DooM 3 System Requirements

[Disorder]

I have a Pentium IV, 1500 MHZ with 256 MB Ram and a GeForce 2 MX400.
What do I need to upgrade in order to make Doom III run smooth?

[dsm]

Say Kat, do you know anything about what Sound cards would be best for Doom 3? If you do, I'd very much like to know what sound card one should aim at getting.

[Katarhyne]

Well, my advice to you is to get a Sound Blaster Audigy (preferably of the platinum variety, of course), a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (much cheaper, but doesn't have the firewire or other nifty technologies that the Audigy has, like EAX3 which makes me want to orgasm every time I play a game that uses it), an SBLive! 5.1 (though I don't really recommend this as a general use soundcard since it's a piece of shit) or the onboard audio for an nVidia nForce or nForce2 platform - preferably the nForce2, naturally.

Of those, the Audigy will deliver the highest sound quality, followed very closely by the nForce2, and then the Live! and the Santa Cruz. Of those, the nForce and nForce2 MCP chips have the lowest CPU utilization, followed by the Santa Cruz, the Audigy, and then finally the Live (<-- the reason why the Live is a piece of shit).

Of course, to really appreciate your beautiful new soundcard, you'll need a decent set of speakers. I recommend Creative Labs, Cambridge Soundworks, and Boston Acoustics, for traditional computer speakers. If you're looking for something with a little more "oomph", I'd hook up your system to your home theatre. If you have a decent video card you should have an S-Video out, which will provide plenty enough video quality to play Doom 3 on your TV, surrounded by your big, powerful home-audio speakers. Of course, some of us might not be able to handle that. :P

[dsm]

Katarhyne said:

Kat's recommendations

Thanks a lot, this info might be a good idea to add to the D3FAQ.

I don't plan on getting a bunch of great speakers (my brother has some kickass speakers of the Cambridge Soundworks brand) - at least not the first while (gotta show my neighbours a bit of respect), but I have some kickass headphones, which I think make up for the lack of speakers.

[Radea`]

Hrm, kindof new here (first post!),but thought I'd adress some things on the NV30 (All imo)

First of all, the NV30 WILL be launced this year. Notice how I said "Launched". The AXP 2400, 2600, & 2800+ were not (2600+ is just coming into the retail sectors) available for at least 7 weeks after their "launch". NV30 will most likely be announced at Comdex, with ATI's R350 (ATI's 1st GPU since R200, asArtX did the R300, will be on DDR II!) shortly after.

Second, based on current specs (I know its not all true, but probably will happen) NV30 will come clocked with DDR II @ ~500MHz. This may seem great, but the NV30 will probably (Almost definatly, actually) be on a 128-bit memory bus, which means that on 500MHz DDR II, the memory bandwith is around 16 GB/sec (128x1000\8\1024). The R9700 right now, has got memory bandwith of 19.4GB/sec (256x620\8\1024).

What does that mean for Doom? The rendering technologies are going to be based mainly on the memory bandwith of the GPU/VPU, which is why Carmack said the statement that SDR cards are too slow, which only a small part of it has to do with their rendering abilities, but the rest of the small bandwith issue. Based on current specs, the already Will be faster for Doom's engine than an NV30.

So anyone thats saying a NV30 will be needed to see this game in its best, dont acknowledge that until the card is out, since it will (on current specs/rumors)be slower than the R9700, albeit not by much, although being slower is a lot different than being a lot faster.

Of course my whole post is based on the needs of the NV30 being 128bit memory bus, because if it isnt, nVIDIA has delivered one killer card for Doom!

Edit:

BTW, that ` next to my name is not supposed to be there :(

Edit 2:

Thought i'd address another post

Clawhammer is a slower version of the Sledgehammer, why not just get a Sledgehammer, it's better. Also they are 64 bit chips and I don't know if there will be a 32 bit converter. If there is, it will play games slower then the p4's and AMD chips do. Makes more sense to me to get the p4 3 ghz then a 64 bit chip that is designed for office work

The Claw Hammer & Sledge Hammer are using x86-64, basically an extension on the x86 architecture. Its almost like 2 32-bit pipelines that work together to make a whole 64bit one. The Claw Hammer is a lot faster than any current processor in 32bit apps, but falls short of the Itanium 2 (Of course, this is right now, and it is not done...) in 64-bit apps, by quite a margin (1GHz Itanium2 performing on par with a 2GHz Claw Hammer, although the Itanium2 wont work well, if it even will with 32bit apps)

[Katarhyne]

Actually, Radea, the NV30 will probably still be somewhat faster than the Radeon 9700 in Doom 3. It's true that the 9700 has a small memory bandwidth advantage, but Doom 3 is actually more fillrate-limited than bandwidth limited (test it yourself; I'm curious to see where Carmack said it would be bandwidth-limited. It might be bandwidth-limited on older cards, but that's because THEY'RE bandwidth-limited, not because the engine is) - and it's expected the CineFX architecture will be clocked very high, due to the .13u process (which, as you no doubt know, is the reason it's delayed.) It's also worth nothing that the NV30 supports a few things that the 9700 doesn't, most notably OpenGL 2.0 - which there is a rendering path for even in our version .02 alpha. So, in conclusion, the NV30 will almost certainly be somewhat faster than the R300 in Doom 3.

And yes, it will likely be announced this year. And, it might even be launched just before the year's out. But I promise you that you will not be able to purchase an NV30 before the year's out - probably not even in January or February. I'm even willing to bet an NV30 on it. Why am I so sure about this? Several analysts expect the NV30 will not be available until the spring. That's how late Nvidia is with this thing.

[edit - 2 days later] I'm actually not so sure the 9700 WILL have a memory bandwidth advantage. Remember that the NV30 is using DDRII, Radea. I don't know what differences that makes, though I'm pretty sure it IS faster than traditional DDR. And keep in mind that bandwidth isn't everything - you've got latency to consider too.[/edit]

[sargebaldy]

hey, just so you all know, a Rage128 Pro is "capable" of running DoomIII, though not quite "optimal" :) But on a 1ghz PIII or higher, with sufficient RAM, you can run doomIII, at close to 0.5fps. I know, i've done it :P. but don't expect it to look like much :P

[Grazza]

An interesting point, Sir. I'll bear it in mind. ;)

[DOOM Anomaly]

Grazza said:

If those are screenshots from the leaked alpha, I'd delete that link right away if I were you.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11032

Yeah, I'm not gunna look at those pics but, just make sure that they aren't any Alpha pics or, ur in for a bit of unhappiness from a mod.

[Radea`]

Rage128 Pro is "capable" of running DoomIII

Actually, its not. Nothing pre-GF256 generation is capable of running it, as Carmack did not support them in the engine. He was pondering whether or not he should, but he said it would only be worse for newer cards as they would need reduced features.

[sargebaldy]

i know what carmack SAID, but the E3 version of DoomIII at least can run under a rage128 pro 16M video card. i know, because i've done it. feel free to email me at owen_lloyd@hotmail.com if you want proof of it.

[The_Tonx]

sargebaldy said:

i know what carmack SAID, but the E3 version of DoomIII at least can run under a rage128 pro 16M video card. i know, because i've done it. feel free to email me at owen_lloyd@hotmail.com if you want proof of it.

I know that.. I've seen screenshots of DOOM III been ran on Rage128. It looks pretty much same as been run with TNT2 (wich I have) so I know what it looks like..

BTW, my TNT2 has 32MB video memory and it can run DOOM III with 1-10 FPS. When standing on the first "hall" I got ~5 FPS.

[Radea`]

Hmmm. I guess the E3 version does, then. Probably because that version seems to emulate everything that it can not do on the GPU, which makes sense :). Maybe then the final will not do that?