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TheLazenby

Doom 3 is gonna hate my PC, isn't it?

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I finally ditched my old computer and got a new one, but I'm worried that Doom 3 still won't work. (But "Absolution" does!! I'm ecstatic!)

It has a 2 Ghz AMD Sempron, 512 MB Ram, and a built-in Radeon Xpress 200 graphics card with DirectX 9.0 support. Stuff like "Half-Life 2" would work on this, but I'm still skeptical about D3. A kid I know from school has a recent computer with one of those expensive, high power, cooling fan equipped cards, and even he said that he had to set the graphics in "Doom 3" to a lower quality to get it to work.

I mean, it's cheap at Best Buy, so I wouldn't mind taking it back if it didn't work. So what do you all think??

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TheLazenby said:

A kid I know from school has a recent computer with one of those expensive, high power, cooling fan equipped cards, and even he said that he had to set the graphics in "Doom 3" to a lower quality to get it to work.

Do you know if the person in question was trying to run Ultra quality? As far as I know, there isn't a computer out yet that can run that decently.

And concerning how well it's going to run for you...I think you're just about set, for everything except the video card. You'll be able to run Doom 3, but you may have to run it at 640x480 and low quality (possibly turning off the high-quality special effects setting, and a few of the others).

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No, I'm not sure what quality he was trying to run. That's odd that the Ultra setting can't run on any PC out there... I wonder what id tested it on??

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Ok, I did some cursory research on the xpress 200 chipset. Couldnt find any benchmarks related to doom 3, but I did find out that's it's based on the X300 though it has 2 fewer pixel pipelines. (someone please correct me if Im wrong). While the x300 can run doom 3 at low settings, the xpress 200 has the notable difference of sharing system ram and will typically have very little ram of its own depending on the computer manufacturer.

In short, the game will run but you are not likely to get good framerates, or perhaps even playable ones.

WildWeasel said:

As far as I know, there isn't a computer out yet that can run that decently.

I typically get 40-60 FPS at 1280x1024 at ultra quality. Newer systems will perform even better, so fear not.

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Guardian said:

Wouldn't surprise me if Carmack built a whole new, top-secret, uber-spiffy computer just for that purpose.

They actually did, you know? One of NDs regulars went on a visit to id years back There's an article if you want to see on ND.

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I would imagine developers get engineering samples for testing future feature design and what not.

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Yes. Carmacks .plan file shows him several times getting reference boards to test and play around with. He got a GeForce 3 (or a couple) before they released it at Macworld - how do you thinkg they got the Macworld demo running?

Also, giving test boards to developers is a great way for the hardware designers to get early feedback - since those are the guys that probably know the most about how the cards can/will be used, it's sensible to let them in on them early.

Also, I too can get 40-60FPS in Ultra Quality at 1280. I do however have one of those fancy cooling fan equipped graphics cards.

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this is the simple reason y im not even gonna bother with the pc version and just have the xbox game, my pc would shit itself a hundred times over if i even placed the disc inside lol

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I got my machine to work on ultra. Framerate's pretty good, too. Just lags occasionally.

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TheLazenby said:

A kid I know from school has a recent computer with one of those expensive, high power, cooling fan equipped cards


If it's an ATI it was screwed from the start: Doom 3 massively favours NVidia cards

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Yep, my nvidia 6800 gt actually came with a sticker on it, that featured the hell knight's ugly mug under the doom 3 logo. Above the logo it says "recommended by id software for doom 3".

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TheDarkArchon said:

If it's an ATI it was screwed from the start: Doom 3 massively favours NVidia cards

Well Doom3 doesn't necessarily 'massively favour' nvidia, just ATI has crappy OpenGL drivers.

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I know the feeling trying to get Doom 3 to run on my laptop was a pain. I know laptops aren't made for gaming, but I did end up getting playable frame rates in 640x480. I have an ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 with 64 MB of ram btw. I just bought the game for xbox, and I prefer the xbox version of the game. I have even played the computer version on top of the line computers, but I prefer the Xbox version. There are less enemies that apear behind you, and stuff like that. While I like the whole enemies sneaking up on you and scaring you it is just cheap to have them teleport in behind you. The only down side is that at the rate things are going I am going to end up buying Doom 3 several times over just like the original dooms and quake. Thats the one downside to id is that their games are so good I usually end up buying just about every avaliable version. I've still got doom for my 32x and my Jaguar.

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WildWeasel said:

I think you're just about set, for everything except the video card. You'll be able to run Doom 3, but you may have to run it at 640x480 and low quality (possibly turning off the high-quality special effects setting, and a few of the others).


You're more right than you know. I was able to run Doom 3 on my old GeForce 2 MX doing exactly what you mentioned, and guess what? It didn't turn out bad at all. It was quite playable. Hell, when I upgraded to a GeForce FX 5200, it actually ended up playing SLOWER than on the GeForce 2, even with the special effects turned off and at 640x480 low quality.

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TheDarkArchon said:

If it's an ATI it was screwed from the start: Doom 3 massively favours NVidia cards


I have a Radeon X300 that runs Doom 3 perfectly on medium quality with all of the special effects turned on.

One time I switched to ultra quality just to see if I could make out a difference, but I couldn't really see one. There was a huge performance drop; what I meant was that I didn't notice a difference in graphics. What exactly are the differences between the quality levels?

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If you ask me the setting that makes the most obvious difference is anti-aliasing. When you look at a screenshot of the game with antialiasing downlow versus one with it high, you notice the difference immediately. Of course, this also effects the game's performance. Me no have to worry though, got a gig of ram and that 6800 gt 256 along with 3.3 ghz.

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SlayeR said:

Well Doom3 doesn't necessarily 'massively favour' nvidia, just ATI has crappy OpenGL drivers.


Yeah, and NVIDIA cards suck at Direct3d.

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Well, I downloaded the demo. Even on low quality, the framerate was pretty bad. I didn't try adjusting the special effects or anything, though, so that may have something to do with it. It wasn't completely unplayable though, you just kinda had to be patient. I haven't decided about whether or not to try the full version yet.

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