DOOM Alpha System Requirements

DOOM's back. The king of shooters has returned this weekend for a Closed Alpha, inviting a select group of players in for the glorious opportunity to blow chunks out of each other on a cold October weekend. Like a giblety Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Built on id's new id Tech 6 engine, DOOM 2016 promises to be an absolute graphics powerhouse. If the latest gameplay video is anything to go by, it doesn't disappoint. 

Here are the minimum system requirements for DOOM Alpha:

DOOM Alpha Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit 
• CPU: Intel Core i5-660 3.33GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz
• RAM: 8GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 2GB Video Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870
• HDD: 6GB Free Hard Drive Space

DOOM Alpha Recommended System Requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz
• GPU RAM: 3GB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 280

Now these system requirements are for the DOOM Closed Alpha so they're obviously subject to change, but they do give us a good idea of where they're heading with the hardware demands. id Software's games are traditionally graphics powerhouses and DOOM is no different. Consider as well this is will be chaotic, lightning-quick action in multiplayer, a stable 60 frames per second is going to be a must. DOOM is built on the studio's proprietary id Tech game engine, this time id Tech 6. It's the first ever game to use id Tech 6 so we haven't got a lot to go on just yet, only that it's OpenGL-based. This means it doesn't take advantage of DirectX features so it's not going to have any of those DX12 benefits, unless id has baked it in themselves under the hood. 

The AMD FX-8350 CPU seems totally excessive in comparison to the i5-660 Intel CPU. On the AMD front we'd expect you to be able to cope fine with a higher-end quad-core Phenom processor. Otherwise, the graphics cards required seem pretty reasonable for a game like DOOM. You'll likely be able to get away with less, but it's going to cost you a frame rate drop. In a game so dependent on twitch shooting and quick reactions, this is less than ideal.  Moving up to the recommended DOOM system requirements and these are pretty high end but exactly to be expected of a graphics powerhouse launching in 2016. If these cards can crank out Ultra at 1080p then that seems like a totally fair deal. 
One last thing - that 6GB size is strictly for the Alpha; the main game will be many times larger than this, so don't go getting your hopes up!