Creating a Destructible world (ala minecraft)

Is voxel rendering the only possible route if I want a fully destructible “Minecraft” like world?

I really want to create something like that, but something that has a better graphics. So, I researched about voxel rendering and realized that voxel rendering were replaced by polygon few years ago because it’s not efficient and produce poor detail.

Well, I noticed that minecraft sometimes dropped my fps to 20s with my old 8500 gt on shelf.

Any idea you want to share?

Minecraft does polygon rendering.