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.

[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.

[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

[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.

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

[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

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. "

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...

[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".

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.

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...

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

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...)

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: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: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.

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

Quake?

[skiman1979]

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

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: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.