by Anton Shilov , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Alexey Stepin
08/03/2004 | 07:47 AM
UPDATE: Added performance numbers for ATI RADEON X800-series of graphics cards achieved with yet-unreleased CATALYST 4.9 beta drivers along with new comments across the whole range of demos and in “Conclusion” section.
Humankind have managed to land a man on the moon and sent multiple expeditions to other planets, such as Mars. While the Spirit and the
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Id Software has been known for pretty interesting titles since the late nineties, but became really famous after the release of the classic Castle Wolfenstein in 1992 and massive Doom in 1993. Both games have become legends and brought astonishing respect to id, who then released such big titles as Quake, Quake II and Quake III. Originally id specialized on quality first-person shooters, but after the Quake II ended up as a mainly death-match game, the company decided to create a title that would be a death-match from the ground-up. So born the Quake III, after which the head of id John Carmack said he wanted to make a yet another quality first-person shooter, not a yet another LAN massacre, so emerged Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom III.
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First discussed in late 1999, the Doom III has been delayed a number of times and was finally released on
The plot of Doom III is the same as that of the original Doom: you are a marine that is sent to the Mars to accomplish security tasks. While the marine is going around the spaceport building, he meets several people who tell him to get out from Mars because of strange and dangerous things happening there. Wherever he is going and whatever talks he is hearing it is all about unexplained phenomena…
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It just so happened that during the very first mission to find a missing scientist you face a blast and a widespread outbreak of zombies and monsters all streaming to assassinate the remaining human beings following the orders of their spiritual leader Dr. Patrugger. The dramatic escalation in the wave of violence you face while going around the now abandoned
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While the first two levels somewhat resemble Half-Life game with its “calm before the storm” concept, the following is just a yet another massacre you witnessed in the original Doom – the main thing you will need is enough ammunition and quick reaction to shoot down or dismember a yet another enemy with a gun or a chain-saw.
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If you are looking for realism, you are not going to witness anything new in Doom III compared to other today’s games, such as FarCry, in terms of graphics and physics. You can destroy almost nothing on the levels and you can hardly keenly injure others like in games like Soldiers of Fortune. Shadows and dynamic lighting, the big things of Doom III, are slightly better than in other games, but they hardly really affect your impressions about the game since all the levels are extraordinary dark and even on “easy” settings there is going to be a massacre, which is why you will hardly notice all the advantages of Carmack’s new engine.
There are very few spacious rooms in the game – the whole action is happening in very tiny and narrow corridors, as the developers probably wanted to create an atmosphere of a rather uncomfortable base on unfriendly Mars. This facilitates the load on hardware and allows the game to be easily ported to consoles (where spacious levels are rare), but it urges you to fight literally everything that is on your way, something that modern computer games try to avoid, allowing you to sneak in without being noticed or to combat distantly.
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Unlike other contemporary games, such as FarCry, the Doom III requires linear passing through – you cannot avoid almost anything and you always do not have to think a lot in order to pass one or another obstacle, the main thing you should do well is to shoot fast.
Linear going through and narrow rooms evidently reduce the importance of advanced artificial intelligent – all your enemies have to do is to attack you on timely basis and stay unseen, which is rather easy, as there is massive amount of dark places within the game.
Graphics is the key-part of every game that is released for personal computers today. Modern 3D graphics cards can do astonishing amount of work and thanks to that contemporary computer games look spectacular. As usually, we expect a new level of graphics and realizm from id Software. Due to extensive amount of hype around the game, we did expect something truly extraordinary out of the title, but the reality turned to be less optimistic.
As said above, shadows and lighting are considered as the main visual advantages of the Doom III game. Massive amount of dynamic light sources cause a rather panic feeling and resemble approaches used in movies, when a beam of light sheds an ugly monster ready to strike you for just a second; the next moment you are either killed or defending yourself in a fight till the last breath.
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The game lacks so-called soft shadows and uses a number of light maps, therefore, we cannot say that Doom III uses only dynamic lighting model.
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While geometry of characters’ faces impresses much, the remaining objects, including the world and body-parts are not as smooth as those in other games, namely FarCry and Unreal Tournament 2004. In general, geometry makes extremely good impression in Doom III, all characters are very well done. But when it comes to negative impressions, we have to note pretty low-poly body parts in some cases as well as pretty simplistic levels.
Bump mapping is a yet another highly-advertised advantage of Doom III. To tell you the truth, the much discussed peculiarity looked astonishing in 2001, 2002, but not in 2004, when all games can boast with it.
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Textures, in “high quality” settings, are also not that impressive. We cannot say they are blurry, but just they do not amaze much in terms of level of details.
Faces and mimics is indisputably a strong part of Doom III. Every character among human beings has his own face and mimics, which is something new in computer games and that moves games towards cinema with actors and actresses.
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Unfortunately, as it is said above, there are truly not enough polygons on characters and world, which is why we see quite some artifacts like quadratic heads, absence of tongues (!) and some other issues because of this.
Id decided not to implement a complex physics model into the Doom III – boxes and barrels fall down like they were made of tin and are empty, not steel and filled with gasoline or some other things.
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There is absolutely no music in the game. Nothing to fuel your imagination except in-game sounds. Furthermore, corps do not stay even for a minute, which is also a part of nearly all contemporary game.
We played Doom III on a number of PCs using a number of graphics cards and it looked and played very well. Neither ATI nor NVIDIA offer degraded image quality with the latest hardware (X800-series and 6800-series), as far as we can say based on our brief investigation.
Doom III image quality comparison | |
ATI RADEON X800 | NVIDIA GeForce 6800 |
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The only thing that seems to be different on ATI and NVIDIA seems to be gamma – everything is very slightly darker on NVIDIA’s GeForce 6-series, but that is truly hardly an issue.
Hopefully you made your own conclusion about the Doom III, as a game, now it’s time to see what hardware you will need to play it.
For our tests we utilized our typical system for benchmarking with the following configuration:
For the first part of our Doom III hardware coverage we used the following graphics cards with driver settings set to match each others’ quality:
Please note that the game is reported to have fps limiter at around 60-64 fps, while timedemos calculate average fps, which means that performance of the real game may be slightly different from the test. On the other hand, we have to report that fps limiter does not work in some cases, which may also have its impacts on the results.
In our “hell” demo we did a bit of sightseeing in hell. We took a walk around lakes with lava and glanced on devil’s architectural “masterpieces”. We also had to combat with monsters and take a walk near a precipice. The demo contains quite some effects and complex geometry.
The GeForce 6800-series graphics cards provide astonishingly good results outperforming all RADEON X800-series products participated in this test in all resolutions. Surprisingly, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra manages to beat the RADEON 9800 XT, bringing some hope to its owners.
Excellent performance of NVIDIA-based products seem to be conditioned by the fact that the GeForce FX and GeForce 6 chips can calculate two times more “zixels” than pixels, e.g., the GeForce 6800 Ultra that has 16 pixel pipes can calculate up to 32 z-values per closk, which is crucial when rendering a lot of shadows.
NVIDIA has always had the industry’s best OpenGL drivers, which is also very important help to win the Doom III competition.
ATI’s upcoming 4.9 beta drivers obtained already after the article’s first publication deliver a speed bump for ATI’s RADEON X800 hardware, however, the additional fps are not enough to outperform any of the GeForce 6800-family graphics processing units.
Performance drop from activating full-scene antialiasing and anisotropic filtering is gargantuan.
Still the GeForce 6800 Ultra, GeForce 6800 GT deliver nice performance, while the RADEON X800 XT is significantly slower. Less powerful graphics cards are not really good performers in Doom III with eye-candy features enabled.
Benefits the new version 4.9 beta drivers provide in terms of performance seem to be somewhat more substantial in eye-candy mode. Nevertheless, the RADEON X800-series still lag behind the GeForce 6800-series.
In this demo we recorded a battle with monsters’ squad in the northern room of the marsian base. In this demo we noted massive amount of shadows along with pretty complex geometry.
Again, the whole GeForce 6800 family produces stronger results compared to ATI’s RADEON X800 lineup because of faster Z-calculations as well as more efficient OpenGL drivers along with certain optimizations implemented by NVIDIA and game developers.
While the new CATALYST 4.9 beta drivers gave some speed benefits to ATI’s RADEON X800 hardware, it still does not outperform NVIDIA’s hardware.
After looking through the results, we have to say one more time that enabling full-scene antialiasing and anisotropic filtering dramatically affects performance of modern graphics processing units in Doom III: neither of them deliver playable fps in 1600x1200 and only the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT models showcase 45 – 50 fps in 1280x1024 with eye-candy features enabled.
While the GeForce 6800-series are still ahead, such performance advantage is not that important, as speed in high resolutions is definitely not high enough for playing.
Pay attention that we excluded older-generation products from benchmarking in eye-candy mode and also decided not to finish the run of the GeForce 6800 in 1600x1200, as its results would be too low (it takes around 30 seconds to render one frame for the product) because of insufficient amount of onboard memory.
Performance advantage brought by the new 4.9 beta drivers seems to be more tangible in eye-candy mode; however, it is still not enough to match performance offered by NVIDIA’s high-end parts. RADEON X800 XT’s lead over GeForce 6800 is hard a breakthrough, frankly speaking.
In our “Recycling” demo we finally entered the Mars’ surface just to fight two demons and enter the known narrow corridors of doom to massacre another plethora of monsters.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800-series hardware clearly outperforms ATI’s RADEON X800-series in Doom III. Take 1280x1024 resolution and more or less finalized drivers: the GeForce 6800 Ultra beats ATI’s RADEON X800 XT by about 46% and even the GeForce 6800 manages to leave ATI’s top offering behind by approximately 8.5%!
The drivers that are to be released either in late August or September do deliver higher performance figures compared to another beta drivers used originally, but still ATI’s RADEON X800-series of visual processing units is behind the rivals among the GeForce 6800 family.
The situation on “Recycle” level in eye-candy mode is the same as in the “CPU” level – only two top NVIDIA’s offerings deliver more or less sufficient performance in 1280x1024, while ATI’s latest chips seem to be even slower.
There is not much we can add about the CATALYST 4.9 beta drivers: they are faster than before, but no breakthroughs with performance.
“Hellhole” level includes running though corridors to the place of the great challenge: the fight with the “cyberdemon”.
Owners of the ATI RADEON X800-series are probably going to assassinate the “cyberdemon” pretty comfortably, but those who have the GeForce 6800-series are going to do this at much higher fps! The GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is slightly faster than the RADEON 9800 XT, but both hardly deliver enough fps.
Hellhole is the most complex demo-scene in our testing, but it gains nearly nothing in terms of performance on the RADEON X800 with the forthcoming CATALYST 4.9 drivers in “pure mode”.
“Hellhole” level is even harder to render in eye-candy mode for contemporary graphics processing units.
NVIDIA’s lineup is still considerably ahead of ATI’s, but its performance is not enough to play comfortably in high resolutions with anisotropic filtering and full-scene antialiasing enabled.
With new 4.9 beta drivers installed, ATI’s RADEON X800 XT is clearly faster than the GeForce 6800, but, to tell you the truth, this is not a serious achievement, as the “XT” part should be treated as a rival for NVIDIA’s “Ultra” parts.
As follows from the name, deathmatch is a deathmatch with loads of explodes, shooting and rapid moves.
All NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 graphics cards participated in the test delivered above 100 fps in 1024x768, but only one card from ATI’s camp – the RADEON X800 XT – managed to surpass 100fps limit. In higher resolutions the GeForce 6800-series continue to lead, meanwhile older-generation offerings are on their knees…
On a deathmatch level performance of ATI RADEON X800 does not increase much as a result of possible optimisations brought by the CATALYST 4.9 beta.
On deathmatch levels graphics cards fell themselves much more comfortably: the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT deliver around 40fps in 1600x1200, which is nice, while the RADEON X800 XT and the GeForce 6800 can demonstrate “almost” sufficient performance in 1280x1024. Still, both cannot be considered as good performers.
As we could already figure out, the CATALYST 4.9 beta drivers provide more substantial benefit in the mode with anisotropic filtering and full-scene antialiasing enabled. Unfortunately, the only GeForce 6800-series board ATI's RADEON 9800 XT manages to outperform is the model 6800 that costs $299.
So, Doom III is finally here. It makes positive impression, but those, who played the original Doom 10 years ago may just be too old for this kind of action, while the guys and gals who spent months played Counter Strike and FarCry pretty recently may just find the new Doom a little bit monotonous… Frankly speaking, the gameplay is pretty primitive: linear passing-through and very trivial solutions along with the amount of killings is definitely not something that today’s games deliver. Doom III would look excellent in, say, 2002. But not in 2004.
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Anyway, in case you got it, you probably wonder which hardware is the best for it.
The answer is pretty simple: at this stage with current drivers and version of the game NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800-series is the best thing you can buy for Doom III. ATI’s RADEON X800-series also delivers nice performance and astonishing gameplay, but based on the benchmark numbers we have to say that it is much behind the rival. Older-generation hardware will hardly be a good choice for Doom III, however, keep in mind that we tested with “high quality” settings set, while “medium quality” may offer higher performance, but with a bit compromised image quality.
To tell you the truth, even on a rather mainstream machine you are going to experience the game in all its glory. For instance, we tried to run the Doom III on a machine powered by Intel Pentium 2 .40GHz processor, i875P-based mainboard, 1GB of dual-channel PC3200 memory, ATI RADEON X800 PRO graphics card and SB Live! audio card and the game performed astonishingly well with quality settings set to “high” and anisotropic filtering 16x activated from the drivers.
It is interesting to note that some of the graphics cards working at high (but still stock!) frequencies produced artifacts and even BSODs in Doom III. So far we have experienced only one such issue with a top-of-of-the-range contemporary graphics card from a manufacturer that we do not name at this time.
ATI’s new beta CATALYST 4.9 drivers did not bring the Doom III performance crown to ATI’s RADEON X800 XT hardware, even though it also did not degrade image quality. Now those, who already own, or, only plan to acquire, an ATI’s latest graphics card should probably either hope for totally re-done ATI’s OpenGL drivers, or pay attention to more sophisticated GeForce 6800-lineup. While we probably should not make any final conclusions based on results in beta drivers, the general picture can certainly be seen.
In short-term future X-bit labs will release more Doom III benchmarks with different quality settings and wider range of graphics cards.