disappointed with Doom 3 graphics -- is it my Ti4200 or the game?

[rabbit fighter]

I'm just not impressed with the graphics at all, but most of the reviews I've read say that everything is turned on for a Ti4200 except the heat waves. Some of the posts here say everything is "shiny" but nothing is shiny for me.

Do I have something set wrong, or is my Ti4200 just not displaying the game to its full potential (minus the heat waves)?

I was under the impression that a new DX9 card would only get me the heat waves and more frames.

Will the game actually look better or just have more frames with a 9800 or 6800?

Running at Medium quality, 800x600
P4 3.2 Ghz HT
1 Gb Ram
GF4 Ti4200 @ 270/509
Soundblaster Live 5.1 gamer

 

[otispunkmeyer]

looks awesome on my 9500pro at same settings, may just be that your card simply cant render it as it was ment to be rendered

medium quality once compared to high quality does look abit crap tho, high quality looks so much more crisp....and to have high quality your gonna need at least a 9800pro, GF4 AA an AF suck donkey d!ck

 

[Rage187]

it will look better on a new card.

 

[apoppin]

try a DX9 card - yours is DX8 - the difference is . . . uh, 'night and day'

:roll:

you are missing the lighting effects (a BIG 'deal')

edit: if you have ANY doubts, compare what you are seeing with the SCREENSHOTS.

 

[rabbit fighter]

So getting a DX9 card will make things "shiny" and so on, even though this is an Open GL game?

Anandtech: "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."

I wouldn't say it "looks great"-- looks a lot like quake 3 with the obvious shadow/light difference. Characters are noticeably better.

: "If you have a low-end video card, fear not, DOOM 3 will look good on it. By default, all of the advanced quality settings such as shadows, specular lighting, and bump mapping are enabled. As long as your video card meets the system requirement of a GeForce4 MX-440 64MB, all of these effects will be available to you. The only effect that will not be present is Heat Haze, which requires a DX9 level video card."


So, I'm confused--am I getting all the eye candy with my Ti 4200, just lower res, with compressed textures, and lower frames? Or am I missing stuff?

I have to say if I'm not missing stuff I don't see how people can rave about the engine and graphics.

 

[Shinei]

The textures are compressed under medium quality; even if you change the compression method from 256-color to RXGB, you're still going to be using compressed specular, diffuse, and normal maps, which hurts image quality. Try setting the quality to High, but you'll need to use the CacheMegs attribute and manually disable anisotropic filtering in the config file (type "1" in the field, it's the same thing as zero to Doom) if you want to play anything better than a slideshow. Even then, don't expect spectacular framerates.

And the phrase "DX9 card" means it supports more features of OpenGL (along with the DX9 spec), namely the features that are in the OGL1.5 core API, along with the stuff Carmack custom-designed for Doom 3. DX8 cards support OGL1.2, I believe, which doesn't have as much stuff and the Ti series' vertex shader units aren't as sophisticated as the programmable ones you find in a 9500+ or an FX series card. The game is noticeably better-looking on a DX9-compatible card (it's odd to say that, since it's an OpenGL game, but for some reason the DX9 spec seems to be the more demanding of the two APIs even though they do the same things), in my opinion.
That's not to say that you should rush out and buy a brand new card just for Doom 3... I suggest sticking it out until the fall when the new cards come out, and then seeing Doom The Way It's Meant To Be Played.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Get one of these, call me in the morning newegg

 

[PrayForDeath]

Can you post some screenshots so we can judge wethere you're seeing the game in all its glory or not?

 

[RedWolf4000]

The Ti4X00 line will make all skin look shiney and poorly shaded unless you go to your advanced driver settings and set performance to High Quality. This wont slow down your game to much at all, and it looks MUCH better. A good DX9 card wont cost you too much if you want to upgrade.

 

[rabbit fighter]

Good news! I tried Shinei's suggestion, set it to high but disabled aniso (I just disabled it globally in the driver). I also lowered the res to 640x480, but I must say the game looks MUCH better.

I am disappointed that I can't run in a higher res, given that I have a pretty powerful system. Granted my Ti4200 is aging, but it seems like I just bought it to get really high frames out of Quake 3. Given how fast it is in Q3A, it seems it ought to do a bit better in Doom3, since the graphics don't _seem_ as different and the framerate suggests and given that new games like UT2004 run very well on it.

My own video card history:

Quake Software
. .
. .
Quake II Software
. .
. Voodoo2 (8 mb) -- bought to enhance Quake II
. .
Q3A .
. Diamond Viper II (S3 chip, 32 mb) --- bought to make Q3A run better
. GeForce 2 GTS (64 mb?) -- bought to make Q3A run better
. GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (128 mb) -- bought to make Q3A run better
. .
Doom 3 ????

Every one of those cards cost $200 when they came out. Guess I'm in line for a 6600

 

[zephyrprime]

He was asked to explain how he now could justify coming to Illinois

Yes but no vertex or pixel shaders! (fragment shaders in OpenGL parlance). I think that guy made a mistake because "advanced quality" surely includes fragment shaders.

 

[rabbit fighter]

OK, I just finished playing for an hour on my brand new 6800nu.

It is like a totally different game. The graphics are GORGEOUS, except for the low-res looking textures. Why so blocky/pixelly?

Kyle over at was on crack when he said the GF4 Ti would provide all the bells and whistles minus heat waves and that it would offer an amazing gaming experience or whatever. Not true.

I didn't want to say it earlier (for fear of starting a flame war) but my initial impression of Doom3 was that it SUCKED. Well, I am very happy to admit I was wrong, but why haven't the reviewers said, "Don't bother playing this game without a DirectX 9 card"? Or, "We strongly recommend a DirectX 9 card"? Sure, you can play it without one, but the game isn't worth the effort without the graphics.

Well, here's my mini-review:

Doom3 sucks on a GF4 Ti4200.
Doom3 rocks on a GF 6800nu.

 

[gururu]

its not so much DX9 features as it is raw speed. your old 4200 is three generations back, it wasn't meant to cut D3. and I understand the 5800 series to do very well with D3 and they aren't dx9 compliant.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: rabbit fighter
OK, I just finished playing for an hour on my brand new 6800nu.

It is like a totally different game. The graphics are GORGEOUS, except for the low-res looking textures. Why so blocky/pixelly?

Kyle over at [.H.] was on crack when he said the GF4 Ti would provide all the bells and whistles minus heat waves and that it would offer an amazing gaming experience or whatever. Not true.

Wow,Ii was going to tell you that you were wrong as Carmack had stated that the game was designed around the orignal geforce and the game would be feature complete on a geforce3 with newer hardware just benifting mainly in speed and a little bit in quality due to floating point shaders. However, I just got done checking out the nv20 render path and the difference between that and arb2 is just night and day.

As for the texture resolution, you have keep things down a bit when you have not just a texture but also a specular and normal map for everything. Also, there is a lot more texture variety in a doom3 level compared to something like ut2004; and that alone means you can't get carried away with high resolution textures.

 

[jhunt303]

I'm using a XP1900 with an 8x AGP Ti 4200 @ 800x600 LOW Bump Mapping enabled... is playable

The graphics are poor on this card.. simple, but you can still play the game fine.


If you want everything to look good, click 'yes' to everything on advanced options. You can't really compare the performance you get though as to that from a dx9 card.


If you want to watch a slideshow set everything to on, whack the detail up to High and run at 1024*768, I personally can see almost no difference between the ti4200 doing this and a radeon 9800, only the frame rate is different.

Jonny

 

[iversonyin]

i hav Ti4200 64 MB version on lowerst setting. the game is barely "playable"

 

[ChuaChua]

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthre...242&highlight=doom

They discuss Doom3's graphic engine. It is a bit technical.