Doom 3: Hardware in SA

Hi,

I'm no avid gamer, but I sort-of grew up on Doom, Doom2 and Descent(1-3). My loving wife got me a copy of Doom3 for my b/day, knowing that I'd have to do some upgrading on my PC.

Things that I know I should do is to up the CPU, get more RAM and bigger HD. I've settled pretty much on an Intel board and 2.8 or 3.0GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and a 80GB SATA drive.

What I do not know, is which graphic display card to get. On the Doom 3 packet, it's neatly printed that you need either an ATI Radeon card (8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800) or nVidia (3/Ti, 4MX, 4/Ti, FX, 6800). Cool. Now where do you get these cards in SA?

I've had a look at the Sahara and Rectron price lists, but they sell mostly compatible cards (like the poorly rated Powercolor cards that use reference designs and reject chips [see 9800SE series] from ATI). One card I am looking at is the Leadtek GeForce 5700 and 5900 series. Anybody have experience with these cards or and other pointers? Price should be under R1500 to fit in my budget.

I'll be running Win2k, but will consider upgrading to XP (yechh) if I have to.

--deckert

leadtech 5900xt is R1495 ex vat. I would recomend that. Also why are you taking the 80gig SATA? small difference between 80-120-160. 80gigs is way to little in 2days world. 400gig hard drives are suppose to be arriving soon. when that happens all other drives prices will become dirt cheap.

If you are buying a new board you could get a board with PCI Express (8I915GMF -decent board) an opt for
GIGABYTE® ATI Radeon X600PRO PCI-Express 16X 128MB DDR 128-bit DDR with TV-out/Twin View+DVI, Memory 600MHz

since its the same price it should kick ass. Doom will run smoothly on that card


..- dot dot dash

Best value for money card in SA is the Radeon 9600. not the best but for price vs preformance I would say it is the best value. Even on that card though Doom 3 struggels a bit though. Powercolor also have some decent stuff, I had a povercolor TNT2 back in the day and it benchmarked faster that the equivilant Gigabyte.

FREEEK
PCI Express is cool, very cool but not yet. The technology is still too new and although nVidia and Radeon say it is great and starting to make cards it is still pretty much uncharted territory. I would really wait a bit longer and mainly with current bus technology PCIE can't even run at half potential, it will just bottelneck the data.

There is no peace without war!!!

Deckert: There's no point getting a fast CPU, 1GB of RAM and then a pretty poor card.

Check out the Athlon 64s - they're very good value for money, cheaper than the P4s and they generally outperform them too. I'd say it's a much better choice than a P4, personally.

Graphics card wise, R1,500 isn't much at all. You can probably get a 9600XT which is a pretty decent card. I wouldn't usually recommend something so low but as you said, you're not going to be gaming much so it should run Doom 3 fine at least. Otherwise, the 5900XT is a better choice as it's faster.

<i>Originally posted by freeek:
<br />leadtech 5900xt is R1495 ex vat. I would recomend that. Also why are you taking the 80gig SATA? small difference between 80-120-160. 80gigs is way to little in 2days world. 400gig hard drives are suppose to be arriving soon. when that happens all other drives prices will become dirt cheap.</i>

The 5900xt seems to be the right way to go. nVidia also seem to have a lot more support for Linux than ATI does - that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling

As for HD size, I'm a bit paranoid at high data density. I'd rather have 2x80GB disks running RAID1, than one 160GB drive. If you loose the drive, you loose 160GB of info - not nice. I've always run with redundant drives in my machines (current system has 2x40GB mirroring each other).

<i>If you are buying a new board you could get a board with PCI Express (8I915GMF -decent board) an opt for
GIGABYTE® ATI Radeon X600PRO PCI-Express 16X 128MB DDR 128-bit DDR with TV-out/Twin View+DVI, Memory 600MHz
since its the same price it should kick ass. Doom will run smoothly on that card</i>

The only hassle I have is that the ATI Radeon that is available, is made by Gigabyte. Once again, it's a vendor that makes the reference design, not the highly beefed up card made by ATI themselves. I've always been afraid of vendors such as Gigabyte, CNET and especially VIA (see my later post).

I am looking at Intel's "Rock Lake" D865PERL if I go for AGP(8x), or the "Battle Lake" D915PBLL for the PCIE(16x). Both have RAID1 capability. I agree that PCIE is a bit new, so maybe I'll go for AGP while PCIE settles down.

--deckert

<i>Originally posted by TheVoice:
<br />Deckert: There's no point getting a fast CPU, 1GB of RAM and then a pretty poor card.

Check out the Athlon 64s - they're very good value for money, cheaper than the P4s and they generally outperform them too. I'd say it's a much better choice than a P4, personally.</i>


I tend to agree with you that the AMD processors are much better, but I have had very bad (historical) experiences with VIA chipstes (endless hassels with the IDE drivers, getting them stable). These boards also tend to have a hodge-podge of chips (VIA bus controllers, bridges, Realtek LAN chips, Winbond IO controllers, etc). All combined equate to a board that is not very stable.

I have long since taken a decision to stay with board such as the ones Intel make. They are very stable and the chips on them are all designed to work together smoothly. So I'd sacrifice speed for stability. It's not in everybody's interrest, but it is what I have chosen. If I could lay my hands on a true-blue AMD chipset board, I'd be delighted, but they are very expensive and as rare as Mazda miata's.

<i>Graphics card wise, R1,500 isn't much at all. You can probably get a 9600XT which is a pretty decent card. I wouldn't usually recommend something so low but as you said, you're not going to be gaming much so it should run Doom 3 fine at least. Otherwise, the 5900XT is a better choice as it's faster.
</i>

Good, another pointer towards the 5900.

--deckert

Not all AMD boards are VIA based - there's the nForce chipset which has shown a lot of success. The Athlon XP (K7) VIA boards were generally quite poor, but their current K8 boards for the Athlon 64s are very good indeed and have recieved many recommendations. If you're still against VIA, there's the nForce3 350 chipset coming very soon (if not out already) which is looking good. Stability really isn't much of an issue anymore, and if it is, it soon becomes public knowledge.

You cant get A MSI Radeon 9800 PRo for about R2100-R2300
If you want I can hook up to a supplier that have these great prices.

I would also reccomend a AMD 64 3000+ or 3200+ with MSI K8 Neo Platinum- brilliant card

If you're still against VIA, there's the nForce3 350 chipset coming very soon (if not out already) which is looking good. Stability really isn't much of an issue anymore, and if it is, it soon becomes public knowledge.


i have a xp 3000 64 bit with chaintech zenith 250 with a nforce 3 chipset. Runs like a dream. I would also recomend AMD.



..- dot dot dash

Here's a link to a discussion on Slashdot revolving around the new nVidia 6600 series. The discussion pans out pretty quickly to cover other cards that support Doom3.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/13/1341237&tid=152&tid=137&tid=218

The 6600 apparently manages 42fps at 1600x1200. Well, heck, I played Doom at 320x200, so playing at 800x600 will be a treat. I really won't need all the high-rez stuff. As long as the video is bright enough. Quake was notorious for having a very low gamma.

--deckert

<i>Originally posted by Dominic Rooney:
I would also reccomend a AMD 64 3000+ or 3200+ with MSI K8 Neo Platinum- brilliant card
</i>
It may be a brilliant card, but I cannot find any support for it in the Doom3 documentation. Does it have some form of emulation? The Doom3 docs are very specific about which cards (and chipsets) are supported.

--deckert

The MSI K8 is a motherboard for the Athlon 64s, whilst the 9800pro he recommended is a video card. I think he got confused in his workind. 'Can't' should probably be 'can' too, because the pricing on 9800Pros has dropped significantly lately.

Sorry Dominic.

I just got an ASUS V9980 Ultra (GeForceFX 5950) just a word of caution, don't forget about your power supply!!! 300 watts just does not cut it anymore (with 3 x HDD, 1 x DVD drive and other bits and pieces) these new GFX's cards are power hungry! Of to buy a 530 watt power supply today, another R600 but when you have just thrown R4000 odd on a GFX card, I suppose it's a small splash in the ocean!

ECHO

When u bought the card were you not advised that 480watts is recommended. nVidia is going the same way voodoo went, vodoo's last Big card was the vodoo 5000 of something, it had an external power supply. Lets just hope nVidia does not follow suit and basically go backrupt.

There is no peace without war!!!

Sorry, I was caught up and didn't concentrate. The MSI K8 Neo Platinum is the motherboard and MSI Radeon 9800 Pro is the grpahics card

Hi again,

Maybe not quite OT, but it still relates to the hardware required to drive Doom 3. I've settled on the nVidia 5900XT 128MB RAM AGP (I just have to choose between Gigabyte and Leadtek now).

The question I have is this: the card has a DVI port with the little extention thingy at the end where you can attach another monitor. Does the card support two monitors "out of the box"?

I currently run two 17" monitors, one from my Intel Extreme 3D card (on board) and the other from a Matrox Millenium card which I use while developing. Will I be able to drive both monitors from one card? (i.e. like a Dual-headed card, in Matrox speak).

--deckert

Yep you can, there should either be software with the card or software that's downloadable that will allow you to do that. Then you just use the Analogue-to-DVI convertor that it will also come with to hook it up to the other monitor.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Pr13sT</i>
<br />ECHO

When u bought the card were you not advised that 480watts is recommended. nVidia is going the same way voodoo went, vodoo's last Big card was the vodoo 5000 of something, it had an external power supply. Lets just hope nVidia does not follow suit and basically go backrupt.

There is no peace without war!!!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

No I was not warned, but yes I knew but thought I would give it a shot anyway Well last night I installed an AOpen 530 PSU. What a differance, really stable system. Played DOOM3 in 1024 x 768 (max my lcd monitor supports, with vsync on) in HIGH quality and it ran smooth Not bad for an old Gigabyte mobo (VIA chipset) Pentium III 1Ghz and 512mb of PC133 RAM and running on 2X AGP!!! Only thing that brings the system to it's knees (and cause's a reboot) is 3DMark2003 (I get to just past the turtle fly over in game test 4, then reboot) I find that it is a lot more stable using the drivers provide by ASUS than by using the nVidia drivers, ASUS says that the nVidia drivers don't support all the features that the card provides??? Ambient temp 32C, core temp 48C (after 2 hours of DOOM3) and thermal cut off on the card... a whoping 120C Memory on card running at 975Mhz and core running at 475Mhz (auto clocking enabled) I know that this card is going to be even better once I upgrade my mobo and cpu. System contains the following:-

Pentium III 1Ghz
512mb PC133 RAM
2 x 160Gb IDE HDD
1 x 40Gb IDE HDD (Removable)
1 x DVD ROM Drive
1 x ASUS V9980 (GeForce FX 5950) 256Mb
1 x Sound Blaster LIVE! Value (Soon to be replaced with an Audigy 2)
1 x 10/100 Network Card
1 x AOpen 530w PSU
1 x slot fan (next to GFX card)
1 x side case fan
2 x back case fan
2 x front case fan
1 x cold cathode kit
Cambride Soundworks 4 speaker surround
Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse
HP 15" LCD monitor

Only issue... with all the fans running it sounds like a nuclear device, humming away in the corner, but then I turn the sound up, it's great!

and yes... DOOM3 has caused me to jump, more than once

lol. maybe you should think about moding your cooling system on ur graphics card!

..- dot dot dash

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by freeek</i>
<br />lol. maybe you should think about moding your cooling system on ur graphics card!

..- dot dot dash
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

lol, have you seen the cooling system on the ASUS v9980? The card weighs 531gms (half a kg) It has a serious cooling unit!