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willed · Feb 10, 2003, 08:53 AM

I have decided that my next upgrade will be a laptop that will be able to play Doom III well. Will even the 17'' PB be able to do this? I know it hasn't come out, but I'm sure someone will be able to hazard a guess. I maybe keeping my iBook 500 for a long time at this rate, which I somehow don't think will be able to handle it!

Pepi Picklefoot · Feb 10, 2003, 10:17 AM

No...and probably no PC laptop will be able to play Doom 3 at a decent frame rate either.

Nor will the current top-of-the-line Macs.

Doom III is really pushing the envelop as far as hardware goes.

You'll definitely need an ATI Radeon 9700 or nVidia GeForce FX or better to get any decent speed out of that game and a fast G4 or Pentium4.

No joke...Doom III *is* going to be the most hardware-demanding game when released.

There's no way in the world the iBook 500 could ever play Doom III. And there's also no way in the world Doom III will play well on the top-end PowerBook.

rampant · Feb 10, 2003, 01:54 PM

Actually, Caramak said that some HP laptop with the MR 9000 and a 2.x Ghz processor would run Doom 3 decently. And U2 is more hardware demanding than Doom 3 because it's coded like ****. Doom 3 will be the best looking, but not most demanding.

Rickster · 07:19 PM

I believe Carmack said that the GeForce 4MX would run Doom (but extremely poorly) when he ranted about that GPU upon its release. The GeForce 440 Go and 420 Go in the new PowerBooks are mobile versions of the 4MX, so the same presumably applies to them. In other words, don't buy one of these if you want to play Doom on it.

He has officially blessed the Radeon 9000 and its notebook counterpart. So actually, the 15" TiBook is better than the 17" AlBook in this regard.

The GeForce 4MX series is great for today's games -- it supports all the OpenGL features they use and is fast. But new games on the horizon use advanced features like pixel and vertex shaders, which only the higher-end cards have (or at least are capable of decent performance with).

Fran441 · Feb 11, 2003, 09:16 PM

I think it will probably run on the current PowerBook G4/1 GHz.

I've been amazed at how well the computer runs games with it's 64 MB Radeon 9000 Mobility.

iamnid · Feb 11, 2003, 09:31 PM

To the original poster... this is all speculation as the game has not been released... nobody knows what the final specs will be.

Pepi Picklefoot · Feb 11, 2003, 09:32 PM

Originally posted by Fran441:
I think it will probably run on the current PowerBook G4/1 GHz.

I've been amazed at how well the computer runs games with it's 64 MB Radeon 9000 Mobility.

Don't give false hopes to willed. Doom 3 will not play at an acceptable speed on the current laptops.

It'll probably run at 10-15fps with all settings turned down to its lowest. And this is an optimistic estimate.

Tom Rudderham · Feb 13, 2003, 04:23 PM

The alpha ran ok on a Radeon 9000 and a 1.2ghz PC without sound (which was buggy as hell!) I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run on a 15" TiBook.
Note - It wasn't my PC, I just saw it running on one!

Pepi Picklefoot · Feb 13, 2003, 05:21 PM

Listen up...if the Altivec-enhanced, dual-processor-aware Nascar 2002 plays like crap on a Dual-800 /w GeForce 3, chances are you'll never be able to play Doom 3 on a laptop.

iBorg · Feb 19, 2003, 02:09 AM

Originally posted by Rickster:
He has officially blessed the Radeon 9000 and its notebook counterpart. So actually, the 15" TiBook is better than the 17" AlBook in this regard.

Hope you're right! The Radeon Mobility 9000 was a major reason (besides the more convenient size) that I've been happy to keep my Ti Gigabook, rather than waiting for the 17"er, with its inferior graphics chip.

Time will tell .....

iBorg

goMac · Feb 19, 2003, 05:29 PM

Originally posted by Pepi Picklefoot:
Listen up...if the Altivec-enhanced, dual-processor-aware Nascar 2002 plays like crap on a Dual-800 /w GeForce 3, chances are you'll never be able to play Doom 3 on a laptop.

I've been running tons of games on my TiBook 1 ghz without any sign of it choking.

Eug · Feb 24, 2003, 02:40 PM

Doom III probably won't be out until Xmas on the PC side. Who knows for Mac?

How much more demanding is Doom III than UT2003? UT2003 runs just OK on my Celeron 1.4 Radeon 9100 system. (The Radeon 9100 is a rehash of the 8500, and both are a bit faster than the Radeon 9000 Pro.)

So, if Doom III is more demanding than UT2003, my guess is that my TiBook 1 GHz Radeon 9000 Mobility ain't going to run Doom III too well.

DBvader · Feb 24, 2003, 04:37 PM

i think taht the powerbook with the 9000 will be fine. id codes their games excetionally well, and they will take advantage of mac specific optimizations.

DBvader · Feb 24, 2003, 04:41 PM

"Doom III probably won't be out until Xmas on the PC side. Who knows for Mac?"

they are being codeveloped. it will, or at least should, be out at the same time.

in any case, just becuas eone game like nascar oesnt run well doesnt mean that another wont. id codes their games exceptionally well. as a matter of fact, my mac (dual 867/9000) runs quake 3 just as fast as my PC (athlon 2000+/Ti4200). doom's code, if its like any other id game, will be very optimized,

Eug · Feb 24, 2003, 08:10 PM

my mac (dual 867/9000) runs quake 3 just as fast as my PC (athlon 2000+/Ti4200)

I can see them both playing awesomely, as Quake 3 is a very old game, but I'd be very surprised if you got the same frame rates.

Frame rates on an TiBook 1 GHz Radeon 9000 with Quake 3 are mediocre. (But it plays well of course.)

ie. Frame rate differences with Quake III won't matter much, but they could make a huge difference with the VERY demanding Doom III.

Pepi Picklefoot · Feb 25, 2003, 08:38 AM

Like Eug said...Doom 3 will be extremely demanding. How much more demanding than Quake 3? Orders of magnitude. How much more demanding than UT2k3? Quite a bit more demanding.

Unless you're planning to play Doom 3 as a slideshow at the lowest setting, don't even bother buying a laptop for the game.

I can't believe some people still think Doom 3 might be playable on the current Apple laptops.

I don't even think it'll play decently on my Dual-800 with Radeon 8500 at the lowest setting.

Besides...let's pretend it did play well on the lowest setting, why buy a computer knowing that it'll only play the game well on the lowest setting? You'd be losing much of the Doom 3 atmosphere.

You can bet that Doom 3 is being developped to run at a half decent framerate on the higher end PIV with the best videocard. But this means that you'll need something like a 2GHz+ PIV with GeForce FX or Radeon 9700 to even begin getting an enjoyable experience.

Eug · Mar 5, 2003, 08:53 PM

Some benches of the GeForceFX 5800. This card is currently the fastest available card, until the ATI 9800 Pro comes out.

Code:
              1024x768      1280x1024      1600x1200 
Ath 1800+        36             25             18 
Ath 2000+        35             25             18 
P4 2.4           35             25             18 
P4 2.6           36             25             18

It's only an alpha version of the game, but nonetheless it's obvious it's going to be VERY demanding. At this stage it is ENTIRELY GPU bound. Even a P4 2.6 doesn't increase benchmarks over an Athlon XP 1800+.

DBvader · Mar 6, 2003, 09:05 PM

there is liteally no optimization going on there. so, you cant really judge from that. id isnt stupid. they wouldnt codevelop the game just to have one or two systems able to play it. the reason quake3 runs at the same speed as my Ti4200/2000+ is that it takes advantage of SMP.

doom 3 should run fine on all the new powermacs with 9000s and up.

id is a very competent dev, and will take advantage of every single performance optimizing tool. remember, they are notorious for leasing off their engine. i would assume they would do the same for doom.

lookmark · Mar 6, 2003, 11:13 PM

Doom 3 will run perfectly fine on the PowerBook G5.

daydreamer · Mar 7, 2003, 04:33 AM

Originally posted by Pepi Picklefoot:
Listen up...if the Altivec-enhanced, dual-processor-aware Nascar 2002 plays like crap on a Dual-800 /w GeForce 3, chances are you'll never be able to play Doom 3 on a laptop.

Nascar 2002 literally *FLIES* on my dp800 with GF2mx, with everything set to max and res 1280*1024.

Gul Banana · Mar 7, 2003, 06:19 AM

Originally posted by daydreamer:
Nascar 2002 literally *FLIES*

I assume that you do not literally mean literally.

Eug · 09:31 AM

Originally posted by DBvader:
there is liteally no optimization going on there. so, you cant really judge from that. id isnt stupid. they wouldnt codevelop the game just to have one or two systems able to play it. the reason quake3 runs at the same speed as my Ti4200/2000+ is that it takes advantage of SMP.

doom 3 should run fine on all the new powermacs with 9000s and up.

id is a very competent dev, and will take advantage of every single performance optimizing tool. remember, they are notorious for leasing off their engine. i would assume they would do the same for doom.

Yes, ID is awesome and they will do some impressive optimization, but never before has a pre-release version of a game been this demanding. Even on older hardware, UT2003 ran (slightly) better in the pre-beta stage.

Now Carmack has said that a 9000 M will be able to run Doom III adequately, but I suspect that's with > 2 MHz P4s to power it, and after optimizations. Thus while a GHz Ti might be tolerable, that leaves just about any other Mac laptop in existence out of the loop (excluding the as-of-yet-unshipped 17" AluBook for the time being). If we're lucky, maybe other current generation laptops like the Ti867 will be OK, but essentially what this means is that any previous generation Mac PowerBooks will be inadequate, as well as likely the current generation 12" AluBook. And of course all current iBooks will be a lost cause. Dual PowerMacs with the 9000 Pro will be better, but this thread is about laptops.

Remember that nowadays on desktops a 9000 Pro is considered a LOW to low-mid end gaming card. And a 9000 Mobility is even slower. My guess is that Carmack is building Doom III to reflect this.