The Official DOOM 3 [H]ardware Guide thread.

Amazing guide, but I have a question about resolution versus AA. Above 1024x768 on my 19" monitor I never see any difference in IQ in games, besides ofcourse the smaller jaggies. Dropping to 800x600 makes the IQ horrible, but am I wrong in not seeing an IQ increase when going to 1600x1200? Do I need to check my eyes? If 2XAA at 1024x768 can give a similar reduction in jaggies as going to 1600x1200 with maybe even less of a performance hit, I stick with AA because at 1024x768 my monitor has a much more pleasant refresh rate (120 versus 85@16x12). Could you comment on this?
 
_Alx said:
Amazing guide, but I have a question about resolution versus AA. Above 1024x768 on my 19" monitor I never see any difference in IQ in games, besides ofcourse the smaller jaggies. Dropping to 800x600 makes the IQ horrible, but am I wrong in not seeing an IQ increase when going to 1600x1200? Do I need to check my eyes? If 2XAA at 1024x768 can give a similar reduction in jaggies as going to 1600x1200 with maybe even less of a performance hit, I stick with AA because at 1024x768 my monitor has a much more pleasant refresh rate (120 versus 85@16x12). Could you comment on this?
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Personal preference, everybody sees things a little differently. Some people prefer high resolutions with NoAA some like lower with AA and some like high res with AA, etc...
 
Man, that's beautiful. Thanks to Kyle and the [H]ard team!

I'm pretty surprised about the fact that AA is fairly unnecessary, but it does make sense. Now I just need the game in my hands and I'll be all set.! :D
 
great article guys, best read I had in a while, very informative and useful, thank you all for your efforts and time;

@_Alx: you will have the best IQ by playing the game on the native resolution resolution of your monitor.. 19" 1280x1024 on CRT, 1600x1200 on TFT.
 
Great job guys! Is there any advantage to running 2Gb of ram for High quality rather than just Ultra quality? I've got another 1Gb of ram I could install, but then I'd have to degrade my ram timings.
 
Awesome! Answered all the questions I had about performance for the game. It was a very big thing and the rest of the community will be talking about it until Doom III. No other site has this, and is another reason to keep coming to [H]ard|OCP. Having the Doom III systems through Newegg.com is a great idea, and almost guarantees performance featured in your article. Keep up the great work!
 
No SMP really sucks.

I cannot believe it is "that" difficult to add. This game took 4 years to make. How hard would it be to do a little multithreading?

Dual Cpu / Dual GPU (SLI) is just around the corner. Work with us on this one JC.
 
Hmm, me thinks I will pick up a Audigy sound card and another 512 stick of ram


I think my motherboard has 5.1-Channel AC'97 Codec. That sucks balls right?
 
I think the article did a great job in most respects. One thing I'd like to have seen, though.

At one point, in the far distat past, John Carmack was heard to have said that the Radeon 9700 Pro would be "the" card to get for Doom 3. A number of us made a major mistake in listening to his words, and bought into the Radeon 97xx/95xx family, preparing for a game that took much longer to release, by which time said hardware was no longer cutting edge.

While the performance of these cards has been great, I'd have really liked to see how well the 9500Pro and 9700Pro stacked up. I know that since they have DX9, we'll get the Heat Haze feature and such, but I wanted to make sure that 1024x768 at High Quality could be done. The article was cake all right...I just hoped for a little more frosting. :)
 
bmg said:
Great job guys! Is there any advantage to running 2Gb of ram for High quality rather than Ultra quality? I've got another 1Gb of ram I could install, but then I'd have to degrade my ram timings.
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not for high quality
 
Nvidiot said:
No SMP really sucks.

I cannot believe it is "that" difficult to add. This game took 4 years to make. How hard would it be to do a little multithreading?

Dual Cpu / Dual GPU (SLI) is just around the corner. Work with us on this one JC.
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the game is higly video card dependent anyways, i don't see how an smp setup would help when even lower end cpu's like the AXP and 2.4C are doing just fine in it
 
Impact9 said:
Heh, Hey you know I would gladly drop a few pesos to have a ad free [H]. ;)
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That was in the works earlier this year and the project was nixed when the funds had to be allocated to the Infinium Labs/Phantom Console lawsuit that is still on going.
 
LoneWolf said:
I think the article did a great job in most respects. One thing I'd like to have seen, though.

At one point, in the far distat past, John Carmack was heard to have said that the Radeon 9700 Pro would be "the" card to get for Doom 3. A number of us made a major mistake in listening to his words, and bought into the Radeon 97xx/95xx family, preparing for a game that took much longer to release, by which time said hardware was no longer cutting edge.

While the performance of these cards has been great, I'd have really liked to see how well the 9500Pro and 9700Pro stacked up. I know that since they have DX9, we'll get the Heat Haze feature and such, but I wanted to make sure that 1024x768 at High Quality could be done. The article was cake all right...I just hoped for a little more frosting. :)
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9500Pro here: http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDY=
 
Dougieha said:
Kyle and Brent:

One question...what monitors did you guys use to test on? I have a Dell 2001FP LCD with a 16ms response time, and I was wondering if you guys tested with any LCDs, and if so, how they looked. In any case, I'm happy that I'll be able to run at my native resolution.
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We brought our own 19" CRTs. No LCD testing was done.
 
Yahya said:
can you guys explain to me why the ati x800's are performing relatively poorer than the 6800's and do you think a driver tweak would make a difference?
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Many are pointing to the drivers, but I really think there are some fundemental hardware issues at work here. NV4X was built to do stencil shadows and ATI's tech, that is basically 2 years old is not.....
 
Kyle n Brent, very nice work and well done on the article. I was able to read through it and get a very good idea of where almost any system config and video card will handle the game. Even though you didn't have the time to test the multitude of possible system configs out there, I think you provided the information necessary for almost anyone to determine what game settings will work best for their current machine or where the upgrade dollars can be best spent to give them the level of gameplay they desire. One of the most informative and helpful articles posted on OCP to date. Thanks for all of the [H]ard work.

If by some chance someone from ID software also reads these, I don't think ya'll could have picked a better site to allow this testing and hardware guide to be written by. Their work speaks for itself. Thanks for letting them do it. (and tell JC good luck with the X Prize).
 
Thank you for the guide! I now have a clearer picture of what to purchase, and also feel good that this game will be playable on 2 of my 4 PC's right out of the box.

60 some hours in 3 days, that is dedication! Thanks again, [H] is the Best
!
 
I hope my pentium 4 1.6 gigahertz, 512mb ram, 9600XT hold up well :(.

I'd like to use 1024 by 768 and high quality... any chance that will happen? :(
 
Nvidiot said:
No SMP really sucks.

I cannot believe it is "that" difficult to add. This game took 4 years to make. How hard would it be to do a little multithreading?

Dual Cpu / Dual GPU (SLI) is just around the corner. Work with us on this one JC.
Click to expand...
If you understood how programing for SMP works, you might understand why they don't want to use it. For one, it causes timing issuses, which can allow for problems in calculations, like in the per-[poly,pixel] hit detection, that can screw up game play. Look into SMP Race Conditions, that might help explain it better then I can.
 
While technically the DOOM 3 Ultra Quality level calls for a 512MB video card, if you have enough system memory on the motherboard, you can get that Ultra experience even at 1600x1200 with 4XAA. There are still some slight pauses in the game that are noticeable as the textures needed are loaded from system memory, but it is certainly playable and you will have a hard time beating the visual experience. This is probably the closest we have come to witnessing real-time movie quality CG.
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Would this apply to my system, if I had a 6800Ultra OC???

Could I still play at 1600x1200 Ultra High, 4xa/a 8xa/f ??? i.e. do I have what it takes to play at the level of your "[H]ard|OCP Ultimate DOOM 3 System" ?

My 2gb ram is 3200re, processor FX-51, so both slightly(?) slower.

An answer to the above would be much appreciated, thanks.

(also - I notice that you say in your 6800u OC review on Farcry, that the x800xt performs better (higher res - 6800u isn't playable at 1600x1200) - has that been adressed now (think it has?)
 
Wow, awesome guide. You guys pretty much covered my system to a T. Thank you for not ignoring the 9500 Pro.

I think this article really shows the strengths of your reviewing method. Other sites might do an apples to apples comparison, but I think it is awesome to see exactly how my system will perform in this game.

Thanks again and thanks to id for this awesome game.
 
Very impressive. You all take the cake for going above and beyond when it comes to a hardware site.

thanks. I mean it.
 
That was VERY indepth, thanks so much.

Definately a quality read, and tought me tonnes about what to expect.
 
Xipher said:
If you understood how programing for SMP works, you might understand why they don't want to use it. For one, it causes timing issuses, which can allow for problems in calculations, like in the per-[poly,pixel] hit detection, that can screw up game play. Look into SMP Race Conditions, that might help explain it better then I can.
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Yeah Xipher, it's a big mystery to me how it works. No way Carkmack could figure it out either. I guess we just ain't bright enough.
 
Carmack knows exactly what he is doing, and that is why he didn't use it. Quake 3 had some SMP support, but it wasn't recomended that people use it.
Also, the way can utilize SMP can be different depending on Operating System. Without it, it helps portablity. I don't even know how one would utilize it in windows, but I have read up on using it in C with Linux. Its supposed to be standardized, but not every one always follows standards.
 
TonyZ said:
Kyle || Brent

Have you guys done any OC testing with the 6800 series cards? I'm was just wondering if you ran into any problems with D3 running in an overclocked config where other games ran fine based on Carmak's mention of overclockers beware.

BTW, excellent writeup.

-Tony
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I clocked the stock 6800NU (325) up to 425MHz and it started corrupting textures so I backed it down to 400 where it was stable. Keep in mind that ALL of the BFGTech 6800 cards are already OCed and we saw no issues at all.
 
NoGodForMe said:
Holy wow Batman.
/picks jaw up off the floor after seeing so many tests.
You've outdone yourselves again.
First the BFG hardware articles, and now this.
I could feel the excitement coming thru the screen.
Thanks for all the hard work and time spent testing.
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I think that one line makes for the best compliment I have ever gotten in my seven years of doing this. Many thanks for the kind words.
 
Does this mean I'm going to pick up more chicks with my video card? :confused:

:p

Another masterpiece from you guys, you seem to never let me down! Thanks! Oh and the ads "added" a nice touch, so I went ahead and clicked on them to show support for you guys!
 
Good job IMHO. It's obvious alot of work went into it. I'm also happy I don't have to regret any of my hardware decisions :D
 
oh wow great review. I do have a question though? What is the min CPU speed before it starts handicapping your video card? The reason I ask is that I have a Athlon 2100XP and I am considering buying the 6800 GT becasue I want to play the game at 1280x1024 High Quality with maybe some AA if I have enogh power leftover. Suggestions?
 
Thank you Kyle and Brent for the excellent gudie that you guys put together. It was very informative indeed and showing us how even on a two yr old card the game still looks very breath taking.

Makes you wonder if you need to even waste your money upgrading to play this game? The funny thing is If anything your upgrade dollars whould have been more better suited for Far Cry than Doom 3 and possibly for Half Life 2 (gonna have to wait and see on that one but I cant imagine them pulling the same IQ "stunt" that id did hehe).

Once again thanks [H] crew, id, and enthusiast hardware providers :) :) :)
 
Hi. I don't really play many computer games but i would ideally like to be able to play Doom 3 at 1024x768 at HIGH texture settings.

I currently have a P4 2.8 GHz with 1 GB of PC3200 ram and a ATI 9800 pro video card. I don't really know how drivers effect performance but it seems like people are saying new ATI drivers should help perfomance somewhat. Do you think it will bump perfomance up enough that I would be able to run at HIGH texture quality on my machine?
 
Xipher said:
Carmack knows exactly what he is doing, and that is why he didn't use it. Quake 3 had some SMP support, but it wasn't recomended that people use it.
Also, the way can utilize SMP can be different depending on Operating System. Without it, it helps portablity. I don't even know how one would utilize it in windows, but I have read up on using it in C with Linux. Its supposed to be standardized, but not every one always follows standards.
Click to expand...

I'm just surprised that's all. If SMP was attempted in Q3 there must have been at least one person at id that thought it would be beneficial.

I am thinking down the road as well. We read all about multi-core cpus coming from AMD and Intel. The current batch of P4's already has HT. It seems like a no-brainer to include SMP support (if only to distribute the physics engine workload or maybe the AI engine workload). Today this may not be a big deal, but as this will be THE game for the next 2 to 3 years it would be great if it were made to take advantage of near future or even contemporary features in cpu technology.

This is not a trivial programming task, but neither is writing the most advanced video game to ever hit the market.



Just my 0.02.
 
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