How does DOOM: The Dark Ages look this good rendered at 360p

DOOM: The Dark Ages promotional art — This image isn't DOOM: The Dark Ages rendering at 360p. (Image credit: Microsoft / id Software)

While not something I dabble with personally, I have this weird fascination with PC games running on ridiculously low-end hardware and those who just flat out run things at the lowest settings and resolution just for fun.

It's a frequent hole I fall down on YouTube, and one of the latest videos I stumbled on was from a channel I've watched a lot in the past. But the title really grabbed me.

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Doom The Dark Ages at 240p with DLSS 4... - YouTube — — Doom The Dark Ages at 240p with DLSS 4...

I'm not going to transcribe everything that's going on, the video does that better than I ever could.

The short version is that it shows off DOOM: The Dark Ages running on a PC with an RTX 3050. Using NVIDIA's DLSS 4 witchcraft, it's possible to render the game at 360p, while still playing at 1080p.

I'm frankly staggered. A game rendered at 360p has no right to look as good as this, and yet, it does. Witchcraft, I tells ya.

Not content with that, things go a step further, dropping the resolution to 240p while playing at 720p. A few of the video's commenters have described this as having an old-school DOOM feel. I get that.

Besides making a fun YouTube video, what good is it? The whole idea is that the GPU is rendering the game at a lower resolution, which helps increase the overall frame rate. DLSS then kicks into gear and upscales the visuals so they're actually decent to look at.

As games get more and more demanding and the latest hardware more and more expensive, it's technology like this most of us will be relying on to help us enjoy the latest games. When it works this well, who's complaining?

Richard Devine is the Managing Editor at Windows Central, where he combines a deep love for the open-source community with expert-level technical coverage. Whether he’s hunting for the next big project on GitHub, fine-tuning a WSL workflow, or breaking down the latest meta in Call of Duty, Forza, and The Division 2, Richard focuses on making complex tech accessible to every kind of user. If it’s happening in the world of Windows or PC gaming, he’s probably already knee-deep in the code (or the lobbies). Follow him on X and Mastodon.

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