The new Doom came out in May, and alongside that release, Nvidia published a video of the game running on the Vulkan API. Even though that screen capture topped out at 60fps, it made us want more. Now we're getting a chance. Id Software, Doom's manufacturer, has released a patch this week that’ll bring Vulkan to the game. This makes Doom the first major game to release Vulkan as a patch as opposed to a proof of concept or beta.

So what does Vulkan mean for you? As far as Doom is concerned, your game will perform at a higher frame rate, so everything will run a little more smoothly (not that it was bad to begin with). At a broader level, Vulkan support means game developers no longer have to rely exclusively on Microsoft's DirectX. Vulkan games can more easily be made into Android and Steam OS games, so at least theoretically, developers have more freedom to take their game to platforms other than Windows PCs. Vulkan also allows the CPU to do less work to run a game and thereby frees up the GPU for better performance. As for Doom, older GPUs should be able to support better frame rates with the patch, id Software said.