Specs for the new game

A lot of people are saying "I heard..." about the specs of the new game.

ID Software haven't (as far as I'm aware) revealed ANY details whatsoever about the specs the game will require, so whoever you've heard this stuff from is LYING.

Personally I don't think the new game will require that high specs compared to what will be available at it's time of release.
Why?

Look at Quake 3. That runs blisteringly fast on my computer (486 motherboard, AMD-266 overdrive, 96 megs RAM), and look how utterly shit that spec is compared to what's available today.

Also, there is currently a LOT of backlash in the gaming community in general about the ridiculous specs games need at the moment, and this seems to be forcing companies to actually lower them (e.g. the recently released Monkey Island 4 and various other new and forthcoming games all use relatively impressive engines that still run on low-end computers like mine).

I have a feeling that this backlash will get stronger over the next couple of years. At the moment the gaming public mainly seem to concentrating on processors, but there is a growing movement in the gaming press to slow down the speed at which new 3D cards are thrown at us that hopefully the public will latch on to as well.

I say that the minimum spec for the new game will probably be something like a P3-600 with 128 megs RAM, which may sound like quite a lot today (actually it isn't), but it'll be pretty crap in two years time. I've no idea about what 3D card it'll need, but probably GeForce 2 will be the lowest that it supports due to all the new feature the game will have.

Q3A engine was an upgraded Q2 engine and D3 engine is a New Engine so there is your answer.

Dima has a point, Q3 started as Quake and the engine has only been upgraded. Doom needed almost the best available, as did quake, as will Doom 3 because these were/are new engines.

Yeah. Carmack´s doens´t have time to make hard optimization. He´s already incredible bussy writing the engine from scratch, starting the Linux code, solving ATI drivers issue and discussing general gameplay issues.
We should expect greater speeds on the next games, i wonder what games will iD make in the future? They have discarded Quake for now...

Don't forget that Carmack is no longer the only programmer in the company.

He never was. There was Romero, Cash and Hook.
Anyway he´s the only one working on the rendered part. Duffy´s designing the tools, Dosé is creating the new animation system, and Devine is coding the Sound system.

Romero might be a programmer, but I don't think he actually did any programming on the Dooms or Quake 1. Carmack probably didn't let him.