Doom3 quality settings

[BFG10K]

However, show me one benchmark ANYWHERE where it shows a benefit moving to a 512MB card of the same speed in Doom 3.

Click

Would I goto Intel.com to get reliable information on how Pentium 4s perform compared to Athlon 64s?

Why would ID lie about video memory requirements? What would they have to gain?

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: Maxspeed996
Video Card wise....I have an AGP 8x slot on my board. Will the X800 be enough.
Or will the x1600 with a Zalman on it , and overclocked be the way to go? They are around $150 for the x1600.....

I just thought of something else. The X1600 might be a better card in D3/Q4 since the 1000-series has better OGL performance than the 800 series. However I don't really know much about the relative performance merits of these 2 cards. I think the X1600 Pro is decent.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: VIAN
Ultra quality doesn't look that great anyway.

Heck, even High Quality isn't worth it.

It's better to use Medium Quality and enable 8xAF in control panel.

how can you do that? for me the af settings for doom3 profile are grayed out.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

However, show me one benchmark ANYWHERE where it shows a benefit moving to a 512MB card of the same speed in Doom 3.

Click

Would I goto Intel.com to get reliable information on how Pentium 4s perform compared to Athlon 64s?

Why would ID lie about video memory requirements? What would they have to gain?

Maybe because of the fact that everyone around would be like "WOW OMFG ID software's Doom 3 needs 512MB of VRAM to run. It must be really advanced"

The performance differences shown do not reflect the difference that would exist due to memory swapping. Like stated above, play BF2 with 512MB of ram in a 64 player server at max settings, then do so with 2GB of ram. The difference is far more than 5-10%.

 

[Fox5]

1. Doom 3 on ultra quality does not always exceed 256MB.
2. I'd imagine the video cards have some compression schemes that help things out.
3. AGP texturing and PCI-Express bandwidth should alleviate the requirements brought on by the minimal data that exceeds VRAM. (not everything in graphics needs 20GB/s bandwidth)

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: BFG10K

However, show me one benchmark ANYWHERE where it shows a benefit moving to a 512MB card of the same speed in Doom 3.

Click

Would I goto Intel.com to get reliable information on how Pentium 4s perform compared to Athlon 64s?

Why would ID lie about video memory requirements? What would they have to gain?

Maybe because of the fact that everyone around would be like "WOW OMFG ID software's Doom 3 needs 512MB of VRAM to run. It must be really advanced"

The performance differences shown do not reflect the difference that would exist due to memory swapping. Like stated above, play BF2 with 512MB of ram in a 64 player server at max settings, then do so with 2GB of ram. The difference is far more than 5-10%.

OK when people say "swapping" in this context they are referring to texture swapping from VRAM to main RAM, not from main RAM to the HDD. You're conflating 2 different things. I agree with your point that Ultra quality doens't benefit much from 512MB RAM, but the reason isn't that there's no texture-swapping going on - it's just that, on a PCIe/AGP8x system, the texture swapping (from a 256MB card) results in a comparatively small performance loss due to id's optimizations. See the b3d article that BFG linked to where they talked with id about that.

Edit, having said all that, the moral is that graphics cards can benefit from 512MB in the near future. Like someone said, the textures are comparatively low-res in Doom3 and if textures actually exceed 256MB in the turkey-baster level...

 

[dguy6789]

Perhaps you are right. I did forget to remember the fact that PCIe x16 is a heck of a lot faster than any hard drive.

 

[BFG10K]

The performance differences shown do not reflect the difference that would exist due to memory swapping.

What are you talking about? The two cards are identical except for memory size so that is clear evidence that 512 MB makes a difference.

The very first example shows the 512 MB X800XL getting 57.4 FPS, a mere 3.5% performance drop from going to Ultra while the 256 MB card gets 49.9 FPS or a performance drop of 13.7%.

This is a blatant and real world difference.

Like stated above, play BF2 with 512MB of ram in a 64 player server at max settings, then do so with 2GB of ram. The difference is far more than 5-10%.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. You're talking about paging while the issue at hand is texture swapping.

Maybe because of the fact that everyone around would be like "WOW OMFG ID software's Doom 3 needs 512MB of VRAM to run. It must be really advanced"

Nonsense. The fact that ID went to so much trouble to minimize the effect doesn't back your interpretation of the situation.

 

[BFG10K]

how can you do that? for me the af settings for doom3 profile are grayed out.

You can't, neither on ATi or nVidia because their application detection prevents it. You'll need to set the AF level in Doom 3 itself.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Nonsense. The fact that ID went to so much trouble to minimize the effect doesn't back your interpretation of the situation.

which is sad

 

[weewegs2543]

And it's a fact that a 128 MB card can run it at ultra settings. It just has to swap out files a lot more.

 

[RampantAndroid]

on my old AGP 6800 Ultra, non OC'ed I ran D3 at ultra high, 1280x1024, and rarely dropped below 60 FPS. My system config at that time was:
A8V Deluxe
A64 FX53
PNY 6800U
1 GB 2-3-3-6 RAM
Audigy 2 ZS Plat
2x 10K RPM 74 gb Raptors in RAID 0.


I haven't tried it on my new config as of late (which is mostly the same, except new mobo, 2 GB 2-3-2-5 RAM, and a 7800GT OC'ed)