Earlier this year id’s lead engine programmer said that id Tech 7 powering Doom Eternal could run at 1,000 fps. Which is kind of a funny theoretical laugh because nobody has a computer that can do that, at least I thought so, but apparently there are overclockers out there who can in fact do that. Bethesda recruited Polish hardware retailer x-kom to figure out how to run Doom Eternal at 1,000 frames per second. Then they did it. There’s a video of it, above.
The surprise? For me, at least, it’s that this is fairly widely available, if expensive, computer hardware. Here are the specs:
- CPU: Intel Core i7 9700K @ 6.6GHz
- Motherboard: ASUS Maximus XI APEX
- GPU: ASUS RTX2080Ti Strix @ 2.4GHz
- RAM: HyperX Predator 4000MHz CL19 2x8GB
- Drive: Samsung 512GB M.2 NVMe Evo Plus
- Power: Be Quiet 1200W Straight Power
Of course, you couldn’t really do this at home because the key component is that they had to literally pour liquid nitrogen into the computer to make it work. Yes! That’s right, -196 degrees Celsius, -321 degrees Fahrenheit, liquid nitrogen. That’s because when you overclock a system like this it gets very hot. Don’t try this at home, and actually go and scold the guy who does this because he handles the liquid nitrogen without gloves and my high school chemistry teacher would be very mad about that.
You can read a more detailed article on the whole thing at Bethesda’s website. Also, if you could actually run a game at 1,000 fps, would you be able to tell the difference?