Doom 3 gone gold

[Trippy]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

Did you not see the 5950 Ultra and 9800XT benchmarks on the second to last page?

[daveNYC]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

Did you not see the 5950 Ultra and 9800XT benchmarks on the second to last page?

Missed them actually, but they're still $400.

[kidder]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

Did you not see the 5950 Ultra and 9800XT benchmarks on the second to last page?

Missed them actually, but they're still $400.

There is a trick where you take this 5900XT card for $192.99
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-128-185&depa=0

Then you flash the card bios to a 5950 Ultra.  (Sets the GPU and Memory clock to the 5950 levels and also bumps the card voltage by .1v)
http://www.cluboverclocker.com/guides/5900_Flash_Mod/

There are varying degrees of success that I have read about.  If the card acts up after flashing, you can usually go in with coolbits and underclock the card a bit to get it to run.

Save about $100.00 by using this little trick.

[Megrim]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

The article is essentially proving what most people consider assumed knowledge; this game will only run 'well' on the latest squeaky clean system. Everyone else will have to tweak, and tweak hard.

[daveNYC]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

The article is essentially proving what most people consider assumed knowledge; this game will only run 'well' on the latest squeaky clean system. Everyone else will have to tweak, and tweak hard.

Yeah, I'm just a little pissed that they go "Look, benchmarks!" and they don't bother giving results for a mainstream system.  I don't really care if the FPS count is in the 10s, I just want the information.

[Soukyan]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

Did you not see the 5950 Ultra and 9800XT benchmarks on the second to last page?

Missed them actually, but they're still $400.

For $400, you're best off snagging the nVidia GeForce 6800 GT.

[Sable Blaze]

Agree. Best bang-for-the-buck seems to be (it does hurt to say this--$400!) the 6800GT.

I've been going by Far Cry benchmarks, assuming this will be (more or less) similar to DOOM3. It's not pretty. I'm not sure 1600x1200 will be viable. I've been playing Quake2 some in preparation for DOOMsday, and I can barely see the HUD at this resolution. 1280x1024 (1280x968 in Q2) seems the best compromise. Framerates at 1600x1200 with any kind of filtering are abysmal on anything less than an X800PE or 6800Ultra.

In Far Cry, 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 4xaniso, you can see framerates about 35-40fps with the 6800GT on a 2500 Barton. I don't recall the memory used, but my impression was it was good memory at half a gig. Those are good numbers. I'd say that's probably DOOM territory.

Still...$400. Worse, I don't see prices on these cards coming down significatly any time soon. With demand going up from the release of DOOM3 and the fact HL2 is just around the corner, I think they'll stay steady throughout the summer, if not beyond. Even now, 6800GTs are backordered on many vendor sites.

[HaemishM]

Uh, from what I read they benchmarked it on one machine with 4 gigs of RAM, and another with 2 gigs.  That's really nice and all, but it's not exactly useful information.  That doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the three video cards were all top of the line.

Did you not see the 5950 Ultra and 9800XT benchmarks on the second to last page?

Hate to tell you this, Sparky, but that is hardly what I would consider not top of the line cards. And the trick of flashing some shit to make it into an Ultra = More trouble than I'll ever care to do.

[Alluvian]

Not sure what the flashing stuff does, but you can get a 5900XT gainward golden sample card and overclock it faster than the 5900 ultra easily (heck you can overclock it TO the ultra specs under full manufacturer warranty) for about $180.  Not sure what exactly the difference with the 5950 is.

I am just abit annoyed that AFTER my computer purchase I found a person who could get me 40% all ATI products.  That would have swung my allegience for this round.  Ah well.  Next card will probably be some 6900 geforce card whenever they drop to the $200 range or so.

I just know my 5900xt even overclocked will be struggling with soon to be released games, but that is what I get for being on a serious computer upgrade budget.  Ah well, I have no interest in AA or AF so with all that stuff off I can run better than those that insist on it at least.

And even on my old geforce4 TI4200 I thought farcry ran just fine.