're averaging out maybe a little bit below that 100 FPS, around like 96 or so.
Now if you were curious, you know, what you could get if you were to be, you know, turn on absolutely everything. So if we were to turn on FSR to balance and frame generation, could we get a higher refresh rate experience? And the answer is yes. So, as you can see, we're getting right around 160 FPS. Not really too many compromises whatsoever when it comes to our visual quality. And we are getting here a very high refresh rate. So, this would populate any 144 hertz screen. This would populate, you know, any 175 Hz screen relatively well. And the input latency doesn't feel too bad. Again, since we are coming from a pretty high base FPS, there are enough frames to actually work with to make it a pretty smooth experience. And additionally, the fact that the game does have such great frame pacing that the fact that the frames are being delivered at such a consistent rate without really many if any stutters or frame drops leads to a pretty solid uh frame generation implementation.
So, that's been it. You know, the 9070 XT on Doom: The Dark Ages. And uh overall, you know, I'm pretty impressed. The 970 XD is shaping up to be like a really solid card. Even on a, you know, AAA new release without the proper, you know, FSR4 support, we are able to play at max settings, 4K, and get what essentially is like it feels to me to be a pretty native looking 4K image at a really high refresh rate. It just goes to show, you know, when these games are well optimized, how uh how well they actually run on PC when developers actually, you know, take the time and care to, you know, make well optimized games that, you know, can still look really great and actually run really great. Anyways, appreciate you guys for watching. Thank you guys for all the support on all the videos I've been putting out. If you want to see more, please subscribe. Playing on benchmarking a ton of different GPUs against this game. So, take care and we'll see you later.