Running doom3

[clarkdevlin]

MSI GeForce4 Ti4200-8x 128MB Graphics Card

Will this gfx card run doom 3?

[minibubba]

sure, but not with all the eye candy turned up high. You also wont get any of the dx9 specific features.

[clarkdevlin]

Do you know any good bargain graphics cards which have dx9 features?

[amd_man2005]

Nvidia Geforce FX5600ultra or 5700ultra .

ATI Radeon 9600pro or 9600XT

[PersianImmortal]

Firstly noone really knows what hardware will even be satisfactory (i.e. not great but not bad) for Doom3, so don't update now in anticipation. It also depends on your taste in resolution, settings, how much fps is enough for you etc. Really, noone knows.

Secondly Doom3 is OpenGL not DirectX, so DX9 is irrelevant. And many cards have "DX9 features" but run dog slow.

Thirdly remember that it doesn't matter how good your graphics card is if you have a slow CPU and low RAM. So an upgrade for Doom3 or any recent game will require an upgrade of all your components, including motherboard (to allow greater bandwidth).

So the conclusion is don't upgrade now, wait until demos and actual benchmarks for the final versions of games like Half Life2 and Doom3 come out. Then shop around, and buy according to your budget and tastes.

[minibubba]

Doom3 is OpenGL not DirectX, so DX9 is irrelevant.

really? I had no idea. I guess that's what I get for assuming

[The__tweaker]

including motherboard (to allow greater bandwidth).

I'ma get me a modern DX9 videocard before this game comes anyway but does that mean this game will most likely prefer a fast Intel quad pumped bandwidth monster over my XP2600+.. :confused:

[Soulburner]

Nvidia has the advantage in Doom 3, for a couple reasons. For one, its OpenGL which Nvidia is almost always faster at than ATI, and secondly they are using their Ultrashadow technology. I recommend at the very least the new FX5700U for this game. FX5600 will get you by but i'm not sure if you will be able to play with all the details up.

A Ti4600 will barely run the game at 30fps says Carmack, so a Ti4200 is what I would consider inadequate.

[The__tweaker]

I see, so a Nvidias modern gpu's would do better than Ati's modern gpu's then for Doom, I've heard the opposite for Half life though..

However one can wonder what's the best buy for all the other games comming up next year, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game I have really high hopes about, it just seems to be to good to be true.. :)

[PersianImmortal]

Again this is speculation. The only data I've seen which hints at actual performance is this Doom 3 Preview at Tom's Hardware a while back.

You'll need to note a few things when looking at those benchmarks. Firstly they use a 3.06Ghz Pentium4, so if you have a slower CPU expects results to be much lower.

Secondly the ATi Catalysts they used were the 3.2s which is before ATi introduced both much better performance and stability into their drivers (as well as options like Triple Buffering for OpenGL). The nvidia Detonators used were also exposed to have cheats in them which lower image quality to boost performance.

Finally John Carmack, head Doom3 guy has said that he had to code specific paths for the FX cards because they weren't performing well enough without them. So yes the FX does beat the Radeons (although I'm sure the gap is not so large now), but unless you only want to play Doom3, every other game will not show the same results. Typically Radeons beat FXs in DX9 games, and are only slightly behind in OpenGL.

[Wiggo]

By far too much speculation goin' on here in this thread for my likin' especially b4 the actual game is released. Show some patience ppl b4 ya waste money on an upgrade in this case. ;)