Mac Doom 3 Benchmarks Posted

[MacBytes]

Category: Benchmarks
Link: Mac Doom 3 Benchmarks Posted
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug

[ZildjianKX]

For an active discussion of this, please see this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=112491

[Chaszmyr]

Good that Doom 3 has decent (even if bad compared to high end PCs) performance on a PowerMac. Something tells me not too many iMac users will be playing Doom 3 with high high settings though

[Nermal]

I hope they release a demo. My CPU isn't quite fast enough, but I have a 9800 which will hopefully make up for it. But I'm definitely not buying it if I don't know how well it'll run.

[2GMario]

some of the article doesnt really make sense to me

they say the megahertz mith does apply to games, but they didnt optimize for dual G5's

why wouldnt u then to get the added performace ?

they also say, that on both pc and mac, the game requires a pretty good machine

why not just release for the G5 then ? there are differences between the g5 and the g4, pretty considerable ones architecture wise as i understand it (being 64bit and all)

and no, nothing against the g4 guys out there, i have a ibook, but when the game requires about 1gb+ ram, ur not nessecerally gonna play it on a laptop.

and then, future games may be ported to the mac easier due to the liscensing of the game engine.

if the engine isnt optimized for a dual processor system, what good does it do us to have future games developed for the mac if they dont use this extra power ?

im not sure about u guys, but when im working, im working, when im playing a game, im playing a game. thats cool one of my g5 chips can sit there and deal with word or what ever in the background, but thats now how i play my games.

to me, it appears as a cop out. you know apple sells dual processor systems out of the box. optimize for a dual processor machine. its not like the G5 isnt a popular machine. everyone i know that likes apple, wants a g5 or has one.

what ever
-Mario

[angelneo]

Originally Posted by 2GMario

some of the article doesnt really make sense to me

they say the megahertz mith does apply to games, but they didnt optimize for dual G5's

why wouldnt u then to get the added performace ?

they also say, that on both pc and mac, the game requires a pretty good machine

why not just release for the G5 then ? there are differences between the g5 and the g4, pretty considerable ones architecture wise as i understand it (being 64bit and all)

and no, nothing against the g4 guys out there, i have a ibook, but when the game requires about 1gb+ ram, ur not nessecerally gonna play it on a laptop.

and then, future games may be ported to the mac easier due to the liscensing of the game engine.

if the engine isnt optimized for a dual processor system, what good does it do us to have future games developed for the mac if they dont use this extra power ?

im not sure about u guys, but when im working, im working, when im playing a game, im playing a game. thats cool one of my g5 chips can sit there and deal with word or what ever in the background, but thats now how i play my games.

to me, it appears as a cop out. you know apple sells dual processor systems out of the box. optimize for a dual processor machine. its not like the G5 isnt a popular machine. everyone i know that likes apple, wants a g5 or has one.

what ever
-Mario

I think the effort to make any applications dual processor aware might involve quite a lot of re-coding. Dual processor is still a rare thing in the PC desktop world so it might take some time before PC-Mac applications are written to make use of it especially when it is ported over from the PC version.

Releasing a 64bit version doesn't necessary make the game run faster. I think there's quite a lot of discussion involving 64bit app vs 32bit around here.

Unix is built for multi-tasking. I don't think its that simple to tell the Unix to direct all their resources to a single application without some major changes in the OS.

Feel free to correct me though

[Timelessblur]

it is all about cost to benfit ratio. Now of all the G5 macs out there how many of them are daul processor. If you think about if a very small number fo them are. at 2 graund for just a tower that is pretty much high end for computer so it very small. vast majority of the g5 out there are single processor computers. The just was not worth spending the time to opimized it for daul CPU. The time was better spent making it work well on the single processor computer where it is was more imporanted

[broken_keyboard]

Even if they don't do any manual G5 optimizations they should at least build a separate executable with G5 compiler settings. Just look at the difference with the G5 compiled Firefox.

[Phat_Pat]

Is it possible, for instance, in the future if Doom3 sells very well, that they can go back and add support for DP?

[Lacero]

Looks like my DP 1.8GHz G5 with FX5200 video card ain't gonna cut it for 4x FSAA 1600x1200 Doom 3 gameplay. Damn you ID Software!

[invaLPsion]

Originally Posted by Phat_Pat

Is it possible, for instance, in the future if Doom3 sells very well, that they can go back and add support for DP?

They did it with Quake 3...

We'll see. The performance gain in Quake 3 when using both processors is astounding. Gains of more than 100 FPS.

[Laslo Panaflex]

Originally Posted by Lacero

Looks like my DP 1.8GHz G5 with FX5200 video card ain't gonna cut it for 4x FSAA 1600x1200 Doom 3 gameplay. Damn you ID Software!

With that video card, you don't get much at all, even a PC. Really the 52000 is crap . . .

[obelix]

Why is Apple so darn adament about sticking such poor quality video cards in their products. I mean really... would it kill them to throw out all that NVidia trash and just go straight with the radeon 9800 line as their base model... or the 9550 line... anything is better than those trashy 64mb cards they throw into most models. 128mb or go home!

[~loserman~]

Originally Posted by obelix

Why is Apple so darn adament about sticking such poor quality video cards in their products. I mean really... would it kill them to throw out all that NVidia trash and just go straight with the radeon 9800 line as their base model... or the 9550 line... anything is better than those trashy 64mb cards they throw into most models. 128mb or go home!

You must be kidding right?
Nvidia's cards blow ATI out of the water.

Just not on the Mac. In the PC world nothing can touch Nvidia.

Here is a DOOM3 benchmark for you

Nvidia 6800 Ultra no SLI 92.4 fps

ATI's best card the Radeon X800 XT PE 82.0 fps

Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI 104 fps

ATI has no answer for the ability of Nvidia's Dual Configuration SLI
And even cant compete with the Single card either.

ATI is always behind Nvidia in technology.

[Demon Hunter]

That's not really true. ATI's current lineup is based on the same architecture they've been using for a long time (RV450).

Just wait until the X950 XT comes out (RV520). What people don't realize is that this is ATI's next gen, the X800 was not!! It's rumored to have 24 pipelines, and 512 MB of texture memory... with roughly 3x performance over the current X800 XT.

Macs probably won't see it for a long time. But to say ATI is "always behind" is ridiculous. They've been leading the mobile GPU market for a while now.

Furthermore... Doom 3 was optimized for the 6800 from the start. So all of those silly Doom 3 benchmarks mean very little... unless you love your Doom.

[Mav451]

Good lord. I thought fanboys on [H]ardforums were bad, but this takes the cake.

Please remember that Doom3 is just ONE game. That is the number one thing that nVidia fans always forget. Or did you forget about 3DMark2k3? nVidia repeatedly denying their cheats in trying to produce better numbers than the 9800 (doing it w/o any optimizations)?

Given, ATi is stronger at D3D, it always has been. nVidia has always been stronger at OGL.

Why don't we talk about the price-efficient X800XL, which is (finally) hitting the suggest MSRP of $299 [at CompUSA or ATi website anyway], the same price range as a 6800NU?

• 475/900 @ 12pipes (475 x 12 pipes >> 5700M Pixel Fill Rate)
  vs.
• 400/980 @ 16pipes? (400 x 16 pipes >> 6400M Pixel Fill Rate).

Why don't we take a look at games, other than Doom3?

Far Cry:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4...l/index.x?pg=8

HL2 (with a greater range of MP)
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4...l/index.x?pg=6

[~loserman~]

Originally Posted by dferrara

That's not really true. ATI's current lineup is based on the same architecture they've been using for a long time (RV450).

Just wait until the X950 XT comes out (RV520). What people don't realize is that this is ATI's next gen, the X800 was not!! It's rumored to have 24 pipelines, and 512 MB of texture memory... with roughly 3x performance over the current X800 XT.

Macs probably won't see it for a long time. But to say ATI is "always behind" is ridiculous. They've been leading the mobile GPU market for a while now.

Furthermore... Doom 3 was optimized for the 6800 from the start. So all of those silly Doom 3 benchmarks mean very little... unless you love your Doom.

You should take a look at the Mobile Nvidia Go 6800 ultra. IT even beats the desktop ATI X800 by 30 fps in Doom3
And beats it in most of all other benchmarks too.

[jeffy.dee-lux]

i'm just curious, is there really any visual difference between 60 and 120 fps? Can our eyes really pick up any improvement?

[computerfan]

There you go again by looking at Doom 3 benchmarks. Overall, I think ATI is better for their prices and benchmarks for the games I play.

[Mav451]

Depends on the game. In Doom3, with the FPS limiter of 60 in place (and the strenous GPU requirements of the game itself), hitting just 60 in this case is good enough.

However, in a high-paced action game like UT2k4 or CS:Source, for example, losing frames means the action isn't as smooth. This is something you have to see for yourself, but in terms of a competitive edge, ask yourself.

Would you rather have 40FPS or 100?

[Mav451]

Originally Posted by ~loserman~

You should take a look at the Mobile Nvidia Go 6800 ultra. IT even beats the desktop ATI X800 by 30 fps in Doom3
And beats it in most of all other benchmarks too.

If you are referring to Tom's Mobile 6800 Ultra review, then that was a joke. The only two tests they run are 3DMark2k5 (theoretical at best) and Doom3 (the sole application/game on which the 6800 performs admirably).

Selective reporting at best, or blatantly nVidia biased at the worst. Its a no-win situation for people who are brain-washed by these reviews...

Kind of like what Tom did in 1999-2001 with AMD reviews, bleh.

[~loserman~]

Originally Posted by computerfan

There you go again by looking at Doom 3 benchmarks. Overall, I think ATI is better for their prices and benchmarks for the games I play.

I believe this is a DOOM3 Thread after all...
So no other benchmarks in this thread should be relative.

[~loserman~]

[quote=Mav451]

Given, ATi is stronger at D3D, it always has been. nVidia has always been stronger at OGL.

And guess what isnt on the Mac... D3D
But OGL is.

[cb911]

well i'm not really looking forward to seeing how (slow) this runs...

i guess unless something drastic happens we'll be behind the PC side when it comes to games.

[Mav451]

True, but the troubling part about the #'s (at least for now) is that even the X800XT's on the PC hit 50FPS at 1600x1200.

http://www2.hardocp.com/image.html?i...hfN182X2wuZ2lm

That is on a last-generation, Athlon XP platform as well. The 3200+ should be nowhere close to the computing power of the G5's (eliminating the CPU issue). And again, we are back to the issue of drivers.

You know, I wonder what how the 6800 will perform on the Mac side...