EA on Next-Gen: graphics will look well "beyond Doom 3&

[London Geezer]

JVD, u're still going on about Doom3 being "runnable" on a Geforce1?? Come on man, stop making a fool out of yourself...

I just bought a Geforce5900Ultra 256MB and i'm not sure i will be able to PLAY the game without turning some things off.

When people mention "Doom3 graphics" they dont think about 640x480 without all the features that make the game pretty (bump maps, shadows etc)...

Mentioning Doom3 is mentioning the nice shadows, the bump maps, the hi res textures... All of those will not be present when running Doom3 on a Geforce1, unless you want the thing to melt...

 

[Qroach]

Doom 3 is gonna run fine on a geforce 5900 ultra. Infact it'd run fine on a fast geforce 4.

As far as the rendering goes for that game, it's not huge on the use of "new" graphical features. It's target platform was the geforce 1 and above. Any card with that feature set will be able to run with all the bells and whistles. It's just the faster cards out there will be able to render the same scene in less passes.

I think the point Jvd is making is that it's a game that doesn't really push any features now available a few years back, so it's not a good game to compare "future graphics with".

 

[_phil_]

Doom 3 is gonna run fine on a geforce 5900 ultra. Infact it'd run fine on a fast geforce 4.

with a 2,6 ghz cpu at least 8)

 

[nobie]

Doom 3 is confirmed for X-Box. So EA thinks next-generation consoles like X-Box 2 will be even better than what X-Box can do?

DUH

 

[Wunderchu]

Doom 3 is confirmed for X-Box. So EA thinks next-generation consoles like X-Box 2 will be even better than what X-Box can do?

DUH

good point

 

[jvd]

doom 3 needs a 9700 class card for decent performance;

doom3 beta (alpha?) 2 runs normal with (say 30fps) when in a corridor with no animals or monsters but chugs to unplayable level when 2 or more monsters come around.
this on a amd 1900xp with a overclocked 9600XT ATI.

yes, you can run doom3 on a geforce 3 with a lot of options turned of but the end result is not quite what it should be!

I can run the game fine with a geforce 1 sdr on a 1ghz cpu at 640x480 with the effects on. It runs at 10fps

That is the leaked alpha . According to anand and his tests my 9700 shoudl be getting 3 times the performance i was getting in the alpha with his build which is not the newest build nor are the drivers tuned for this game.

I can easily see the sdr getting 30fps which is more than playable.

It also looks better than silent hill 3 on the ps2 runninÆœŽ" that res and that card

 

[jvd]

Doom 3 is gonna run fine on a geforce 5900 ultra. Infact it'd run fine on a fast geforce 4.

As far as the rendering goes for that game, it's not huge on the use of "new" graphical features. It's target platform was the geforce 1 and above. Any card with that feature set will be able to run with all the bells and whistles. It's just the faster cards out there will be able to render the same scene in less passes.

I think the point Jvd is making is that it's a game that doesn't really push any features now available a few years back, so it's not a good game to compare "future graphics with".

THank you .


The game will be very playable. No you wont be able to play it at 1600x1200 but you wont be playing next gen console games at that res either. MOst will be playing ps3 and xbox 2 games at ntsc standards . Which is 640x480 or closer to it than it is to 1600x1200 .

I've seen the leaked alpha run on a geforce sdr card and it ran fine at 640x480.

 

[cybamerc]

He used Doom 3 as an example because it's a game that gets a lot of hype for its graphics. Some of you read way too much into every little remark.

 

[cybamerc]

jvd:

> I've seen the leaked alpha run on a geforce sdr card and it ran fine at
> 640x480.

You need your eyes checked then. The alpha runs like crap on my system (GF2MX 400/1 GHz Athlon). With shadows and specular turned on I'm getting 2-3 fps when I'm not looking into a wall.

The performance of the GF2MX 400 is practically identical to the GF 256 SDR.

 

[jvd]

jvd:

> I've seen the leaked alpha run on a geforce sdr card and it ran fine at
> 640x480.

You need your eyes checked then. The alpha runs like crap on my system (GF2MX 400/1 GHz Athlon). With shadows and specular turned on I'm getting 2-3 fps when I'm not looking into a wall.

The performance of the GF2MX 400 is practically identical to the GF 256 SDR.

Perhaps you just don't know how to properly set up a pc ?

I get fine framerates on the card at that res. Like i said 10 fps on a leaked alpha which is no where near final performance.

I would expcet 30fps when all is said and done .

ALso you might have not been running the correct path as there were a few in the bencmark

 

[akira888]

The performance of an alpha version of a software product is never very indicative of it's final performance. Every project I've worked on (admittingly quite few) always held back any optimizations until the implementation was complete and the QA was more or less complete.

 

[Fox5]

Yeah, ditto to what akira said about the performance of alpha versions, and the doom 3 alpha is quite old by now.

However, I remember when I saw the doom 3 alpha(wasn't there kind of an unofficial ban on talk abut the doom 3 alpha?) on a geforce 3, and I believe a 1.4 gig athlon, it ran like crap, like 10-15 fps. On a 9700 pro with a 2.1 ghz tbred it runs faster than 30 fps most of the time, sometimes 60 fps. In other words, it has performance about on par with halo! ok, not that bad...well, actually at 640x480 in halo I would probably never see a frame under 60, and on a (overclocked to xgpu speeds with default ram)geforce 3 my avg fps in the timedemo at 640x480 is around 40 fps a 1.8 gig tbred.

Hmm, I still wonder, is the xgpu really faster than a geforce 3? I mean, its specs are closest to a geforce 4 ti 4200, but it is even more bandwidth limited than a ti 200, and from my testing it seems that a 230/460 geforce 3 gets exactly the same scores as a 210 or a 250, and only a slight improvement over a 200 mhz. Plus, from the benchmarks I've seen, the doubled shaders of the geforce 4 at best only make like a 20% difference in performance compared to a geforce 3 at the same speed, and at higher resolutions the difference goes down to basically nothing. Just doesn't seem like the xgpu would have the bandwidth to perform even as well as a ti200. Can't really test evenly though, as the pc version of halo runs with a lot less effects(but I can go up to 1024x768 and still keep an average of around 30 fps, or turn on fixed function and go up to any res and stay over that :? ), and I'm not sure what kind of settings NFS:U runs with on the xbox. At high detail I'm stuck at 30 fps at 640x480, but at medium detail I get 60 fps most of the time(sometimes drops slightly), or I can manually set the settings somewhere in between medium and high and get 60 fps. Guess I could try Star Wars:KotOR or Deus Ex:IW demo and see how they perform, but I still don't know what kind of settings they run on xbox. If xbox runs NFS:U at high settings, then I guess the performance is very indicative of what the doubled shaders can do.

 

[cybamerc]

http://www.planetdoom.com

The german magazine PCGames Hardware has a quick Q&A with John Carmack in their latest issue. It’s very short, but there are a lot of new and unbelievable information.
- A video card with at least 128MB RAM and Pixel Shader 1.1 support is required for DOOM 3.
- A 2.5GHz CPU should be enough for the stencil shadows and physics calculations.
- The testing phase might last till summer or even later this year.
- DOOM 3 will be released on 4 CDs.
Last time we heard about the target system for DOOM 3 it was just a PC with a GeForce 3 class video card, but according to that Q&A it will be the minimum. Maybe we will find out more during the upcoming GDC.

I guess id doesn't know how to set up PCs properly either.

 

[Simon F]

The performance of an alpha version of a software product is never very indicative of it's final performance. Every project I've worked on (admittingly quite few) always held back any optimizations until the implementation was complete and the QA was more or less complete.

One should always remember the following maxim from Tony Hoare which was restated by Donald Knuth:

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil".

 

[London Geezer]

He used Doom 3 as an example because it's a game that gets a lot of hype for its graphics. Some of you read way too much into every little remark.

THANK YOU...


It's like saying "next gen games will look like FFX's FMV in realtime" it's just an example. It doesn't mean anything, it's just an example. And a pretty useless one too...

No point in telling us that a Geforce1 can run the game "fine" with all features on at 640x480 (which it wont, by the way, and yes, jvd i do know how to use a computer properly thankyouverymuch).

The game will probably not run "fine" (very little does at a stable framerate) with all features on on the Xbox, which has a Geforce4... If bloody Halo or Unreal Tournament (or any other fps on the system apart from Timesplitters2) can't run at a stable framerate, what makes you think Doom3 will?

 

[Legion]

Run is probably a gross Overstatement.

No, it's not. GF1 is the minimum requirement, it'll run on one -- Carmack has stated this.

and i will be the first to trumpet "BULLSHIT!"

In order to get the GF1 to run this you'd have to lower the detail to such monumentally low levels the game would lose its graphical appeal.

 

[London Geezer]

Run is probably a gross Overstatement.

No, it's not. GF1 is the minimum requirement, it'll run on one -- Carmack has stated this.

and i will be the first to trumpet "BULLSHIT!"

In order to get the GF1 to run this you'd have to lower the detail to such monumentally low levels the game would lose its graphical appeal.

Exactly, and by the time u do that, the game will look like Quake3. If even that. And at a lower resolution too.

When the PR people mention Doom3, they mention it while running it at full detail, because that's what distinguishes Doom3 from the rest, the features. Turn them off and u get a Quake3-lookalike (of course the design is different, though).

They're using Doom3 as an EXAMPLE, no one is arguing about what system will be able to run it, at what framerate.

When they mention it, they mean "Next Gen games will look much better than a game of this generation running on one of the best engines out there with nice shadows and nice bump maps". Forget the name Doom3. Forget the fact that it could run on a Geforce1 (which it wont).

Once u understand that, u'll also understand how stupid a statement like that is, i mean of course next gen graphics will be superior to this generation's best looking games...

It's like saying "A Formula 1 car is faster than a Honda Civic!!!". Useless.

 

[V3]

I thought Carmack wanted Doom3 to look the same from the minimum requirement upto the highend. The only different is the resolution. Geforce1 will have to go with res lower than 320x240 while GeforceFX probably can run the game at 1600x1200.

In contrast with HL2, where there are GFX feature set, differences. So the game wouldn't look the same across low to high end card.

Something like Carmack engine is what I want for next gen, low end version of the console would play the game at 480p and maximise every feature for that resolution, while the high end version of the same console would play the game at 1080p, but with the same feature set. So they would look the same except for the resolution.

Much like how some game today can be played at higher res. But that's only because the game doesn't maximise the console's resources at 480p, enabling them to go for higher res to maximise the usage of console resources.

 

[Legion]

i am sure if i were abusing mind altering substances i'd say exactly the same thing as Carmack.

 

[London Geezer]

IT's unreal. It's like saying that new hardware only offers higher resolutions. It's just stupid.

I spent enough money on a very nice 5900ultra and i'm sorry to say, there's a reason i don't plan to buy any games to play on my new PC...