Low End Tests: Last Man Standing
And finally, we have the low end budget cards and previous generation equipment. We ran these tests at the default resolution set by each of the first three quality settings. We ran the High Quality setting, as last years midrange cards almost make our playable frame rate list. For some, this may be close enough, but we really want to see that 40-45 frames per second average before we call it rock solid.At Medium quality, the GeForce 4 Ti 4400 falls in our playable range, which is very impressive for such an old card. Medium quality still looks great, and even with the quantization visible on lighted surfaces (especially in specular highlights) is still aeons beyond what one would expect this venerable card to handle. The id team has certainly out done themselves with quality support for previous generation hardware while building in plenty of scalability.
Though we didn't test it here, the best setting for both the 5700 Ultra and 9600 XT is Medium Quality at 800x600, as it gives the best performance and balance of visual experience.
Another bit of goodness to take away from these tests is that Low Quality and Medium Quality really don't show a tangable difference on these cards. There is absolutely no reason to run Low Quality on any card that has more than 64MB of RAM. This means that textures won't be resized, though some quantization may be evident from the compression used on normal, specular, and diffuse maps.
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edge929 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I think I'll wait about a YEAR for prices to come down to reasonable levels, then I'll get a 6800 Ultra and play it the way it's suppose to be played.VortigernRed - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Derek,There is def something wrong with your figures here.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2146...
You have a Geforce 6800 ontperforming a X800XTPE by about 70% on the top graph "high quality med res" also theX800 Pro scores are identical to the R9800 Pro. Maybe you have left a higher quality setting on with the X800s (AA or something)
Gibhunter: Geforce4 MX is nothing like a GF3 TI 200. GF4 MX offers a similar featureset as the GF2 and pretty much the GF256 before it, however it has a better memory controller and so offers performance similar to the higher end Geforce2s ie Pro and Ultra. GF3 offers PS and VS.
Reflex: JC always said that Doom3 targeted the Gefore256s featureset. However that does not mean the Geforce256s performance of course.
Koing - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Thanks for report Derek.I probaly own't be playing it for ages as I'm notmuch of a pc gamer but that is that.
Koing
Reflex - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
#36: Huh? GF3 was always the minimum spec for it...unclebud - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
"John Carmack has spoken of possible issues when overclocking a graphics card with Doom 3,"sounds like Mr C is trying to excuse his code bloat (to me).
what happened to "voodoo 3 2000 will be able to run doom 3 fine"?
araczynski - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
reminds me a lot of Deus Ex 2, cept more atmospheric and more responsive.araczynski - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
on my system 2.4@3.3/1GB/5900(128) the game plays very nicely with everything maxed (AA off) at 1024x768. the game is very good, especially in terms of atmosphere and graphics, the sound isn't as good as i think it could've been, but still very nice. also some issue with it not seeing 7.1 setups as surround, have to downgrade in windows to 5.1.worth teh wait i think, at least singleplayer is, don't really care about the multiplayer from this type of genre so won't try it.
gibhunter - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
#27, GF4MX is more like GF3 Ti 200. GF2MX was more on par with the original Geforce video card.I am interested to see if the Radeon 9200 loses any frames per second on a slower CPU. My guess is that it doesn't take a very powerful cpu to max it out hence it should hover right around 20fps on even a P4 2GHz.
maverick81 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I have a laptop with a AMD mobile 64 3200 and a ATI mobility 9600 with 64 mb. I have been using it for ganes until my x800 gets here. Only been playing doom 3 for about 4 hours. It seems to run fine, not as good as a desktop but playable.thebluesgnr - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Derek,do you have a FX5200 or 5500 with a 64-bit memory interface to test?
also, I'd like to see the Radeon 9550 results.
Thanks,