DOOM III - Special Preview

NVIDIA and id Software (http://www.idsoftware.com/ ) were kind enough to give us access to a preview version of id's upcoming game DOOM III and let us benchmark it on a system furnished by NVIDIA. The 3D engine of this version is the most current build.

id's new 3D engine is nothing short of amazing, and going by their track record, it will become the future standard for in-game graphics. To say that the graphics are a revelation and a veritable firework of effects that pushes graphics hardware to its limits would still be an understatement, but unfortunately that's all we're allowed to say at this time.

The DOOM III engine offers a selection of rendering modes to choose from. NVIDIA's FX and NV2x cards are explicitly supported with their own codepath and optimizations. ATi's cards are supported with the R200 codepath. Of course, there are general modes like ARB2 as well, which is what ATi's Radeon 9800/ 9700/ 9600/ 9500 cards use. The Radeon 9000 runs in "R200," while NVIDIA's FX 5900/ 5800/ 5600/ 5200 use "NV30." The GeForce4 Ti4200 runs NV20 code, although at reduced rendering quality.

Due to a bug, ARB2 currently does not work with NVIDIA's DX9 cards when using the preview version of the Detonator FX driver. According to NVIDIA, ARB2 performance with the final driver should be identical to that of the NV30 code. So a lot has happened since John Carmack's latest .plan update (

• 11 – Benchmarks
  

  1. 1 – Introduction
  2. 2 – GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
  3. 3 – 256 Bit Memory Interface
  4. 4 – Ultra Shadow Technology
  5. 5 – Floating Point Ops
  6. 6 – Comparison Table
  7. 7 – Detonator FX
  8. 8 – Aniso Image Quality
  9. 9 – Aniso Image Quality, Continued
  10. 10 – Test Setup
  11. 11 – Benchmarks
  12. 12 – DOOM III - Medium Quality
  13. 13 – DOOM III - High Quality
  14. 14 – Doom III - Medium Quality 4xFSAA
  15. 15 – Unreal Tournament 2003
  16. 16 – 2xFSAA
  17. 17 – 4xFSAA
  18. 18 – 8x Anisotropic
  19. 19 – 4xFSAA & 8x Aniso
  20. 20 – Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  21. 21 – 2xFSAA
  22. 22 – 4xFSAA
  23. 23 – 8xAnisotropic
  24. 24 – 4xFSAA & 8xAniso
  25. 25 – Splinter Cell
  26. 26 – 3DMark 2001 SE
  27. 27 – Fillrate
  28. 28 – Shader Performance
  29. 29 – 3DMark 2003
  30. 30 – Shader Performance
  31. 31 – Codecreatures
  32. 32 – Average Number Of Polygons
  33. 33 – Conclusion
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