I spent my first few hours with the RTX 5060 playing Doom: The Dark Ages, and it feels pretty slick for under $300

Not everyone’s going to find the RTX 5060 riveting, especially from a specs point of view. But, as someone who was born in the fires of entry-level PC gaming, I’m always keen to see what the most affordable graphics cards can actually do for under $300. It’d be an understatement to say that budget GPUs are hard to find in 2025, so when Nvidia asked if I wanted to try out the cheaper Blackwell GPU ahead of its official launch, I was extremely keen to dive in.

Naturally, I won’t be able to share any RTX 5060 benchmarks or figures ahead of the launch with you. You’ll have to wait for my full review for those vital performance bits, and they will ultimately dictate whether the GeForce card deserves a place at the best graphics card table. I like to spend at least a week testing GPUs across a variety of demanding games to get a proper feel for whether they provide real value. But before I get to that, I want to chat about the few hours I’ve spent with the Blackwell card playing DOOM: The Dark Ages.

Bethesda’s shooter is admittedly living in my head rent-free since ray tracing is baked into its idTech engine. You’d perhaps think that such settings would hold back maximum frame rates dramatically, but the fact that I was able to play Doom the Dark Ages at over 500fps at launch using an RTX 5080 quashes that idea completely. The RTX 5060 is a bit of a different beast since it only boasts 8GB VRAM and is a much more modest GPU, but I can confirm that it does feel pretty nice on my current best gaming monitor pick, the LG UltraGear 32GS95UE-B.

Again, I’ll be sharing plenty of figures in my eventual RTX 5060 review, but since I’m about to sign off for the weekend, allow me to chat about my first few hours with the card. I will eventually be testing the GPU at 1440p and 4K, but since we’re talking about an entry-level model, I’ve kicked things off at 1080p for now. Since I’ve still got high refresh rate monitors on my mind, I’ve also been playing with DLSS 4 Quality Mode and x4 Multi Frame Generation on with Ultra Nightmare settings enabled.

Now, keep in mind that this time last week, I was using an RTX 5080 to hit stupidly high frame rates at 1080p. This time around, I’ve decided I want to see how far the new 60-class GPU can get without dialing back settings, since plenty of players picking this card up are going to be using Full HD displays with pretty high refresh rates. What I’m looking for is whether I can detect a performance difference between the two setups before I even get to benchmarking, as that could support the idea that the RTX 5060 packs a plentiful punch for 1080p players.

Immediately upon landing once again in the Doomslayer’s shoes, it honestly felt like I was still using the RTX 5080. I was using DLSS 4 in ‘Balanced’ mode last time around, in the name of hitting extreme frame rates while preserving fidelity, but making the switch to Quality mode really helps the RTX 5060 pump out textures and effects with the same sort of enthusiasm.

Replaying through the gory shooter’s intro, I wasn’t able to sniff out any notable frame dips or lag compared to my previous playthroughs. That naturally prompted suspicion within me since there’s usually some sort of trade-off when using performance boosting tricks, and that led me to tiptoeing through the same area again in a bid to carefully examine finer details and textures. I’ve witnessed AI upscalers make a mess of intricate lines, mesh fences, and other smaller elements, but even the chains holding lanterns far off in the distance looked pretty defined with x4 MFG on.

I did eventually shield charge past one enemy who looked slightly blurrier than expected for a brief moment. This is something I picked up on when playing on the RTX 5080 with DLSS on, too, so it could be that Multi Frame Generation struggles a bit with more detailed enemies. Would I have noticed this or cared during a normal playthrough? Probably not, but it is a reminder that these tools aren’t completely devoid of caveats.

I am wary that playing at 1080p in 2025 sounds a bit ‘meh’, even if scaling back resolution does mean you can embrace faster panel speeds. Therefore, I’ll be really expecting the RTX 5060 to hold its own at 1440p and 4K, especially if DLSS 4 is on. If playing at full HD is anything to go by, purely on feel, I reckon it’ll be easy enough to hit well over 60fps even in new releases using Multi-Frame Generation.

And, if you’re making the jump from an older card like the RTX 2060 or even the RTX 3060, the performance jump is going to feel pretty wild. I actually used an RTX 3070 rig a few years ago for settings tests and found that 1080p was sometimes a bit much for shooters similar to DOOM: The Dark Ages, so it’s pretty refreshing to find that you can play speedy fps games on a new 60-class card without having to deal with sluggish frame rates, even if DLSS 4 trickery is required.

Whether or not the RTX 5060 will be worth buying fully depends on my eventual benchmarks and other important GPU tests. Spending a couple of hours in DOOM: The Dark Ages is absolutely not enough to determine if a graphics card provides the right level of performance, especially if there’s a significant gap between the sub-$300 card and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.

That said, I’m feeling optimistic about the RTX 5060 and, while there’s a wider conversation to be had about relying on tools like DLSS 4 to meet minimum specs, I could have happily played through the entirety of the shooter today without feeling any sense of performance FOMO or vibe that something was off.

Put it this way – I have a pal who exclusively uses an RTX 3060 laptop to play everything and never looks at settings or frame rates. When he sees what Nvidia’s $299 GPU can do, I suspect he might end up thinking about building an RTX 5060 PC as an upgrade.

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