Doom Eternal can do 1000 fps if you've got the hardware for it

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Back in the days of Quake and Quake 2 (and probably others, but that's what I played), it was common for players to minimize graphical settings in order to maximize framerates. Speed is life in online games, after all. It's also great for bragging rights, and if you could maintain a solid 30 fps while the bullets were flying and the bombs exploding, you were a real hero on the id Software forums.

Rip and tear with some more Doom Eternal goodness

all doom eternal runes locations — (Image credit: id Software)

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Things have changed somewhat since those long-ago days when players used console commands to remove Quake's framerate cap. Speaking to IGN, id Sofware's lead engine programmer Billy Kahn said that the id Tech 7 engine has been dramatically overhauled for Doom Eternal, enabling "bigger explosions, more vibrant looking particle effects," and a ridiculous number of frames moving from your monitor to your eyeballs every second.

"On id Tech 6, we maxed it out to 250 frames per second. This game, if you have the hardware right, it could hit 1000 frames per second. That the max we have," Kahn says in the video.

"And there's really no upper limit, I've had some hardware here locally that we built just for testing, where we had scenes running in the 400 frames per second. So people who have 144hz monitors, or even the new monitors that you'll see coming out that are even above that, going forward this game will hold up for many years and it will give you really amazing opportunities to leverage that hardware."

Does this mean it's finally time to stop asking if it can run Crysis? I'm thinking probably not—I'm a real stickler for tradition—but I wouldn't mind seeing what a game running at 1000 fps actually looks like. Check back in ten years, I guess.

Doom Eternal comes out on March 20. This is what it looks like in 4K.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.