id Software's Official DOOM3 Benchmarks

[onetwo]

Anyone else notice the nvidia fans squawking the loudest about this test dont even have current hardware?

I guess anyone owning ATI hw should commit seppuko now.

Why does someone with a 6800 on a Barton 2500 think they are gonna blow someone out with an X800 on a faster machine?

Its the WHOLE SYSTEM, CPU, RAM and Vid card and sound card.

If you build up your system by choosing the best parts one piece at a time, the rest of the system will take care of itself.

There is nothing to gain by going with an X800 Pro when you can get a much faster 6800GT for the same price. Actually, you DO get to say, "At least I'm not being bottlenecked by the CPU!"

 

[coffee33]

It just seems to me that they have had a secure hold on the performance lead for 2 years now. And in that time, what have they done with linux? or OpenGL? or multi-monitor support? And they didn't even come out with a new core this year. I just don't get it. In the same time Nvidia did some insane driver work with the NV3x series, built an entirely new core with all kinds of new features, developed SLI, did the Nforce chipsets. I mean seriously, what the hell is ATi doing with all thier time? Working on the Xbox 2???

is it normal to become arrossed at the word "SLI"?
I remember 3dfx v2's I had and playing myth: the fallen lords, now those were the days!

 

[burningrave101]

Anyone else notice the nvidia fans squawking the loudest about this test dont even have current hardware?

I guess anyone owning ATI hw should commit seppuko now.

Why does someone with a 6800 on a Barton 2500 think they are gonna blow someone out with an X800 on a faster machine?

Its the WHOLE SYSTEM, CPU, RAM and Vid card and sound card.

The video card is going to have the primary influence in Doom 3. A good CPU/RAM/Mobo combination is as good as well but a high-end CPU/RAM/Mobo alone will do you little good at 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF in Doom 3.

The CPU plays little role at those settings in a GPU intensive game. A Pentium 4 3.0c can outperform an A64 3500+ at 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF because the video card is doing most all the work.

I'm going to venture to say that 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF and 36.3 fps on a GT is playable while 21.5 fps on a Pro at those settings is probably not in DOOM3. I say that because the X800Pro is only getting 42 fps at 1024x768 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF in the D3 bench and i'm sure thats playable. Otherwise the lower end cards dont have a prayer in D3.

It would be nice to know what the lowest "playable" frame rate is in D3.

 

[onetwo]

40%? Try 60% !!

You're right -- depending on how you look at it, you can say that the X800 is 40% slower than the 6800, or that the 6800 is 66% faster than the X800.

So, if you're familiar with the 6800 experience, the X800 will be 40% worse. If you're used to gameplay on the X800, you can expect the 6800 to be over 60% better.

Wow

 

[^eMpTy^]

is it normal to become arrossed at the word "SLI"?
I remember 3dfx v2's I had and playing myth: the fallen lords, now those were the days!

Perfectly normal...

 

[theelviscerator]

If you build up your system by choosing the best parts one piece at a time, the rest of the system will take care of itself.

There is nothing to gain by going with an X800 Pro when you can get a much faster 6800GT for the same price. Actually, you DO get to say, "At least I'm not being bottlenecked by the CPU!"

Now if you could get the best parts to come out at the same time......

 

[coffee33]

You know,I'm 38 and I didn't get my first computer until early 2001 and missed all that,I really feel like I was left out sometimes.

I'm 30 and I didn't get my first computer till 1997, I feel left out on all the tech before my 486 hehe. I did have a hand me down Texas instrument that had cartridges heh.
Enjoy the now, for it is upon us!

 

[gpitpitan]

lol it looks like the majority of the posts from the last few pages are from the same people over and over again. AND PEOPLE who WRITE like THIS to FEEL like THEYRE GETTING their POINT aCROSS. The finger pointing of fanboi this and fanboy that turns these threads into crapulance. With both sides taking the blame. But hey, not like its ever going to stop.

back to topic.

Chalk up a point for nvidia for this one. i think their driver team is finally picking up speed and showing what kind of legs the nv45 does have and unlocking its full potential.

ATI may stand and take notice, but to say that this is their death knell is pretty...to be honest...freakin retarded. Give credit to where credits due ATI being able to stretch the now R300 core this far is an achievement in of itself and still being able to compete with new architechtures from other companies.

I dont think anyone here can argue that this has probably been one of the better seasons for videocards. The performance is huge on both sides, and you cant go wrong with either company. And who gets to benefit from all this? We do.

 

[onetwo]

This can't be ATI's death knell as they have built up an amazing amount of goodwill based on their performance last generation.

 

[gordon151]

Why do some believe the performance delta in Doom III is because of poor OpenGL drivers on ATI's part? There's been quite a few design decisions made by nVidia in their recent hardware whose benefits seem to have been geared specifically towards this game engine (mainly because these changes were spearheaded by Carmack himself). Not to mention there are additional factors that probably caused the game to be even more optimized for a specific architecture than another (like using cg to compile the shader code :/). I mean ATI's OpenGL driver performance may not be on par with nVidia's, but its not THIS bad. That's why I don't think any amount of reworking on ATI's part could help the X800 Pro reach GT levels, but maybe they might find some way to help put the X800 XT PE up there. To say the least, I never really thought it would be that close in performance to the 6800U (heck i thought a 5900U would perform close to it ).

 

[Mike90]

Man there sure appears to be a lot of teenagers in here hooping and hollering about this like idiots. It's not the card, it's the drivers. As stated already in here, opengl drivers are Nvidia's strong point so that's what's generating the fps number differences here, not really a comparison of vid cards. The X800XT-PE has plenty of power to stay up with the 6800 Ultra and ATI is reported to be working on improving their opengl drivers (which they should have paid more attention to long ago). Even the way it is now, the differences in fps are not going to be enough to notice in gameplay anyway.

This is just one game and some people are equating it with the second coming of Christ. If people are going to make a decision on a vid card from just one game, they are total morons. What's the percentage of opengl games compared to D3D? Very small and will stay that way. If it wasn't for ID, opengl would already be dead. I'm not sure even they can save it for much longer.

Get real.

I think ATI's mistake was with the X800 Pro. They should have never produced it and instead did what Nvidia did with just lowering the clock speeds of the PE. I believe they are working on doing just that, which is not going to make people that already bought the X800 Pro too happy.

 

[SuperRob]

So now people are predicting the demise of ATI? That makes me laugh as much as the people who keep insisting that Nintendo is going to stop making game consoles.

ATI has so many other facets of their business, they aren't going anywhere any time soon. The only thing that could make them pull out of the GPU market would be disastrous sales, and that doesn't appear to be happening.

In fact, I hate to remind all of you, but we are a MINORITY. Vocal, yes, but still a minority. Most people are going to stick with either brand loyalty, or whatever they can get on sale. Benchmarks aren't going to translate into sales. Especially if ATI turns around and uses this as an excuse to cut prices on the boards ... that might even work to their advantage.

I'm not trying to be an ATI fanboy here, just trying to make sure that you're all seeing both sides of the picture. It's not as cut and dry as "ATI got whooped in Doom 3, and now they're going to leave."

 

[theelviscerator]

The video card is going to have the primary influence in Doom 3. A good CPU/RAM/Mobo combination is as good as well but a high-end CPU/RAM/Mobo alone will do you little good at 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF in Doom 3.

The CPU plays little role at those settings in a GPU intensive game. A Pentium 4 3.0c can outperform an A64 3500+ at 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF because the video card is doing most all the work.

I'm going to venture to say that 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF and 36.3 fps on a GT is playable while 21.5 fps on a Pro at those settings is probably not in DOOM3. I say that because the X800Pro is only getting 42 fps at 1024x768 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF in the D3 bench and i'm sure thats playable. Otherwise the lower end cards dont have a prayer in D3.

It would be nice to know what the lowest "playable" frame rate is in D3.

I guess lucky for me then this monitor tops out at 1280 @ 75 hz which I consider minimum playable
it does 1600 but only @ 60 hz..whats the point really...LOL...


I have a feeling I will be getting over 40 at 1280 4x/8x myself.....

 

[Kasra]

$225 for 512mb ddr2 Corsair ram from newegg

4gb = 225x8 = $1800

seeing as these are 256mb sticks and nobody's got 16 friggin' ram slots on their mobos, you're gonna have to buy higher density sticks which would cost even more for same capacity.

2k for ram, yeah right. What kind of "benchmarking" system is that!

 

[burningrave101]

I always got the impression that the X800XT was better in most games then the 6800Ultra and that the GT was/is better then the Pro.ATI really screwed up by not putting out a better card to compete with the GT at that price point,but aside from D3 they aren't that far apart and I'm happy with mine.

Yea besides D3 and EVERY other OpenGL game and every OpenGL game to come they AREN'T very far apart.

People are talking like Doom 3 was the first OpenGL game ever released. What about last years hits Call of Duty and KOTOR? What about the coming up hits based off the D3 engine like Quake 4?

Dont forget the 6800's also support SM 3.0 and FP32 which can be used to add more performance and visual ehancements in upcoming games like Far Cry which will have HDR in the 1.3 patch. Over a dozen games have announced support for SM 3.0 including HL2.

And about the only time the PE beats the 6800u is when high AF is enabled. And then its entirely dependent on the game and part of the game your playing as to which is faster.

People look at 3 or 4 games and say the X800XT PE is faster in D3D and then they look at Doom 3 and say the 6800u is only faster in one game. lol

 

[jaffy]

2k for ram, yeah right. What kind of "benchmarking" system is that!

Thats a next gen system. Just showing what some of you will be using a year from now

 

[^eMpTy^]

Chalk up a point for nvidia for this one. i think their driver team is finally picking up speed and showing what kind of legs the nv45 does have and unlocking its full potential.

It's the NV40, not 45, but whatever.

ATI may stand and take notice, but to say that this is their death knell is pretty...to be honest...freakin retarded. Give credit to where credits due ATI being able to stretch the now R300 core this far is an achievement in of itself and still being able to compete with new architechtures from other companies.

Stretching the r300 for 2 years is not an accomplishment. The XTPE is being outperformed by the Ultra which has a 120Mhz clock disadvantage.

In Doom 3 the GT is beating the XTPE, with a 195Mhz clock disadvantage.

I'm not trying to say I think ATi is on its deathbed, but I am saying that the r300 core is old and slow, and the fact that, after 2 years, ATi is still with it, is not a good thing. Then need a new core, cuz Nvidia is just going to keep coming.

 

[^eMpTy^]

Yea besides D3 and EVERY other OpenGL game and every OpenGL game to come they AREN'T very far apart.

People are talking like Doom 3 was the first OpenGL game ever released. What about last years hits Call of Duty and KOTOR? What about the coming up hits based off the D3 engine like Quake 4?

Dont forget the 6800's also support SM 3.0 and FP32 which can be used to add more performance and visual ehancements in upcoming games like Far Cry which will have HDR in the 1.3 patch. Over a dozen games have announced support for SM 3.0 including HL2.

And about the only time the PE beats the 6800u is when high AF is enabled. And then its entirely dependent on the game and part of the game your playing as to which is faster.

People look at 3 or 4 games and say the X800XT PE is faster in D3D and then they look at Doom 3 and say the 6800u is only faster in one game. lol

Can I get your 2 cents on the "ATi's on its deathbed" debate...?

 

[Kasra]

I'm sure the next-gen system in a year or so won't feature a Prescott core. Heck, I don't know why people still buy these... wait for dual cores already.

JC = Jesus Christ

 

[Beakerman]

Wow. I read every post in this thread. Took me until tomorrow.

My 2 cents... I was lucky enough to find the X800 XT PE locally and I jumped on it. Yes the 6800 cards are leading in the benches, but I don't regret my decision. I have my card NOW and I am enjoying it. And I'm not a fanboy either. The X800 XT PE makes my previous card, a 5900 XT, it's BITCH.

So I am awaiting my copy of DOOM3 to stress my system. I'll play the game, run my own benches and have a great time.

I hope the rest of you will too.

 

[burningrave101]

People dont realize the 6800u isn't even the PE's counterpart. Its the 6800u extreme. ATI announced the PE because of nVidia working on a 6800u extreme.

The vanilla X800XT 500/500 is the 6800u counterpart. Try downclocking the PE to 500/500 and see how well it fairs against the 6800u then.

The 6800u is already faster then the PE at every setting in OpenGL games.

The 6800u is faster then the PE without AA + AF in D3D games.

The 6800u is faster then the PE with AA enabled in D3D games.

The 6800u is tied for performance against the PE with high levels of AF enabled.

Thats 3.5 wins to .5.

nVidia has also given the option to enable full Trilinear filtering with NO optimizations. ATI has not and their running Brilinear mixed with their Trilinear like nVidia did on the NV30's. So who REALLY has the better IQ quality here?

 

[Deleted member 12106]

Link no worky

 

[Mike90]

but I am saying that the r300 core is old and slow

That's funny dude, what planet do you live on man?

The r300 has been kicking Nvidia's butt for quite awhile now and is still right there and still mostly outperformiing Nvidia still. Now Doom3 benchees are out and now you think it's the end of the world for ATI.

Go grab a beer dude, cause you sure need one (if you're old enough, that is). Hilarious!

 

[MrHappyGoLucky]

nVidia cHrist: The Way You Were Meant To Be Saved!

burningrave101 has this tattoed on his left tit

seriously,,,, can he do a post in less than one paragraph ?

 

[^eMpTy^]

People dont realize the 6800u isn't even the PE's counterpart. Its the 6800u extreme. ATI announced the PE because of nVidia working on a 6800u extreme.

The vanilla X800XT 500/500 is the 6800u counterpart. Try downclocking the PE to 500/500 and see how well it fairs against the 6800u then.

The 6800u is already faster then PE at every setting in OpenGL games.

The 6800u is faster then the PE without AA + AF in D3D games.

The 6800u is faster then the PE with AA enabled.

The 6800u is tied for performance against the PE with high levels of AF enabled.

Thats 3.5 wins to .5.

nVidia has also given the option to enable full Trilinear filtering with NO optimizations. ATI has not and their running Brilinear mixed with their Trilinear like nVidia did on the NV30's. So who REALLY has the better IQ quality here?

You should make yourself a website explaining all this with all the appropriate links to reviews etc and then just post links instead of typing this stuff over and over...your hands have got to be getting tired.

 

[MrHappyGoLucky]

You should make yourself a website explaining all this with all the appropriate links to reviews etc and then just post links instead of typing this stuff over and over...your hands have got to be getting tired.

Then he could sit there all day and hit the refresh button on his browser so it looks like he's getting traffic. The website could be called Rapid Nvidia Fanboy.com

 

[ZenOps]

I still think ATi's has a superior hardware design, at least at the chip-level. As bad as the OpenGL drivers might be.

The cooling solution and voltages they are using in the X800 seem to be very conservative, almost underclocked even compared to the 9800pro. All ATi would probably have to do to increase the speed another 100 mhz would be to add a two slot cooler with some ramsinks and raise the voltage .1 maybe. So in otherwords, be closer to the power consumption of the 6800Ultra with the same cooling. ATi's chip has been proven to go to >700mhz on liquidcooling.

That should cover the OpenGL gap, and give it an even more commanding lead in D3D against the 6800ultra. And given enough time, ATi might eventually get around to a good performing OpenGL driver set too, which could mean a commanding lead there too.

But since both ATi and Nvidia seem to be unable to meet demand as is now, its unlikely they will need to push any of their high-end products. Honestly, it really feels like ATi and Nvidia CEO's got together and said, lets make a duopoly and make cards that perform almost exactly the same.

 

[WuTangClam]

2 months ago everyone was blown away by the performance increase of the x800 series over previous generations. Now people are saying that ati should pull out of the graphics card market entirely.

I fully agree that the 6800 series is the best card choice for doom 3, bar none. Having said that, I don't see why ati won't be able to improve their openGL drivers. Ati has come a long way since the first radeons came out in terms of driver advances. I predict that in a few months we will see the gap between the x800 series and 6800 series lessening as ati opengl driver performance is improved.

 

[Beakerman]

nVidia has also given the option to enable full Trilinear filtering with NO optimizations. ATI has not and their running Brilinear mixed with their Trilinear like nVidia did on the NV30's. So who REALLY has the better IQ quality here?

Yes ATI hasn't included the option to enable full Trilinear yet. ATI has Brilinear, which is Trilinear and Bilinear mixed, not Brilinear mixed with Trilinear.

 

[MChief]

I dont think anyone here can argue that this has probably been one of the better seasons for videocards. The performance is huge on both sides, and you cant go wrong with either company. And who gets to benefit from all this? We do.

I was about to say this myself. NVidia wasn't the only winner today, we the consumers won also. NVidia screwed up once with the whole FX line, but aside from that fiasco, consistently from the TNT2 every product they've had has been top notch.

ATI has screwed me every time I gave them another shot. Mach32/64, Rage, etc, with lousy support, buggy drivers and buggy hardware. Damn canadians.

But in any case, when we have 2 manufacturers fighting each other for the crown, we win. Look at what has happend with PC's since the IBM Compatible days. Competition is very good for the consumer.

<puts on my fire suit to prepare for the flames>

Now if Microsoft ever gets some real competition, we will start to see some *major* benefits.

</flamesuit>

Anybody know about capitolism's rule of 3's? Any time you have 3 major companies competing for your business, prices go down and quality goes up. Realistically, a two year old video card is still sufficient to have a fantastic gaming experience with top of the line software.

This really beats the days when I had my first computer (a top of the line 286/16mhz when I was 13) and playing state of the art games at 320x240 w/ 256 colors. Tie fighter and Doom 1 were both a slideshow on my 486/33, same resolution and color depth. I got them playable by overclocking the cpu and memory to 40mhz... ahh those were the days.

 

[obs]

Was anyone really suprised by thes results?

 

[^eMpTy^]

That's funny dude, what planet do you live on man?

The r300 has been kicking Nvidia's butt for quite awhile now and is still right there and still mostly outperformiing Nvidia still. Now Doom3 benchees are out and now you think it's the end of the world for ATI.

Go grab a beer dude, cause you sure need one (if you're old enough, that is). Hilarious!

The XTPE is clocked at 520Mhz and is basically 2 r300 cores strapped together. I think you know this. The issue is this, the 6800U at 400Mhz is keeping up at 1600x1200 full AA and AF. What does this tell you about the r300 core? It's a less efficient design which needs to be clocked to the moon to keep up. Let's not take into account AA and AF which ATi optimizes. Just raw performance to demonstrate fillrate and pixel shader performance, the 6800U wins in damn near every benchmark. And this is against a card with the same number of pipelines, that is clocked 120Mhz faster. Do you see what I'm saying here? The r300 is on it's last leg, it's clocked as high as it can go and it's just not efficient enough to keep up. Therefore it is old (2 years old) and slow (clock for clock slower than the 6800).

And if you can't understand this I don't blame you, it's a bit of an abstract way of looking at it.

 

[gordon151]

You should make yourself a website explaining all this with all the appropriate links to reviews etc and then just post links instead of typing this stuff over and over...your hands have got to be getting tired.

You know, I saw a couple posts by tranCendenZ where they were so scarily similar, down to the review links and so forth. I'm like wondering if he has a template post with all this stuff down, where he just copies and pastes it and add the necessary additions to tailor it to the specific reply.

 

[coffee33]

I was about to say this myself. NVidia wasn't the only winner today, we the consumers won also. NVidia screwed up once with the whole FX line, but aside from that fiasco, consistently from the TNT2 every product they've had has been top notch.

ATI has screwed me every time I gave them another shot. Mach32/64, Rage, etc, with lousy support, buggy drivers and buggy hardware. Damn canadians.

But in any case, when we have 2 manufacturers fighting each other for the crown, we win. Look at what has happend with PC's since the IBM Compatible days. Competition is very good for the consumer.

<puts on my fire suit to prepare for the flames>

Now if Microsoft ever gets some real competition, we will start to see some *major* benefits.

</flamesuit>

Anybody know about capitolism's rule of 3's? Any time you have 3 major companies competing for your business, prices go down and quality goes up. Realistically, a two year old video card is still sufficient to have a fantastic gaming experience with top of the line software.

This really beats the days when I had my first computer (a top of the line 286/16mhz when I was 13) and playing state of the art games at 320x240 w/ 256 colors. Tie fighter and Doom 1 were both a slideshow on my 486/33, same resolution and color depth. I got them playable by overclocking the cpu and memory to 40mhz... ahh those were the days.

I remember firing Dungeon Keeper up on my 486 and thinking "OMG this is awesome" then I fired it up on my 900Mhz Alienware and couldn't play cause the cursor moved to fast and thought "awesome!".

 

[Kasra]

Anybody know about capitolism's rule of 3's? Any time you have 3 major companies competing for your business, prices go down and quality goes up. QUOTE]

I agree. Those Matrox cards are really giving the 6800's and x800's a run for their money.

 

[burningrave101]

You should make yourself a website explaining all this with all the appropriate links to reviews etc and then just post links instead of typing this stuff over and over...your hands have got to be getting tired.

I just get done typing out this long post and then some nOOb that registered fifteen minutes ago comes and posts saying the same pro ATI shit again that i just proved wrong lol. Its an endless cycle.

Yes ATI hasn't included the option to enable full Trilinear yet. ATI has Brilinear, which is Trilinear and Bilinear mixed, not Brilinear mixed with Trilinear.

Yes i know that. Thats what i said .

Was anyone really suprised by thes results?

It didn't surprise me at all. I been saying on here for a few weeks now that the 6800GT would most likely outperform the X800XT PE in Doom 3 simply because the 6800nu is capable of beating the PE in OpenGL, even at high settings.

 

[^eMpTy^]

Then he could sit there all day and hit the refresh button on his browser so it looks like he's getting traffic. The website could be called Rapid Nvidia Fanboy.com

LOL...fanboy or not...he's right, and when you're right you're right...

 

[cstafs]

Yea besides D3 and EVERY other OpenGL game and every OpenGL game to come they AREN'T very far apart.

People are talking like Doom 3 was the first OpenGL game ever released. What about last years hits Call of Duty and KOTOR? What about the coming up hits based off the D3 engine like Quake 4?

Dont forget the 6800's also support SM 3.0 and FP32 which can be used to add more performance and visual ehancements in upcoming games like Far Cry which will have HDR in the 1.3 patch. Over a dozen games have announced support for SM 3.0 including HL2.

And about the only time the PE beats the 6800u is when high AF is enabled. And then its entirely dependent on the game and part of the game your playing as to which is faster.

People look at 3 or 4 games and say the X800XT PE is faster in D3D and then they look at Doom 3 and say the 6800u is only faster in one game. lol

Yes I know Nvidia is better then ATI in ALL Open GL games,but I don't remember playing CoD and thinking"Shit,this games looks like crap and is way to slow for me".And yes the 6800GT is better then the X800 Pro overall,but I am O.K WITH THAT!Just like I was O.K. with the fact that ATI were better then Nvidia the last round,but I didn't post fanboy crap all day then and I wouldn't now even if I did have a 6800 GT or Ultra because I just don't think ATI's cause is hopeless like you apparently do.Anyways enjoy your card and D3 because I will enjoy it also.

 

[Erc]

As an ATI user I'm totally dumbfounded.

 

[SuperRob]

The XTPE is clocked at 520Mhz and is basically 2 r300 cores strapped together. I think you know this. The issue is this, the 6800U at 400Mhz is keeping up at 1600x1200 full AA and AF. What does this tell you about the r300 core? It's a less efficient design which needs to be clocked to the moon to keep up.

That's the most ridiculous conclusion I've heard so far. All this means is that the drivers are crippling an otherwise decent card. OpenGL is ATI's problem, always has been. But your facts don't support your conclusion that the chip design is less efficient. In fact, all the EXPERTS have always said that ATI's design is MORE efficient, if anything.