Days before the launch of Doom Eternal, iD Software made headlines when they revealed that id Tech7, the engine powering Doom Eternal, was actually capable of running the game at even 1000fps, hardware permitting. This speaks volumes about the engine’s prowess, but what about the people who don’t have super high-end gaming machines to play Doom Eternal on? In fact, most people would have entry-level to mid-range configurations, at least here at home. So, the goal was to see how well we could run Doom Eternal on a not-so-high-end system.
We have on hand an MSI Prestige 15 running a hexa-core Intel Core i7-10710U, 16GB DDR4 memory and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q. In the current lineup of mobile GPUs, the GTX 1650 Max-Q is the lowest rung in the ladder. We fired up Doom Eternal and set it to 1080p, with graphics set to high. What followed for the next hour was an incredibly satisfying experience of ripping and tearing. Using Nvidia FrameView to record the frame rates, we note an average of 67fps, which, for all intents and purposes is very playable. Turning VSync on locks the frame rates to 60fps, with little to no tearing and definitely no stutters at any point in the game. Lowering the “water” and “reflections” quality from High to Medium did net us an improvement of roughly 8-10 fps but given that the MSI Prestige 15’s display is capped at 60fps refresh rate, wanting to go higher made no sense. Bumping the resolution up to 1440p while keeping the graphics settings at high caused the frame rate to drop to an average of 41fps, with notable stutter occurring when there is plenty going on on the screen in terms of explosions, enemies and not to mention, super-fast movement.
On the other side of things, there’s a beefy desktop, powered by an Intel Core i7-8700K overclocked to 4.9GHz, sporting 32GB of DDR4 memory and has an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super to manage graphics duties. To this, we have connected the LG Ultragear 27GK750, a 27-inch gaming monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. At 1080p, Doom Eternal runs north of 200fps on Ultra Nightmare graphics settings, which is frankly overkill. The graphics settings, not the frame rates. We restored the i7-8700K to its stock clocks to see if it would impact the frame rates, and sure enough, we saw them drop to a 189 fps average, which is still very impressive. Lowering the graphics setting to “high” as we did for the MSI Prestige 15, we see the frame rates max out at 240fps (we left G-Sync on for this one).
It's impressive to see that at a time when improved graphics fidelity has always required a heavy “hardware tax,” ID Software has taken the opposite approach. The game engine is so beautifully optimized that it allows Doom Eternal to run on low-end and even really old hardware with notable ease. If you have an older laptop like a Dell G3 (review) or an Asus TUF series machine or even something like an Acer Predator Helios 300, you’re going to be just fine when it comes to playing Doom Eternal. While it may not be the most visually rich and high FPS experience, it will definitely be a very satisfying one.