Earlier this year Nvidia showed off its new GTX 1080 card by running Bethesda’s Doom with the super-speedy Vulkan API instead of OpenGL, resulting in frame rates approaching 200 with all the bells and whistles. Today Bethesda makes Doom Vulkan support official.




Vulkan is basically the next-generation OpenGL application programming interface, boasting higher performance, better CPU usuage and better ability to distribute work among multiple CPU cores. That means faster frame rates for higher end PCs and less strain on lower-end ones. It’s what’s powering the Nvidia Doom clip below.

And now it’s powering every PC copy of Doom, should users so choose. Today’s patch allows users to switch between OpenGL and Vulkan, adding an additional executable to the game’s main directory to support the newer API.


Interested in giving it a go? Check out Bethesda’s blog post for a list of known issues and how to make sure your PC has what it needs.