Doom 3 System Requirements Revealed

The Llama King writes "The Houston Chronicle's Computing column has got the Doom 3 minimum system requirements. Biggest eye-opener: 384 MB of memory. Lots of mainstream PCs have been sold with 256 MB of RAM, so upgrades will be in order. RAM chip manufacturers should be salivating about now. You'll also need a 1.5-GHz processor and a GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 graphics card or better."

Comments

Re:thats it?

[Threni]

I'm surprised it got an article on Slashdot in it's own right, given that the information was posted as a comment to the last Doom3 story here. I guess we're going to see lots more exciting Doom3 facts and figures here.

P3 CPUs?

[mukund]

How about top-of-the-line Pentium3 CPUs? 1.5GHz definitely means a P4 or a similar Celeron, but weren't the 1.x GHz P4 cpus actually slower than high end P3 CPUs?

So I'm wondering if DOOM3 would work on a high-end P3 system as I have a dual CPU P3 system with a GeForce FX 5200 card.

Honestly, those are pretty low-end specs

[beavis88]

I'm betting that playing Doom 3 on the "minimum required" system will be the easiest way to force people to upgrade their hardware.

Hell, I have 1 GB RAM and a GF4600, and I'm fully expecting the performance to be bad enough to force an upgrade on my part...

Re:Very smart

[kfg]

Wait a year and buy the same system used for two hundred bucks.

Sometimes patience really is a virtue.

KFG

DirectX 9.0?

[David Leppik]

If you're upgrading, look for at least 128 MB of video memory in a card with Direct X 9.0 capability that installs into an AGP slot.

I thought Carmack was a big OpenGL fan. (Maybe the last one in the video game industry.) Why would you need DirectX for Doom? Maybe that's just shorthand for certain shared requirements, such as programmable GPU capabilities.

This shouldn't be considered a minimum for play

[boschmorden]

This should be considered a minimum for LOADING the game. I've played most of the first person shooters out there for the last few years. 256MB of RAM, or even 384MB is too little. Even with a nice graphics card your framerates will be very very low. I think if anyone wants to play and enjoy any of the games lately you'll need a minimum of 512, and even at that you'll need a gig to be comfortable. I think id is in a position where they can't raise the bar to 512 because they'd lose out on sales of people buying the game that had less. I think these people will purchase the game and realize they need more and go out and buy it.

Re:From the article

[Have Blue]

Doom does use OpenGL, but DirectX version compliance levels are a convenient way to separate generations of cards. It's easier than posting a list of OpenGL extensions that must be supported.

Cheapest way to play Doom 3

[jvmatthe]

Wait for the Xbox version to come out. An Xbox plus Doom 3 will set you back $200, plus tax. If you don't have anything against Microsoft's console, it's obviously the best choice.

Personally, I'm waiting for the Linux binary, since my Linux box it appears to have sufficient specs. I do regret that binary-only drivers (for my ATI or NVIDIA card) will probably be required.

Moo

[Chacham]

Upgrade for a game? Doesn't that increase the cost of the game? Games are expensive as it is, there's no reason they can't fit it in current common cases.

Games are made for people to play, not that people were made to play games. Games should fit current specifications, rather than demand more.

And then they wonder why sales are dismal.

Game consoles usually stay the same in each model, and games *must* work on them and cannot demand more. That's a good thing. It makes the developers do more with less. On PCs, people seem to do less with more. And that is a real problem.

Re:Moo

[schmoli]

Pardon my hostility, but this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard! Games, and specifically iD software, have always pushed the limits of the technology available to the public. Personally I think it's a great thing that they can come out with a game that is so advanced it can't even run at optimal settings on an existing consumer machine (when launched, at least). Telling people to only code to what's available would stop the evolution of graphics, coding, everything related to computers.

Re:People don't care

[tomhudson]

When the first DOOM was released I had a few friends who said that needing a 486 PC just for a game was insane.

They upgraded after playing the game on someone else's PC.

Doom played fine full-screen on a 386/40 with 8 megs of ram (if you had more than 8 megs, you had to disable hidden refresh, so it actually played slower on machines with more memory).

Don't you think that upgrading hardware just for a game sort of says "I need a life"? Wait 6 months. After the initial surge, everyone will be overstock, and prices for better hardware will fall.

Re:thats it?

[Squishy Eyeball Jeff]

If it did, everyone and his brother would be complaining that it's nothing more than a rehash of old games underpinned by a new engine. Today's focus is more on content than ever before, so id had to ante up. A simple rehash would kill them.

Now, if they included the old levels as a bonus, that'd be another story.

PC Gamer Life And Fun

[blueZhift]

Awww, such is the life of the PC gamer! In the old days, people would complain about these things, but the truth is that I think PC gamers live for this! I mean, who here doesn't like having an excuse to go out and seriously upgrade your rig?

Heck, I'm not even planning to get Doom 3, and I get all jittery just thinking about upgrading my old box, which is way overdue. But I've learned to wait until the game comes out and real people play on real systems, before doing any upgrade. That way you can get the right hardware and avoid any unforeseen incompatibilities.

Awww, the life of a PC Gamer...

Meanwhile, in reality...

[LSD-OBS]

Look, these days, there will be 2 main types of people that will buy this game.

1) Oldskool die-hard Doom lovers. These people have been around long enough that the concept of hardware upgrades is nothing new to them. Chances are they will currently have good enough hardware for Doom 3, or they will take it for granted that they will need an upgrade before they buy the game.

2) Newskool FPS gamer kids. They take their gaming pretty seriously, and having the latest hardware is pretty much a competitive issue to them. If you find any of these guys with less than 512mb of RAM or a 3D card older than a GeForce 3, chances are they don't have the money to buy Doom 3 anyway.

The hardware requirements stated are really light for a game of that genre, especially considering the target market. I think the poster is rather off-target by insinuating that this is a problem.

Minimum requirements for now

[Xian97]

The Doom games were always a showcase for the engine's technology. It probably won't be for a year or two before developers that license the technology start hitting the full capabilities of the engine. When that happens, I look for the current minimum requirements to go up so plan accordingly for the games that will be built on the engine in the near future if you are going to upgrade your hardware. I think that the current recommended requirement will soon be the minimum when you see the next wave of games built on the technology that iD has created.

Fuck That

[windside]

There's no way in hell. Playing an FPS with a console-type controller instead of a keyboard is roughly equivalent to gouging out your own eyeballs, in terms of pain and frustration.

I remember the first time I tried Doom64 - UGH. Please. I'll stick to Mario, thanks.

Sure, there's bound to be a keyboard/mouse add-on for the XBox, but certainly not a cheap one. Factor in the karma burn for owning (nay, touching) an XBox and your effective cost has climbed far beyond that of a new CPU and some RAM.

Re:Fuck That

[Hollins]

I agree. Not only is control tedious without a mouse and keyboard, they have to crank down the rate you can turn to make the game controllable, which means they generally have to add some auto-aiming features. It's a completely different experience. On top of that, you have lower resolution, no console to enter commands (want fov 120? sorry) and you miss out on all the mods, which can be half the fun of iD games.

Console versions of FPS are barely shadows of the real thing.

Re:People don't care

[PitaBred]

What's with the "wait 6 months"? It's not as though hardware is ever doing anything but getting cheaper and faster. As long as you buy next-to-top-of-the-line, you'll get about the best bang for your buck. And next-to-top-of-the-line should run Doom3 admirably.
Secondly, if gaming is important to you, I don't think it really says "I need a life". Getting a new set of golf clubs costs more than a computer upgrade... do golfers also need a life?

Re:thats it?

[wolrahnaes]

the difference between a GF2 GTS and the GF3 was very superficial.

Umm....wrong...

GF2GTS is a NV1x card, with no programmable shaders. DX7 class gear. Hardware T&L was the extent of the "high end graphics" capability of this chip. Later nVidia confusingly renamed these Geforce4MX, as compared to the real GF4Ti, which was a tweaked GF3.

GF3 was an entirely new generation of chip, the NV2x (using x as a variable, not to be confused with NV2X which is the GF3/nForce hybrid used in the Xbox)
NV2x was the first generation of DX8 hardware with programmable shaders.