Doom 3 for Mac... Still Coming

[MacRumors]

Last week, id Software announced that Doom 3 had gone Gold Master for the PC, and provided hints at the coming Mac version.

According to MacCentral (http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/07/15/doom3/), Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id, reported in his .plan file:

... Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games, More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains 'when it's done', but I can confirm that it's definitely coming.

[coumerelli]

I know this is something to get SUPER excited about - only, I'm not a gamer.

Thing is, a lot of my friends are, and they always tell me, "there's just not enough software for the mac..."

I say, "name something."

they say, "games!"

now I can say, "Doom 3 is!" :D

[realityisterror]

too bad about 2% of the people here have systems that can run that game....

reality

[Mudbug]

too bad about 2% of the people here have systems that can run that game....

reality

but that 2% of us are going to have a GREAT time :D :cool:

[MacsRgr8]

Gr8!

This made frontpage!

Shows how badly we want this game.
I'm all setup for it: Dual 1.8 Ghz G5, 1.5 GB RAM, (Radeon 9800 OEM), but GeForce 6800 ordered!

Oh that'll be the day:
nVidia's GeForce 6800 shipping the same day as Doom 3.
This would boost both sales :D

[Windowlicker]

why can't they just release them at the same time? :Q shouldn't be that big a deal these days.

[puckhead193]

I can't wait for it to come on Mac, who cares that it will be out for PC first, it will look alot better on a mac! hehe
I hope it comes out soon because college starts in sept! hehe i need something to do on my "off time" and the parties don't start till at least 12 :p

[jcook793]

Ah crap. Now I'll probably have to buy both versions because I'm dying to play this game. I don't game much but Id games rock. Maybe I could install Gentoo on my G5 and play it. :)

Did anybody notice that a Linux port is going to be released before an OS X port? Sheesh.

But at least it will be available!

[JamSoft]

I wonder when it's going to be announced. I hope it's soon 'cause I can't wait to run this baby on my new 2.5Ghz g5 with the NIVDIA 6800 :cool:

Here's my wish list for the mac os x doom 3 engine:
• dual cpu support
• altivect support
• g5 64bit optimized.


of course those are all wishes. What do you think the probability will be for actually having any/all of those features?

-Nate

[Surreal]

^^^

dual chip shouldnt be hard ... just a matter of proper assignment to to available processor

altivec and 64 bit optimization...i don't know so much about...someone else ??


i don't think optimizing the code would do too much...i think the best thing would be to make sure it was properly optimized to use all of the availabe ram...but i don't know about the difference between 32 and 64 bit very well.

[DGFan]

Hopefully 10.3.5 will fix the FX5200 performance problems 10.3.4 created so I'll have a small chance of being able to run this on my PB.

[FriarTuck]

The hardware upgrade required will make this...

most expensive computer game ever.

[MacsRgr8]

The hardware upgrade required will make this...

most expensive computer game ever.

Remember when Unreal (original, not the Tournament) came out?

WOW.. that game wasn't playable at max settings until the Voodoo 5 grfx card came along for in the G3 B&W.... a couple of years later.

[Lanbrown]

• g5 64bit optimized.

-Nate

What do you think the 64-bit is going to give you?

[Fuchal]

Remember when Unreal (original, not the Tournament) came out?

WOW.. that game wasn't playable at max settings until the Voodoo 5 grfx card came along for in the G3 B&W.... a couple of years later.

Hmm. I ran that on my Pentium 2 350MHz with Voodoo3 16MB at 1600x1200 fine...

[g4cubed]

This is great news but how long before we get it? I wish the release was the same as for the pc :rolleyes:

[MacsRgr8]

Hmm. I ran that on my Pentium 2 350MHz with Voodoo3 16MB at 1600x1200 fine...

The trick is the 3Dfx... The Voodoo cards were gr8 back then. Glide was fast (mind you, only 16 bits grfx).
Rage on the Mac was more demanding of the hardware. Even the original G4 with ATi Rage 128 (16 MB grfx) wasn't capable of running Unreal at max settings.
Getting the faster grfx cards as Voodoo 5, ATi Radeons etc. made a huge difference. It took a while before those were made available for the Mac.

[GetSome681]

I wonder when it's going to be announced. I hope it's soon 'cause I can't wait to run this baby on my new 2.5Ghz g5 with the NIVDIA 6800 :cool:

Here's my wish list for the mac os x doom 3 engine:
• dual cpu support
• altivect support
• g5 64bit optimized.


of course those are all wishes. What do you think the probability will be for actually having any/all of those features?

-Nate

High end games like this are not CPU bound (to some extent yes), but their performance is almost 90% related to the video card.

[AndrewMT]

I've said this before, but Apple would really benefit by creating their own game studio (like Microsoft has) that releases quality, drool-inducing games exclusively for Macs (or at least releases on a Mac first).

They could start up a game studio the same way Microsoft did - by buying another studio (bungie). I would suggest Cyan or Shiny (are they still in business, or are they called something else)?

Who's with me?

[discstickers]

Ah crap. Now I'll probably have to buy both versions because I'm dying to play this game. I don't game much but Id games rock. Maybe I could install Gentoo on my G5 and play it. :)

Did anybody notice that a Linux port is going to be released before an OS X port? Sheesh.

But at least it will be available!

The linux binaries won't work under linux on Mac hardware.

[bishopduke]

!

[smegdude]

Woo Hoo!! Another game my G4 iMac can't play, if this game comes out before christmas it'll boost the sale of the G5 iMacs as if there wasn't enough interest already.

nice to see a non ipod related story on macrumors.

[diehlr]

I don't get why there are negative comments for this as well as many other positive announcements made on this site. Would you people rather Doom 3 not be released? People are weird.

[Laslo Panaflex]

I've said this before, but Apple would really benefit by creating their own game studio (like Microsoft has) that releases quality, drool-inducing games exclusively for Macs (or at least releases on a Mac first).

They could start up a game studio the same way Microsoft did - by buying another studio (bungie). I would suggest Cyan or Shiny (are they still in business, or are they called something else)?

Who's with me?

That would be sweet, but to be fair, what does Apple know about making games? Sure they could buy out another studio, but there has to be some sort of apple touch. How would they do it?

[Damek]

For everyone who would have to buy a new computer to be able to play it (do we even know what the Mac spec requirements will be?), why not consider buying an XBox? No, the graphics won't be "freakin' awesome", but I bet it will still be fun and scary. That's what I'm thinking of doing, though probably not for another 6-12 months. And hey, by then maybe the XBox will only cost about $50-$100! :rolleyes:

And it'll let you play Half-Life 2, too...

[Dreadnought]

Bring it on!


I'm all setup for it: Dual 1.8 Ghz G5, 1.5 GB RAM, (Radeon 9800 OEM), but GeForce 6800 ordered!

Can I take that poorly 9800 of your hands? I'll trade you for my 9600....

[Damek]

For everyone who would have to buy a new computer to be able to play it, why not consider buying an XBox?

To answer my own question, probably because shooters were made to be played with a keyboard and mouse, and the XBox doesn't let you do that. *sigh* ... back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll be able to play it on my lowly 1GHz iBook somehow... :o

[uzombie]

I'll have it in two weeks. That's why I went and built a PC. An Athlon with a 9700. (Shuttle XPC). Just for games and when my G4 is out on loaner.

For those that can't wait, having a PC for games is pretty cheap. Actually, an Xbox is cheapest.

This way, I can be ready to kick butt online when my Mac buddies chime in!
:D

[blueBomber]

so only those with the 2.5 G5 machines will be able to actually run this with decent graphics and an acceptable framerate. Good thing I just ordered my GeForce 6800 for my pc; the G4 PB isn't gonna cut it.

And to all those wanting to play this without a super high-end mac: get it for the X-Box. The version shown at E3 was fantastic looking and ran very well.

[Mav451]

High end games like this are not CPU bound (to some extent yes), but their performance is almost 90% related to the video card.

That is true, but you need to consider the kind of CPU needed to support the 9800/6800...and when you consider that, then while it may INDEED be 90% video card, it can't do that if you have it paired to a 4-year old G4.

This is why a Pentium 3 + 6800 would HOPE to get the same frames as maybe a P4 2.4C + Geforce3.

5year-old CPU + today's video card; or 1-year old CPU + 3-year old video card.

I'm betting that the P4 setup will do a lot better.

[blueBomber]

That is true, but you need to consider the kind of CPU needed to support the 9800/6800...and when you consider that, then while it may INDEED be 90% video card, it can't do that if you have it paired to a 4-year old G4.

This is why a Pentium 3 + 6800 would HOPE to get the same frames as maybe a P4 2.4C + Geforce3.

5year-old CPU + today's video card; or 1-year old CPU + 3-year old video card.

I'm betting that the P4 setup will do a lot better.

A P3 (which tops out at 1.3ghz) would not be able to even push that 6800. That's a terrible case of bottlenecking your video card. And also, there ARE games out there that are very cpu limited. UT2K4 has a very diminishing return on framerate even with the fastest GPU. The bot AI in the game is very intesive on the CPU, and even more when you turn on Speech Recognition. In flyby benchmarks and online play with no bots, framerates usually soar.

[windowsblowsass]

so since i cant ron it on my emac any word on the
xbox version

[paulie]

For everyone who would have to buy a new computer to be able to play it (do we even know what the Mac spec requirements will be?), why not consider buying an XBox? No, the graphics won't be "freakin' awesome", but I bet it will still be fun and scary. That's what I'm thinking of doing, though probably not for another 6-12 months. And hey, by then maybe the XBox will only cost about $50-$100! :rolleyes:

And it'll let you play Half-Life 2, too...

That's exactly what I did. I like playing games, but I don't need a PC to do it. World of Warcraft (beta) runs sweetly on my 12" PB 867. So I picked up an Xbox. Now I can trash-talk 3 friends while playing any of HUNDREDS of games and causing MS to lose a little bit of money. It's a good way to get the best of both worlds.

Have an Apple? Buy an Xbox for gaming. Simple problem, simple solution.

[CmdrLaForge]

This is really great. Not only because Doom will be a great game but as well because many games are using the ID platform

[Sabon]

For everyone who would have to buy a new computer to be able to play it (do we even know what the Mac spec requirements will be?), why not consider buying an XBox? No, the graphics won't be "freakin' awesome", but I bet it will still be fun and scary. That's what I'm thinking of doing, though probably not for another 6-12 months. And hey, by then maybe the XBox will only cost about $50-$100! :rolleyes:

And it'll let you play Half-Life 2, too...

Buy an X-Box? Don't you mean LAMEBOX? If I were going to buy a console (which I won't be buying) it would most definitely be a PS2 or a GameCube.

I've got an 800mhz G4 iMac. Saving my money for a G5 iMac. How about a 30" iMac? I wish...

[Sabbath]

Wow wasn't doom first shown on mac back on a GF3 I can remember joking to a friend about how we would need a GF6 to run it and here we are :D

It's a shame there is no way I can afford a mac to run it, I could dust off my PC and update a bit, but I just can't bring myself to, I guess an xbox is the only way to go then.

edit: worst typed post ever

[DGFan]

High end games like this are not CPU bound (to some extent yes), but their performance is almost 90% related to the video card.

It depends. Many new games have pretty complicated physics models which are totally CPU dependant. I remember many of my friends struggling with UT2K3 on machines with great video cards but so-so processors. A new processor helped a lot.

[blueBomber]

Wow wasn't doom first shown on mac back on a GF3 I can remember joking to a friend about how we would needa GF6 to run it and here we are :D

It's a shame there is no way I can afford a mac to it, dust off my PC and update a bit, but I just can't bring myself to, I guess an xbox is the only way to go then.

The XBox version of it is actually VERY nice looking. The framerate is said to hover at around 30fps in the final build (more than playable). And as far as multiplayer support; who cares. Doom3's multi is nothing stellar. Now Quake 4 running on the Doom3 engine, sign me up for that.

[isgoed]

This probably requires a G5 mac. G4 1.25Ghz is definitely low end for this game and only playable on the lowest setting. The min spec for PC is 1.5Ghz pentium and a geforce 4mx. So the latest iMac will run it, but barely.

I suggest ID buys the new IBM compiler and makes a dedicated G5 optimized version. This will save IBM a lot of time and automatically uses the capabilities of altivec and 64 bit. Maybe they make a G5 version only.

I hope Steve jobs finally sees what a home computer should do and gives the new iMac G5 an upgradable graphics card. Hopefully PCI express, so we could buy our graphics cards at the local retail store.

[JamSoft]

What do you think the 64-bit is going to give you?

________________________________
Game makers--traditionally among the first to make use of new technology--see clear advantages to 64-bit computing.


That extra speed will let programmers add remarkable detail to their software, says Tim Sweeney, founder and lead programmer at Epic Games, maker of the popular Unreal game franchise.


"You'll see better textures, more realistic sounds, and larger and more realistic environments," Sweeney adds.


Plus, the characters themselves will be rendered with dramatically more detail. You'll see more realistic representation of features such as hair, skin, and eyes. And the computer-run characters will have more realistic artificial intelligence, he says.


Epic has already updated Unreal 2003 for use on a 64-bit system, Sweeney says. The program will be ready to go as soon as a compatible 64-bit OS arrives. The company, which typically spends about two years creating each of its new games, is already working on its first fully 64-bit game, which is scheduled to hit store shelves in 2005.


Video encoding will also improve in a 64-bit world, says Tom Huntington, corporate communications manager at DivX. The company's DivX codec compresses DVD-quality video up to ten times more than the MPEG2 standard, making it easier to transmit over the Internet.


A 64-bit processor will improve both the encoding and decoding of video, he says. Better still, when you view a video file on a 64-bit desktop, you'll see "a noticeable difference in speed," he says, resulting in more frames per second and a more film-like playback.


Eventually the benefit will go far beyond speed, says Rich Heye, vice president of AMD's microprocessor business unit. The key to 64-bit computing is that it will open up possibilities for creative programmers in ways never before seen.

Source (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111508,00.asp)
________________________________

I don't know very much about 64 bit architecture, other than it allows you to address more than 4GB of ram. However, I know it does/allows for much more that just that. I also know that most of todays game rely on graphics power, but think about how much faster Quake III runs when you have dual cpu support turned on, and you're running the Altivect enhanced engine. It's a big improvement.

You know doom 3 would scream if ID optimized the engine for dual cpu's, altivect, and G5 64 bit architecture.

of course, that wouldn't bypass the need for a high end graphics card, but still.

-Nate

[Sabbath]

The XBox version of it is actually VERY nice looking. The framerate is said to hover at around 30fps in the final build (more than playable). And as far as multiplayer support; who cares. Doom3's multi is nothing stellar. Now Quake 4 running on the Doom3 engine, sign me up for that.

Thanks for quoting my terribly typed post, so I couldn't hide from how bad it was ;)

I guess I will have to pick up an Xbox and try it out (unfortunately my current housemate who has one is moving out at the end of this month). I prefer fps games with a keyboard and mouse, but the cost difference is just too much for the luxury to be justifiable.

[TDM21]

I like the part f the statemant saying "until it is as polished as the PC version." Now you can take it 2 ways. 1. They are tweaking and optimizing it to make it one of the best games ever for a mac or 2. It will have as many bugs and glitches as the PC version. I really hope it is the first one, dispite the fact that i will never be able to play it on my PB.

[neverfade]

How long would you say after the PC version will ID bring it out for MAC OSX?

they said it's coming, but whatever that means - 3 months, 6 months, 9 or a year?!

Would love to play this game....

[blueBomber]

I guess I will have to pick up an Xbox and try it out (unfortunately my current housemate who has one is moving out at the end of this month). I prefer fps games with a keyboard and mouse, but the cost difference is just too much for the luxury to be justifiable.

Picking up an Xbox and a copy of Doom3 together is still cheaper than the videocard it takes to play it properly on the PC. :)

[MacsRgr8]

I've said this before, but Apple would really benefit by creating their own game studio (like Microsoft has) that releases quality, drool-inducing games exclusively for Macs (or at least releases on a Mac first).

They could start up a game studio the same way Microsoft did - by buying another studio (bungie). I would suggest Cyan or Shiny (are they still in business, or are they called something else)?

Who's with me?

Count me in!

Games that use the velocity engine, SMP support, and are written in OpenGL from the ground up....
Nanosaur and Bugdom were games that looked gr8 on an iMac rev. A with only 2 MB VRAM.

[GetSome681]

That is true, but you need to consider the kind of CPU needed to support the 9800/6800...and when you consider that, then while it may INDEED be 90% video card, it can't do that if you have it paired to a 4-year old G4.

This is why a Pentium 3 + 6800 would HOPE to get the same frames as maybe a P4 2.4C + Geforce3.

5year-old CPU + today's video card; or 1-year old CPU + 3-year old video card.

I'm betting that the P4 setup will do a lot better.

This is why I said "to some extent." Obviously pairing a p3 won't yield good results, but a 1800-2000+ AMD chip paired with a 6800 would run doom3 about 90% as well as a p4 3.2 with a 6800.

[mactarkus]

I broke down a few months ago and bought a cheap PC strictly for gaming since my iMac G4-800 wasn't going to handle the latest Mac games (what few there are) and my Dual G5-2.5/6800 won't be coming until August. For a hard-core gamer, it's the only way. After rebates I got an HP Athlon3K w/512MB RAM/160GB/CD-RW/DVD for a measly $369, less than my nVidia 6800! I added another 512MB for $50 and an nVidia 5900SE for $189. Now I can rock Battlefield Vietnam, Far Cry, and many, many more. Of course, this PC is no good for anything else.

[grabberslasher]

<rant>
I am sick and tired of all those idiots who think you'll need a G5 with a 6800 to play it! It plays acceptabley on AN 800MHZ PENTIUM 3 WITH A GEFORCE 2 MX!!! I know this because I have played the unoptimised, work-in-progress alpha version that leaked out. I can personally guarantee it will work on any 800MHz Mac with a Geforce 3 or higher. No Dual 2.5Ghz G5. No GeForce 6800 XT.

Now please, drop it. My current powerbook will be able to play it just fine, at full resolution (TiBook 800). If it doesn't, I'll eat my hat.
</rant>

I'm just glad that it's coming out soon. The only game that actually will need a GeForce 6800 or higher is Unreal 3 - which is scheduled to come out in about 2005/6.

As for dual CPU support, I think every ID game has this as an option (I know Quake 3 and it's derivatives do).

[zakee00]

This probably requires a G5 mac. G4 1.25Ghz is definitely low end for this game and only playable on the lowest setting. The min spec for PC is 1.5Ghz pentium and a geforce 4mx. So the latest iMac will run it, but barely.

I suggest ID buys the new IBM compiler and makes a dedicated G5 optimized version. This will save IBM a lot of time and automatically uses the capabilities of altivec and 64 bit. Maybe they make a G5 version only.

I hope Steve jobs finally sees what a home computer should do and gives the new iMac G5 an upgradable graphics card. Hopefully PCI express, so we could buy our graphics cards at the local retail store.

you really dont know what you are talking about. a brand new 1.25ghz is NOT "definitely low end for this game and only playable on the lowest setting". that is bull. i bet d3 will pretty good on my 1.25GHz/mobility radeon 9600. maybe medium settings, i know it will be playable on low if it comes to that. everyone thinks that d3 is like a total beast only playable on a dual 2.5GHz G5. not the case.
well then again, we all really should stop presuming, because it all depends on how well the final game is written. i KNOW there will be alti-vec support, because all new games have it. its pretty much the only thing that makes new games playable on macs. 64 bit support, MAYBE. if john carmak really wants to make a good game, then it will have 64 bit support for macs and windows.
PCI-Express in an imac? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA ROFL! the NEWEST, GREATEST intel mobos have pci-express, not the $1,000 dell POS'es. or $1,000 Apple POS'es
:cool:

[zakee00]

<rant>
I am sick and tired of all those idiots who think you'll need a G5 with a 6800 to play it! It plays acceptabley on AN 800MHZ PENTIUM 3 WITH A GEFORCE 2 MX!!! I know this because I have played the unoptimised, work-in-progress alpha version that leaked out. I can personally guarantee it will work on any 800MHz Mac with a Geforce 3 or higher. No Dual 2.5Ghz G5. No GeForce 6800 XT.

Now please, drop it. My current powerbook will be able to play it just fine, at full resolution (TiBook 800). If it doesn't, I'll eat my hat.
</rant>

I'm just glad that it's coming out soon. The only game that actually will need a GeForce 6800 or higher is Unreal 3 - which is scheduled to come out in about 2005/6.

As for dual CPU support, I think every ID game has this as an option (I know Quake 3 and it's derivatives do).
finally, someone who agrees. i dunno about FULL RES on ur 800mhz pb, but with some decent ram u should be able to play it.

[zakee00]

Count me in!

Games that use the velocity engine, SMP support, and are written in OpenGL from the ground up....
Nanosaur and Bugdom were games that looked gr8 on an iMac rev. A with only 2 MB VRAM.
yeah, i was amazed when i saw how great bugdom looked running on a rev.a imac!! amazing what smart people can do, (sorry dice :)

[inkswamp]

They could start up a game studio the same way Microsoft did - by buying another studio (bungie). I would suggest Cyan or Shiny (are they still in business, or are they called something else)?

I disagree that this would be a good move. Id and (formerly) Bungie were sort of the game company equivalents of Apple--both companies that seemed to know exactly how to do these things right and were light-years ahead of others. Others try to copy them but always seemed to make it too complicated or miss the underlying spirit of the whole thing. Id and Bungie are the only ones who do games with the same seamless perfection that Apple does with the OS and its apps.

In gaming, Apple would be a big, clumsy corporate intruder not unlike MS. (Still bums me out that Bungie relegated themselves to yet-another-MS-tentacle, but oh well...) I don't want to see that.

IMO, what Apple could do is partner with some of the bigger game companies and supply resources and help to make sure that some of the more visible titles get out the door on time. Likewise, Apple could (and hell, maybe they do already) solicit feedback about what game developers need in OS X in order to get games out on time. Another approach would be for Apple to open their own publishing company to work on porting games more aggressively.

But opening their own game company? No. They have no reason to do so unless they are sitting on some great revolutionary idea that would completely turn the gaming world upside-down... and that's really unlikely.

[grabberslasher]

Hehe. Oh I'll make it run full res! That is about the only graphics setting you can actually change in the game. Apparently the graphics are the same no matter what res you use.

[Sabon]

<rant>
I am sick and tired of all those idiots who think you'll need a G5 with a 6800 to play it! It plays acceptabley on AN 800MHZ PENTIUM 3 WITH A GEFORCE 2 MX!!! I know this because I have played the unoptimised, work-in-progress alpha version that leaked out. I can personally guarantee it will work on any 800MHz Mac with a Geforce 3 or higher. No Dual 2.5Ghz G5. No GeForce 6800 XT.

Now please, drop it. My current powerbook will be able to play it just fine, at full resolution (TiBook 800). If it doesn't, I'll eat my hat.
</rant>

I'm just glad that it's coming out soon. The only game that actually will need a GeForce 6800 or higher is Unreal 3 - which is scheduled to come out in about 2005/6.

As for dual CPU support, I think every ID game has this as an option (I know Quake 3 and it's derivatives do).

I do and don't hope your right. Because my 800mhz G4 iMac has a GEFORCE 2 in it. I don't need best graphics. I just hope that it at least doesn't look ugly and doesn't stutter on my iMac. But I'm _TRYING_ (wink) to build a budget case (with my wife) for getting a G5 iMac this fall.

[shen]

finally, someone who agrees. i dunno about FULL RES on ur 800mhz pb, but with some decent ram u should be able to play it.

i am gonna laugh hard when it comes out after all this system whining and i can play it on my eMac......

[grabberslasher]

finally, someone who agrees. i dunno about FULL RES on ur 800mhz pb, but with some decent ram u should be able to play it.

May I make an addition to my previous post, I was running the game at 1600x1200 on a Pentium 3 800Mhz with 128MB RAM at 20fps (average). And the game has a cap of 30fps (I think) anyway, so no extra CPU is wasted.

[macfan86]

i got a 15" PB 1.25ghz with 512mb of RAM...

Do you think this game will perform well, or should i throw a 1gb chip in this baby?

[grabberslasher]

Try it first before spending the money if possible. Wait 'till you hear others experiences.

[virividox]

i wonder what the min requirments are; but seriously i wouldnt buy id just play it on my pc instead keep my little mac clean :)

[blueBomber]

May I make an addition to my previous post, I was running the game at 1600x1200 on a Pentium 3 800Mhz with 128MB RAM at 20fps (average). And the game has a cap of 30fps (I think) anyway, so no extra CPU is wasted.
yeah right. This reminds me of the people who used to say that they had Quake running on a 486. Show me a screenshot with a fps counter, and I'll think about believing it. Hate to break it to everyone, but if UT2K4 can't run well on g4 emacs and imacs, Doom 3 really will not. Sorry if you guys want to believe otherwise.

[iBert]

Hey, all. Good thing Doom 3 will come to the Mac. I just turned to a Mac fan. I might have a buyer for my P4 gaming rig. Want to go Mac from now on, maybe in the future I'll get another windows. but hope not. anyways to the point. I'm a student for now, so $$$$ is kind of short. I want to get a G5, but don't know if to go with the 2.0Ghz or 1.8Ghz. i know their is going to be some different, but for a not so hardcore gamer which do you guys recomend. Only games will be playing are going to be Blizzard Enterainment games and UT, maybe I'll go for Doom 3. But it'll depend on the system I get. I know here is not the place to post this, but it's a sure place to get some help from Mac gamers or you guys that know way too much more about Macs than I do. All the help you give will be appreciated.

iBert

[mactarkus]

He's absolutely right. UT2K4 runs ok at low res and details *and* if I turn the sound off on my iMac G4-800 with 768MB RAM. In other words, it's painful to play any game that way so I play on my gaming PC. Doom III on this trusty ole iMac? I doubt it. I can't wait to benchmark Doom III on my Dual G5-2.5/6800 setup side-by-side with my $600 Athlon 3K/5900SE. As much as I love my Mac (for everything but gaming), I'm sure the price/frame/sec will be tops on the PC by a wide margin.

yeah right. This reminds me of the people who used to say that they had Quake running on a 486. Show me a screenshot with a fps counter, and I'll think about believing it. Hate to break it to everyone, but if UT2K4 can't run well on g4 emacs and imacs, Doom 3 really will not. Sorry if you guys want to believe otherwise.

[w00tmaster]

Hey, all. Good thing Doom 3 will come to the Mac. I just turned to a Mac fan. I might have a buyer for my P4 gaming rig. Want to go Mac from now on, maybe in the future I'll get another windows. but hope not. anyways to the point. I'm a student for now, so $$$$ is kind of short. I want to get a G5, but don't know if to go with the 2.0Ghz or 1.8Ghz. i know their is going to be some different, but for a not so hardcore gamer which do you guys recomend. Only games will be playing are going to be Blizzard Enterainment games and UT, maybe I'll go for Doom 3. But it'll depend on the system I get. I know here is not the place to post this, but it's a sure place to get some help from Mac gamers or you guys that know way too much more about Macs than I do. All the help you give will be appreciated.

iBert

If you are gaming and can wait till August, you can use the $400 price difference between the 1.8 and the 2.0 to invest in the 6800 card. However, since the 1.8 Mobo is somewhat crippled compared to the 2.0, if PCI-X vid. cards become popular in a few years, you may be out of luck. The 1.8 model only has 4 memory slots compared to the 2.0's 8 and only has pci slots, instead of the pci-x of the 2.0.
It all depends on your budget, but my recommendation would be to see if you can do what I did(and trust me, after the agonizing Apple order process you will be glad too) is see if you can find a refurb rev. A dual(be careful, there is also a single model available, you want 2 of those babies in there)1.8 for $1799, you can find them occaisionally on the little special deals thing in the bottom left of the apple store page. The older model has all the features of the 2.0(8 slots, pci-x) but is $700 less than a new 2.0. Use that money to get the 6800!

[grabberslasher]

yeah right. This reminds me of the people who used to say that they had Quake running on a 486. Show me a screenshot with a fps counter, and I'll think about believing it. Hate to break it to everyone, but if UT2K4 can't run well on g4 emacs and imacs, Doom 3 really will not. Sorry if you guys want to believe otherwise.

Hehe. I don't particularly care if you believe me or not.

First of all I don't have that PC any more (Custom built a 3.4Ghz P4), secondly my graphics card is totally ******** (It has only worked for a small while and that was when I tried Doom3 (about feb. of this year)). The fps were 19/20 (until there was more than one character on screen, then it went to 5fps - but that was a problem on the alpha anyway). I made screenshots a long time ago, but they're stuck in a RAR file of my old PC's hard disk. If you really want them you'll have to wait a while.

My Powerbook at the moment gets 40+ fps in Unreal 2K4, and I certainly expect that I'll be able to play Doom3 on it.

Anyway, I have no reason to make stuff up about it. I'll be playing it when it comes out whilst the rest are waiting for their 2.5 G5s and Geforce 6800s!

[Mav451]

Hehe. I don't particularly care if you believe me or not.

First of all I don't have that PC any more (Custom built a 3.4Ghz P4), secondly my graphics card is totally ******** (It has only worked for a small while and that was when I tried Doom3 (about feb. of this year)). The fps were 19/20 (until there was more than one character on screen, then it went to 5fps - but that was a problem on the alpha anyway). I made screenshots a long time ago, but they're stuck in a RAR file of my old PC's hard disk. If you really want them you'll have to wait a while.

My Powerbook at the moment gets 40+ fps in Unreal 2K4, and I certainly expect that I'll be able to play Doom3 on it.

Anyway, I have no reason to make stuff up about it. I'll be playing it when it comes out whilst the rest are waiting for their 2.5 G5s and Geforce 6800s!

For another point of perspective, I ran 25-30 FPS on the Doom 3 alpha, and that was with a pitiful Radeon 8500 + Athlon XP @ 2600+. Who knows what my mobile (currently @ 3200+) and a X800 or 6800 could do.

I.e., the hardware of 2002. It didn't take a P4 3.2Ghz to run Doom3 and that's the beauty of it :)

[blueBomber]

Hehe. I don't particularly care if you believe me or not.

First of all I don't have that PC any more (Custom built a 3.4Ghz P4), secondly my graphics card is totally ******** (It has only worked for a small while and that was when I tried Doom3 (about feb. of this year)). The fps were 19/20 (until there was more than one character on screen, then it went to 5fps - but that was a problem on the alpha anyway). I made screenshots a long time ago, but they're stuck in a RAR file of my old PC's hard disk. If you really want them you'll have to wait a while.

My Powerbook at the moment gets 40+ fps in Unreal 2K4, and I certainly expect that I'll be able to play Doom3 on it.

Anyway, I have no reason to make stuff up about it. I'll be playing it when it comes out whilst the rest are waiting for their 2.5 G5s and Geforce 6800s!

UT2k4 and Doom 3 are completly different animals engine wise (and I wouldn't call 40fps playable for a fast paced game like UT, that framerate would get you destroyed online). Your post said you were pulling down 20 fps at 1600x1200 on a Geforce 2mx on a P3 800 with 128 megs of ram. This is nonsense. Your frame buffer would be completly taxed before you even saw your first polygon. Not to mention that 128 is not even close to enough ram for Windows let alone Windows with the game running too. That is what I was responding to. I'm sure Doom 3 will run on your PB. Much in the same way that UT2K4 runs on my PB 12"; poorly. I'm not trying to start a flame or anything, but be realistic; ID software is THE company responsible for pushing PC speeds. I hardly think that a G4 is the target machine for actual playability.

[blueBomber]

For another point of perspective, I ran 25-30 FPS on the Doom 3 alpha, and that was with a pitiful Radeon 8500 + Athlon XP @ 2600+. Who knows what my mobile (currently @ 3200+) and a X800 or 6800 could do.

I.e., the hardware of 2002. It didn't take a P4 3.2Ghz to run Doom3 and that's the beauty of it :)
A 2600+ is a respectable processor speed for this game. And the 8500 was acceptable for the leaked alpha (it's faster than a GF2MX by far).

The engine has matured a bit since that early alpha. Trust me.

I had it running too. I know the differences between then and now.

[Mav451]

Hmm...so does that mean my XP-M @ 3200+ with my 8500 could handle it for now? I'm considering running it up to a 9800 Pro for Doom 3 (and to hold out for another 1.5 years, till I convert to 939).

[zakee00]

i just watched the trailer and the GF3 release video. i fully expect to play d3 on my 1.25GHz/mobility 9600 Alubook. the only thing is, i would want to up the ram to 768. i have a feeling the game will run fine high grafx at 800x600. 20-30fps maybe. d3 is a slow paced game, not at all like ut2004. and 40fps wouldnt get u destroyed online, are you high? a steady 40fps is great for ut2004, i do pretty good with 30fps.
bottom line: if id pulls all of the stops for the mac version, im sure ill be in good shape for d3. hell, in the gf3 release video, they showed d3 running GREAT on a powermac g4. anyone know what the speeds were like back then? 600-700mhz? with a gf3? my powerbook would school that thing. one thing im lookin foreward to is RTCW2, with the D3 engine!!!! IMG has an article on it!!!!! **drool**
anyway, even if my pb can play d3 until this christmas, when im going to upgrade my gaming pc...then ill just play the windoze version :cool:
im friggin excited, you all can go to d3files.com and watch the videos...scary shizit yo ;)

[zakee00]

Hmm...so does that mean my XP-M @ 3200+ with my 8500 could handle it for now? I'm considering running it up to a 9800 Pro for Doom 3 (and to hold out for another 1.5 years, till I convert to 939).
i know ur processor would run it, but i think u might have a bit of a graphics card bottleneck. that 9800 pro should go down in price soon, and then ud be in gr8 shape...lucky bastard :D lol
and what is a 939?

[blueBomber]

i just watched the trailer and the GF3 release video. i fully expect to play d3 on my 1.25GHz/mobility 9600 Alubook. the only thing is, i would want to up the ram to 768. i have a feeling the game will run fine high grafx at 800x600. 20-30fps maybe. d3 is a slow paced game, not at all like ut2004. and 40fps wouldnt get u destroyed online, are you high? a steady 40fps is great for ut2004, i do pretty good with 30fps.
bottom line: if id pulls all of the stops for the mac version, im sure ill be in good shape for d3. hell, in the gf3 release video, they showed d3 running GREAT on a powermac g4. anyone know what the speeds were like back then? 600-700mhz? with a gf3? my powerbook would school that thing.

You've seen the new screenshots; the engine has undergone a major graphical overhaul since that first demo running on that hardware. Plus now you have AI to figure into the equation instead of a looping demo of the effects. Also, the video from Macworld has one major difference from the final build: usually there is only one or two light sources in a scene, the final release is going to have light sources bouncing everywhere. That's where newer video cards come in. The GeForce 6 series has shader model 3.0, the current Radeon line has 2.0. These are the cards that will be able to render the game properly. Add in the fact that all of the models are self-shadowing, along with environment mapping everywhere and you have a power hungry game. And a steady 40fps a second is not terribly impressive in UT2K4, when most of us are getting around 70 solid fps (some even more). What I consider a solid frame rate and what others think is easily a matter of debate. Better just to drop that one before it turns into a full blown thread :)

[blueBomber]

i know ur processor would run it, but i think u might have a bit of a graphics card bottleneck. that 9800 pro should go down in price soon, and then ud be in gr8 shape...lucky bastard :D lol
and what is a 939?
9800pro's are at around $200 right now, you could get cheaper by shopping around a bit. A great value right now is with the standard GeForce 6800 non-ultra. At $300, it offers a noticable performance increase over the Radeon 9800pro, and even the XT. That extra hundred dollars goes along way for getting a card that will last you a bit longer. Feed that 3200+ properly (I take it from the M description that it's overclocked?)

[~Shard~]

Man, good old Doom! Although I'm not really a gamer anymore, I think I'll definitely have to check this one out. I don't know if it can top Doom2 though, that rocked... ;) Ah, all those countless hours playing through Doom and Doom2, and even more hours using the Deth Editor to design my own Doom2 levels, doing things with the level editor you were never meant to do - invisible sectors, bridges you could walk under, ah the list goes on and on... Good times! I think I'm going to have to find a way to fire up Doom2 again for kicks - anyone know how I could accomplish that on my Mac? :cool:

[blueBomber]

Doom Legacy
http://legacy.newdoom.com/

Full OSX opengl implementation of the original doom engine. You can throw any wad files you have at it and they'll run perfectly. You can even add things like 3d models and the like to it. Gotta love the gaming community; throw us some source code and we scramble on it like a fumbled football. :D

[~Shard~]

Doom Legacy
http://legacy.newdoom.com/

Full OSX opengl implementation of the original doom engine. You can throw any wad files you have at it and they'll run perfectly. You can even add things like 3d models and the like to it. Gotta love the gaming community; throw us some source code and we scramble on it like a fumbled football. :D

Cool, nice one! The sweet thing is that I still have some of my .WAD files archived! I'll be checking this out tomrorow for sure... :cool:

[Mav451]

9800pro's are at around $200 right now, you could get cheaper by shopping around a bit. A great value right now is with the standard GeForce 6800 non-ultra. At $300, it offers a noticable performance increase over the Radeon 9800pro, and even the XT. That extra hundred dollars goes along way for getting a card that will last you a bit longer. Feed that 3200+ properly (I take it from the M description that it's overclocked?)

The word you left out is overclocked enough :)

Yeah, I guess that sounds like a good option. I was considering either 9800 or higher or the 6xxx series (as the FX5xxx series absolutely pales in comparison to the 6 series). Ha, to be honest, I upgraded from my Antec 430 to a Enermax 460 (jump from 20A to 33A on the +12v) just for that purpose.

[isgoed]

<rant>
I am sick and tired of all those idiots who think you'll need a G5 with a 6800 to play it! It plays acceptabley on AN 800MHZ PENTIUM 3 WITH A GEFORCE 2 MX!!! I know this because I have played the unoptimised, work-in-progress alpha version that leaked out. I can personally guarantee it will work on any 800MHz Mac with a Geforce 3 or higher. No Dual 2.5Ghz G5. No GeForce 6800 XT.

Now please, drop it. My current powerbook will be able to play it just fine, at full resolution (TiBook 800). If it doesn't, I'll eat my hat.
</rant>

I'm just glad that it's coming out soon. The only game that actually will need a GeForce 6800 or higher is Unreal 3 - which is scheduled to come out in about 2005/6.

As for dual CPU support, I think every ID game has this as an option (I know Quake 3 and it's derivatives do).
You've been bashed already. But do you honestly believe that a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 32 MB will play the game? You will play it at 320x240 allright. Original DooM Resolution! :p. Do you want ketchup with that hat?

you really dont know what you are talking about. a brand new 1.25ghz is NOT "definitely low end for this game and only playable on the lowest setting". that is bull. i bet d3 will pretty good on my 1.25GHz/mobility radeon 9600. maybe medium settings, i know it will be playable on low if it comes to that. everyone thinks that d3 is like a total beast only playable on a dual 2.5GHz G5. not the case.
I do not know what i am talking about? I'll give you my resumé


I played Doom Alpha (640x480, dynamic shadows on, no compressed textures, No AA, No AF). I got 15fps average and it dropped to less than 1fps when an enemy appeared, probably due to the sound engine that couldn't cope because i have SDRAM. (PC: Athlon 1200mhz, geforce4200Ti, 256mb SDRAM)
I have been visiting planetdoom.com regularly for a year now
I daily visit tweakers.net (dutch hardwaresite) and read all messages about videocards
i am a game developer (I recently made the same physics engine as DooM3 uses ( http://revaro.spymac.net/BInariesPE.zip ))


Now, I didn't make up the system requirements. The minimum 1.5Ghz pentium requirement is stated by PCGamer. See the posts I made on the thread: ( http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=936311#post936311 ). This is by the way a newspost I submitted, so if it wasn't for me you wouldn't even be on this post.
And your powerbook really only has the minimum specs for DooM3. It plays Warcraft3 and unreal2004 just at low setting. How do you expect DooM3 will play. The G4 processor in the powerbook clearly can't handle the need of the Radeon mobility. (See benchmarks on http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html about the mobility radeon).


well then again, we all really should stop presuming, because it all depends on how well the final game is written. i KNOW there will be alti-vec support, because all new games have it. its pretty much the only thing that makes new games playable on macs. 64 bit support, MAYBE. if john carmak really wants to make a good game, then it will have 64 bit support for macs and windows.


You HOPE, it will have altivec support, because withouth it, the game will be unplayable on a G4. That's why i think that if you want to do good to this game, you should get a G5. The G5 (in an iMac or Tower) has the potential to really play this game in full glory. A dual G4 might do the trick. Carmack wants to make this game as polished as the PC version. For a G4 this means a whole lot of optimizing and this will take long and might run it at just slightly better setting than minimum (and this certainly NOT DEFINES as polished as the PC version). Mind you; medium spec is (2.4GhzP4 or equivalent, 1GB RAM, Geforce5950 or Radeon 9800 Pro/XT). You will be able to play DooM3, but don't expect anything more than 640x480, low texture quality, low sound quality (<=especially low sound (unless you have a dual G4)). That's why i recommend to put much more focus on the G5. IBM's compliler saves J. Carmack a lot of work and enables altivec optmimization and 64 bit support in one go.

PCI-Express in an imac? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA ROFL! the NEWEST, GREATEST intel mobos have pci-express, not the $1,000 dell POS'es. or $1,000 Apple POS'es
:cool:
You are only laughing about your own foolishness. True that at this moment only intel has PCI-express. Your costs argument has nothing to do with it. Current PCI-express motherboards only costs about 20$ more than without PCI-express. And if apple wants to make an iMac design that will lasts 3 years, I wouldn't be suprised that they go for PCI-express (If they make the graphics card upgradable).

By the way:
ROFL = rolling on the floor laughing
POS = Point of Sale (A pay-desk is meant by this. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about)

[Nermal]

Doom Legacy
http://legacy.newdoom.com/

Full OSX opengl implementation of the original doom engine. You can throw any wad files you have at it and they'll run perfectly. You can even add things like 3d models and the like to it. Gotta love the gaming community; throw us some source code and we scramble on it like a fumbled football. :D

Ooh, new version :)

I wonder whether Final Doom works properly now.

[AidenShaw]

PCI-Express in an imac? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA ROFL! the NEWEST, GREATEST intel mobos have pci-express, not the $1,000 dell POS'es. or $1,000 Apple POS'es


Actually, the Dell Optiplex GX280 has PCI Express at $877 with an ATI Radeon X300 SE PCIe x16 64MB graphics card, DVI w/VGA adapter, TV-out....


Also, another post confused PCI Express (the new standard that is rapidly pushing AGP to the wayside) with the older PCI-X standard used in the Power Mac and many other systems.

PCI-X is more or less the old PCI standard with the clock bumped up as high as 133 MHz (from the original 33 MHz).

PCI Express is a new multi-lane serial interconnect (with quite a few similarities to HyperTransport) with far greater bandwidth and scalability than PCI-X. Unlike HyperTransport, though, you'll find native PCIe cards that will plug into PCIe slots on the mobos.

For example, here's a Mellanox PCI Express InfiniBand card:

http://www.mellanox.com/products/shared/Host_III_HCA.jpg
http://www.mellanox.com/products/hca.html


Check out http://www.intel.com/technology/pciexpress/devnet/, in particular the PDF link "What is PCI Express", for more info.

[Damek]

By the way:
POS = Point of Sale (A pay-desk is meant by this. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about)

The person clearly doesn't know what they are talking about, but FYI, POS can also stand for "Piece Of Shlt" - and I'm pretty sure that's the use the person intended.

[notmyname21]

I just bought an iBook G4 1.07 GHz 512 Mb, and games like UT2004, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 and Kelly Slater Pro Surfer shows bad graphics and freezes after a while and I'm left with a forced restart. Apple said they would send me a new computer, but, should I just wait for 10.3.5 or downgrade to 10.3.3?

Help much appreciated!


Hopefully 10.3.5 will fix the FX5200 performance problems 10.3.4 created so I'll have a small chance of being able to run this on my PB.

[isgoed]

Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, gives his recomendation for the system requirements:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/weekly/2690450

It confirms what was told by PCGamer

[grabberslasher]

And your powerbook really only has the minimum specs for DooM3. It plays Warcraft3 and unreal2004 just at low setting. How do you expect DooM3 will play.

What the hell are you talking about? Warcraft 3 and Unreal 2k4 play at FULL graphics and resolution on my powerbook.

Warcraft 3 never goes less than 60 and Unreal only when I have 16 characters on screen.

And as I previously said, Doom3 was planned to have an FPS limiter so it can't go past 30fps. So in that respect, my 40fps in Unreal is quite adequate.

[blueBomber]

I just bought an iBook G4 1.07 GHz 512 Mb, and games like UT2004, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 and Kelly Slater Pro Surfer shows bad graphics and freezes after a while and I'm left with a forced restart. Apple said they would send me a new computer, but, should I just wait for 10.3.5 or downgrade to 10.3.3?

Help much appreciated!

you say after a while, that leads me to believe it may be a heat related issue (NOT POSITIVE). Usually if your computer equipment is overheating, it exhibits freezes, graphic corruptions, or even horrible slowdowns (as evidenced by running a P4 without a HS+Fan at Toms Hardware). If you are not already, try running games while your laptop is resting on a table or some other flat surface, making sure that the fan ports are unobstructed. Alternativly, the fans in your ibook may not be working properly (not coming on when they are supposed to), that is an Applecare issue.

[notmyname21]

Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, gives his recomendation for the system requirements:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/weekly/2690450

It confirms what was told by PCGamer

Well, the question was more of a software problem question then one about system requirements. I've read e.g on apple discussions that 10.3.4 severely cripples the 3D graphics, and I wanted to check with DGFan that wrote something about 10.3.5 fixing some FX5200 problem, if this was the case.

Regards

[notmyname21]

you say after a while, that leads me to believe it may be a heat related issue (NOT POSITIVE). Usually if your computer equipment is overheating, it exhibits freezes, graphic corruptions, or even horrible slowdowns (as evidenced by running a P4 without a HS+Fan at Toms Hardware). If you are not already, try running games while your laptop is resting on a table or some other flat surface, making sure that the fan ports are unobstructed. Alternativly, the fans in your ibook may not be working properly (not coming on when they are supposed to), that is an Applecare issue.

My "after a while" = only a couple of minutes, which shouldn't be enough to heat it up too much, right? And I always have my computer on a flat table. And Kelly Slater Pro Surfer only works at the lowest resolution, and even in this case the graphics are horrible, already from the start. See the attached image. It's bad, taken with a cellphone.

[blueBomber]

I would say it is more than likely a hardware issue then. But just to be sure (and to not go through the hassle of not having a laptop for a week or so), try downgrading the os is possible. It might clear it up, or it might not. If it persists, I would call Apple immediatly.

[notmyname21]

I would say it is more than likely a hardware issue then. But just to be sure (and to not go through the hassle of not having a laptop for a week or so), try downgrading the os is possible. It might clear it up, or it might not. If it persists, I would call Apple immediatly.

Cool, thx for your advise. I'm in Ithaca right now and will be leaving for Sweden in two weeks so if the problem still persists after the downgrade I'll have to fix this with Applecare back home though.

[isgoed]

What the hell are you talking about? Warcraft 3 and Unreal 2k4 play at FULL graphics and resolution on my powerbook.

Warcraft 3 never goes less than 60 and Unreal only when I have 16 characters on screen.


I don't know why i even bother to respond to your remarks, but just to prove my right and don't get other people's hope up here goes:

ok, warcraft 3 is really good playable on a mac, i don't disagree on that (allthough i couldn't find fps on the internet).

I looked for the unreal tournament benchmarks on barefeats.com an the only test it got more than 25fps was in flyby, which is basically a nonsense test.

The tests are:
UT2004

PB 1.33 Rad9600 (800x600) Medium "Bridgeoffate" 23FPS
PB 1.33 Rad9600 (1024x768) High "Bridgeoffate" 24FPS
PB 1.33 Rad9600 (1600x1024) High "Bridgeoffate" wouldn't run
PB 1.33 FX5200 (1024x768) Max FlyBy 45FPS
PB 1.50 Rad9700 (1024x768) Max FlyBy 72FPS
PB 1.33 FX5200 (1024x768) High Botmatch 20FPS
PB 1.50 Rad9700 (1024x768) High Botmatch 24FPS

Sources:
http://www.barefeats.com/pb11.html
http://www.barefeats.com/ut2004.html

So I can explain your '40 FPS' only in one of the following ways:

You're on drugs
You can't count
Your powerbook is blessed by mother teressa


Furhtermore DooM3 is far more advanced than Unreal 2004. It uses pixelshaders a lot and has heavy CPU demands for the AI, sound and physics. People are buying new hardware for this game!


And as I previously said, Doom3 was planned to have an FPS limiter so it can't go past 30fps. So in that respect, my 40fps in Unreal is quite adequate.

You mean: "as I previously incorrectly said". DooM3 is capped at 60fps. Now 30fps is playable enough, but i bet you only get that on the lowest settings.

What i expect is that this is a moment of grief for you and you can't accept it just yet. But accept your loss:

Your powerbook is now part of a group of computers known as the "minimum spec"

[shyataroo]

Does Doom 3 Support Hyper Threading Technology? (I am too lazy to look it up) that having been said why doesn't apple use Hyper Threading on the G5? Imagine a Dual G5 3.0ghz with Hyper threading it will run like a Pentium 4 at 10ghz or a Celeron at 30ghz and also I think apple should Get rid of 2 Ram slots to add in a 3rd hard drive (or just replace the 2 250's with 1 of LaCaie's 1TB bigger Drive) I am going on a rant sorry all

[blueBomber]

Does Doom 3 Support Hyper Threading Technology? (I am too lazy to look it up) that having been said why doesn't apple use Hyper Threading on the G5? Imagine a Dual G5 3.0ghz with Hyper threading it will run like a Pentium 4 at 10ghz or a Celeron at 30ghz and also I think apple should Get rid of 2 Ram slots to add in a 3rd hard drive (or just replace the 2 250's with 1 of LaCaie's 1TB bigger Drive) I am going on a rant sorry allit would be cool, but not feasible right now. IBM needs to concentrate on breaking down that mhz wall they've hit right now. And hyper-threading isn't double the processor speed; it's work divided between two processors (just like all dual proc. setups). The system won't run faster than the clock of the chip, but it can crunch double the work at the same time. Hopefully that makes sense. :)

[isgoed]

Does Doom 3 Support Hyper Threading Technology? (I am too lazy to look it up) that having been said why doesn't apple use Hyper Threading on the G5? Imagine a Dual G5 3.0ghz with Hyper threading it will run like a Pentium 4 at 10ghz or a Celeron at 30ghz and also I think apple should Get rid of 2 Ram slots to add in a 3rd hard drive (or just replace the 2 250's with 1 of LaCaie's 1TB bigger Drive) I am going on a rant sorry all

I don't know if DooM3 can actively use Hyperthreading. I do know that John Carmack once said that he didn't like that the xbox 2 will be a multithreaded system. He says that it doesn't fit game development. For hyperthreading on the G5 look for SMT (simultaneous multi threading). It is how IBM call hyperthreading but is currently only enabled in the Power series and not in the ppc970(fx). It will probably com to the mac in the form of the G6. IBM claims it has a 40% speed increase, but don't expect anything spectacular from it for games. Just wait to see some actuall test.

I am not in the market for a powermac, but i would rather have 8 ramslots than 3 hard disks.

[clr900]

Well since there seem to be so many experts in this thread, what kind of frame rates should I expect to get on my new dual 2.5 with geforce 6800 ultra?

[blueBomber]

Well since there seem to be so many experts in this thread, what kind of frame rates should I expect to get on my new dual 2.5 with geforce 6800 ultra? Lots:D
Seriously, nobody knows right now. The game is not out (and who knows how long the Mac version will take). But rest assured that a 2.5 with a 6800 Ultra is going to be awesome for running Doom3. And besides, you can't buy a faster mac than that right now, so it's a moot point.

[clr900]

Lots:D
Seriously, nobody knows right now. The game is not out (and who knows how long the Mac version will take). But rest assured that a 2.5 with a 6800 Ultra is going to be awesome for running Doom3. And besides, you can't buy a faster mac than that right now, so it's a moot point.
....Well.... your a moot point! :D ;)

[blueBomber]

....Well.... your a moot point! :D ;)
hardy har... :rolleyes:

[kingtj]

You know, I think this is a bigger question than most people seem to admit!

Even the games that promised "simultaneous release" on both Mac and PC haven't quite lived up to the promises lately. (EG. UT2004, which was in stores for the PC for at least 1-2 weeks before the Mac version. I should know. I was popping in the local CompUSA stores every night after work looking for this one.)

If they don't want the Mac to feel "second rate" with regards to games, they could at least make sure the new titles come out on the SAME DAY for both PC and Mac platforms. Once again, they're doing it with Doom 3. The OS X version will be out later, when they feel "it's ready". In other words, it's been taking the back seat to the PC version which will sell a LOT more copies.

I think the root of the problem is all the outsourcing done for Mac versions of games. With the exception of Blizzard, who seems to write both Mac and PC versions of their titles and releases them as "hybrid" discs (good for them!), these other titles have to be ported/developed by people like MacPlay or Aspyr all the time.


why can't they just release them at the same time? :Q shouldn't be that big a deal these days.

[coggie355]

Being a bit of a Doom fan, im a bit worried that its not gonna go well on my powerbook G4 with 32mb VRAM. Does anyone have any clue how i can make the graphics better on it, or do you think ill just have to get another mac...
Cheers

[blueBomber]

Being a bit of a Doom fan, im a bit worried that its not gonna go well on my powerbook G4 with 32mb VRAM. Does anyone have any clue how i can make the graphics better on it, or do you think ill just have to get another mac...
Cheers
Don't buy a new Mac!!!! Just drop some money into a pc that is to be used for gaming purposes only. It's going to be cheaper than any Mac that is powerful enough. There is no evil in turning to Windows for gaming; we'll let you come back to the light side when your done playing
:D
and pick up a KVM switch also if you have a desktop Mac. It saves on having another monitor kicking around.

[blueBomber]

I think the root of the problem is all the outsourcing done for Mac versions of games. With the exception of Blizzard, who seems to write both Mac and PC versions of their titles and releases them as "hybrid" discs (good for them!), these other titles have to be ported/developed by people like MacPlay or Aspyr all the time.

I agree in a way. Depending on the game there isn't that much code to change to compile a Mac binary. Remember the old Quake3 engine trick? Just download the newest patch for the game, add in your pak files from your purchased cd, and viola! Instant Mac version. ID is releasing the Linux binaries online, just add in the files from the pc version. This way, they still sell a copy of the software, the Linux people get their version, and ID only had to press and send one version of the software to retail. If it's possible, they should do the same thing for the Mac version.

[7on]

I want to see a sort of "loader+ROM" for future games. That way, only the loader has to be ported. The loaders could be open source too, for more OSes to take advantage. It'll be much like Emulators and ROMs are done today on a far less "legal" scale. I do wish this would become a possibility. There could be like an ID loader, Blizzard loader, RockstarGames loader, etc. Or they could do it based on engine. I think this'd solve everyone's problems.

[zakee00]

I do not know what i am talking about? I'll give you my resumé


I played Doom Alpha (640x480, dynamic shadows on, no compressed textures, No AA, No AF). I got 15fps average and it dropped to less than 1fps when an enemy appeared, probably due to the sound engine that couldn't cope because i have SDRAM. (PC: Athlon 1200mhz, geforce4200Ti, 256mb SDRAM)
I have been visiting planetdoom.com regularly for a year now
I daily visit tweakers.net (dutch hardwaresite) and read all messages about videocards
i am a game developer (I recently made the same physics engine as DooM3 uses ( http://revaro.spymac.net/BInariesPE.zip ))

1. the doom alpha shows nothing at all about how the final will run, if you want to impress me with your resumè then i wouldn't have put that on there. and your low ram choked the proformance BAD.
2. so what...there has been almost no info on D3 in the past year anyway, up to now.
3. i daily visit tomshardware.com...and look at new video card benchmarks
4. i'm not a developer (i'm 14), but i downloaded your engine and that's pretty neat.

Now, I didn't make up the system requirements. The minimum 1.5Ghz pentium requirement is stated by PCGamer. See the posts I made on the thread: ( http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=936311#post936311 ). This is by the way a newspost I submitted, so if it wasn't for me you wouldn't even be on this post.
And your powerbook really only has the minimum specs for DooM3. It plays Warcraft3 and unreal2004 just at low setting. How do you expect DooM3 will play. The G4 processor in the powerbook clearly can't handle the need of the Radeon mobility. (See benchmarks on http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html about the mobility radeon).

figure id puts in altivec support for the mac version (which they WILL, its obvious), i would expect a 250MHz improvement. So figure the min req. for D3 is a 1.25GHz G4. And GF3. My system meets/exceeds the min system req for D3. i'm not expecting to play it on high, i could if i wanted to though. my mobility radeon 9600 has the shaders built in, theres nothing preventing me from running it on high graphics. maybe the video ram. (64MB isn't very much for this game)

You will be able to play DooM3, but don't expect anything more than 640x480, low texture quality, low sound quality (<=especially low sound (unless you have a dual G4)). That's why i recommend to put much more focus on the G5. IBM's compliler saves J. Carmack a lot of work and enables altivec optmimization and 64 bit support in one go.

again, 640x480? no, but 800x600. thats fine with me. high texture quality, low sound quality. sound dosnt matter to me because my pb speakers arent great anyway. texture quality wont decrease proformance by much, it's the SHADOW quality that will murder proformance. i'd put that on med maybe. dont want low, and high would work like crap probably. i might need to put it on low in order to have good proformance, because i think the shadows use shaders and my pb dies with halo and pixel shaders on. but with pixel shaders off, everything on high halo works pretty good. and thats with bad code. if d3 has good code, then i expect med. settings all around on my system.

You are only laughing about your own foolishness. True that at this moment only intel has PCI-express. Your costs argument has nothing to do with it. Current PCI-express motherboards only costs about 20$ more than without PCI-express. And if apple wants to make an iMac design that will lasts 3 years, I wouldn't be suprised that they go for PCI-express (If they make the graphics card upgradable).

pci-express is a high-end option. it dosn't even increase graphics proformance right now (maybe in 2-3 years it will). it is NOT needed on a low end consumer system, aka imac. agp 8x graphics would be great for an imac. and this is all assuming that apple makes the graphics card upgradeable, which they probably won't. by the way, 20$? it's $20, with the dollar sign in FRONT of the number. and i'm a fool.

By the way:
ROFL = rolling on the floor laughing
POS = Point of Sale (A pay-desk is meant by this. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about)
hmmm...im sure POS means point of sale, but it means "piece of ****" as well. so don't say i don't know what i am talking about.

[Mav451]

To both of you...do not fully trust any SINGLE website. This goes especially to THG (Tom's Hardware Guide) readers. Tom is well known for skewing his testing results toward Intel--if I could find the link, he actually had a special "hate" page toward AMD-users (this was back in 2002 with the Bapco incident).

This is why I don't trust his site anymore. If you extrapolate results from sites such as Xbit, [H]ardOCP, Anandtech, ExtremeTech, etc. together and then make your own judgement on what you have learned then you will get a far less biased point of view.

This is not saying to STOP reading THG--just be more careful of treating it as "facts". They are an informational site, I'll admit, but I'll never fully place much, if any faith in that site ever again.

[AidenShaw]

pci-express is a high-end option. it dosn't even increase graphics proformance right now (maybe in 2-3 years it will). it is NOT needed on a low end consumer system, aka imac.


If your definition of "high end" is $877, for sure. (Dell GX280)


I don't disagree with you completely - however the "buzz" in high end graphics now is PCIe.

It's a moot point that maybe the good graphics cards don't really need PCIe - moot because they'll only be built in PCIe configs. Moot because you won't be able to buy an AGP card in that class....

I've seen lots of new bus technologies show up (BI, EISA, TURBOchannel, PCI, AGP {1,2,4,8}X, PCI-X, HT, PCIe, ....), but the tsunami associated with PCIe is truly unique in the way that I/O adaptors are available at the beginning of the techology ramp up.


major hype about the cool technology
systems, motherboards and chipsets supporting the bus
major graphics hype (check ATI and nVidia homepages for PCI Express news)
other I/O support (see Mellanox and Topspin InfiniBand adaptors, Broadcom GigE adaptors, Emulex and QLogic Fibre Channel, 10 GbE, ....)


Usually it takes several quarters to get everything lined up - but PCIe has lots of good cards ready at the get-go!

Have you tried to buy a good PCI graphics card lately? Sad state of affairs - mostly older crap being sold for a hefty price.

It's going to be the same for AGP graphics far sooner than you imagine. All of the hot cards with the features you want will be PCIe-only. If you want AGP - settle for second tier chips with third tier specs - at above second tier prices

[cb911]

yay! it's still coming to Mac! :D

it ought to be great... just not on my PB... :(

and about buying a PC for gaming, why not just use your Mac and support Mac games industry? i know i dont' want any more computers than i need. if i can do everything on my PB, then great. however if i can't play Doom 3 on my PB that just means i'm going to have to wait until the PowerBook G5s come out. ;)

although PCs do have lots more games, yes. so i guess it's really up to you, and this post hasn't said anything really important at all. :p

[cb911]

o major hype about the cool technology
o systems, motherboards and chipsets supporting the bus
o major graphics hype (check ATI and nVidia homepages for PCI Express news)
o other I/O support (see Mellanox and Topspin InfiniBand adaptors, Broadcom GigE adaptors, ....)

if you're wondering how to do bullet points... try option+8 ;) (on OS X at least...)

•

for those of you on Win or other systems and don't know how to do bullet points, i give you a stock bullet point. feel free to use it royalty free in any of your posts. :cool:

[AidenShaw]

if you're wondering how to do bullet points...

If I can't type <ul><li></li><li></li></ul> I'd just as soon use a lower case OH ! ;)

[oingoboingo]

What the hell are you talking about? Warcraft 3 and Unreal 2k4 play at FULL graphics and resolution on my powerbook.

Warcraft 3 never goes less than 60 and Unreal only when I have 16 characters on screen.

And as I previously said, Doom3 was planned to have an FPS limiter so it can't go past 30fps. So in that respect, my 40fps in Unreal is quite adequate.

Can you post some system configuration details, game settings and actual FPS scores, using a benchmarking tool like Santa Toolpak please? On my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook, I rarely see the UT2004 FPS counter exceed 20 FPS at 1024x768, and it's usually well below 20 FPS. Even on my 1.6GHz G5/Radeon 9600 Pro system, it is rare to see UT2004 FPS scores rise too far above 30 FPS with high-level graphics detail settings. I'd be interested to see how you have your system and software configured to achieve a solid 40 FPS in UT2004 on a PowerBook.

[isgoed]

pci-express is a high-end option. it dosn't even increase graphics proformance right now (maybe in 2-3 years it will). it is NOT needed on a low end consumer system, aka imac. agp 8x graphics would be great for an imac. and this is all assuming that apple makes the graphics card upgradeable, which they probably won't. by the way, 20$? it's $20, with the dollar sign in FRONT of the number. and i'm a fool.

hmmm...im sure POS means point of sale, but it means "piece of ****" as well. so don't say i don't know what i am talking about.

Glad that you agree that it is possible to run it on minimum spec. You point out some area's where you think medium spec is possible. Well it is pointless to argue about that. We will see it when it comes out. (I don't think there will be an option for 'medium shadows', it is either on or off. And hopefully you won't be able to turn it off (as in the alpha demo)). As for PCI-express; I think the other people in this thread already showed what is right.

Now i only have two advices for you:


Stop the attitude: "I am a powerbook übermensch and no one else diserves good hardware". Don't brag about your powerbook, use it!
Explaining to me the meaning of POS really doesn't make you smarter. It just shows that you can't appreciate macintoshes.

[army_guy]

It will come, but not for a long time and dont expect the performance of the PC version also amount of bugs etc.. DOOM3 is purely focused for the PC now as its one of the games (also HL2 etc..) that will revive the PC industry (due to H/W sales) and video cards (NVIDIA/ATI).

[supergod]

Is anyone even going to be able to play this game at a decent frame rate? From what I've heard this thing is just ridiculous in the power it needs; I have a 1.6 G5, Radeon 9600, 512 mb of ram (probably soon to be 1gb) and I really want to run this game but not if I have to sacrifice quality. Anyone think this is going to be a possibility?

[benjrobb]

should a dual 867 powermac with 768 mb ram and geforce mx w/ 32 mb vram be able to play this with a at least descent settings? I cant imagine that id would make the game unplayable for anyone w/o a g5. I would seriously consider upgrading to a refurb g5 1.6 from apple if i knew i couldnt play this sweet game on my comp, even though i just bought it off ebay.

[blueBomber]

should a dual 867 powermac with 768 mb ram and geforce mx w/ 32 mb vram be able to play this with a at least descent settings? I cant imagine that id would make the game unplayable for anyone w/o a g5. I would seriously consider upgrading to a refurb g5 1.6 from apple if i knew i couldnt play this sweet game on my comp, even though i just bought it off ebay.
Nobody can really say for sure what performance you will get, but considering that the 867, and the GeforceMX fall below what ID is saying minimum spec, I would say a sacrifice in quality will have to apply. The posted specs recommend at least a GeForce3, and even higher if you can, considering they also recommend 128 megs of video ram.

Edit: the specs posted are for the PC, so the Mac may gain some room in how low a processor it supports when it is ported. But videocard specs will more than likely stay the same.

[oingoboingo]

Is anyone even going to be able to play this game at a decent frame rate? From what I've heard this thing is just ridiculous in the power it needs; I have a 1.6 G5, Radeon 9600, 512 mb of ram (probably soon to be 1gb) and I really want to run this game but not if I have to sacrifice quality. Anyone think this is going to be a possibility?

I sure hope so, because that's almost exactly the system I have :) I don't think we'll be able to play at the highest detail settings, but from the minimum system specs I have read (P4 1.5GHz/Athlon 1500, GeForce3/Radeon 8500, 384MB RAM), I'm hoping that we should be able to get reasonable performance out of the game at medium-type settings. The only thing you might need to do is increase the amount of RAM you have (which you are planning to do anyway).

If the Radeon 9600 Pro doesn't pack enough punch, then I guess a Radeon 9800 Mac Edition might have to be on the cards some time in the future. Ahhh...sweet, sweet upgradable video...

[zakee00]

To both of you...do not fully trust any SINGLE website. This goes especially to THG (Tom's Hardware Guide) readers. Tom is well known for skewing his testing results toward Intel--if I could find the link, he actually had a special "hate" page toward AMD-users (this was back in 2002 with the Bapco incident).

This is why I don't trust his site anymore. If you extrapolate results from sites such as Xbit, [H]ardOCP, Anandtech, ExtremeTech, etc. together and then make your own judgement on what you have learned then you will get a far less biased point of view.

This is not saying to STOP reading THG--just be more careful of treating it as "facts". They are an informational site, I'll admit, but I'll never fully place much, if any faith in that site ever again.
thanks for the heads-up, i'll check out some of those other sites. btw, i apoligize for being kind of a prick back there, that was pretty dumb. i really hope that they have different shadow levels, because that is going to be the biggest drain on proformance. i guess i'm just really hoping it works good on my PB, in reality it probably won't, but thats what PC's are for ;). i would hope that a new G5 with a Radeon 9600 Pro could handle it (D3) pretty good, especially with 64 bit optimizations :)
EDIT: "Boycott the iPod and iPod mini! Listen to the masses Steve! POWER PC 970 IN THE IPOD NOW!!!!" hehhe i like that

[zakee00]

should a dual 867 powermac with 768 mb ram and geforce mx w/ 32 mb vram be able to play this with a at least descent settings? I cant imagine that id would make the game unplayable for anyone w/o a g5. I would seriously consider upgrading to a refurb g5 1.6 from apple if i knew i couldnt play this sweet game on my comp, even though i just bought it off ebay.
i seriously doubt it, MAYBE lowest settings. BTW, i just remembered something...we are arguing over what res. this game will be playable at, but if i remember right, when id previewed D3 multiplayer at some quakecon thing or something, it was rumored that D3 was being run on highest settings, 640x480. and judging from pics of the event and word of mouth, D3 looked amazing at 640x480. i really hope this is true...or else i might end up running it at 640x480 anyway :(

[army_guy]

The big game software companies I dont think can be bought especially the ones that thier main revenue is PC games. Remember PC games more or less drive the PC industry, games such as DOOM3 and HL 2 will kick it into high gear.

[sirzacolot]

Benchmarks were officially released today they can be found [H]ardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com)

Here is a quote from the first page of the article.

"For those of you that think you are not going to have the hardware that you need to play DOOM 3, the fact of the matter is that many of you will be just fine, although an upgrade may still be in your future. As of this afternoon we were playing DOOM 3 on a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 box with a GeForce 4 MX440 video card and having a surprisingly good gaming experience. Even a subtle jump to an AMD 2500+ with a GeForce 3 video card that is two years old will deliver a solid gaming experience that will let you enjoy the game the way id Software designed it to be. That fact alone should let many of you know that you will not be left behind in experiencing DOOM 3. "


It looks like many fears of Doom 3 being unplayable at the minimum configurations are somewhat unfounded. They do not give benchmark numbers for the lower end cards but a "surprisingly good gaming experience" from that kind of rig is good enough for me.

Now I only need to decide to buy it for windows or wait to play it on my PB, either way I will have a great time.

sirzacolot


*******************************
PB 12" 1.33 768mb
*******************************
XP1900+ Gf4Ti4400 512mb 30+30+20+5 gb
*******************************

[isgoed]

Benchmarks were officially released today they can be found [H]ardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com)
Wow! Amazing framerates on 1600x1200. But then again this is just a fly-by demo. It is common for a botmatch to get the fps halfed. As [Hard] OCP puts it:

One thing that you really must keep in mind when looking at timedemo results such as these, is that DOOM 3’s AI and physics engine are not being used as they would in a real-world gaming experience. That considered, we would guess our average framerates shown here to be a bit higher than if you were actually playing the game.
If you would have told me a year ago that I could play DOOM 3 on a GeForce 3 64MB video card and 1.8GHz AthlonXP and have a good gaming experience, I would have called you crazy, but that is exactly what we are seeing. Certainly we will have much more information on this in the coming weeks with the DOOM 3 [H]ardware Guide. At that time we will take a look at a much wider array of CPUs, Video Cards, and Motherboards and what overall gaming experience they can deliver.

Playable on a 64mb graphics card? this is gonna make a lot of mac users happy. I am very curious about their hardware guide. to see some real scores of 'low end' hardware.

Now I only need to decide to buy it for windows or wait to play it on my PB, either way I will have a great time.
I think the idea is that you buy the PC version and download the mac binaries. So you can buy the PC version anyway (even before the mac version is out)

[zakee00]

well, i'm praying that i can play d3 good on my pb :o...those benchmarks didn't really tell me much, i knew that nvidia's would out-perform the ati's because d3 was made for nvidia cards, as hl2 was made for ati's. i think imma be screwed with my ati mobility radeon 9600 :(...gotta wait till christmas to upgrade my pc :) it will be intresting to see how lower end hardware performs with d3...also how well the mac version performs.
must....have....doom...iii......
man i'm already dreaming about this game, seriously it's sad :rolleyes:

thanks for the benchmarks though, thats cool...imma check back after d3 comes out to see how lower end hardware performs.

[isgoed]

Still a comment from [H]ardOCP:
NVIDIA has told us more than once that the 6800 series was “designed to play DOOM 3,” and the truth of that statement is now glaringly obvious.
I think the 2.5Ghz powermac with the geForce 6800 will perform amazingly on DooM3. probably 60FPS on 1600x1200 (or equivalent widescreen) noAA, 8xAF, high quality textures.

[zakee00]

Still a comment from [H]ardOCP:

I think the 2.5Ghz powermac with the geForce 6800 will perform amazingly on DooM3. probably 60FPS on 1600x1200 (or equivalent widescreen) noAA, 8xAF, high quality textures.
yuppers, but i'm really curious to see how it would proform on a pb... or imac g5.i figure a pm g5 with 6800 ultra will scream...imagine, d3 with a 30" display...running at it's native res :D

[AidenShaw]

I don't know very much about 64 bit architecture, other than it allows you to address more than 4GB of ram.

On the contrary - you know almost everything about 64-bit - it allows a single program to use more than 4 GiB of RAM.

You don't need 64-bit to put more than 4 GiB of RAM in a computer. Intel's 32-bit chips have supported up to 64 GiB of RAM for a long time. A single program can only use 4 GiB of course, but the system could run many 4 GiB programs at once.

The G4 chip could also support up to 64 GiB of RAM, but Apple never put it in a system that could support more than 2 GiB.


However, I know it does/allows for much more that just that.

Not really. The only other thing 64-bit does is that is supports native 64-bit integers, rather than depending on the compiler to use a couple of 32-bit integer operations to work on 64-bit integers. If your program depends on 64-bit integers in performance critical areas, this aspect of 64-bit CPUs might be an advantage.

The rest of the "G5 optimizations" are there to better utilize the architecture of the PPC970 chip. These can give a good speedup, but they're independent of whether you use 64-bit addressing (which of course OS X applications can not) or 64-bit integers.

[Trekkie]

On the contrary - you know almost everything about 64-bit - it allows a single program to use more than 4 GiB of RAM.

You don't need 64-bit to put more than 4 GiB of RAM in a computer. Intel's 32-bit chips have supported up to 64 GiB of RAM for a long time. A single program can only use 4 GiB of course, but the system could run many 4 GiB programs at once.


Just a point of order here, but just because you could put 64GB of RAM in an server or desktop doesn't mean it was supported efficiently. 4GB was still a barrier.

To cross 4GB a few different emplementations exist that are reminiscent of crossing the 640KB 'barrier' of days of old. The big one being PAE. PAE 'pages' memory in and out above 4GB in 4MB pages (instead of 4K pages above 1024MB) and is very processor intensive and causes all sorts of latency doing this.

the '64 bit extension' technology introduced in the G5, Opteron, and now the updates to the IA32 architecture called EM64T were built to try and address this problem while not requiring 'all new' things like the IPF family does with the new EPIC architecture, etc.

So the G5, Opteron, and EM64T enabled IA32 chips can now have a new set of registers which allows the applications/operating systems to run in 64-bit mode but also allow you to install your original operating systems on them. Opteron and EM64T (really AMD64 and EM64T) are binary compatible and won't require a seperate operating system for each one. The G5 being a 64 bit processor (again in the same way, new registers to address memory only) will slowly move to a 64 bit OS once device drivers, etc are updated. Until then 10.3 and everything that isn't 64-bit enabled will function just fine.

The G4 chip could also support up to 64 GiB of RAM, but Apple never put it in a system that could support more than 2 GiB.


not without doing something similar to PAE it wouldn't...



Not really. The only other thing 64-bit does is that is supports native 64-bit integers, rather than depending on the compiler to use a couple of 32-bit integer operations to work on 64-bit integers. If your program depends on 64-bit integers in performance critical areas, this aspect of 64-bit CPUs might be an advantage.


No program is going to 'depend on' 64-bit integers other than someone doing some crazy math. This is actually a draw back to a pure 64-bit implementation is now you have 'program bloat' in that to store the number '2' in memory you now need 2x as much RAM as you did before because the space set aside is now a 64 bit int instead of a 32 bit int. That's why the memory extension technology in the G5/Opteron/Intel Xeon is so beneficial is that you can still use 32 bit integers and not have to go full bore 64-bit.

[Raidiant]

Buying a console doesn't solve anything, I wish I could play SWG, or Horizons are some of the better and more unique RPGs out there. Also this just sucks its already bad enough that macs suffer from incompatibility and hard to upgrade issues, games are also ridiculously limited, I hate to have to wait 1 year just to play doom 3. I have an XBOX so its alright, but recently I realised that macs can only work with webcams with $80 and above which completely sucks considering the windows $20-30 webcam options.

anyway I don't see why people can't just have a PC to play games, hell its cheap and hell thats what its only good for.

you know macs have an edge in software, but apple needs to improve a hell lot fast in the software department, because windows is beggining to really cut it close, most people wouldn't even consider a mac nowadays cos modern pcs are so convenient.

Its sad to see that china is being eaten away by windows, such a big market apple didn't even take a glance at.

[A Mac Gamer]

I think the idea is that you buy the PC version and download the mac binaries. So you can buy the PC version anyway (even before the mac version is out)

Do you think that id will have binaries before they release the Mac version. That would be really sweet if they did, but Todd Hollenshead didn't say anything about that in his last .plan. :(

[zakee00]

Do you think that id will have binaries before they release the Mac version. That would be really sweet if they did, but Todd Hollenshead didn't say anything about that in his last .plan. :(
something tells me that we wont see the binary thing happen this time. they want D3 to be AS polished as the windows version, and that dosnt include buying the pc version and having to download binaries. :rolleyes: if you would though, could you explain how this would work? i was still on PC's when quake 3 came out, so i didn't have to do the binary thing last time.
thanks,
Nick

[AidenShaw]

Just a point of order here, but just because you could put 64GB of RAM in an server or desktop doesn't mean it was supported efficiently. 4GB was still a barrier.

To cross 4GB a few different emplementations exist that are reminiscent of crossing the 640KB 'barrier' of days of old. The big one being PAE. PAE 'pages' memory in and out above 4GB in 4MB pages (instead of 4K pages above 1024MB) and is very processor intensive and causes all sorts of latency doing this.

I believe that you are confusing PAE (Physical Address Extension) with PSE (Page Size Extensions) and AWE (Addressing Window Extensions).

You are right in that remapping addresses to give the process more than 4 GiB of memory is expensive.

We're not talking about that - we're not talking about giving the process more than 4 GiB.

We're letting the system manage more than 4 GiB of total RAM, but only giving a max of 4 GiB to processes.

This is not inefficient, since the operating system handles pages via page numbers, not addresses. Since the page is 4KiB in size, a 32-bit page number can describe far more than 4 GiB.

There is no appreciable performance loss to running large memory Windows or Linux systems using PAE. The hit comes if you use PSE and/or AWE to force remapping in order to "cheat" and use more than 4 GiB in a single application.


No program is going to 'depend on' 64-bit integers other than someone doing some crazy math. This is actually a draw back to a pure 64-bit implementation is now you have 'program bloat' in that to store the number '2' in memory you now need 2x as much RAM as you did before because the space set aside is now a 64 bit int instead of a 32 bit int. That's why the memory extension technology in the G5/Opteron/Intel Xeon is so beneficial is that you can still use 32 bit integers and not have to go full bore 64-bit.

The real issue here doesn't have much to do with the extension technology. There are two main programming models for 64-bit systems - ILP64 and LP64.

In the first, the "c" datatypes "int", "long" and "pointer" are 64-bits. In the second, "ints" remain 32-bits while "longs" and "pointers" become 64-bits.

ILP64 has the advantage that casting an "int" to a "pointer" (or vice versa) doesn't cause problems - but it has the disadvantage of using 64-bits for a default integer.

As long as the chip supports both 32-bit and 64-bit integers, it's an OS design choice whether to use ILP64 or LP64. Most choose LP64.

"Tiger supports the industry standard LP64 programming model supported by other 64-bit Unix systems. This means developers can easily port 64-bit code to Tiger. LP64 support in Tiger provides for 64-bit pointer, long, and long long but preserves 32-bit integer data types."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html


As far as the "crazy math" comment, note that all of your machines have 64-bit or larger filesystems (if you can have files bigger than 4 GiB, you need 64-bit filesystem data).

The system has to use 64-bit integer arithmetic to work with files - but fortunately this does not fall into the "performance critical" arena. There's so much else going on with file access that a couple of extra "add" instructions aren't important.

[HarbV7.0]

This thread is exactly why I build a new PC about every 2 years and usualy upgrade the vid card every year. Work pays for my Macs and I love them. However I spend 8 hours a day supporting Mac Server and Client and by the time I get home I've had enough! So... I spend most of my time at home on my PC running Linux (FC2). BUT when I want to play a game i boot into XP Pro and I can play them when they come out and to be quite honest, on the platform they were really tweaked and developed for.

Don't get men wrong, I love Mac and I do use it at home (heh, mostly on the weekends). I also love gaming though and if I have to boot into Windows to play a game I will. I feel sorry for the really hardcore Mac users that most likely will never see HL2 :(. MY windows instal has games and firefox and THAT'S it! Other than that it's in Linux all the time.

[zakee00]

I believe that you are confusing PAE (Physical Address Extension) with PSE (Page Size Extensions) and AWE (Addressing Window Extensions).

You are right in that remapping addresses to give the process more than 4 GiB of memory is expensive.

We're not talking about that - we're not talking about giving the process more than 4 GiB.

We're letting the system manage more than 4 GiB of total RAM, but only giving a max of 4 GiB to processes.

This is not inefficient, since the operating system handles pages via page numbers, not addresses. Since the page is 4KiB in size, a 32-bit page number can describe far more than 4 GiB.

There is no appreciable performance loss to running large memory Windows or Linux systems using PAE. The hit comes if you use PSE and/or AWE to force remapping in order to "cheat" and use more than 4 GiB in a single application.




The real issue here doesn't have much to do with the extension technology. There are two main programming models for 64-bit systems - ILP64 and LP64.

In the first, the "c" datatypes "int", "long" and "pointer" are 64-bits. In the second, "ints" remain 32-bits while "longs" and "pointers" become 64-bits.

ILP64 has the advantage that casting an "int" to a "pointer" (or vice versa) doesn't cause problems - but it has the disadvantage of using 64-bits for a default integer.

As long as the chip supports both 32-bit and 64-bit integers, it's an OS design choice whether to use ILP64 or LP64. Most choose LP64.

"Tiger supports the industry standard LP64 programming model supported by other 64-bit Unix systems. This means developers can easily port 64-bit code to Tiger. LP64 support in Tiger provides for 64-bit pointer, long, and long long but preserves 32-bit integer data types."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html


As far as the "crazy math" comment, note that all of your machines have 64-bit or larger filesystems (if you can have files bigger than 4 GiB, you need 64-bit filesystem data).

The system has to use 64-bit integer arithmetic to work with files - but fortunately this does not fall into the "performance critical" arena. There's so much else going on with file access that a couple of extra "add" instructions aren't important.
ho-ly-crap where did you learn all of that? what is your degree in? :D

[blueBomber]

something tells me that we wont see the binary thing happen this time. they want D3 to be AS polished as the windows version, and that dosnt include buying the pc version and having to download binaries. :rolleyes: if you would though, could you explain how this would work? i was still on PC's when quake 3 came out, so i didn't have to do the binary thing last time.
thanks,
Nick
Most of the actual program files for Quake3 (and Quake1 and 2) are largly the same for every version that is available. This is also why companies like Blizzard release hybrid games because they only have to change a few key files for the program to be cross-platform. The binary switch works by downloading the newest point release (or patch) of the game you want to "port". Then, you simply copy the files necessary to run the game from your Windows install onto your Mac (or Linux) machine. Delete any useless files (.exe and so on) and fire up the binary from the patch that you just installed on your machine. Instant Mac version. I'm not sure of the legality of doing this, so consult your EULA before attempting. Although I don't see how this could be wrong, ID used to include instructions for getting the Linux version of Quake 3 to work on Windows, and even included links to the necessary files.

[AidenShaw]

ho-ly-crap where did you learn all of that? what is your degree in? :D

Undergraduate double in Physics and Math. Masters in Computer Science.

More than 25 years in the business, in software, mostly for hardware vendors (Digital/Compaq/HP, now at a software house).

Spent a lot of time working on the Alpha 64-bit rollout and 64-bit NT on Alpha.

I've been on both sides - trying to hype 64-bits to people who didn't need more than 128MiB in their systems. Using PSE and AWE to get Oracle to run with a 20 GiB data cache on a 32-bit OS and showing people what a great advantage it was.

Bottom line - if you don't have more than 4 GiB of RAM in your system, you almost certainly don't need 64 bits.

If you have several apps that need a few gig, you need a 32-bit system that supports more than 4 GiB of RAM (like OS X on a G5, or Windows 32-bit server or Linux 32-bit (both support up to 64 GiB of RAM on a 32-bit system)).

It's only when you have more than 4 GiB and you need to give more than 4 GiB to an individual application that you need 64-bits....

[pozytron]

Most of the actual program files for Quake3 (and Quake1 and 2) are largly the same for every version that is available. This is also why companies like Blizzard release hybrid games because they only have to change a few key files for the program to be cross-platform. The binary switch works by downloading the newest point release (or patch) of the game you want to "port". Then, you simply copy the files necessary to run the game from your Windows install onto your Mac (or Linux) machine. Delete any useless files (.exe and so on) and fire up the binary from the patch that you just installed on your machine. Instant Mac version. I'm not sure of the legality of doing this, so consult your EULA before attempting. Although I don't see how this could be wrong, ID used to include instructions for getting the Linux version of Quake 3 to work on Windows, and even included links to the necessary files.
While it's true that most games have included map, texture, sound, etc. files that work on all platforms, porting a game is much more complicated than that. The code for the game uses a lot of platform-dependent calls to open new windows, get joystick input, etc. and has to be manually ported to the Mac. This can take a lot of time and a lot of money, even if, in the end, the game install CDs have 99% of the same data.

[mmmdreg]

I didn't search but what would be the *minimum* to run the game on a mac or PC?

[zakee00]

hm...so basicly they just take the source code from the windows exe, turn it into a .app file, and optimize the code for PPC? then all of the textures, shaders, maps stay the same cuz d3 is opengl....neat. i guess its harder when the game engine uses directx. i hope that i can just get the windows version and download the mac .app...mac games are expensive, and you have to buy them from special stores. d3 for windows will be EVERYWHERE..lol ill just go to walmart and buy it.

[zakee00]

I didn't search but what would be the *minimum* to run the game on a mac or PC?
no one knows for mac, but pc is as follows:
System Requirements:
Microsoft Windows 2000/XP; Pentium IV 1.5 GHz or AMD Athlon 1.7 GHz XP processor or higher; 384MB RAM; 8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers; 1.7GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 400MB for Windows swap file); 100% DirectXR 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers; 100% Windows 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers; 3D hardware Accelerator Card Required - 100% DirectXR 9.0b compatible 64MB Hardware Accelerated video card and the latest drivers.

Multiplayer Requirements:
Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported; Internet play requires broadband connection and latest drivers; LAN play requires network interface card and latest drivers

found them on ebgames.com. im guessing that these are recommended, not required. aka, if u have this system you can run the game pretty good on med. settings or so. one thing i thought was cool was the broadband only thing, wansn't expecting that. good i guess. another thing: wasnt this game supposed to be opengl? whats up with 100% directXR 9.0b video card and sound card? any ideas? my guess is that it uses opengl, but it just says directx(r?) to make sure you have the shaders on ur vid. card. im confused. :confused:

[blueBomber]

While it's true that most games have included map, texture, sound, etc. files that work on all platforms, porting a game is much more complicated than that. The code for the game uses a lot of platform-dependent calls to open new windows, get joystick input, etc. and has to be manually ported to the Mac. This can take a lot of time and a lot of money, even if, in the end, the game install CDs have 99% of the same data.no kidding, that's why this trick only works on games powered by the Quake 3 engine. Read my post again.
ps, nice sig.
fan of the classic DOTD or the new "28 Dawn Later"?

[blueBomber]

...whats up with 100% directXR 9.0b video card and sound card? any ideas? my guess is that it uses opengl, but it just says directx(r?) to make sure you have the shaders on ur vid. card. im confused. :confused:
That would be my guess. Since people are much more aware of what version of DirectX their card supports than what version of OpenGL, it's probably just easier to say the DX specs.

[isgoed]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/532/532505p1.html?fromint=1
Todd: We've got the demo to wrap up and the programmers are working on getting the dedicated server wrapped up so once those two things are done we'll start focusing on getting the Mac stuff done so we actually have a pretty full slate. After the announcement everybody kinda took the next day a little easier, but for me the activity level has actually picked up here recently. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

IGNPC: When do you think we're actually going to be seeing that demo?

Todd: It's hard to say. There's a few things we have to get working on. We're still in the process of determining exactly what the content's going to be. The hope is that we'll get it out pretty soon, but it won't be before the full game is out on store shelves here in the US.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/preview_6103236.html
GS: Todd, you were quoted in Chris Morris' CNN/Money column as saying that Doom 3 might not come out this year for the Xbox.

TH: I said I couldn't guarantee it, but I didn't rule it out.

Based on this I guess it is at least a 3 month wait before DooM3 OSX comes out (so that will be october). Next thing will be that virtual PC is even released before DooM3, so you will be playing it in emulated mode before native mode.

[bcsimac]

I can't even play the new games anyway. I am still stuck with a bondi blue rev B iMac. However, I am glad to see these games coming out for the Mac.........That is very important!

[A Mac Gamer]

I think John Carmack once posted in his .plan about how he hates Directx. John is old school, and loves opengl, Doom 3 is all opengl, no directx, im almost 100% sure.

[blueBomber]

I think John Carmack once posted in his .plan about how he hates Directx. John is old school, and loves opengl, Doom 3 is all opengl, no directx, im almost 100% sure.
More than hates, he is completly AGAINST it. He feels that openGL is much more robust and compatible than DX, which is half right. DX has surpassed openGL for gaming purposes for speed, features, and ease of use. Of course even Carmack can't escape the ease of using the other DirectX technologies like DirectInput and DirectSound.

[pozytron]

no kidding, that's why this trick only works on games powered by the Quake 3 engine. Read my post again.
ps, nice sig.
fan of the classic DOTD or the new "28 Dawn Later"?
Well, I've never heard of "28 Dawn Later" ;) but I did like both the original Dawn and the remake. They each have their own merits. The original had very cheesy makeup effects, but still is a great movie in its own right. The remake actually was quite good too. I love the special effects in the remake, they are so awesome! I actually have not seen all of 28 Days Later, but I'm sure (based on what I have seen) that Dawn of the Dead is better :)

[aliasfox]

This is something I stumbled across when reading about the introduction of the ATi Rage 128. Most reviewers said it had very decent 32 bit performance- though 16-bit performance is lacking. Compared to other chips of the day, the Rage 128 had little more than half the performance at 16-bit color levels.

How is this relevant now? Well, ATi Radeons still seem to have this deficit- 16 bit and 32 bit performance is roughly identical. But GeForce's don't. My rev. A Powerbook 12" barely plays Halo at 32 bit XGA- regardless of the graphics settings, but it does perfectly fine at 16-bit on all but larger scenes with a lot of motion. I can even turn particles on and medium textures!

That's the key folks: if you want decent performance out of your somewhat older machine with a GeForce, turn color down to "thousands" instead of "millions." I don't notice a quality difference, but the difference in speed is astounding. It may help people bordering on the low end of the requirement scale.

Of course, this only helps if your system is graphics card limited- meaning any system running an MX processor of any sort, and most likely any system running a 5200.

[mmmdreg]

I got a couple of eMacs (1GHz, 1.25GHz) and a 2.8GHz P4 laptop.. but they both have like the same/similar graphics card :S which is only 32 meg so.. yeah.. tho the PC runs games better than the Macs I think..

[zakee00]

That would be my guess. Since people are much more aware of what version of DirectX their card supports than what version of OpenGL, it's probably just easier to say the DX specs.
yeah, thats what i was trying to say :) so, what version of opengl does doom iii need anyway? 1.5?

[JohnnyCash]

So the only Mac that Doom will be able to be played on is the G5...no laptops.that really sucks, although I'm not surprised :mad:

[thedogcow]

I don't think Doom 3 will come out. This is from the mouth of Carmack.

Read this slashdot link.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/14/227248&tid=112&tid=10

[Nermal]

Since you posted a link to a Slashdotted server, I'll help out.

A Mac "gamer" asked about the port to OS X. Apparently there is no current time for the release of a port. The game runs, but there is a lot of optimization, and currently they feel the Mac platform can not yet offer the same experience as the PC. Activision will not publish the Mac version of Doom 3. There is no publisher set currently.

[thedogcow]

Since you posted a link to a Slashdotted server, I'll help out.

Thanks, I can't be held responsible for crappy servers :P

I raise the question, what about the 6800 card?! This is hardly a crappy vid card.

[o1b2]

doom yes was a fun game but in its dos days .As games go I am more peed off that sims 2 is not be released to the mac anytime soon. EA emailed me back and said "some time 2005." oh well. That is not anything new the pc platform seems to get all the releases first.

[Jimong5]

I think ill be ready for doom 3, at least at minimum settings-
Dual 867 G4, 1 GB RAM
ATI 9700 (I actually found one with ADC on Ebay, i was so excited)

Unless its more CPU Bound that I would like...

[macsrus]

As games go I am more peed off that sims 2 is not be released to the mac anytime soon. EA emailed me back and said "some time 2005." oh well. That is not anything new the pc platform seems to get all the releases first.

I feel the same way...
You cant even get a decent chess program for the MAC...

OH YEA.. thats right you can get ChessPatzer(Chessmaster) 9.0 finally... Now that version 10 is out on the PC...
But it is nothing like the real Chess software... Like FRITZ, JUNIOR, HIARCS, SHREDDER and CHESSBASE...

[puckhead193]

anyone know the min. requiments for doom 3 on a mac? I hope i can run it well..if not, i'm stealing my brother's dual 2.5 G5 :D (if it ever ships) :rolleyes:

[Frobozz]

I think ill be ready for doom 3, at least at minimum settings-
Dual 867 G4, 1 GB RAM
ATI 9700 (I actually found one with ADC on Ebay, i was so excited)

Unless its more CPU Bound that I would like...

I'm worried the dual 1GHz G4 is going to be the minium CPU specs. The scary thing is that a couple games already have dual 1GHz specs as the _minimum_. Ahhhh! That's what I have. Now I need to upgrade... and I don't think $650 to squeeze an extra 33% CPU performance will be worth the money. (dual 1.33 upgrade).

What I'd like to do is hold out until the dual 2.5's are available as refurbs, or until the dual core 3GHz Macs are available next feb/mar.

[Frobozz]

anyone know the min. requiments for doom 3 on a mac? I hope i can run it well..if not, i'm stealing my brother's dual 2.5 G5 :D (if it ever ships) :rolleyes:

If the PB in your sig is what you'd like to run it on... no. It probably won't play it. You might be able to load it and run it in 640 x 480, but I wouldn't call that "playing" it.

I was looking through specs of some recent games. The following have a 1GHz processor listed as the minimum. Not sure how duals equate, but here they are:


Republic
James Bond 007: NightFire
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic


... so it looks like the days of the 1GHz chip are coming to an end. :-( I seriously doubt Doom3 will have any less specs. The GPU should scale down nicely to a GF4mx, though not look as good. The CPU on the PC Side is a 1.5GHz or equivalent chip.... this might be the first Mac game to require a 1.25 or greater G4/G5.

[Frobozz]

More than hates, he is completly AGAINST it. He feels that openGL is much more robust and compatible than DX, which is half right. DX has surpassed openGL for gaming purposes for speed, features, and ease of use. Of course even Carmack can't escape the ease of using the other DirectX technologies like DirectInput and DirectSound.

OpenGL 2.0 was recently finalized, which incorporates a lot of extensions to the 1.x API, and includes a lot of enhancements:

http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2004/august/opengl.html

[Mord]

UT2k4 and Doom 3 are completly different animals engine wise (and I wouldn't call 40fps playable for a fast paced game like UT, that framerate would get you destroyed online). Your post said you were pulling down 20 fps at 1600x1200 on a Geforce 2mx on a P3 800 with 128 megs of ram. This is nonsense. Your frame buffer would be completly taxed before you even saw your first polygon. Not to mention that 128 is not even close to enough ram for Windows let alone Windows with the game running too. That is what I was responding to. I'm sure Doom 3 will run on your PB. Much in the same way that UT2K4 runs on my PB 12"; poorly. I'm not trying to start a flame or anything, but be realistic; ID software is THE company responsible for pushing PC speeds. I hardly think that a G4 is the target machine for actual playability.

getting destroyed at 40fps thats utter crap i play halo on my dual 450MHz cube with a radeon 7500 at 20-30fps and i certainly dont get destroyed i generally come out top. you cant tell the difference above 30fps :p

[slughead]

too bad about 2% of the people here have systems that can run that game....

Especially with Apple's stupid choice in video cards for their ieMacs.

Good luck running d3 on that 5200 imac users! But don't worry, I'm sure the iMac G5 will have something better... oh wait.

[Jordan Merle]

great

[dviant]

The CPU on the PC Side is a 1.5GHz or equivalent chip.... this might be the first Mac game to require a 1.25 or greater G4/G5.

Yes and considering that framerates (maybe I'm picky) are still lacking on my PC's AMD 2ghz (xp2400+) with a GF FX5600 Ultra card, I'm guessing that a 1.25 G4 (regardless of vid card) is not going to be very good at all. Min requirements these days seem like bare minimums... not playable minimums.

[jhu]

Yes and considering that framerates (maybe I'm picky) are still lacking on my PC's AMD 2ghz (xp2400+) with a GF FX5600 Ultra card, I'm guessing that a 1.25 G4 (regardless of vid card) is not going to be very good at all. Min requirements these days seem like bare minimums... not playable minimums.

many review sites claim that 640x480 is quite playable and actually still visually impressive. perhaps your standards are too high? the minimum cpu requirement is 1.5ghz pentium 4. this should be about equivalent to a 1 ghz ppc7400.

[puckhead193]

all i hope is that my powerbook can run it well!

[JohnnyCash]

From Macgamer:
Apparently there is no current time for the release of a port. The game runs, but there is a lot of optimization, and currently they feel the Mac platform can not yet offer the same experience as the PC. Activision will not publish the Mac version of Doom 3. There is no publisher set currently.

I got a feeling its going to be a very long wait...what gets me is that couple of years ago John Carmack got up at a Mac Expo and showed Doom3 to the world for the first time. It certainly looked as if it was being developed on a Mac...that was the impression anyway....this sucks.

[jhu]

From Macgamer:
Apparently there is no current time for the release of a port. The game runs, but there is a lot of optimization, and currently they feel the Mac platform can not yet offer the same experience as the PC. Activision will not publish the Mac version of Doom 3. There is no publisher set currently.

I got a feeling its going to be a very long wait...what gets me is that couple of years ago John Carmack got up at a Mac Expo and showed Doom3 to the world for the first time. It certainly looked as if it was being developed on a Mac...that was the impression anyway....this sucks.

perhaps they'll make a mac download available on their site.

[neoelectronaut]

Remember when Unreal (original, not the Tournament) came out?

WOW.. that game wasn't playable at max settings until the Voodoo 5 grfx card came along for in the G3 B&W.... a couple of years later.

And I wish I could find a copy of the Mac version just to see how much it would scream on my eMac's dinky Radeon 7500. :(

[MacsRgr8]

And I wish I could find a copy of the Mac version just to see how much it would scream on my eMac's dinky Radeon 7500. :(

I have tried the game on an eMac 700 Mhz (512 MB RAM) with a GeForce 2 MX.
Damn, couldn't say the game was screaming at all! Around 30 fps (lowest < 24 fps) at max settings, 32 bits, 1024 x 768 (the intro fly by).
A 500 MHz G4 with Radeon 8500 DID make it scream, though! > 50 fps at same settings.
Seems like the GeForce 2 MX doesn't perform well in Rage 3D rendering.... :rolleyes:

I bet your eMac with Radeon 7500 will make it fly!
You must be able to get hold of a copy somewhere?

[neoelectronaut]

Unreal Tournament runs rather so-so on my Mac, actually.

But I attribute that to the horrible OS X update that was, well, never really finished. It's still in beta. :rolleyes:

[isgoed]

I have a PC that is in specs similar to powerbooks/imacs. I bought doom3 a week ago and at first it ran poorly. I then went to do some tweaking and here are the results of the timedemo demo1 benchmark I ran. The first score is of the first run and the 2nd score of the 2nd run. These differ because doom3 caches openGL states. Between each scores. I only note the changes I made to the system/setup.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
PC: AMD athlon 1200mhz, geforce 4200ti 128mb, 256mb SDRAM133, AGP4X, Windows2000Pro, desktop 640x480x32bit, no tray icons, no background
Drivers: nVidia 42.80, DirectX 9.0b
Doom3: low quality, 640x480x32bit, no shadows, 22kHz sounds, preload images, maxImage 256, noCompressedTextures, lodBias 0.7

344.6s = 6.2FPS ][ 177.3s = 12.1FPS

Quite poor performance: barely playable
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
nVidia 61.77

151.8s = 14.3FPS ][ 80.8s = 26.6FPS

Great performance gain. The new drivers doubled the performance!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
512mb DDR266

93.3s = 23FPS ][ 77s = 27.9FPS

The better ram shows two effects. The previous 256mb ram was below minimum spec (384mb), while with 512mb we are above it. It clearly shows that in the first run, caching OpenGL-states goes much faster when you have 512mb available. FPS where up to 23FPS from 14.3FPS. In the second run you can see the advantage of DDR266 over SDRAM133. In the second run the states are already cached so the only advantage comes from the speed of the RAM. This is a benefit of a slight 1.3FPS.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Doom3: 800x600x32bit, reset all settings to medium quality (shadows on, no high quality effects)

111.4s = 19.3FPS ][ 98.8s = 21.7FPS

I consider this the best trade-off between quality and playability
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
AA4x

184.2s = 11.7FPS ][ -

No, this is too heavy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

CONCLUSION:

How doom3 will run on Macs primarily depends on how well the videocard drivers are. Since the quality of the drivers on the Mac have always lagged behind PC-drivers this may be a realy important issue. Second thing is that the speed of the memory on G4 machines is not that good, but as long as you have plenty of ram (which most macs have) this is not a real big issue. Keep in mind that the geforce 4200ti is faster than a Radeon 9200 or a geforce FX5200, so iMac and eMac users might have to run in 640x480mode. Powerbook Users (Radeon 9600m & Radeon 9700m) can probably turn high quality effects on (DirectX9/PixelShaders) and run in (1024x768). A problem is however that a lot of macs have 64mb videocards, which means that they are forced to run in low quality mode (resolution can remain at 1024x768 though). This is especially true, because G4-systems have a slow bus speed (133mhz/166mhz) and only have an AGP4X interface so you can't pump large quantities of texture data over the system bus.

[alastairh]

Unreal Tournament runs rather so-so on my Mac, actually.

But I attribute that to the horrible OS X update that was, well, never really finished. It's still in beta. :rolleyes:

Actually it's probably down to the fact that the Unreal series of games was designed to use DirectX, and not OpenGL. It was only when the Linux port was done that OpenGL support was added, and because the engine is geared-up for Direct3D, OpenGL was always less well supported.