Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bulsajo]

Looks like there's finally a solid release date, and there's already a review out.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/doom3/

Looking for minimum/recommended system specs but haven't come across them.

Has anyone else had better luck?

http://www.doom3.com/

[Demophobe]

Minimum specs are here:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/weekly/2690450

Todd Hollenshead, id's chief executive, said Doom 3 will require:
• A 1.5-gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 chip or AMD Athlon 1500
• 384 megabytes of memory
• Two gigabytes of hard drive space
• An nVidia GeForce 3 graphics card or better; or an ATI Radeon 8500 or better

This is just to run the game, and it will look like crap.

A good system for ALL the eye candy:

3GHz+ CPU, NV6800 or ATIx800 graphics (nVidia will probably come out on top, with PS3.0 and VS 3.0 support, which Doom3 will have*), 1GB RAM, SATA HDD with at least 4GB free space (7200RPM min, 10k best).

This machine will run with all on max, probably between 30 - 60 FPS.

* = nVidia support the latest in Pixel shader model (3.0) and vertex shader model(3.0), something required for games in the future that make use of real-time shadows. Lately, this has been where games are going....shadow rendering and high-resolution textures. Pixel shaders and vertex shaders are algorithms that calculate how much light and shadow to draw on each Pixel. (Pixel = picture element. The "dots" on a monitor. Higher resolution = more pixels)

Real-time shadows can be rendered on PS2.0 and VS 2.0 hardware, like the x800 (ATI's latest), but need multiple passes through the rendering pipeline (the production factory) to come up with the same results as PS3.0 and VS3.0, which can render in one pass. So, nVidia's card will be more efficient.

This will not however adversely affect the way the game looks. It will have an effect, especially in a slower-paced game like Doom3, so it's worth looking into. Run and gun games (UT2004, for example) are designed very differently from creep-along games, like Splinter cell, Thief or Doom3.

These slower games have more eye-candy in terms of shadows and textures, which are keys to any 'realism' we want to achieve.
Higher resolution textures are sharper, crisper and don't 'blur' out so much as we get closer to them in the game; they remain sharp.

High-res textures need a lot of video memory, shadows need a good GPU, or graphics processing unit. I think the NV6800's next implementation...probably in Q4 2004, a " super ultra" version (basically a 6800 on steroids) will be the one to get for most titles coming out in the next year or two.

Don't forget...Doom 3 and Half-life 2 will be setting the bar as far as graphics to come for the next while. Id software and Valve software will be licensing out their engines to a lot of game developers, meaning that if we have hardware that can fly through Doom3 and HL2, we will be set for a while.

I expect that my P4 @ 3.5GHz, 1GB PC3500, SATA RAID and Radeon9800XT will play Doom3 at 1024x768, with no anti-aliasing (easing the "jaggies") or ansiotropic filtering (blending the mipmap levels), with all the candy on at 20-40FPS. Not stellar at all.

Christmas....

[Bulsajo]

Thanks.

Yeah, guess I'll need an upgrade if I want to run it in all its glory, but what I have now is about halfway between the minimum and the eye-candy specs so I don't think I'll upgrade any time soon. (although Asus does have some reasonably priced PCI/DDR2 compatible boards out now...)

I run Far Cry on medium settings as it is, and it still looks absolutely gorgeous with no frame-rate problems.

[Gord]

[Demophobe]

I see 50.8 at 1024X768, medium quality, no AA or AF. 45 for 1024x768, high quality, no AA or AF.

Close enough for rock and roll....Good link, thanks...I read that review before....guess it didn't stick.