Doom 3 upgrade time

[McGraw]

I have an Athlon 1.4Ghz Thunderbird with a bog standard GeForce 3 64mb card and 512mb ram.

Doom 3 is not nice to play on this system so I intend to upgrade.

Will I see an increase in performance from upgrading the graphics only?

I realise there is a cut off point for graphics performance based on CPU speed.

Any clues as to what nvidia card this would be on my system?

Thanks a lot.

[Jon M]

It all depends on your budget... at the moment.. the best price/performance card around would be an ATI 9800 pro or XT.

[McGraw]

Thanks, but wouldn't that be overkill on my machine?

Perhaps I'd be better off with a CPU/Mobo/Upgrade instead?

[Neil]

You'll need (IMHO)...

A good CPU/mobo/ram level (A 2.5 ghz minimum CPU would be my advice, coupled with at least 512MB of DDR ram)

If you're serious about running the game well, then you need a DX9 compatible video card-Nvidia 6800 GT/Ultra, or Radeon 9800 Pro/x800 would be my advice (I've got an x800 Pro with all 16 pipelines open & Doom 3 flies along quite happily! D )

I also have an Athlon 64 3400+ & a gig of DDR ram!

Good luck.

[Edit]-As mentioned below a beefy powe supply would be essential.

Also-There's no point in upgrading CPU/mobo/ram & then using your old graphics card, as it would just cause you a bottleneck in terms of power (& also vice versa)

Originally Posted by s1lv3r

It all depends on your budget... at the moment.. the best price/performance card around would be an ATI 9800 pro or XT.

I'd go along with that - the only caveat being that they have a fairly beefy power requirement, so anything less than a good quality 300W power supply is possibly not going to be up to the job.

Regarding the question of upgrade graphics or cpu, it's likely that a cpu upgrade will also require a new motherboard - and it would still be limited by the 'old' graphics card - best bet, unfortunately, would be to upgrade the lot......

[McGraw]

I just want it playable at medium detail at about 800x600.

[Jon M]

Originally Posted by McGraw

I just want it playable at medium detail at about 800x600.

It runs that perfectly on my machine .. (1.4 overclocked to 1.8, 512mb ram at 200fsb, and a geforce4 4200 64mb)

So on that basis, you're not as far from an adequate specification as it might seem.

[McGraw]

I really don't want to buy a new graphics card to find that my existing card is the ceiling for my CPU.

Might just get the Radeon 9800.

Can anyone shed any light on what the fastest video card there is any point in me buying for my processor speed?

The law of diminishing returns etc.

TBH I doubt that purchasing a top of the range card would be a dissapointment, OK your Ram and CPU are going to be a bottle neck but it wouldnt be wasted money.

I have an XP 2400 512Mb ram and a GF FX 5200 (128Mb) Doom doesnt run that well on this setup.

I'd skip the GF 4's and look towards a mid or high end FX.

The ATI 9800 Pro's are tempting, but out of sheer bloody mindedness I dont like ATI. Absolutely no reason for it, except that they are equally as bad as Nvidia for cheating.

If I had a budget and wanted to upgrade I'd go for the 9800 pro, not long ago these babies were the fastest things on the planet.........and thats not bad coming from an Nvidia fan.

[Nutty]

I'd go for a 6800 GT, awesome card, I have one myself. You can get one for 300 notes. Or a 6800 for about 200, theres also newer 6600's coming out, which are cheaper.

Stay clear of the GF-FX series imo, their AA quality isn't much cop, and they take a much bigger hit turning on AA or AF than the 6xxx series.

[McGraw]

Did some tinkering last night. Turns out I had 4x antialiasing on which made it unplayable at 640x480.

I removed the anti-aliasing and slightly overclocked my Geforce 3. It's now playable at 1280x1024.

No way I'm upgrading now.