Differences between Doom 3 quality settings?

[ShawnD1]

To get the best quality with acceptable performance, I tested all the quality settings in the Doom 3 options. When running timedemo demo1, the qualities low, medium, and high all scored the same frame rate which was about 40 fps (no shadows). The ultra high quality wasn't too far off with a frame rate of about 36.

If low, medium, and high quality all give the same frame rate, is there really a difference between them?

I ran the tests at 1024x768, 2x AA, and 2x quality AF on a Radeon 9600XT.

 

[Jeff7181]

No shadows? What's Doom 3 without shadows? I'd turn off specular and bump mapping before I'd turn off shadows.

Anyway... yes there is a difference between them... but in my experience, the difference is mostly in frame rates. I can't for the life of me tell the difference between High and Medium, so I leave it at Medium. I haven't played much at Low, but I suspect if I set it to Low and increased the resolution to maybe 1280x1024 I'd get acceptable frame rates and probably wouldn't notice much image quality difference than with Medium detail at 1024x768.

 

[nanaki333]

did you have vsync turned off when you ran these tests?

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
No shadows? What's Doom 3 without shadows?

It is whatever the opposite of slideshow is.

I'd turn off specular and bump mapping before I'd turn off shadows.

How can I do that?


vsync was off.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
No shadows? What's Doom 3 without shadows?

It is whatever the opposite of slideshow is.

I'd turn off specular and bump mapping before I'd turn off shadows.

How can I do that?


vsync was off.

They're in the advanced video settings right with shadows and vsync.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Doom3 without shadows is like sex without pleasure.

Anyway, you can disable specular and bump mapping in video options->advanced settings.

 

[vshah]

what cpu? may be a bottleneck...

-Vivan

 

[ShawnD1]

Athlon 3200+. I'll retry the benchmarks at 1600x1200 and post the results.

 

[DarkKnight]

there no way the cpu is the bottleneck. When I overclock my athlon 2500+ from 2.1ghz to 2.3ghz, my framerates stay EXACTLY the same. The game is completely limited by my radeon 9800, so I'm sure that it is the radeon 9600 thats holding you back. Try enabling triple buffering in the ati control panel and turning on vsync in game, it doesnt help a lot in benchmarks, but it helps to smooth of the fps in the game. Also, turn off AA and AF, they don't help much and kill ur framerates.

 

[gururu]

definitely not a cpu bottleneck

link