Doom3 Benchmarks too good to be true ?

[Labrador]

We have all seen the new Doom3 benchmarks here;
http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQy

I was wondering are the good FPS "too good to be true ?" Because one of the comments in the [H] review really rang a bell, something like a year ago they didnt think when the game would ship, there would be NO video card available to play the game at high res + maxxed game options and still get decent frames.
Please post your opinions on which one of these statements seem more realistic.


- The new [H]ardware by nVidia 6800 series really is ground breaking, and better than we expected ?

- Doom3 graphics are NOT as great as we all hoped they would be, still being a great looking game engine, but not that holy sh!t wow factor ?

 

[theNoid]

Have you seen the graphics ? the gameplay ? because by your statesments I'd assume thats a no. Doom3 is IS the most anticipated PC game to date. People have saved money to upgrade just for this game. Why ? Because stastics show the average gamer is 24-40 yrs old, and most of us grew up on the Doom series. That and the fact the engine is outstanding ...

That being said, the graphics ARE that good, and believe you me, the gameplay will have the WOW factor if not the OMFG WOWZERS factor. Everyone was so Doom hyped up, the benchmarks came out... since then I see posts springing up denouncing iD or actually trying to say how Doom3 isn't good anyways... and you know what ? Just look at the sig of whos posting and you'll understand why. People are turning into sour grapes because 'the truth hurts'.

DEAL.

 

[AgentxofxChaos]

What Noid said. The wow factor is definitely there, the graphics are definitely there. In my opinion we haven't seen anything as good as this to date. Do keep in mind that the benchmarks they did were timedemos, so real world gameplay performance will probably be slightly lower than that shown in these tests. It is probably still safe to say that playing the game in it's "Ultra" settings will still need a newer card, however it is very good on current hardware as well. So the great [H]-Team will be doing a more in depth review of several different hardware configurations, to give a more detailed test. That will be where we will see probably the "real world gameplay" results. However it is looking pretty good so far.

 

[doh-nut]

i wouldn't say doom3 is the most anticipated. wouldn't say it wasn't either, but halflife2 is just as anticipated

 

[Karmakaze]

Option #3: Carmack and company have had almost a year to tweak the game. A game can look good without necessarily needing 10x more horsepower, and if anyone can do that it's id.

 

[datamage]

You also have to remember that the timedemos do not take AI/Physics into calculation. So actual performance should be somewhat lower.

One thing that you really must keep in mind when looking at timedemo results such as these, is that DOOM 3’s AI and physics engine are not being used as they would in a real-world gaming experience.

edit: Just noticed that IxGOxSOLO posted the same remark.

- D.

 

[ReaperMan]

High Quality is not the highest avaliable, AFAIK. I've seen a proverbial "Ultra" setting mentioned a couple of times, that cannot run on the current cards period, as it needs about 512 MB of video memory.

You might also note that they didn't test 1600x1200 at 8xAA and 8/16xAF. I have a feeling the cards might run out of memory at that anyways.

Also, most cards these days support 1920xsomething crazy as well, and some break 2000 pixels wide.

So, no, no card runs it at decent framerates at maximum resolution, maximum AA, maximum AF, maximum features, and maximum drool-worthiness.

I will say that it was a bit of an eye opener that it breaks 60 fps at 1600x1200 in HQ mode.

 

[heyheyhey]

The game will definatly have the "wow" factor you are refering too.

 

[LiquidX]

What I think it is, is that DOOM3 is ushering in a new era like Quake did. Everything is about to repeat and mimic the Quake and Unreal era, being wowed, having a ton of games on the engines and not being able to full max them out until a few years...or months at the rate ATI and NV is going.

Also with this era more than before it's developers it seems are making their games more powerful than before. Most FPS before use to be made for low end to mid-range systems now its seems its for mid-range to the high-end with recent releases. I guess id just designed DOOMIII with the future in mind knowing the long lasting affect there Quake engine has had and the fast improvements in pc hardware..

 

[HitMan-sC]

I wouldn't say the numbers are too good to be true. This is Carmack we're talking about here. Why would he code an engine that would only run well on systems in the hands of less than 1% of the target audience? Besides, you have to consider that most of these monsters have a low-poly count, but are bump-mapped to get their detail. Sure, real-world performance will be slightly lower, but almost everyone should be able to get a great experience out of the game.

 

[Neurofreeze]

Also remember that these were timedemos, so the physics engine really wasn't pushing the system as much as it normally would, although that's all CPU.

 

[Xenozx]

does doom 3 use SM3.0 at this stage of the game?

 

[Neurofreeze]

I wouldn't say the numbers are too good to be true. This is Carmack we're talking about here. Why would he code an engine that would only run well on systems in the hands of less than 1% of the target audience? Besides, you have to consider that most of these monsters have a low-poly count, but are bump-mapped to get their detail. Sure, real-world performance will be slightly lower, but almost everyone should be able to get a great experience out of the game.

What's funny is that everyone's saying how low-poly these models are, but they're 2000-4000 each, which is about the same, if not more, than most next-gen games like FarCry (which I think hover around 2500) and UT2004 (about the same). However, those are creature model polys. I don't know if it's the same for player models.

Last I checked though, Valve said player models for HL2 will be around 5000, but who knows if they've kept that. Supposedly weapons were going to be 4000 or so each, but lately I've heard it's been trimmed down to a mere 500 (which is still a lot when you think about the size and relatively simple shapes of weapons...). Gabe "Still talking about a September relese" Newell was spouting about a 12,000 polycount vehicle last year and stating that's how it's going to be in the game, but in a recent interview he said they were trying to get that polycount down too. So who knows anymore?

 

[Drexion]

something like a year ago they didnt think when the game would ship, there would be NO video card available to play the game at high res + maxxed game options and still get decent frames.

The game is NOT played with MAX options:- The highest texture setting needs a 512MB graphics card.

 

[datamage]

does doom 3 use SM3.0 at this stage of the game?

SM3.0 is D3D, Doom III is an OpenGL game, so no.

- D.

 

[Harkamus]

People have saved money to upgrade just for this game. Why ? Because stastics show the average gamer is 24-40 yrs old, and most of us grew up on the Doom series. That and the fact the engine is outstanding ...

I'm 19. I just spent about 1800 bucks for DOOM ]I[. I'm an avid gamer, but I have not needed to upgrade my 1.4 AMD/Ti 4600 combo until now.

So far I've bought a Dell 2001FP, AMD 64 3200+, 1 gig Corsair XMS(2, 3, 2, 5/6? timings), ABIT KV8 Pro mobo w/ K8T 800 Pro chipset, Swifting watercooling stuff(pump, chipset/cpu/gpu water blocks), 74 gig 10000 RPM Raptor, and a 6800 Ultra.

 

[Xenozx]

oh i didnt realize that, so as far as SM and PS 3.0 those code paths are only for D3D games and cannot be optimized for OpenGL? Thats very interesting, how come they dont have specific code paths for OpenGL?

 

[AACI_CIO]

Because stastics show the average gamer is 24-40 yrs old, and most of us grew up on the Doom series.

Sweet. This means I am average. I wonder what doom would look like on my current computer with the ol' Sony FW900 24" widescreen....

 

[Xenozx]

well im 21 and i remember playing the original doom on my old windows 3.1 machine. I dont remember most of the specs but i think it was like 55 mb hard drive so that probably puts the system memory at like 8 mb. im pretty sure it was videocardless (did they even have them then) but it played games like a champ back then. I also remember play a air plane game called "Aces" or "aces of the skies" and a wierd game called "Gadget" where you had to collect parts and build all kinds of machines, very educational. Anyone remember the "Hugo series"?

I also just upped the ante on my machine. Im waiting for my BFG 6800 ultra to come in. have 3500+ athlon 64 OC'ed to 230x11. have 2x512 corsair 2-2-2-5 sticks oc'ed to 460 mhz at 2-3-2-6 timings Yea!. have asus a8v deluxe mobo with 2 seagate baracuda's in a raid 0 config. also have an slk-948u hsf. vantec stealth 520 w psu. I think total i spent about 1700 bucks, will be selling my tachyon G9700pro to my brother along with an older 19 inch monitor for 200 bucks. so that means like 1500 total 8)

 

[pxc]

The game is NOT played with MAX options:- The highest texture setting needs a 512MB graphics card.

The current PC Gamer has a Q&A with Robert Duffy ("lead programmer, id software"):
"In Ultra Quality, everything is uncompressed but most levels require about 500MB of texture memory, so we don't enable this setup by default on any currently shipping video card."

Another interesting tidbit:
(describing the software only sound engine) "... The only drawback is that we run the sound engine in a separate thread, and keeping up with sound-synchronization issues has at time been a bit of a headache."
Great news for P4 HT/dual CPU owners.