Doom 3 Hardware Guide Debuts

Nosf3ratu writes "Over at HardOCP, the boys have teamed up with id software again to publish the Official Doom 3 Hardware Guide. As the guide states: 'With the prospect of so many new people being brought into gaming by DOOM 3, there will likely be a lot of questions regarding the computer hardware needed to support it.'"

Comments

Sweeeeeet.

[zedmelon]

From the hardware guide:
"What we noticed immediately is that DOOM 3 looks incredible even at 640x480! "
and
"Looking at the image, it's surprising just how good Low Quality looks."

My hopes weren't very high, but I'm relieved to see this. Now I know my TNT2 card will do just fine.

But seriously, their test on a minimal system yielded encouraging results:
"Our system was composed of a 1.5GHz Pentium 4, 512MB of Corsair RAM, and a GeForce 4 MX 440 video card"

fp?

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[zedmelon]

Informative.

Don't we have a mod for "+1, Efficiently Sidesteps Sarcasm?"

No WAY, man! My TNT card has never let me down yet! Wagons Ho! still looks as great as it did in '95!

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[foidulus]

I'm wondering how it will end up looking on LCDs whose native resolution is higher than the resolution that Doom suggests. If you don't run an LCD at it's native resolution, it tends to look very block and blurry, which could make the image even worse....
Looks like I'll have to buy a 6800 if I want to play this game

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[AliasTheRoot]

Actually you'll find that a TNT2 has very good throughput, the lack of T&L will hurt in DOom3 tho.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[untermensch]

Don't we have a mod for "+1, Efficiently Sidesteps Sarcasm?"

sorry, but the things some people think...

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you were one of the beta testers based on your comments. What exactly were the problems with the gameplay?

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[proj_2501]

I routinely play Starcraft and Unreal Tournament 2004 on my Powerbook G4 at non-native resolutions and they look fine to me.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[multriha]

Don't know about Unreal, but starcraft can't be run at a non-native resolution. It runs at 640x480 I believe always. Powerbooks at just smart enough to scale it properly to fit the screen.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[Usquebaugh]

FYI,

native resolution, as discussed here, is the LCDs native resolution not the games.

LCD have an optimal resolution, running at a lower res than this causes a degredation of the image.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[Minna Kirai]

I routinely play Starcraft and Unreal Tournament 2004 on my Powerbook G4 at non-native resolutions and they look fine to me

If your laptop is a multiple of 640x480, like 1280x960, then the described blurriness wouldn't actually occur for you.

The effect is worst when you run a program a a resolution close to, but not identitical to, the fixed rez of the LCD. That produces some fairly painful scaling artifacts.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[Naikrovek]

just don't stretch it to full screen. 1280x1024 stretched on a 1600x1200 lcd looks shitty, but 1280x1024 unstretched on a 1600x1200 lcd looks fine.

Re:Sweeeeeet.

[rock_climbing_guy]

I must say, thank goodness. Maybe I'll get to play this game after all. I spent $600 upgrading my computer over a year ago and UT2003 still plays so choppy I can't stand it. It still gives me ulcers just thinking about it. Hopefully, if this is right, I'll be able to play DOOM 3 on my AMD 2600+ with 128 MB video RAM.

Believe me, I tried everything to get UT2003 to run well on this system. /me pukes and then faints.

Systems

[mfh]

FTA: "There are no major differences in image quality between NVIDIA and ATI video cards when playing DOOM 3 at the same settings."

From this shot, I would have to say, ATI looks nicer for quality of lighting. The blending seems more natural.

FTA: "There is no doubt that DOOM 3's minimum system specifications can easily deliver a good gaming experience."

If you don't mind frames dropping to this and their ultimate Doom 3 system.

FTA:"Without a doubt, our AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 system sporting the ABIT AV8 motherboard with 2GB of Corsair XMS RAM was the pinnacle of DOOM 3 performance in terms of image quality and speed when outfitted with the BFGTech GeForce 6800 Ultra OC."

And that is a nice system by any standards. I think I am very interested by the Alienware Doom system. The Aurora ALX looks sweet.

Xian has some cool quotes for the guys at Hard|OCP here. Most notably:

"I am proud to say that DOOM 3 is quite possibly the most aurally detailed and complex game ever made, on any platform."

Drooooool.........

Re:Systems

[CyberKnet]

Please bear in mind they are using a BFGTech card. I have personal experience with both PNY cards, and BFGTech cards... My PNY FX5200Ultra passed on, and to replace it, I got a BFGTech 5600Ultra.

I am here to tell you today that in terms of FPS, the BFGTech is better. As it should be, it's a 5600 ultra, and the PNY card was a 5200 ultra. However, in terms of image quality, the BFGTech is far, FAR, FAR below the PNY card. Using the exact same drivers.

BFGTech cards are inferior. I would never recommend anyone buy one, and I would certainly call into question any comparison which used a BFGTech as the baseline image for the nvidia line. The image is simply too far degraded below what the same chip from a quality manufacturer such as PNY would put out.

Yes, this is subjective, I have no screen shots to back it up, but I've been meaning to share my experience for a while, so there it is.

Re:Systems

[DeltaSigma]

From this shot [hardocp.com], I would have to say, ATI looks nicer for quality of lighting. The blending seems more natural.

I couldn't find any real discernable difference between the ATI and nVidia side-by-side images, but I thought there must be at some microscopic level.

So when you pointed this one out I decided to test it.

I pulled the image into photoshop and copied the nVidia screen ontop of the ATI screen. I got them as best aligned as I could and then changed the nVidia layer's blending to "Difference." The thing is completely black (except for the gun, which occupies a different position and the text which was placed arbitrarily). Essentially this means there is almost no discernable difference in rendering quality.

What might make one look better than the other is probably a combination of a couple factors. 1: We're looking at a very hazy image. There's apparantly an additive transparent plane being cast from the light or gun or something. In the interest of making things look organic, the texture/shader on this haze probably moves or morphs in some manner, just to keep it from looking too static. 2: jpeg compression, combined with the minor differences between the two images has likely enhanced certain colors/shades to varying degrees.

Give it a try yourself though. I think you'll agree that there's very little difference between the rendering quality of these split screenshots.

Which isn't much of a surprise considering John Carmack's doing the programming.

Re:Systems

[Billly Gates]

For $5,500 listed for the ultimate doom system, I wonder how a cheaper SMP system would perform playing it?

I bet you guys did not know that doom3 supports smp in Windows.

New Hardware

[Klar]

With Doom3 and HL2 comming out very soon, I am interested to see how this will affect sales in new CPU's and video cards. Will there be a great boost in sales so people can play these games? I for one have just bought a new computer to allow me to play these--although it is a laptop, and I need to get a faster HD for it.. heh

Re:New Hardware

[stonedonkey]

With Doom3 and HL2 comming out very soon, I am interested to see how this will affect sales in new CPU's and video cards. Will there be a great boost in sales so people can play these games? I for one have just bought a new computer to allow me to play these--although it is a laptop, and I need to get a faster HD for it.. heh

It's been horrendous with video cards, especially the 6800GT OC, which is regarded as Doom 3's "sweet spot" for price-performance ratio. I lucked out, apparently, buying that card right after reading [H]'s review of it. I got one of the last few in stock at chumbo.com (a place I'd never heard of, despite my extensive online hardware shopping).

Now, I got the card for $399.99 and free shipping. Good luck finding it anywhere now, at any price. Even those who ran out of stock have pegged the card at at least $420, with $459 being the new baseline. Sales tax and/or shipping can and will push the total up to $500. I saw one place selling the BFG OC for $525. Best Buy, Chumbo and EVGA appear to be the only places on the Internet that still have the GT variant at $400. The 6800 Ultra is only slightly less impossible to get and is that much more expensive, with the Radeon X800 Pro trailing closely behind that.

It's ugly.

Re:New Hardware

[Rolo Tomasi]

Dunno, but I think you'll see a sharp rise in street muggings by desperate geeks ...

Re:New Hardware

[zedmelon]

combining them obviously saved on the hassle of dealing with half a dozen different vendors.

Not to mention a million dollars wasted shipping them all separately

note to mods :
that was a hyperbole - exaggeration for humorous effect.
The real number is much closer to a billion dollars.

/me hits newegg instead of working...

Re:New Hardware

[ostiguy]

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Dear Gateway Valued Customer,

This e-mail is sent to you to informyou of a change with your Estimated Arrival Date which was 07/28/04. Theorder number in question is xxxxxxx for the Radeon X800XT Card. Dueto a delay at our manufacturing facility, your order has a new DelayedArrival Date of 08/27/04. As with all dates provided by Gateway, this isnot a guaranteed date of arrival but only an estimate. Because of thisdelay, you do have the right to cancel this order if this date does not meetyour needs. Please note that your order has been placed into priority toarrive to you as soon as possible.

You can check the status of your orderat anytime by dialing the following number;

ostiguy bangs head repeatedly against desk

Re:New Hardware

[Total_Wimp]

There's a symbiotic relationship between hardware vendors and software vendors that make resource-intensive software.

id makes software that makes people go out to buy new geForce card >> nVidia makes lots of money.

nVidia tells everyone that Doom 3 is the greatest game to ever be seen on this planet >> id makes lots of money.

The software maker actually has an incentive to make a product that is percieved as a resource hog because of this positive feedback loop. It's kind an informal paid endorsement or kickback. The software vendor has to push the envelope just enough that people desire the hardware upgrade, but not enough that they alienate owners of slightly older equipment. id has done this perfectly in this case.

MS and Intel have been doing this for years. It's the reason why Intel doesn't throw it's weight fully behind Linux and why Microsoft is quite late with their AMD-64 OS. In theory neither MS or Intel should really care that much, but since AMD and the Linux community aren't really working members of the positive feedback loop, they're only given token praise. The Wintel feedback loop is even worse than usual because almost everyone buys an MS OS with their new computer so pushing hardware actually generates sales, not just endorsements, for Microsoft.

TW

OSX version Needed

[artlu]

Then, i can use my Dual 2.0 G5 with Apple's gorgeous new displays. Yes, i know LCD is bad for gaming, but the new apple monitors are just crazy. At least my "Stock Game" looks good on the monitors.

Actually, does anyone know if ID is planning an OSX release like they did with Quake 3?

Re:OSX version Needed

[Nosf3ratu]

Yes, they are.
Todd Hollenshead, acting CEO of id said in an email shortly after the announcement of the release date, of OSX and Linux:

"Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be
available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games.
More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release
the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains "when it's
done", but I can confirm that it's definitely coming. "

Re:OSX version Needed

[Nosf3ratu]

I haven't seen any official announcements from id, but from Todd's email, I take it as that there will be one version of Doom 3 to buy (much like UT2K4) and the Linux binaries will be probably be available as free downloads on the internet, much as they did for RtCW and Quake3. The boxed versions of Quake3 were not id products; they were Loki products, iirc.

And on the software front...

[Ford Prefect]

Interestingly, Windows 98 won't be supported.

I'll be in the weird situation of having a game that will run on my PC in Linux, but not on my games-only Windows installation.

Makes a change! :-)

Re:And on the software front...

[Ford Prefect]

Isn't that a sign that it might be time to move away from '98 then?

Quite probably. I'll be building a new PC pretty soon, and it'll probably have something 'hip' and 'modern' like Windows 2000 for games...

Stuff like the Halo Editing Kit and the version of Softimage XSI for Half-Life 2 needs an NT-based operating system anyway, so I really should upgrade. :-)

Anyone know where I can get Win2000 cheaply in the UK? Suprnova need not apply...

Re:And on the software front...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thief 3 wasn't supported on Win9x/ME either. Turns out it the biggest problem was the inclusion of the executable icon using an ordinal OOB on Win9x!

Re:And on the software front...

[Tackhead]

> Interestingly, Windows 98 won't be supported.

"Won't be supported" or "Won't work"?

Those aren't necessarily the same things. My 9800XT "isn't supported" on my 98SE gaming rig either - but it works just fine.

(Why do I game on 9x? Because it's the same 9x license that came with the box six years ago. Because 9x doesn't run services that listen to ports. Because I can boot with a floppy and reimage -- even though, unlike my friends' 2K/XP boxen, I've never had to, because the box has never been 0wn3d. :)

/me glances at the log of RPC/DCOM worm attacks, every few seconds all bouncing against unopenable ports, from even goddamn dialup IP addresses, and laughs.

Yes, 98SE is a DOS shell. Yes, 98SE isn't a real OS. Yes, 98SE is a toy. Yes 98SE has no security model. And yes, for a single-user gaming rig, that's why it's better than a real OS.

In the meantime, 98SE doesn't require me to "activate" it after I swap hard drives or motherboards. 98SE doesn't phone home. 98SE doesn't run services I don't need. And when it crashes, it crashes hard enough that nothing's writing to the hard drive when I press the hard-reset button. 98SE boxen (as long as you're not using M$'s crapware browser and mail client) can be plugged onto the evil Intarweb - straight out of the box - without even a firewall, and not get 0wn3d.

(This rant expired by the equivalent crashes on the same game played on a friend's XP rig - I observed that when a game in XP goes down hard, the OS keeps running. That's not a feature, that's a bug! No mouse, no GUI, just a frozen 3D rendering of the game, but the hard drive light just flickers happily as the remaining components of the OS busily "manage" the swap file. You sorta wait for the light to flicker out, and hope that you press the hard-reset button before it comes back up. WTF kind of crap is that?)

2K/XP are for Microsoft boxen that do real work. For a gaming rig, they're overkill. Gimme a stripped-down DOS box any day.

Now that the rant's out of the way -- who cares if DOOM3 is "supported" on 98SE. I'm sure we'll find out within 72 hours whether or not it "works anyways".

Re:And on the software front...

[delus10n0]

Most of the reasons you've listed for not wanting to switch from 98 to 2k/XP are pretty silly.

In the meantime, 98SE doesn't require me to "activate" it after I swap hard drives or motherboards.

Neither does XP. I've swapped/added many a hard drive to my XP computer, and it never asked me to re-activate. A motherboard is entirely a different matter, since the activation is closely tied to that. Even then it's a simple matter of saying "reactivate over the internet", and a few seconds later you're done.

98SE doesn't run services I don't need.

98 might not run "services", but it most certainly can be running anything in the background, not to mention the normal system things that are constantly running and pretty hard to disable.

And when it crashes, it crashes hard enough that nothing's writing to the hard drive when I press the hard-reset button.

Huh? How is that a benefit? What if it was in the middle of doing a registry update and hard crashes? Next time you reboot, you're gonna get that nice Windows 98 message about the registry hive being corrupted, and to reinstall Windows. Joy!

98SE boxen (as long as you're not using M$'s crapware browser and mail client) can be plugged onto the evil Intarweb - straight out of the box - without even a firewall, and not get 0wn3d.

BS. I dare you to put a stock 98se install on an unprotected line. Time how long it takes for it to be owned. Probably under 30 minutes or so.

(This rant expired by the equivalent crashes on the same game played on a friend's XP rig - I observed that when a game in XP goes down hard, the OS keeps running. That's not a feature, that's a bug! No mouse, no GUI, just a frozen 3D rendering of the game, but the hard drive light just flickers happily as the remaining components of the OS busily "manage" the swap file. You sorta wait for the light to flicker out, and hope that you press the hard-reset button before it comes back up. WTF kind of crap is that?)

Your friend should try hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del to get back to the desktop, or even the "Windows key" gets me back there after a game freezes. ATi added a crash management program to their Catalyst drivers that helps you recover from GPU hangs, and it works pretty well. Besides, if your games/apps are crashing, you've got bigger problems than waiting for your hard drive light to stop flickering.

Re:And on the software front...

[Tackhead]

> If you're running Win98SE without a firewall, I will bet you a brand new GeForce 6800 Ultra that http://housecall.trendmicro.com will identify at least one virus or worm you're already infected with.

Alas, the gaming rig's at home, not at work, or I'd take you up on that. (Even though under most circumstances, I'd take one look at "x-trendjavascan-plugin" and say "You don't get to run here, whatever you are!", but I trust trendmicro.com for some value of trust. :)

FWIW, the old McAfee standalone "stinger" scanner gives me a clean bill of health every month or so, as does AdAware.

> The rest came in through ICMP and other vectors that Win98 was very vulnerable to.

Source? Other than 98's winnuke (easily patched , and I should have been more specific that the box in question is 98SE, which wasn't subject to that bug), I don't recall ever hearing of a remote exploit for 98SE that didn't require at least some cooperation on the part of the victim.

The gaming rig runs a somewhat more secure setup than an OOBE 98SE (e.g. it never IIS "web services" installed on it, NetBIOS crap is unbound from TCP/IP before it goes on the 'net, it does no network sharing, and is basically as deliberately as standalone a box as I can make it. A real firewall eats most inbound traffic by default, and a software "firewall" on the box (that could admittedly be compromised a'la the BlackIce hole from last year) provides early warning of phone-home apps.

For what it's worth, I'd have taken your bet (even without the hardware firewall) and one of us would have owed the other a new video card.

So my box might not have been that fair of a bet. I'd be confident that I'd win with software-firewall-only, but just for kicks, I might try imaging the OS partition, throwing it onto an old 1.2G drive, and seeing if it also passes with neither hardware nor software firewall.

And finally, having seen a couple of "Joe Sixpack" 9x machines infested from people who think "Oooh, clicky! It's my Buddy!", I'm leaning towards XP + Firewall + deactivate-administrator-account + Force Auto-Updates-And-Auto-Installs-On for anyone who's not clinically paranoid.

Re:And on the software front...

[ryanvm]

Considering that to even run Doom 3 you'll have to had purchased a computer within the last two years why would you expect them to support a 6 year old OS?

Laptop Upgrade

[Drewser]

This means I have to upgrade my laptop now to be able to play in class.

Re:Laptop Upgrade

[phalse phace]

Just slap a couple of stickers on it, paint a racing strip across it, or ad one of 'em cathode lights to it. Should increase your frame rate ten fold.

Heh heh

[stratjakt]

These things always make me laugh. HardOCP, TomsHardware, all the "hardcore modder" sites.

No doubt this article will convince a bunch of clueless wannabe's that they MUST piss away $1000 in hardware over the next week else they won't be playing Doom 3.

Which, of course, drives "obsolete" stuff, like the (now over 6 months old!) Radeon 9800 XT into the bargain bin for me!

Between these moron sites, and morons at Best Buy and CompUSA, it's a great time to be a tech bargain hunter.

Not too long ago, I overheard an employee at CompUSA telling some customer "Oh, you have DDR333? You really should get a new motherboard that supports dual-channel DDR 400, it'll make a huge difference in your frame rates".

I lurked about as the customer picked out a new mobo and two new sticks of Kingston HyperX RAM - and of course payed 3 times what the stuff would cost on newegg. He hung around as the "upgrade specialists" installed it for him. Before he left I offered him 100 bucks for his old motherboard (an Asus P4PE), 2.4ghz CPU (just a Celeron, but they frankly perform MUCH better than morons give them credit for) and "obsolete" gigabyte of DDR333, and went home with a bag full of "obsolete" goodies.

Woohoooo! God bless people who refuse to accept their own ignorance. The system works!

Never forget, don't believe your eyes. It may look really smooth and good on your screen, you may think you're having fun, but if those benchmarks say it's old, then damn you it's time to spend money!

Benchmarks are everything!

Re:Heh heh

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, you are incredibley CHEAP

fucking poor morons who cant afford the latest hardware

yourj ust like that win98fag earlier

Re:Heh heh

[untermensch]

While I mostly agree with your statements about sites like HardOCP in general, did you RTFA? They keep stressing over and over again that Doom3 plays fine on remarkably low-end systems, and that there is no real need to upgrade from the several-years-old systems that many of us have.

Re:Heh heh

[fireduck]

No doubt this article will convince a bunch of clueless wannabe's that they MUST piss away $1000 in hardware over the next week else they won't be playing Doom 3.

Actually, they post framerates for the recommended low end system that seem perfectly respectable (i.e., hovering around the 20-30 range) for an ancient system. I'm running a athlon 2100+ with a GeForce4 TI card and I'm not about to upgrade cause of this game.

(now when HL2 comes out and I've got 2 pieces of eyecandy that are droolworthy, I might think about some sort of upgrade...)

Re:Heh heh

[moonbender]

From the article:

There is no doubt that DOOM 3s minimum system specifications can easily deliver a good gaming experience. We found it simply incredible that a system this old could run DOOM 3 at all, much less run it well. It may be hard to believe, but we can honestly recommend spending $50 on DOOM 3 if you have a system comparable to this. You can still have a very worthy DOOM 3 experience with it.

I know some of you are thinking that it would be tough to call gaming at 640x480 a good gaming experience, but the environments in DOOM 3 are very forgiving in terms of resolution as discussed in our IQ section. Do we suggest you use a higher resolution to place yourself in an even more immersive environment? Without a doubt, but it is hardly a requirement to really feel a part of the DOOM 3 story.

And in the conlusion:

All that aside, I'm still astonished by our experience on the min spec system. While we think you'll likely have the best experience at the resolution and quality levels we suggested, dont think for a second that those are the actual requirements for playing DOOM 3. If I had a 1.5GHz Pentium and GeForce 4MX system that was two years old, I would still purchase this game knowing I was in for an incredible experience.

So yeah, I think this article is fairly balanced. They don't pretend you need the absolute latest and greatest to play the game. I don't think it's very insightful, really - their conclusion seems to be "well it runs best on really fast systems, but we guess you can also run it on older systems in 800x600" which isn't exactly a surprising outcome. OTOH I guess they do test Doom 3 on a large range of systems which will give you a fairly good idea at what res and quality settings your own systems will be able to run it, so the article does have its uses.

Re:Heh heh

[Lightwarrior]

Parent: -1, Troll.

He didn't read the article. He just makes blind suppositions about the content of the because it's from a hardware enthusiast site.

Part of the beauty of these sites is that we can get information about how the hardware you and I have in our computers perform compared to what's available. They clearly demonstrate what framerate and image quality you're likely to get, compared to what different hardware is capable of.

Consider my situation. My computer is pretty current, though my video card is about a gen and a half behind the bleeding edge. I'm curious what sort of frame rate and IQ I can expect when my Doom 3 preorder arrives. I know that I'm probably going to be runnining in 10x7 with MQ - maybe HQ (they didn't benchmark my *exact* system).

That's fine. Sure, I could blow $600 on a top of the line video card to improve my framerate, but I don't consider it worth it for a card that will outperform 99% of the games I own.

Assuming Doom 3 is the game it's hyped to be, a year or two down the road I'll be able to come back and play this game in all the glory I could have spent $600 now to see. It's a matter of personal preference.

Hell, I've been doing that with System Shock 2 and Deus Ex for years. Each new video card yields at least one more playthrough, with higher graphics settings, more AA/AF, or whatever.

In regards to your situation of screwing someone out of perfectly good hardware, did it ever cross your mind to inform the gentleman that his hardware was perfectly acceptable, and that the Best Buy salesperson was just trying to make a buck?

In less polite terms, I hope I'm never mugged when you're around.

-lw

Re:Heh heh

[rpdillon]

OK, lets not jump the gun here...

The folks over at TomsHardware, HardOCP, whatever tech site you want to pick on are in a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEAGUE than the idiots that work or shop and CompUSA, Circuit City, whatever.

Those sites cater to folks that want specs on high end hardware. Everyone knows that there is a sweet spot in computer hardware somewhere between cutting edge and one generation old. Performance vs cost in computer hardware (as in cars, machinery, whatever) is exponential, and most people realize this. Those that have a lot of money, spend accordingly, probably knowing its not the best "deal".

That said, of all the articles I've read over at HardOCP, this one gives the most recognition to gamers who don't want to spend a boatload of money. I say:

Give HardOCP credit...they did a very comprehensive and useful review, even for the more casual gamer.

SMP

[iamthemoog]

Nice article, though where's the multi-processor graphs? "Ultimate DOOM3 Systems" still only shows single CPU systems.

Any clues anyone? It seems the game is pretty much video card limited, but a 2nd CPU might flatten out the frame rates to a more even level instead of bouncing up and down from 17 to 60 FPS ...

Re:SMP

[micr0c0sm]

It's confirmed that there is no SMP support. Most games do not have it. Check the [H]ardForums for more info.

Huh???

[TopShelf]

"With the prospect of so many new people being brought into gaming by DOOM 3..."

Does anyone really see Doom 3 as some kind of crossover phenomenon that will make people start gaming and suddenly go buy top-notch computers to support their new addiction? I highly doubt it. This sounds like a huge event for the computer gaming crowd, but not much beyond that.

Sorry to poo-poo the hyperbole, but come on...

Autospooge

[AliasTheRoot]

Is it too much to ask that we have some confirmation that Doom3 is actually a good game before /. spams us with 15 stories a day on it?

There's tons of games coming out all the time, many are better than the mediocre junk id foists on us in the name of selling graphics engines, why dont they get covered?

Re:Autospooge

[th1ckasabr1ck]

Go pick up the latest PCGamer and read the review. Or go check out PlanetDoom and read the reviews in the forum section. All signs point to it being an amazing game that completely lives up to the hype.

Re:Autospooge

[stratjakt]

I don't know, but I can tell you that Far Cry kicks ass. It supports the latest in rendering techniques, but more importantly, it's a fun game with great level design and awesome enemy AI.

Doom 3 isn't going to impress me nearly as much as it would have if Far Cry hadn't beat them to the punch. Id didn't set the bar this time, CryTech did.

New Standards

[micr0c0sm]

It is obvious that this sets a new standard for hardware scaling in games. 640x480 at low quality looks stunning, as does 1600x1200 at high. The fact that 80% of modern hardware (remember 78.1% of statistics are made up) can run it proves that id software is as dedicated as ever to providing the best gaming experience as possible. This guide also sets a new standard in thorough reviews. Granted this shouldn't be expected for every game, although it proves [H]ardOCP is comprised of a dedicated team (thanks Kyle and everyone else) who only want to bring the best information to the end-user. I for one have a new level of respect for id software, and [H]ardOCP. They are both setting new standards in thier respective areas.

Hardware guide?

[FerretFrottage]

1. Chainsaw
2. Boomstick
3. Super boomstick
4. Chaingun
5. Rockets launcher
6. Plasma gun
7. BFG
and a bit of armor

what more do you need?

Aren't they standard issue for all Space Marines?

I'm glad there were screen shots...

[MattRog]

Even looking at the configuration screen shots gave me a little wood: I can't imagine the unparalleled joy I will feel when I start it for the first time.

I suspect one of these things will occur:
1) my heart will stop for two or three seconds when I hear the first 5.1 audio
2) my bladder will burst from playing through the entire game in one marathon 54 hour session
3) I will immediately develop carpal tunnel and a permanent curved spine from sitting in my computer chair
4) My eyes will melt in their sockets like the Nazis in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
5) all of the above

BRING IT ON

3D Sound?

[Lumpmoose]

The article recommends a 5.1 speaker setup. Since EAX isn't supported (erm, yet) and it uses software-based audio, how does the game interface with, say, a normal DD/DTS reciever and it's digital vs. 6-channel analog inputs? I'm waiting for a DD-advertised game to actually output a Dolby Digital signal w/o an nForce.

/hopeless Creative junkie

Hardware on GNU/Linux

[sverrehu]

The interesting question is: What is the optimal hardware for running Doom 3 on a GNU/Linux system? I haven't played a game since RtCW, and I want to buy a new system to play Doom 3 on GNU/Linux. I know nothing about the current state of hardware support for various high-end graphics cards on GNU/Linux.

Re:Hardware on GNU/Linux

[Nosf3ratu]

Here's the long and short answer:

ATI 3d support is spotty at best. Nvidia support is excellent. Their cards perform just as good (if not better, in some cases) in Linux as they do in Windows. I have been gaming with Linux and Nvidia exclusively for about three years (including all the recent titles, such as RtCW, Q3, UT2K3, UT2K4, and ET) and it performs very well. Pair up a big nVidia with a 64bit Athlon, and you've got an excellent gaming rig.

So, the answer: The optimal hardware is the same, no matter what the operating system (although you would require less RAM on Linux, for example, if you use a slim window manager, as compared to XP, etc, etc, ymmv, and all that rot.)

Re:Hardware on GNU/Linux

[molarmass192]

Agreed, nVIDIA drivers for Linux are solid. If anyone wants to really squeeze all the possible juice out of their machine for gaming:

1) Switch to runlevel 1:
-> init 1
2) Disable swapping:
-> echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
3) Start sound manually:
-> /etc/init.d/alsasound start
4) Start networking manually:
-> /etc/init.d/network start
5) Start X without a window manager:
-> startx xterm
6) Launch Doom from the xterm prompt
-> /games/doom3/doom3.sh???

You might be able to take it a step further and try passing the doom startup script to startx but this doesn't work with all games. That said, here's hoping the Linux binaries are available VERY soon after next Tuesday since I'll have the game in hand that Thursday. I've got a GF3 Ti420 so I might be scrambling for a vid card this weekend, but I'm gonna try it first.

Doom3 Board

[vurg]

Don't forget your customized Doom 3 zboard keyset.

JPEG Compression

[Overand]

I don't know if I'm the only person who noticed this, but these screenshot images are REALLY poorly compressed; doing a side-by-side comparison is pointless if all you see are JPEG Jaggies.

Spoiler alert!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnnnnnnh! By God, please don't read the article if you are a spoiler-sensitive person. The fps-graph clearly indicates the locations of monsters as the article describes how "some heavy action that requires the video card to draw several monsters at one time, the frame rate can drop down". Thankfully I didn't look at the x-axis too carefully. Be cautious, people! This article may truly be the demise of your Doom3 experience!

Minimum Required System

[spellraiser]

Strange that this hasn't been posted already ... well, here it is:

DX 9.0 compatible 3D card w/ 64MB RAM*
MS Windows 2000/XP
Pentium 4 1.5 GHz or Athlon XP 1500+
384 MB RAM
8x CD-ROM
2.2 GB of HD space
Broadband (for multiplayer)

*Supported 3D Graphics chipsets:
ATI: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
NVIDIA: GeForce 3, GeForce 4MX, GeForce 4 Titanium, GeForce FX, GeForce 6

Re:Minimum Required System

[DeltaSigma]

They refer to DirectX 9.0 cards because that's what most people recognize. It IS an OpenGL card, and it will use OpenGL rendering paths. However the OpenGL enhancements present on a DirectX 9 card are better than the OpenGL enhancements on a DirectX 8 card... ...it's all a name game pretty much.

Quake?

[skiman1979]

Just curious, is there a reason this story is posted with a Quake 3 icon? Isn't there a games icon?

Answers

[rd_syringe]

An unoriginal plot

Doom started that plot years before Half-Life.

An unoriginal genre

Doom started that genre years before Quake.

Did id even bother hiring writers?

Yes, they did.

High hardware requirements

The HardOCP article makes it a point to state that the minimum spec machine ran the game great.

Nice troll.

LCD is bad for gaming? Time to rethink this...

[LighthouseJ]

How is an LCD bad for gaming, the refresh rate?

I play HL and GTA:VC on my Dell Laptop with the 15.4" display and it looks much much better than my 21" CRT I use a secondary monitor. The refresh is amazing, and the picture quality is crazy crisp. I would use an LCD over a CRT any day, even a smaller LCD too.

Will There Be Demos?

[LighthouseJ]

Any word anywhere on Doom 3 demos? If at all possible, I try the game demos to see how the game performs on my computer. I don't want to buy an unreturnable software game and find out I'd need to upgrade laptop hardware before it's framerates are sane enough to play with.

The report said nothing

[foidulus]

about the benefits of speed holes. I put a few in my machine and I am rip roaring ready to go!

Priceless

[john_smith_45678]

* Doom 3 - $50
* New system to run Doom 3 - $650-100+
* Not realizing the irony of this - priceless

Re:Any one figured out ... ?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Previous reviews and previews have implied that the brand of sound card doesn't much matter (at least for quake iii), but it should be capable of driving 6 speakers.

Dither?

[mfh]

>mfh, are you serious? I can't tell the difference between the two ... what's different?

I'm not sure if it's a dither on the BFGTech Geforce or what, but I could see many of the cells towards the darker area of the image quite a bit more pronounced than on the image with the ATI card. Whenever the dark background is blended with the light, the ATI card seems to be hiding the cubism better than the BFGTech cardie. You see the little cubes all over? They are present in both cards, but the difference is more pronounced with the BFGTech, thus making it less believable. The ATI handles these imperfections in a quite stunning manner, IMHO.

There also seems to be better interpolation between the brown line in the light on the ATI card, as the line seems to be less jagged.

Maybe this was just a varriation from the position the screenshot was taken between the cards, but in that representation I think the ATI looks nicer.

Re:Dither?

[Viking Coder]

No way. All of the differences you point out are completely masked by the JPG differences. (Those "cubes" you refered to are DCT 8x8 boundary artifacts.)

I look at computer-generated image quality differences all day long at my job, and comparing these two images, there basically aren't any. I've additionally used a JPG Artifact removal tool on the two images, and then done the image differencing trick, and you have to turn gamma up by about 1.5 before you see *any* differences, and I believe all of those are positional differences. Turning the gamma up by about 2.5 is even more revealing: the differences between the images are hugely dominated by JPG differences.

Look again.

We'd both need better source images to make any strong claims about one card being better or worse than the other. From where I'm sitting, they're nearly identical.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Viking Coder]

It's the authors. Just like people line up to read the next J.K. Rowlings novel, before there have been any reviews out, people line up to buy the next John Carmack game.

It could be called "The Facts of Life: Tuti versus Natalie" and people would line up around the block for it.

That said, have you read a bad J.K. Rowlings novel?

Translating this all back into the world of technology, it's just the Next Big Thing. I've been waiting since, what, 1999 for this? For me, it's kind of like, Return of the King. I really liked Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers, and I just knew that ROTK was going to be great. I just knew it! Granted, I pretty much felt the same way about Star Wars I and Matrix II and Matrix III. But, people are optimists about entertainment, and the act of being optomistic about it is honestly almost as much fun as the thing itself. I *crave* Doom 3.

Re:Quake 3 Icon

[Lispy]

Yeah, at least an overall Doom Icon would be appropriate. Or an id-icon, if it is for webspace forget about he Compaq icon, they were bought by HP a year ago. While you're at it please update the Ximian Icon with a Novell logo, the Palm III icon with a Tungsten and pleeeease the GNOME icon with a GNOME2 icon. Thank you...

Uh...

[Cyno01]

The new Apple Displays have a 16ms refresh rate. Thats plenty good for gaming. I think there are only a few samsung displays that are quicker than that at 12ms... I bought a 20" yesterday. :D