Doom 3 Review.. Finally

yeah but he said that you could also play w/ a geforce4 mx and 512mb of ram just fine.

i think that 1024 768 is about right w/ all settings max, and when you see it in person you will too :) trust me.
 
yeah the link says

"I know everyone's excited about Doom 3. However, please do not reprint the review in its entirety. Thanks!"

btw, when is doom 3 supposed to come out?
 
lost0822 said:
I'm a moron where's the review?
removed as pointed out above. I think it's in the current PC Gamer. My free subscription just ran out last month. :(
 
I'm so confused, i'm holding the new PC Gamer (w/some girl from Dungeon Siege II on it) in my hand, flipped thru it about 3 times, no Doom Review, plus if they had a Doom review i would think that would be on the cover, not Dungeon Siege II. what's going on?
 
whoa: "with a geforce4 MX card and 512 MB RAM, the texture detail was great, although the game was choppier in spots." That gives me hope it will run decently on my laptop (mobile Ti-4200).
 
Top 10 things you need to know bout DooM 3!

1. 6800 is a tad faster than X800 cards. Both run it in full glory

2. The game has four render paths: NV10, NV20, R200, and ARB2. All paths look awesome, even down to a g4mx, but the ARB2 path is the "full package," and is used for the R300+ and Geforce FX+ cards. It does all it's fancy **** in one pass.

3. PCI Express enhances NOTHING.

4. The difference between a 128mb and 256mb card is that the former uses compressed textures whereas the latter only compresses diffuse and specualr maps. In another words, no big deal. However, a 500mb card is needed to run the game in Ultra Quality mode.

5. 512MB is the ideal system total memory. 384 is required, 1GB is nice, but the difference is negligible.

6. Nothing special is included for a 64-bit OS.

7. A 1.5 Ghz processor is the least recommended, but a 2Ghz and above will help since...

8...The sound engine is entirely CPU dependant. Therefore a crappy soundcard works flawlessly. Not to worry, the enfine only uses a "small percentage of cycles, much less than if the engine relied on a soundcard.

9. The only reccommendation regarding faster framerates is to disable to "advanced special effects option." In other words, upgrade if you have problems.

10. They tie it up by providing three levels of "Doom lovin' PC's"

Low-End:
1.5GhzP4 or equivalent
512MB Ram
Geforce4 Ti 4800 or Radeon 9500

Mid-Range:
2.4GhzP4 or equivalent
1GB RAM
Geforce5950 or Radeon 9800 Pro/XT

High_End: Aka Hardware that doesn't exist, but best guess anyway
3.4GhzP4 or AMD equivalent
2GB RAM
GeForce 6800 Ultra or Radeon X800 XT PE.

In conclusion, the game will run well on a variety of hardware, and Rob Duffy, the lead programmer, says that the game looks real good no matter what, and that it will continue to look better as hardware improves. Like all previous id engines, we'll be playing games based on D3 for another five years down the road.
 
how can the 6800 be only a tad bit faster than the x800? the 6800 blows away the x800 in every other opengl game.
 
Just subscribe to PCGamer when they have a special discounted offer -- It's a quality magazine that everyone in these forums can appreciate... even though sometimes I'm not too sure about the hardware reviews....

Also, I'm not sure that we should worry what resolution the game runs in - I'm guessing that Doom III's 1024x768 will look just as sweet as a lot of other games running at 1600x1200 --
 
creedAMD said:
how can the 6800 be only a tad bit faster than the x800? the 6800 blows away the x800 in every other opengl game.

Well apparently Doom 3 isn't the x800 opengl killer it was portrayed as. :p

(Takes creeds temp)

You feeling ok? LOL
 
Blackwind said:
Well apparently Doom 3 isn't the x800 opengl killer it was portrayed as. :p

(Takes creeds temp)

You feeling ok? LOL

just surprised, I have a 6800gt coming one of my main reasons for getting it was the superiority in opengl in older games, I thought that with even more intense graphics it would separate even more from the x800, oh well.
 
creedAMD said:
just surprised, I have a 6800gt coming one of my main reasons for getting it was the superiority in opengl in older games, I thought that with even more intense graphics it would separate even more from the x800, oh well.

But every OpenGL game doesnt show the same difference between nv and ati cards, why did you expect every one of them to just be a crushing defeat for ati?
 
Guys guys guys I think ATI is aware of the game Doom 3 and what impact it will have so yeah X800 drivers is probably very well optimized for that game as well as the 6800 drivers. And with the 4,7 ATI have improved their Open GL performance too across the whole board.

Believe it or not the x800 are awesome cards too ;)
 
i think this will also hold true with HL2, i am also pretty sure that nvidia's drivers will be ready to get comparable performance numbers with ati's cards. imo you cant lose either way going with ati or nvidia, the big difference from what i have heard is that the 6800 series, especially the gt, is having more oc headroom than the x800 series, but i may be wrong.
 
A 6800(was it a ultra/GT/regular?) running doom3 at 1024x768? i expected a little more but oh well.

Is Ultrashadow II somthing you enable via coding in the game, or does it have to be enabled by drivers?
 
Yes surely those games will be well optimized for both cards from the start so ev. performance difference will probably be more on the hardware level and features like 3dc for HL 2 and Ultrashadow for Doom 3... ATI:s better PS 2.0 performance will of course help a bit too but marginal since 6800 PS 2.0 performance aren´t bad at all.
 
Well not to much of worry to me. With my 9800 PRO playing Far Cry I was limited to 1024x768 on my 21" and it still looked better than any game before it. Even with only 2x aa. I guess the more detail somehow makes up for the low resolution.

Though it can be a bit scary that you pay 500$ for a video card and you are down to 1024x768 gaming instantly when you had hoped for 1600x1200 max detail :)

I am getting used to it flight sims are like that. They are optimized to hold for many many years so you can´t max it out on current hardware. It´s a good way doing it really giving it place to grow. As we have now all those Quake 3 based games start to look really old and gives you 250 fps or similar.
 
None of us will really know how well the 6800's and X800's perform in Doom 3 until some actual Hardware sites get ahold of a copy. PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, Computer Games, and others aren't usually very accurate with their performance scores for Hardware.

They also usually use the oldest drivers they can find it seems like lol.

Hopefully both cards are able to perform well at high settings in Doom 3 but i really look for the 6800's to have at least a 10 fps or more lead on their X800 counterparts.

UltraShadow II Technology

Accurate shadows are critical for realistic and believable scenes in games. But the complex interactions between light sources, objects, and characters involve elaborate programming. For every frame in a game, every light source must be analyzed relative to every object, potentially bogging down the PC and affecting your gameplay. Now, the latest NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6 Series of GPUs delivers the patent-pending NVIDIA® UltraShadow™ II technology, which can be applied to today’s games to build stunning visual effects and to create distinctive digital environments. With a system powered by a GeForce 6 Series GPU, anytime a game or application calculates shadows, UltraShadow II will enhance the overall performance.

Technology Advances
With UltraShadow II hardware, the more passes that are required for the lighting and shadow calculations in a scene, the more significant the performance improvement, with the most complex scenes achieving the most noticeable results. Thus, emerging next-generation games, that employ multiple light sources with many visible objects in each scene—such as Doom III from id Software—will see dramatic improvements in execution speeds. The technology advancements in UltraShadow II also deliver a 4× performance increase (compared to the previous generation) for passes involving shadow volumes.

Additionally, NVIDIA UltraShadow II gives developers the ability to calculate shadows much more quickly by eliminating unnecessary areas from consideration. By defining a bounded portion of a scene (called “depth bounds”), and focusing calculations only on the area most affected by the light source, developers can greatly accelerate the shadow generation process. With the ability to fine-tune shadows within critical regions, developers create incredible visualizations that mimic reality, and still achieve awesome performance for fast-action games. UltraShadow II also works perfectly with NVIDIA® Intellisample™ 3.0 technology to ensure that shadow edges are properly antialiased.

The Result
Ultimately, the innovative techniques combined in NVIDIA’s UltraShadow II technology will empower developers with more programming flexibility and the hardware muscle they need to create unprecedented effects in their games and 3D applications. Complicated lighting and shadow effects become practical and next-generation games rise to the next level in cinematic realism. The results are more photorealistic scenes and environments in your games, without compromising PC performance.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_ultrashadow2.html
 
So im guessing its enabled threw the game like the far cry sm3.0 patch, and not the drivers like the on-chip video processor. /me is confused ;x
 
any idea when the demo will be released ?
it would take some time for it to come in stores in my country ,so would atleast play the demo :)
 
burningrave101 said:
None of us will really know how well the 6800's and X800's perform in Doom 3 until some actual Hardware sites get ahold of a copy. PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, Computer Games, and others aren't usually very accurate with their performance scores for Hardware.

They also usually use the oldest drivers they can find it seems like lol.

Hopefully both cards are able to perform well at high settings in Doom 3 but i really look for the 6800's to have at least a 10 fps or more lead on their X800 counterparts.

UltraShadow II Technology



http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_ultrashadow2.html

I agree, for now the fact that it is gold is enough to sell mags. The rags will sell more later with an article on hardware superiorority how ever small the difference may be
 
there will be a demo, but after the game is out.

From Todd himself.
Demo: our priority was finishing the game first and now we are turning our attention to the demo. I
don't have any information to share regarding any specific content, but I don't believe that we have
ever disappointed in that regard in the past. We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this
probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves.
http://www.webdog.org/plans/6/

and look out for some preperation tips today :D
I know I owe you those preparation tips, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.
 
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