Doom 3 (2004) – retro – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Genre : Action (Shooter) / 3D / 1st Person
Release date : 1 August 2004 of the year
Developers : id Software and Splash Damage
Publisher : Activision 

Doom 3 is a science fiction first-person shooter survival horror game developed by id Software and published by Activision in 2004. Localized and published in Russia by 1C. Set in the year 2145 at the United Aerospace Corporation (UAC) research facility located on the planet Mars, the game is a remake of the original Doom game, but with new graphics and a game engine. The game was developed for Microsoft Windows operating systems and ported to Linux in 2004, and five months later it was also released on Mac OS X.

 

Bethesda has decided to release a re-release of the cult shooter. The set, called BFG Edition, included the shooter Doom 3 itself and the additions Resurrection of Evil and Lost Mission, which included several new levels. Also included are the games Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth. Both games run on Windows 7 without additional settings. The game edition appeared on the market on October 16, 2012 on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The re-release has 3D support, improved sound and lighting. 

A new file storage system from the next generation of the Id tech engine has been added to the game engine, which allows for significantly faster loading of levels. The game has acquired an achievement system. There’s also a checkpoint system. Doom 3 BFG Edition is the first game to feature the Oculus Rift. 

THE GRAFICAL PART

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

Supported OS and graphics API

Doom 3 is supported by almost all major operating systems Windows, MAC, Linux and even Android, so fans of the series, if desired, have the opportunity to run this game almost anywhere.

 

The priority and main graphics API for Doom 3 is OpenGL. 

Game engine

Doom 3 is based on id Tech 4, a game engine developed by the American company id Software in 2004. The Doom 3 games were developed on its basis. The engine was created by John Carmack, who had previously done similar work creating engines for games in the Doom and Quake series. The release of id Tech 4 was a notable event in the history of computer games, since at the time of its release it was one of the most technologically advanced and innovative game engines. The engine was released as a fully commercial product, available for licensing to third parties, but after the release of id Tech 5, id Tech 4 was relicensed as free software. The id Tech 4 engine uses OpenGL as its application programming interface.

 

id Tech 4 was initially planned as an expansion for the Quake III game engine. This was initially envisioned as a complete rewrite of the engine’s rendering, while still retaining other subsystems such as file access and memory management. However, after the new rendering became functional, the decision was made to switch from the C programming language to C++. This required a complete restructuring and rewrite of the rest of the engine. The id Tech 4 code today contains very small portions of the id Tech 3 (Quake III engine) code.

The first computer game to use id Tech 4 was Doom 3, released on August 3, 2004. Since the id Tech 4 engine is the current technology of id Software, it is therefore offered for licensing to third parties. A license for one game costs a fixed amount of money: $250. Moreover, the game can be released on any of the supported platforms, or on all platforms simultaneously. If the licensee wants to use the engine in multiple games, the terms change. When purchasing an engine, the buyer receives all the id Tech 000 source code and support for the following hardware and software platforms: PC, Mac, Xbox 4 and PlayStation 360. id Software guarantees support for the engine, cleanliness and stability of the program code, as well as timely release of the necessary updates to the engine. Before licensing, the buyer can receive an evaluation (trial) SDK.

The downside of the id Tech 4 engine was that it required a high-end graphics accelerator (such as a GeForce FX or Radeon 9700) that was at least compatible with OpenGL 2.0, and also had fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders. By E3 2002, the recommended GPU was the Radeon 9700 with 128 MB of video memory; The efficiency, advanced architecture and 256-bit video cards bus of the Radeon 9700 were necessary to play Doom 3 with high graphics settings and playable frame rates.

The release of id Tech 4 led to the obsolescence of graphics schemes of the GeForce 2, Radeon 7200 and earlier class (RIVA TNT2 and Rage 128), since the engine needed support for OpenGL 2.0, which was absent in these schemes. Also, the engine did not support software rendering, which was provided by the Intel GMA series of integrated graphics cards. At that time, before the advent of id Tech 4, a strong CPU could compensate for a weak graphics card. Before the release of Doom 3, John Carmack warned players not to buy GeForce 4 MX graphics cards for the game, as these cards support OpenGL 1.x, but not OpenGL 2.0. However, many inexperienced consumers mistakenly bought the GeForce 4 MX, confusing them with the GeForce 4 Ti. This is what forced id Software to add support for GeForce 4 MX to the engine, making these video cards the only OpenGL 1.x video cards on which Doom 3 ran. However, there have been cases where enthusiasts managed to run Doom 3 on non-technical video cards such as 3dfx Voodoo 2, but these video cards were unable to render pixel-by-pixel lighting and bump construction.

id Tech 4 added many new features that were missing from the id Tech 3 engine that preceded it. These included building bumps using normal maps and specular lighting. The main innovation of the id Tech 4 engine was its use of fully dynamic pixel-by-pixel lighting. Until this time, all previous 3D engines were based primarily on pre-calculated lighting or lightmaps, and although dynamic effects were available before, the effect simply changed the brightness on the entire object. The approach used in Doom XNUMX featured more realistic lighting and shadows than those found in previous computer games. 

Unified lighting and shading is a light propagation model that was developed in 2004 by id Software and implemented in the id Tech 4 game engine. Previous XNUMXD games, such as Quake III Arena, used separate lighting models to determine how light illuminates game characters and environment. Lighting and shading information for game levels and maps was static, pre-generated and pre-saved, while the same information for game characters was calculated in real time (on the fly).

Doom 3, the first game to use the id Tech 4 engine, uses a unified model that generates lighting and shading on the fly. This means that any light sources affect the entire scene, and not just a predefined part of it. The capabilities of this technology include the possibility of self-shadowing, which is implemented using shadow volumes. Using shadow volumes, characters can cast shadows on themselves: for example, a person’s chin can cast a shadow on their chest. 

Advanced Game Settings

Original version of Doom 3 has both basic and advanced graphic settings. There are four quality levels available for all types of settings: ultra, high, medium and low. You can also manipulate individual settings, but their number is very modest. Doom 3 BFG Edition does not have changes to quality settings, so he did not understand this subsection.

  

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings. 

Various Doom 3 quality modes

As we can see, before the quality of graphics takes place, and the change in picture quality is very significant.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K Doom 3

In 4K, the difference with FullHD is not very noticeable, due to the lack of high-resolution textures.

Comparison of Doom 3 anti-aliasing modes

Anti-aliasing in Doom 3 works well and completely eliminates all surface irregularities.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K Doom 3 BFG Edition

In 4K, Doom 3 BFG Edition looks slightly sharper and better than in HD.

Comparison of Doom 3 BFG Edition anti-aliasing modes

Anti-aliasing, similar to the first version of Doom 3, works great.

General visual design and comparison of Doom 3 versions

Information about the graphics in Doom 3 was described in detail in our previous section about the game engine and there is no point in dwelling on the same thing again. In this section of our review, we decided to directly compare the graphics quality in Doom 3 and Doom 3 BFG Edition and convey these comparisons to the end user.

Doom 3 BFG Edition certainly has improvements, as mentioned above, the lighting is more attractive than in the original version. But all the same, the texture detail in the original version of Doom 3 is somewhat higher, apparently for the previous generation consoles the developers had to simplify the game somewhat… But judging by the sensations, it’s more pleasant to play all in Doom 3 BFG Edition, apparently due to the presence of 4K permissions…

.Next we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware. 

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the test segment:   

 Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1920×1080, 2560×1600 and 3840×2160 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Doom 3. Anti-aliasing was taken based on the maximum permissible limits for AMD video cards, namely 8X. Doom 3 has a frame cap of 62 FPS, and Doom 3 BFG Edition has a frame cap of 120 FPS.

Testing at 1920×1080 resolution

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Doom 3

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level showed an acceptable FPS. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Doom 3 BFG Edition

  

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level.

Testing at 2560×1600 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 Doom 3 

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 Doom 3 BFG Edition

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level. The optimal solutions will be Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti. 

Testing at 3840×2160 resolution

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840×2560 Doom 3 BFG Edition

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 660 level.

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840×2560 Doom 3 BFG Edition

With these settings an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R9 270 or GeForce GTX 660 level. The optimal solutions would be Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 660. 

 As we can see from testing, the contrast was simply incredible – in the original Doom 3 AMD video cards are far ahead, and in the latest Doom 3 BFG Edition NVIDIA video cards, to be honest, we expected that the balance of power in both games would be the same…

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings memory GPU Doom 3 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920×1080 will be 512 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560×1600 – 768 MB of video memory, and for a resolution of 3840×2160 about 1024 MB of video memory.  

Testing at maximum quality settings memory GPU Doom 3 BFG Edition

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920×1080 will be 640 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560×1600 – 1024 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840×2160 about 1280 MB of video memory. 

CPU test

 

We tested processor dependence on 15 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum graphics quality settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Doom 3

 

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 3 Doom BFG Edition

In all cases, CPU performance in games is quite sufficient. 

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Intel % Doom 3

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 AMD % Doom 3 

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Intel % Doom 3 BFG Edition

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 AMD % Doom 3 BFG Edition 

 

Both versions of the game show the same results and are currently able to support up to 4 computing threads, which is actually not that bad.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 16GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.). 

Testing Doom 3 System RAM Consumption 

 

On a 4GB system, Doom 3 consumes about 1.3GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 1.8 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 2.3 gigabytes.    

Testing system RAM consumption 3 Doom BFG Edition

 

On a 4GB system, Doom 3 BFG Edition consumes about 1.5GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 2.4 gigabytes.