Doom 3 Minimum Specs Revealed

Thanks to The Phobos Lab, a Doom fansite, for their info, directly from John Carmack, that the minimum specs for Doom 3 will be "1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, GF1 or Radeon 7xxx series card." There's no word yet on recommended specs to get the best fidelity, but sites such as NewDoom.com and The Phobos Lab are keeping a close eye on the situation, including an interesting but very unconfirmed rumor that "a Doom 3 demo [will be available] for public playing at this year's QuakeCon" - probably wishful thinking, although Carmack is scheduled to speak there, and it's possible at least some new Doom details will be revealed.

Comments

Whew!

[Go Aptran]

Looking at the specs makes me wince a little. We Mac folk will probably have to buy a G5 to play this baby... when (if) it's ported over.

Seriously... while some people will gladly upgrade to be able to play, I wonder if this is the sort of thing that drives people to console systems. At least I know that when I buy a Playstation 2 game, it won't have to replace a section of it to be able to use it to its full potential.

Re:I remember...

[PainKilleR-CE]

Yeah, but we needed a boot disk to run Doom on a 4MB machine anyway.

Meh.

[SD-VI]

"Minimum requirements for playing the game after you install it: Pentium 4 2.0GHz or equivalent, GeForce4 Titanium 4200 or better"

Doom III looks shiny enough, but I doubt it'll revolutionize anything. I'm really waiting for Half-Life 2, which should run on slower computers no problem thanks to the engine's massive scalability; they have textures so large no video card can handle them at decent speeds, and they say they're going to release those well after the actual game, once the hardware exists.

Also, for people who complain about spending a lot, don't buy at the high end and make small upgrades regularly. There's a best buy in every generation. Right now the best buy is the Athlon XP 2500+ at $85, and until recently for video cards it was the Radeon 9500 Pro, which ATi stopped making because it was too fast. (The 9600 Pro is slower.) I've spent maybe $1200 over the last three years, a number I'm happy enough with, and my system is powerful enough.

Apple Macintosh Specs?

[McCall]

Isn't John Carmack a big NeXT and Apple OS X fan? I seem to remember that the first demo of Doom 3 was on Apple hardware.

If thats true, and going off of previous games requirements I would imagine the specs for an OS X version would be very similar to the PC version.

I doubt very much if it will ever see the light of day on MacOS 9 though :)

What's with this "minimum" thing?

[killmenow]

I get a little sick of minimum, recommended, etc. settings. By definition, if it's *minimum* then it should be good enough.

I think game makers/distributors are sacrificing gameplay and quality in the effort to not lock out as many buyers and therefore increase sales.

Besides, everybody knows the minimum specs required to actually USE a piece of software are the "recommended" specs. The stated "minimum" specs are just the specs it takes to keep the EXE from CRAPPING OUT before or immediately after loading.

Re:What's with this "minimum" thing?

[travail_jgd]

My impression is the "minimum" is for people who are willing to sacrifice features -- instead of being forced to buy new hardware. That's a fair trade-off, because very few people buy a new $400 video card every 6-12 months. I just got Serious Sam:SE out of the bargain bin, and turned down features so I don't need to pick up a geForce-class card right away. (Gaming isn't a priority for me.)

"I think game makers/distributors are sacrificing gameplay and quality in the effort to not lock out as many buyers and therefore increase sales."

And that's a good thing! How many copies of Half-Life 3 and Doom 3 would sell if the reference platform was a 4-CPU workstation with a professional-quality video card?

Re:I remember...

[retto]

Same here. I had to learn about memory management before memmaker came out, but it was really handy and like a geeky challenge to do better without using something like QEMM.

I set up a little boot menu with different config.sys and autoexec.bat settings for XMS or EMS.

DOOM is where me and my friends learned the most about networking. Just about everything I ever needed to know about modems or network drivers I learned trying to get DOOM to work.

Descent

[alatesystems]

You need at least a R9600/FX5600 to play at a descent frame rate. [tomshardware.com]

Hey, I liked Descent's frame rates. That was a great game and it came with my Creative ModemBlaster.

On a related note, I've played a D3 alpha and it runs VERY slowly on my GeForce4 TI4400. I mean like 13fps standing looking at a door with smoke and stuff in between. When you start shooting a big drunk alabamaman up close and personal who looks like he just got out of a bar fight after beating his wife, then it slows down to like 3 fps. But I can't even describe to you how good the drunk, beer-belly alabaman looks. In the polygon sense of course.

Chris

Re:Xbox version...

[Rhinobird]

Oh yeah, it'll look fine on the Xbox.

You don't have to do any anti-alaising due to how tv's work.

You only have to run at around 640x480 (actually less than that, but it's a good rough estimate)

only have to run at 30 fps, cause that's all a TV can handle

It's a set hardware standard. Carmack said if he has a set HW standard, he can sqeeze 50% more performance out of his engines by hard coding to that set HW spec.