The first of the Doom 3 benchmarks are in thanks to HardOCP. John Carmack took some time to run the numbers for us. the highlights:

• nVidia kicked butt. The nVidia 5950 Ultra made the ATI 9800XT work for it's money.

So what is the good word?

All that considered, for those of you that are in the high end video
card market, the GeForce 6800GT looks to very much be the sweet spot
when it comes to playing DOOM 3 with all the eye candy turned on at
high resolutions. Obviously the 6800 Ultra is even faster for those of
you that need the best no matter the cost. If I had to make a list of
high end video cards to purchase to play DOOM 3, the GeForce 6800Ultra and GeForce 6800GT would easily take the number 1 and number 2 spots with the ATI Radeon X800XT-PE rounding out the number 3 place.

interesting - i wonder if this will be a nail in ATI's coffin or a boot in their ass to get back into the game?

the more important question is how will this perform on the average joe's cpu?

I'm sure by now that everyone is aware that Doom 3 has gone gold and will be in stores the week of August 2nd. Old news. A lot of people are pretty hyped on this game, can't blame them it's been one slow ass year for new games. I however am having second thoughts on Doom 3 after reading this taken from a article on GameSpy.

GameSpy: What are the current player-hosting capabilities of the game? Is it still designed around 4 players, or has that been expanded?

RD: DOOM 3 multiplayer is based around 4 players; however, internally it is not limited to that. Mod teams will be able to support more.

4 flicking people per server? WTF? I mean first off, thats boring and second off if your a server admin are you gonna run a Doom 3 server so 4 whole flicking people can play on it at once? I'd be pissed if I was planning on running a Doom 3 dedicated server, 4 people, wtf.

Thats pure poo-poo. Good old ID, disappoints once again, for me. I'm sure Doom 3 will have a awesome a engine, no question they make good engines, and maybe a good single player story/game, but with MP being limited to just deathmatch and 4 flicking people a server. I honestly have no insentive to buy this game now.

Yes, he says that this can be modded to support more, but mods take time to be made and with that being the case, why should I rush out and pay 59.95 for the game? I'll blow through the single player in a day or two and then have pretty much zero MP for replay value? Instead I can then just wait till a decent mod comes out for the game and by then the game will be at reduced price, instead of the "new release" ripoff price that is currently set.

Good job ID, I'm sure you just doubled the number of downloads instead of buyers this game will have with that news.

OK, first off ATi doesn't have a coffin (h)

Nah, just remember, this is only half ATi vs. nVidia and the other half the engine wars - I consider the X800 Plat to be a "high end card" however nVidia is always considered the top dog for enthusiasts...I think the fifth generation (FX Series) showed everyone that even enthusiasts don't want it if it will not put out worthy performance for the ridiculous prices. The 5950 Ultra whatever, wow...took them that long to come up with a filler card that could compete..?



About the multiplayer, lol 4 people and DM...can you say 1v1 is all that matters? If iD doesn't bother with making more than 4 players at once (well, sure anything is possible) then there must be a good reason, such as a horrible netcode...I thought those barbaric days would learn from things such as the good ol' CS netcode, but apparently from modern games like Halo they just haven't.

Ya see, 4 players and four ports on a xbox, nice connection. I think they're skimping out on the mp and it's gonna HURT them, you watch. 2v2 CTF isn't very fun, what else do they offer I mean it's no coop so it's obviously very barebones. Team DM and DM appear to be the only viable options for a couple friends...

On the other hand, I'm sure there will be plenty of servers considering it only takes four slots...but I wonder how powerful the servers need be to make it playable...heh. Either way, for a few weeks at least, there will be a plethora of servers.

4 player DM... and no COOP... :evil:

I'm buying it anyway...