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Back in March, id Software’s Lead Engine Programmer said that the latest version of their bespoke game engine, id Tech 7, could feasibly run Doom Eternal at framerates of up to 1000 FPS, given the correct hardware. Extreme high framerates like 1000fps aren’t anywhere close to practical for typical usage, but it does present an interesting question: Which hardware would be required to hit 1000 FPS in Doom Eternal?
id Software themselves say that this was originally intended as a theoretical statement, intended to communicate how scalable id Tech 7 is. But it looks like they’ve ended up deciding to put this theory into practice, and took on the challenge of actually hitting 1000 fps in Doom Eternal.
In order to push the limits of performance for Doom Eternal, they needed to overclock their system, aiming for 6.6GHz. This massive overclock was going to need more than a heatsink and some thermal paste, where they had to use a liquid nitrogen cooling solution. This is a crazy lab experiment style setup, and not something that would be practical for day-to-day usage, or recommended for anyone other than qualified experts. You can easily lose a finger by messing around with liquid nitrogen.
With this massive overclock achieved, they were able to hit their 1000 FPS target, in fact, the managed to hit 1014 fps during a tutorial map:
“On day two, the moment of glory finally came. The DOOM Slayer was walking through the opening corridor of DOOM Eternal’s “Hell on Earth” level when all eight CPU cores clocked at nearly 6.6GHz, and the frame meter registered exactly 1,006 frames per second. It even went up as high as 1,014 FPS during a tutorial map, exceeding the 1,000 FPS goal with frames to spare.”
With high framerate monitors bringing refresh rates like 144Hz, 240 FPS, and beyond possible for high-end gaming systems, it’s great to see games that are being built to handle being run at extremely high framerates being made available. It’s hard to imagine 1000 FPS ever being a viable mainstream framerate, given the effort it has taken to hit that in this one game. But this does give us an exciting taste of what the future of high framerate gaming could hold.
Check out the full blog post to read more details of how they managed to get Doom Eternal running at 1000 fps, and how they set up the hardware to handle it.
Sarah’s all encompassing affinity for technology and gaming has always been at the forefront in her direction in life. From an early age she’s always been deeply interested in all aspects of technology, especially computing. Sparking an infectious intrigue into the process of how computers worked, why they worked and what else they could do. This interest has evolved growing more profound and passionate with every new discovery. With such vision for the pioneering technological age we are living in, she strives to share her knowledge and discoveries in her articles with the Community at WePC.
